BREAKING: THEY’VE TAKEN OUR SPORT AWAY!

For lovers of sport, the nightmare scenario is upon us – a life without sport.

How can we possibly survive?

This is just one of many consequences of Covid-19 and, although a long way down the list of real-life traumas, worrying enough that many lives – and jobs – will be affected by a prolonged absence of what Karl Marx might have called the opiate of the masses. He was actually talking about religion, but many can’t tell the difference . . .

It’s staggering to read the sport pages – these pages – and not have any match reports to ponder, or analysis to disagree with. Instead, we might try and remember the name of Tom Banks, who could pop up in a sports quiz in years to come: who was the last player to score a try in the truncated 2020 Super Rugby season?

Or how about naming the last SA boxing champion to be crowned in 2020, as Tshifhiwa Munyai was amid a sweaty crowd last Sunday, before Boxing SA sensibly put a stop to all action?

The one thing to have shone during these desperate, worrying times has been leadership, or the lack of it. A man like Jurgen Klopp has shown himself to be sensible and socially conscious, saying and doing all the right things with regard to the pandemic.

He has loads of common sense, which isn’t a quality necessarily shared by other influential leaders in sport.

Crises such as this reveal the true character of administrators, which is why several sports were slow off the mark and others were defiantly trying to make a silk purse out of this pig’s ear.

So far, talk of fixtures behind closed doors mostly remains fiction. Such events in Germany and the US were quickly shut down; South Africa too. Local gatherings of 100-plus are banned and the department of health must give the go-ahead for any sports event consisting of fewer than 100 people.

Somehow, the Olympic Games is still holding out, but reality will soon come visiting.

Decisions must be made with regard to the pandemic, but so fluid are the rules that what’s true in the morning might be different in the afternoon. With little to do but hang around, sport bosses will have plenty of time to plot and plan new approaches, changes and compromises. Coronavirus will wreck the sporting landscape and place extraordinary economic strain on already struggling codes.

It’s an open secret that a sport like rugby operates on the margins. Stormers coach John Dobson spoke of the possibility of job losses in rugby. Local soccer and cricket face similar pressures.

Individual athletes such as boxers, road runners, golfers and tennis players stand to lose even more given that prize money can’t be awarded when events don’t take place.

It can’t be business as usual. Sport must adapt in this seemingly post-apocalyptic reality, whether it be by contemplating pay cuts – as New Zealand rugby is said to be considering – or cramming in as much action as possible when the health threat eventually diminishes.

It’s not just the fans who feel lost. Beyond the athletes, sport is a massive industry that links thousands of invested people, who all stand to lose something for as long as we have nothing to cheer.

Stay well, all of you. – © Sunday Tribune