It was in England that I heard for the first time of a football player being charged with bringing the game into disrepute. I was amused.
From an outsider’s perspective the whole aim of rugby was to bring the game into disrepute. And the spectators seemed to relish its most disreputable features.
I can now see the point of the charge.
If suspicion persists that players were encouraged to take drugs whose long term effects are unknown, it would lead parents actively to discourage their children from playing the game at senior level, with incalculable commercial consequences.
Disrepute and disaster are twins.
Games are games. It is a much more serious and potentially dangerous thing to bring a nation’s polity into disrepute.
And that sadly is what the military rulers of Egypt appear to have done when crushing the protests by the supporters of the elected and desposed President Mohamed Morsi. Over 400 people died, perhaps many more. Continue reading
Image: Eureka Street
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