A confession: I have not played any sport for thirty years. That’s not to say I have done no exercise. I’ve periodically had spurts of fitness training, and for a time took up running until painful bones brought me to a halt. I don’t include a short archery course, or a kick-around in the garden, or knocking a shuttlecock about in the park.
My parting company with interactive team sports coincides with me leaving school at sixteen. It’s amazing to think how influential those first formative years were on all that followed. Sports and I never got along. In school, when picking a team, I would always, without fail, be picked last, and consigned to some insignificant role, close to the sidelines. In this, the notion that I was a reject was reinforced week after week for a decade without pause.
When I moved into the senior school, we were forced to play rugby, a sport ill-suited to my stature. In their infinite wisdom, the sports teachers decided that the best way to build the self-esteem of the less sporty kids was to consign them to a group they mockingly called the Extra Zeds. It never occurred to them that we might be more suited to football, or some other less aggressive sport.
It wasn’t until our GCSE year that we were allowed to choose how we spent our games lesson. I chose football, at which point a teacher exclaimed, “Actually, you’re pretty good!” But by then it was too late. I had been turned off sports for life, not least by another of my teachers who seemed to enjoy ritually humiliating me in front of the other boys, referencing at every opportunity my lack of muscles, weak form and lethargic pace.
The day I left that school, I left sports behind for good. In adult life, I have never even had any interest in watching sports. I don’t have a team I zealously support. A major football match is a good opportunity for me to go off and do my own thing, unbothered by crowds otherwise engaged. In truth, I cannot muster any enthusiasm at all for any kind of sport, whether as an active participant or mere spectator.
I may try taking up running again with better shoes and on more level ground, now that my Vitamin D and testosterone levels have become more normalised. I may one day even consider swimming, if I can find an unpopular pool free of prying eyes. Anything I can commit to solo, I will countenance. But will I ever again contemplate taking on a team sport? Hell no! I’m out of that game for life.
Last modified: 6 June 2023
