David Penberthy: The trend that’s wrecking kids’ sport
In 2018, losing is considered such a soul-destroying concept it must be stamped out. Sport can teach kids about racism, violence, bullying and respect, so why not losing, asks David Penberthy.
Like most otherwise normal adult men I often find myself replaying moments from football matches in my head and wishing things panned out differently.
How nice it would be if some games could be reversed or forgotten completely, entire seasons even. It might even be possible to attend some kind of mind-altering retreat where psychologists could train you to forget these things.
Of course, if we adopted the same rules that are increasingly being mandated in the junior codes, I could reflect on the 2017 AFL Grand Final as simply a wonderful day where a game was played in good spirit between my team, the Adelaide Crows, and the Richmond Tigers, where no scores or goal-kickers were recorded, and everyone just had a really nice time.
It would make a pleasant change from turning off my car radio with a clenched fist every time I hear The Killers singing Mr Brightside, the adopted theme song of the Richmond Football Club’s 2017 premiership team.
The local junior Aussie rules comp in my hometown has just adopted new rules where scores and goal kickers will no longer be recorded in under-11 matches.
This is merely an escalation of the same mollycoddling bullshit that now passes as standard in other codes and in every state throughout the land.
It makes you wonder, why do we persist in calling them “matches”? The word “match” suggests a contest in which one team will win and the other lose.
In 2018, losing is deemed to be such a soul-destroying concept that it must be stamped out, lest our tender kiddies be scarred forever more by being exposed to failure. The trouble of course is that when they enter the real world and try to get a job or form a relationship they will find that failure is a normal part of life.
Instead of preparing them for this reality, we are setting them up to be shocked by it.
I have just hung up my whistle after four years as the coach of my eldest son’s primary school football team. To pinch a line from the great Gideon Haigh in relation to his team of toiling amateurs at the South Yarra Cricket Club, my appointment was a triumph of availability over ability.
In my radio day job I start and finish early, meaning I was on hand to set up the cones and run the lads through my half-arsed drills every Tuesday. Despite having no talent as a footballer I found the role terrifically enjoyable. Weirdly, it was often at its most rewarding when things went wrong. Like every junior sports teams there were a few times when our team either faced or instigated episodes of physical violence, racial abuse and bullying.
There were occasional tensions within the team between the more talented kids and the battlers, or kids who were dealing with behavioural problems.
All these moments ended up being important learning experiences for the kids. Sport is a terrific vehicle to teach developing minds about the value of co-operation and teamwork, and that people have different skills and personalities. It is a great way to teach them about mutual respect, the need to abide by rules, the need to take responsibility when you stuff up.
When things did go wrong with our team, or with other teams, the governing body did a great job resolving them, and the aggrieved teams were also mature and open in addressing any dramas.
One of the most important moments in our team came when one of our boys, who is a terrific kid, snapped and belted another kid and was rubbed out for a game, the rematch against the other team later that year.
At the behest of his excellent parents, they made a point of ensuring he attended that game where he was precluded from participating.
Showing great character he went and shook hands with the opposing players. And at training, and on match day before the game, we had a group chat about how violence should never be an option, no matter how much lip you’ve been copping, and how our prisons were home to plenty of otherwise good men who snapped and lost it, our cemeteries home to plenty more who’d been on the receiving end of one killer punch.
These are hugely important conversations to have with young blokes.
This year’s season was a good one. We only lost three games and won the carnival. But our 2017 season was more rewarding, when we got smashed most weeks and only won three games.
Ours was a composite Year 6-7 team, and our performance came down to simple biology. In 2017, almost all the boys in the team were in Year 6, and this year, they were almost all in Year 7, meaning they had all shot up, beefed up, and could easily beat most of their opponents.
The thing is, the wins we had in 2017 meant so much more. Two of them were against a battling team that lost all year, but our third win, in our last game of the year, was against a really good side.
Our boys just suddenly clicked and we stormed home. They — we, to be honest — were all going berserk with joy that day. And our opponents weren’t sobbing on the ground but lined up to shake our hands and tell us well done for playing out of our skin.
That’s the stupidity of these new rules. We embrace the role of sport in teaching us about things like violence and racism, bullying and mutual respect, but when it comes to the apparently devastating concept of losing, we will try to airbrush that from the equation. It’s one of the most important life lessons of all.
And someone had better tell the kids, as they will still know the scores anyway.