Patrick Carlyon: How to make sport faster, higher, easier
Sport is hard, especially when your eyesight fades, and you have to putt with your three-wood after you smashed your putter on the third green. Here’s how to make sport better, fairer and sometimes, thankfully, shorter, writes Patrick Carlyon.
Patrick Carlyon
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Eddie McGuire is right. Sherrin footballs are too hard and slippery.
At my local park, even the designer dogs stop to marvel at how this 40-something bloke murders a short pass, spills a chest mark and occasionally headbutts the ball in trying to mark in front of his face. It’s good to know it’s the ball’s fault.
McGuire fell short of suggesting a round ball, though he ventured to add rubber nipples to a Sherrin, as with a rugby league ball, for ease of use and a better spectacle.
But why stop there? Sport is hard, especially when your eyesight fades, and you have to putt with your three-wood after you smashed your putter on the third green.
Here are some suggestions to make sport better, fairer and sometimes, thankfully, shorter.
BIGGER GOLF HOLES.
You’re putting for birdie, so of course your brain melts. You stab a putt two or three metres past the hole, miss the return putt, and decide to hate golf forever, or until your mates stop laughing at you.
Why not double the size of the cup? Or better, introduce a universal gimme rule for any putt less than 15 feet.
BIGGER SOCCER GOALS.
Many Australians are naturally disinclined to a sport which involves two teams thrashing out
a draw (except for Test cricket, that is, which we’ll get to).
With wider goals, the goalies would lose that preening vanity common to the best of them; after all, it’s hard to beat your chest when the ball has passed you 13 times.
ONE-QUARTER BASKETBALL GAMES INSTEAD OF FOUR QUARTERS.
A sad inevitability of basketball is that opposing teams seem to equalise over the first three quarters of the game. The ball goes back and forth, back and forth, until the last quarter, when the game suddenly gets interesting because the end is nigh.
Perhaps it could be played instead with a Sherrin? For basketball is like the rise of millennial snowflakes who have just “discovered” that racism lurks under every bed. Less is more.
A SHORTER 100M TRACK.
First touted in the The Games TV series, a secretly shortened track would assist in faster times and more world records. Surely someone will break the magic nine second barrier if the track is only 93m long.
TIME-OUTS FOR 1500M SWIMMING. Like basketball, there is a stultifying back and forth, back and forth, to this distance race. You can’t see the swimmer’s faces, you can’t tell what they are thinking. Why not stop every 300m for a breathless interview with poolside rider, Robert DiPierdomenico?
“How you feeling, mate?
“Buggered, yeah.”
“Good onya, mate. Back you go.”
NO GOLDEN DUCKS. Make the first ball of every cricket innings a free hit. It’ll eliminate the eternal sadness of walking off the field, while being heckled by a 15-year-old opposition player, and sitting in the sheds for 74 overs and trying to avoid scoring, Not that this has ever happened to me.
TASERS AT THE TENNIS. Sick of Nick Kyrgios outbursts? Why not an official, dressed in the black face mask of a medieval executioner, who applies a zap each time Kyrgios complains about the colour of the towels?
SIN BIN FOR FOOTY COMMENTATORS.A yellow/red card system for Brian Taylor each time he starts saying “candy” and can’t stop.
BEACH VOLLEYBALL. Lose the sand.
UNDERWATER WATER POLO CAMERAS. Where all the real action happens. Slow motion replays of squirrel grips and rabbit punches, as commentated by BT and Bruce McAvaney.
COMPULSORY DRUG USE IN CYCLING. Instead of illegal top-ups in hidden corners of team tents, place drug stations at scenic points of the Tour de France. Interview competitors about today’s choice of EPO, blood transfusion or testosterone as they are hooked up to intravenous drips and fanned by young women who feed them grapes. Give the stations catchy names, such as Lance’s Lounge and Contador’s Corner.
RANDOM BREATH TESTS IN PROFESSIONAL DARTS. To ensure no competitors receive an unfair advantage by falling under a required 0.15 blood alcohol level.
AFFIRMATIVE ACTION AT THE WINTER OLYMPICS. Ensure every country represented in every event, because the least able competitors are the most entertaining.
FORMULA ONE UBER EATS DELIVERIES. Break up the monotony by having drivers drive a dusty Suzuki Swift to the Watsonia home of Phil, who wants to know why his dim sims are missing.
RACING TO DELIVER THE MAIL. Get Australia Post to team up with race walkers in the hope Christmas cards arrive before January. Award medals according to race walkers who bother to ring the doorbell when they deliver a parcel.
PLAY TEST CRICKET UNTIL THERE’S A RESULT. Even if a cricket match goes 26 days, and Steve Smith is unbeaten on 868, it’ll still feel shorter than the first three quarters of a basketball game.
Patrick Carlyon is a Herald Sun columnist