The Manly rugby league “pride” jersey saga in Australia has again raised the spectre of virtue signalling in sport and demonstrated how it produces numerous inconsistencies and has unintended consequences.
The seven players who objected to wearing the jerseys, and missed the match on Thursday night against the Sydney Roosters, are Polynesians and devout Christians and are being roundly criticized for their stance. However, it’s hard not to see a double standard in the treatment of AFLW player and practising Muslim Haneen Zreika, who declined to wear a pride jumper and cricketer and practising Muslim Fawad Ahmed, who declined to have a beer brand logo on his Australian shirt.
Lack of Consistency
Now, while many may argue that the South African policy of apartheid was justification enough to exclude that country from the world’s sporting family. It should also be asked why Iran has not been banned from international sporting competitions for its support of international terrorism, which has resulted in the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians, and its abhorrent treatment of women, since the revolution in 1979?Wimbledon is the only grand slam tournament that imposed the ban. In response, the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) and the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) made the decision to strip the tournament of rankings points.
This led to the perverse outcome that Novak Djokovic, the winner of the gentlemen’s singles, and runner-up Nick Kyrgios, actually slid down the rankings, rather than being rewarded.
“The ability for players of any nationality to enter tournaments based on merit and without discrimination is fundamental to our tour,” the ATP said.
“The decision by Wimbledon to ban Russian and Belarusian players from competing in the UK this summer undermines this principle and the integrity of the ATP ranking system.
“Our rules and agreements exist in order to protect the rights of players as a whole. Unilateral decisions of this nature, if unaddressed, set a damaging precedent for the rest of the tour. Discrimination by individual tournaments is simply not viable on a tour that operates in more than 30 countries.”
Backtracking
However, some sporting organizations are starting to backtrack on their virtue-signalling. In 2018, Formula 1 decided to ban the use of grid girls, who until then, paraded the pit lane and the starting grid and conducted promotional tasks. They used to wear clothes bearing the names of sponsors and accompany drivers to the podium.In announcing the ban, the managing director of commercial operations at Formula One, Sean Bratches commented: “While the practice of employing grid girls has been a staple of Formula One Grand Prix’s for decades, we feel this custom does not resonate with our brand values and clearly is at odds with modern day societal norms.”
We don’t believe the practice is appropriate or relevant to Formula One and its fans, old and new, across the world,” he added.
However, it now looks like the grid girls will return. They were present at the Monaco Grand Prix this year and others may well follow suit. Race organizers maybe realized that banning the grid girls was nothing but an unnecessary distraction from the actual race, and it actually did women a disservice by robbing them of work opportunities—many grid girls have gone on to have successful modelling careers.
Surely we must now come to the realization that, when all is said and done, sport and politics just do not mix. Indeed, professional sport should be an escape from politics and partisan causes, not a vehicle to promote them.