Sporting stage, all about the theatre

I read with note over the past couple of weeks that the Souths Magpies have a new home in Logan. 

The mayor’s happy. Players are happy. Karmichael Hunt as coach rolls with the punches and fronts with a smile on his face.

I take little reminding, but it’s a nice segue into my love for sport, football in particular.

It’s all about the theatre.

Not like the time in primary school I played a chicken in the class musical and accidentally jumped on the fox to the uproarous laughter of an unforgiving crowd.

Parents can be cruel at times. It was the ’60s and I can assure you they were laughing at me, not with me.

I know that because neither I, the chicken, or the fox were laughing. It hurt, inside and out, and I have a scar under my right armpit to prove the fox costume had razor-like stitching which connected its left ear to the tuft of hair that flowed from the back of its head.

I say “its” not out of disrespect for correct pronouns. I think it was “her”, but I was 8 and it didn’t really matter to me at the time. I was injured, and humiliated.

So no, not that kind of theatre.

More an impromptu, unscripted kind of theatre.

Not like reality television which claims to be unscripted, yet changes the rules to ensure an outcome that magnetises hundreds of thousands of viewers on the edge of their seats as they play along to the make-believe suspense, heightened by editing and mood music.

No, not that kind of theatre either.

It’s theatre built by two teams that both want badly to win. So much so that it’s the one more willing, more ferocious, more “on” who will take glory on any given day.

There are rules, but these are merely guidelines and open to interpretation by a judge whose whistle is as infuriating to one half of onlookers as it is glorious to the other.

A result is impacted by decisions made in split seconds by those playing the game, those judging the game, and those on the sidelines screaming their thoughts on how the game could, might and is being played.

There is no script, and each time we watch, there are different nuances and factors influencing how things evolve – the weather, fitness, skill level. Different. Every time.

Corrupt officials might think they’re staging a result. But evey they are part of the theatre which rivets us to the pages of a newspaper or the screen of a computer between games. 

There’s the theatre of 80 or 90 minutes. Then there’s the theatre that happens in between, all of it unknown, unscripted.

We’ll have our favourites. For most teams, we’ll harbour disdain because of something they’ve done to our team in the past.

They’ll have pipped us by a try, or a goal, or beaten us in a grand final on a day we were filled with hope that this might be the year our crew held a trophy aloft.

One of their players might have injured one of our players, or smiled at us in a moment of fury.

Because as supporters we all want one thing – that is, to win. And in sport, there’s always an opposition trying to ensure that doesn’t happen.

Right now, the Dolphins haven’t had time to inflict injury on our hapless souls. So we love them as our second team.

This will change as they write their scene into each season’s log of unforgettable and unforgiveable misdemeanours that prevent me and my team from achieving our ultimate desire.

That’s sport. That’s theatre. And that’s why we love it.

Hey Wanda, I think I left my jersey in the wash. You seen it? Find it myself, you say? 

Okay, it’s nearly interval anyway.