Sonny Bill who...?

Major sporting developments usually creep up on my awareness, long after everyone else has become fully acquainted with the facts and the prognostications. Mary considers it important to know what’s happening in national level sport, so that she doesn’t appear stupid when it gets discussed at church or in the walking club. Appearing stupid is something I don’t mind very much.

So it is that in the last week or so I found myself having to ask, surreptitiously as it were, kind of sotto voce: Who exactly is Sonny Bill...? Mary says he is a former League player who has now been selected for the All Blacks (Rugby). Apparently this is Big. I don’t know why. He is all over the news, and his photo is on the cover of next month’s Skywatch magazine. Sonny Bill is certainly a handsome lad except for his heavily tattooed right arm which his mother should have stopped him getting.

The sports writers assume I know things I don’t know. There seems to be controversy about where he will play, what position. Does it matter? Perhaps it does. Anyway, the latest is that he wasn’t in the team for the test against the Wallabies in Hong Kong. Oh dear, how sad, never mind. He is the new rising talent, the possibly Jonah Lomu redivivus, no less.

We subscribe to Sky here, as most people do, but not to Sky Sports -- incomprehensibly to many. The nation, I understand, is plunged into mourning because of some catastrophic cricket tour of Bangladesh (“the minnows of world cricket”). We won no games out of four. Some cricket luminary says we played like dicks. Well, that’s not very nice. Not very nice at all. I must have some sporting empathy bypass.

During the week, in the sports section of the TV news, we typically get hilarious clips of the All Blacks or some such at their training session -- we are expected to take these seriously -- these big blokes are skipping around on tippy toes, running back and forth, rolling around the grass. Do they not want to grow up? They occupy huge chunks of the national consciousness and TV time, mainly twinkle-toeing around some footie pitch or signing autographs in a children’s ward.

This morning we hear about some rugby heart throb who is now out for this tour because of his left knee. Their knees, groins, tendons, calf muscles and other important little places are matters of relentless national concern. It makes me wonder whether the demands on their health insurance is simply pushing up premiums for all of us.

Well, you see, I am not a sporting person. Someone recently invited us to join the croquet club. Croquet...? Apparently it would mean initial lessons with some coach. How could I ever go around saying I had a croquet coach? Croquet conjures for me the image of the mad Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland, playing croquet with flamingos as bats and hedgehogs as balls. I once conducted the funeral of a bloke who died playing croquet. I would be unable to play any club game without lamenting the loss of time and energy which could be spent on better things. Like sitting still, reading, meditating...

It is extraordinary to me that a society can expend so much of itself on violent body-contact sports. Plenty of blokes love it -- that I know. But why? It has been suggested that it creams off violence that would otherwise find hideous outlets elsewhere, like domestic violence. But we have that anyway. I don’t seem to have that violent gene. It’s a mystery to me...

Boxing is without excuse. The aim is to render one’s opponent brain damaged so that he can’t get up off the floor. That simply disgusts me. Samoan boxers are cult heroes -- it’s ignorant and debasing.

I still don’t know who Sonny Bill is, or why he has dominated the popular consciousness to the exclusion of really important matters around the world.