THERE was once a move on the sports desk to get the young staff to look up to me. The bosses thus hoisted my cage with the help of a pulley, allowing my more callow brethren the opportunity to peer upwards, throwing bits of raw meat, hints of intros and badinage, thinly disguised as downright contempt, at me.
The idea of a role model on the sports desk was rarely discussed. As opposed to a model roll which, incidentally and after much discussion, was named as a well-fired with mince pie, black pudding and brown sauce.
The best way I found to educate my less mature colleagues was to make a series of mistakes, thus showing them precisely what not to do. I was very, very good at this. A clutch of Scottish journalists have constructed excellent reputations, written some fine commentary and made a very good living at not doing what I do. Or, at least, by not following my example. This has made an old man very happy. But enough of the editor. It has also pleased me.
This column’s antipathy to the concept of role models is thus deep and long-standing. It is most virulent against the notion that one should look to sportspeople for life lessons.
Basically, athletes do not audition for a role as a role model. Frankly, they are ill-suited to filling that job description. This was never better illustrated by the epiphany of Rory McIlroy, articulated at Royal Troon, where he shrugged off the burdens some place on him to become the saviour of golf. Frank, outspoken and ever-so-slightly irked, Mr McIlroy said: “I’ve spent seven years trying to please everyone and I figured I can’t really do that, so I may as well be true to myself.”
Pausing only to reflect that this is a model I could follow with some benefit, I realised that the role model concept was also being quietly demolished in my book at bedtime. It is And the Sun Shines Now, Adrian Tempany’s magisterial, passionate and insightful examination of English football. It contains so much that is essential to an understanding of the bloated game in England, most notably the role of Hillsborough, Heysel, Tory governments and Rupert Murdoch.
But it is dotted, too, with the sort of statistics that allow the jaw to drop and the eyebrows to raise. Like Roger Moore being hit by a mallet. Which happens. Though not enough.
How’s this for a figure? How’s this for a riposte to those who insist that Wayne Rooney's every curse, his every sigh, his every meditation on the importance of dialectical materialism is scrutinised then imitated by kids?
The National Literacy Trust in 2009 conducted a survey that shows that 78% of children aged seven to 15 had a role model but these were all predominantly from “within the immediate family”. Only about 2% of the kids named a sportsman as a role model.
Other surveys have found that children value in adults a capacity for hard work, honesty and an ability to be kind and caring. Some athletes will tick some of these boxes, a few will tick all. They are human beings, after all. But they are also personalities who can be intensely focused, sometimes at the expense of others. They may – and in many cases undoubtedly are – caring, nurturing parents or sons and daughters. But not on court, on track or on pitch.
In these arenas they have to be brutal – on opponents and themselves – resistant to pain and oft times consumed by more neuroses than a Woody Allen script. In many cases, too, they have been brought up differently from the rest of us. They have lived in a world of constant approval, where rules do not apply to them, where allowances are made to personalities that can remain unformed, even fatally damaged.
There are bright, inspiring figures in sport. There are people who show extraordinary grace, toughness or generosity in their times of crisis. But we should not demand that of them. In many instances the most attractive personality traits are simply inimical to the pursuit of sporting glory. It would be like expecting a shark to say grace before dinner.
There are lessons to be learned from sportspeople, notably and spectacularly in how their resilience allows them to battle back from defeat. This observer can certainly use every help in this area. But it is pointless to expect them to be the paragons of virtue, the setters of a template for life.
Sport and its elite performers are there to be enjoyed. There to provide drama, entertainment and even the odd insight into how triumph and disaster can be met, accepted or even overcome. But when one is watching a great athlete shout and struggle and scream and claw his or her way to victory, it might be best to hear the cautionary note of: “Don’t try this at home.”
Heroes and heroines in sport are not there for purposes of imitation though they may serve as inspiration. It is comforting that the statistics show the kids have already grasped that, though the ones on the Herald sports desk seemed to know all this intuitively. To be theirsel’ is their aim. And to me hit me with a daud of pie, obviously.
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