What’s with sport and cheats ? Or should that read Sportsmen & women and cheating?
Let’s start with “The Nike Curse”. Originally a phrase coined about a fantastical Nike Ad starring some of the sporting worlds’ biggest names & building the anticipation for the 2010 FIFA World Cup which, after their bad form, injuries or similar seemed doomed or cursed. The Ad featured the likes of Christiano Ronaldo, Wayne Rooney, Didier Drogba, Roger Federer, Kobe Bryant and even Homer Simpson. Tiger Woods wasn’t in it and of course not all of the participants have had their worlds come crashing down around their ears, but it’s a good starting point.
I don’t need to say much about Tiger Woods except that WOW, how the mighty have fallen!! I would have confined that to his private life, but just watching his golf scores and his competition form, I'm afraid not! It may have started out that way but, hmmmmm……. Tiger = zero.
And so on to Rooney. Oh deary me. Well, it’s sordid and it’s mucky and to be completely fair – it has NOTHING to do with his football. Or at least it didn’t until Alex Ferguson left him out of the team playing Everton on Saturday (he’s originally a blue and in fact made the error as a teen of wearing a t-shirt saying he’d be blue forever). Everton fans have always had a go at him but I do concur that this weekend would have been a blood-bath had he played. Sadly for Man U, that meant a draw with Everton which won’t sit well with the Manu U fans. Especially since Everton scored 2 goals in extra time to draw. Ouch! Rooney = zero.
Here’s a conspiracy theory for you ! Nike is big business, very big wealthy business. Perhaps there’s a rival business out there muddying up the ether and creating the environment for Nike’s great stars to revert to type to ……………………………. (a) Cause Nike to draw negative press and so weaken their foot-hold; or (b) cause Nike to ditch said “stars” to be snaffled by rival business. Interesting trying to figure the brand that wants a star after their dirty laundry is washed, aired, ironed and re-aired in public …………. Insurance perhaps ?!
And what is it with the so called “gentlemans sports?” Cricket ??? Rugby ???
Cricket is about to undergo a make-over with all the match-fixing, dropped balls, no balls, etc. etc. I’m sure everyone remembers the Hansie Cronje classic ………”The devil made me do it!” moment. Essentially, the betting, scamming, cheating and dodgy-ness has been around in cricket for absolutely ages. Prior to Hansie-gate and clearly post Hansie-gate. Now there is apparently a list floating around through the corridors of cricket power which includes the names of a whole load of dodgy moments and potentially dodgy cricketers all tied in with the IPL played in South Africa earlier this year. The newspaper reckons that will never become public but if Nasser Hussein has his way………………….. Well, lets just say he’s all for the airing of dirty laundry here again!
If you wanted a fall from grace story to compare here with the others then all I need say is Kevin Pietersen! His form is dreadful and for a while there, he didn’t have a county to crawl back to in the hope of getting it back. Seems he’s now with Surrey until the end of the 2010 season and there’s a story about that he’s heading back to Natal for a couple of games before the Ashes next year …………… intriguing! His tweets of irritation at being dropped for the Twenty20 series got him fined and chastised, yet again. I personally think KP is an Ass – but there you go. How rapid the backward slide as everything keeps going wrong! He might still regret those lions he had tattooed on his person if England do decide that between his foreignness (trust me, as a fellow South African, they find him foreign) and his bad form, he can sit out the Ashes and worse!
And then the much filmed pantomime of Rugby “blood-gate”. The basic principal of 'we need to get this idiot off the field, fake an injury or something please, because we need ……….. on as replacement, quick quick!' Best idea between jocks was - take a blood capsule out of your sock, bite hard and leave the field looking like you’ve ripped the head off a vampire bat , add a quick wink to fellow conspirators , and then get the good team doctor to cut the lip to cover the ass ! Classic! We all know that rugby = blood = rugby, but the moment you add the “joke shop”, it all becomes a bit Ozzfest really. There are other corkers in rugby including players for Bath admitting to and/or avoiding urine testing for Cocaine. I kid you not. Cocaine + Rugby = ………………… one can only wonder. Now Steroids + Rugby = Obvious really, judging by the size of some of them, but that’s a WHOLE other blogging moment.
And there’s swimmers and cyclists and track athletes and Formula 1 – each story and each moment similar in that there’s a human sports person attached and …………………… MONEY.
I suppose that’s where this ends really. Sport + Money = TABLOID HEADLINES. That might be a bit simplistic and more than a bit unfair to all sportsmen out there who aren’t basically dreadful people, or naturally dishonest, or naïve, or stupid, or common, but the reality is that Business + Sports = Vulgar Money + dodgy sportman = CHEATING! Oh, and don’t forget THE NEWS OF THE WORLD – sordid entrapment specialists that they are and BAM – you have The Rise and Fall of Sports and Sportspersons.
Don’t know if I’m appalled or waiting for the next mucky episode.
Over and never “down” or out.
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