Politics and Sport Has Always Been a Toxic Mix

Daly Cherry-Evans (2nd L) of the Sea Eagles, wearing a rainbow-trimmed Pride jersey, defends during the rugby league match between the Manly Sea Eagles and Sydney Roosters in Sydney, Australia, on July 28, 2022. Glenn Nicholls/AFP via Getty Images

Commentary

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.

When the Wallabies took to the field against England recently in Sydney, they sang the Australian National Anthem in the Indigenous language of the area, the Yugambeh language. However, this could be seen as an exclusion rather than an inclusion since there are over 300 Indigenous languages in Australia. As it turned out, the Wallabies lost the match convincingly. Surely the real objective in a sporting contest is to win and to do so by playing well and fairly?

From the early 1970s, South African sporting teams were banned from international competitions for 20 years in protest of that country’s apartheid system. The problem with this was that South Africa during this period had the best cricket and rugby union teams in the world, with players denied the fundamental right to ply their trade based on merit and without discrimination based on their nationality, and spectators denied the joy of watching them. In effect, these players were penalized because of decisions made by their government, which of course, they had no control over.

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?

The other problem with virtue signalling in sport is that it can backfire. The once-bastion of the old establishment, the All England Club, which in the 1980s had no issue with South Africans Kevin Curran and Johan Kriek playing on the hallowed grass courts at Wimbledon (indeed, Curran was a finalist in 1985 against Boris Becker), decided this year to ban Russian and Belarussian players from competing, which meant that the tournament was robbed of its number one male player, Daniil Medvedev.

Daniil Medvedev of Russia celebrates with the championship trophy after defeating Novak Djokovic of Serbia to win the Men's Singles final match of the 2021 U.S. Open at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in New York, on Sept. 12, 2021. Matthew Stockman/Getty Images

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.

As the ATP stated at the time,

“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.”

The WTA made a statement along similar lines: “Nearly 50 years ago, the WTA was founded on the fundamental principle that all players have an equal opportunity to compete based on merit and without discrimination. The WTA believes that individual athletes participating in an individual sport should not be penalized or prevented from competing solely because of their nationalities or the decisions made by the governments of their countries.”

When that argument was made in support of South African sporting teams being allowed to compete in global tournaments, it was summarily dismissed.

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.

As Katherine Deves, the Australian campaigner to Save Women’s Sports said, many people “do not want to get involved in these political movements and just want to play football.”

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.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.