Sport

I love going to the football, because you get to eat like a tradie and scream for no reason – two things I want to do every day but can’t, as it’s been explained to me that such behaviour is ‘annoying’ and I will develop ‘bowel cancer’.

I find the concept of sport very relaxing, because it typically pits people of relatively comparable strength and ability against each other and, within a particular time frame, we usually know who has won and who has lost. There’s a fairness, or at least an attempt at fairness, that doesn’t exist in the real world. (It’s interesting that the idea of a ‘fair and level playing field’ in society is considered so outrageous to some of the very people who insist on it in sport.)

It has recently dawned on me how important referees are in sport, and how little they have to gain from it. They take on the job, knowing that no one will ever have a poster of them on their wall, nor will a movie ever be made about the difficult decisions they’ve had to make. I’ve never heard of a big-breasted woman falling over herself to talk to a referee, and they aren’t ever papped hanging out with the players. They’re tantalisingly close to the sporting heroes of the world, yet I doubt a boy has ever boasted to his school friends about his dad’s profession as a referee – in fact, I imagine it’s got the same stink to it as a staunch lefty admitting their dad is a cop or votes Nationals.

Referees get none of the glory but a lot of the criticism. Does anyone suffer more disrespect than a ref? At the end of the game, depending on whether you’re on the winning or losing side, the referees have either done their job adequately, or they are absolute dogs and should be dead.

These refs are clearly so passionate about the game that they’ve become experts in it, yet they aren’t allowed to appear partial to one side, even though they of all people have the most appreciation for how the game was played. It’s verging on priesthood in a way. In fact, did you know that referees have to take a vow of celibacy in order to pass their final referee exam? Okay, that’s not true – but I bet you believed it.

Yet, for all the flack that referees cop, if a sport were to dismiss all human referees and instead let a computer referee make the decisions with digital precision, all hell would break loose. If it weren’t for that element of human error, what would people talk about and fight over all week until the next game? Referees aren’t just there to facilitate the game; they’re there to act as circuit breakers, so people can blame them instead of the players.

I was at the football with my friends not long ago, sitting a row back from a large group of young, quite obviously private-school boys. It was the sleeveless puffer vests and complete lack of shame about the privileges of cumulative wealth that gave them away.

These types of private-school boys always seem to love their dads in a way that isn’t in any way cute or relatable. Meanwhile, their dads probably stay out until 11 pm on weeknights trying to see how much they can drink before spewing on their ties. I used to think private-school boys like this wanted girls to call them ‘Daddy’ in bed to make them feel dominant and powerful, but I’ve pivoted into thinking that they just want to be reminded of their actual dads. Any opportunity to discuss their father and his future investments. Even while thrusting away, there’s no reason he can’t impress upon his lover just how impressive his dad is. ‘Daddy? Why, yes, he does have his own parking spot in the city!’

These boys at the footy seemed like they were letting off a bit of steam, no doubt needing some relief from the pressures of living at home in their parents’ architect-designed mansions while they saved up enough money for a deposit on a house they would buy at age twenty-three.

I don’t want you to think I’m man-bashing here – I love men. But these aren’t men; they’re Country Road bags running off the fumes of their dads’ Mercedes-Benzes. They’re the sort who start wars in the Middle East, and do nothing but move other people’s money around their whole lives. By age forty, they won’t be able to come unless they’ve paid a woman to crush their scrotum with a high heel. I know it sounds harsh, and I know not all private-school boys are like that, obviously – but, my god, I’ve met so many of them that are like that, I’m happy to piss off a few of the good ones as collateral damage.

As I sat behind these boys – about fifteen of them – I became fascinated by their dynamic and began watching them instead of the football game. I even began to feel sorry for the few who were not as alpha as the others, and who probably just wanted to watch the game in peace as opposed to being part of this undulating human sea of white skin, sandy-coloured hair and homophobic slurs.

I quickly figured out that they were not loyal to each other in the slightest and, in fact, would attack each other in order to avoid being a target. To protect themselves from being made fun of or called a ‘pussy’, they had to instead point at someone else and make them the subject of a put-down. It seemed like a very stressful situation to be in.

‘You need to go to the toilet? You’re a fucking pussy, mate,’ one said, before surreptitiously looking around to see if he’d pulled it off.

The boy who had just had this accusation levelled at him hesitated, and another boy a few seats away stepped in on his behalf, either out of solidarity or merely pure self-interest. ‘Why are you so obsessed with him going to the toilet, you gay cunt?’ To which he received a huge laugh and a round of high-fives.

The boy who initiated the exchange retreated. He would need to gather himself before attempting anything like that again.

At last, their team scored a try and they all begun bellowing like wild animals into the cold night.

‘Fucking yessss, boys, ow ow owwwwww!’ one shouted and the others joined in.

One boy, getting so excited by all the yelling, started roaring louder and louder until he lost control and was betrayed by his very own vocal cords, which turned his previously manly roar into a high-pitched squeal. His eyes widened and he could tell he was in for it. They all converged on him in a barrage of insults, the loudest coming from the boy who had lost the battle from earlier. This barrage lasted around three minutes. I noticed that the squealer didn’t speak much for the rest of the night.

In my later schooling years, I went to a public high school that offered placements for kids who displayed academic or sporting excellence, which meant it was considered a selective school and so we competed against private schools. Let me be clear, I was not there for any kind of academic or sporting reasons – I just lived in the catchment area so they had to take me in, much to the chagrin of the more-talented students.

I went to a few of the rugby games our school played against the private schools. The private-school kids would chant ‘Your dad works for my dad’ at us over and over until the game started. Then the chant would taper off somewhat as they watched their team get destroyed by players who lived in suburbs the private-school kids would never step foot in, like Marsden, Beenleigh and Browns Plains.

The private-school kids would always cry that it wasn’t fair that they had to compete against our school, because we had players who were genetically more gifted – that is, players who were from places like Tonga and Samoa, and had more natural agility and strength than the chinless private-school boys.

What was fair to them, though, was that they would all go on to own property and receive jobs from their friends’ dads without having to bother with all that irksome ‘interview process’ stuff.

Now back to the private-school boys sitting in front of me at the football. Towards the end of the night, the game nearly over, a boy with rat-like features who hadn’t done anything in a while threw his beer up into the air. It landed all over a couple of middle-aged Indian men sitting a few rows in front. The boys began cackling and hitting each other on the back, when the friend I was with, who is truly gargantuan in size, tapped the little rat boy on the shoulder.

‘Mate, what the fuck was that?’ my friend said. ‘Go and apologise to those men now.’

The boy, rolling his eyes cockily to his friends, started to turn around in his seat. ‘What the fuck are y—’ he began, before clocking the entirety of my friend’s stature.

Without another word, he scuttled off down the concrete steps, profusely apologising to the men he’d spilt beer on, while furtively glancing up at my large friend to make sure he was satisfied.

Thank you to sport for occasionally being there to facilitate dunking on people who really need to be dunked on.