How to play like Barca #1

You know you want to… so stop simply being in awe of them and look closely to see what makes Barcelona the best team the world has ever seen – in any sport.
By Simon Lewis

Facing the relative minnows FC Bate Barisov in the Champions League group stages (28 Sept 2011), Barcelona were being kept at bay by the mass of yellow Bate shirts stockpiled in the midfield and in front of their penalty box. Barca were playing well but up until the quarter hour mark you wondered if they would be able to perhaps keep them at bay. Within 7 minutes Barca were 2-0 up.

Aside from the pressure they kept exerting, what made the difference in both goals was, as usual, slick and purposeful passing: move the ball quickly, don’t linger on it, get your opposition running around for it. But… a big factor was the fact that they kept switching the play from one side of the field to the other. If the opposition are massed against you and parking the bus in front of goal, you have to get up in their face… but equally you must pull them this way and that.

By spreading the ball across the field, this way then that, from left wing to right wing and back, you force the opposition to stretch themselves that little bit, thereby opening up gaps for you. Add some well-timed, darting runs as well and you can see how Barca went 2-0 up in the face of a pretty solid and determined defence.

© SIMON LEWIS • The Ball magazine  simon@theball.co.za • www.theball.co.za

LIVING THEIR DREAMS

Living their dreams
By Simon Lewis

One of the things I’m most grateful to my parents for is allowing me to follow my own dreams and live those dreams. In hindsight, a lot of that time may have come to nothing and may well not have paid off, but it was my dream to live and my responsibility to accept and deal with any success and failure that came along.

Most importantly, as I was largely encouraged to enjoy my own interests and activities and seldom forced into things I was not interested in, it left me with wonderful, warm memories from my childhood and a happiness and sense of fulfilment about the life I have lead to date. I may not have achieved my goals or matched the achievements of many of my peers, and I have had disappointments along the way, but I’m fortunate to be able to say I have been happy with my day-to-day life and what I have achieved. Happiness is probably the most important thing for a human, from the cradle to the grave.

True, to have achieved greater success my parents should have been tougher on me in certain respects and perhaps forced me to comply with the ‘right way’ of doing certain things that I shied away from.

Fortunately, through my own life experiences and being open to interpret life’s lessons as they’ve come along, I have been able to see where my parents ‘went wrong’ and to realise a balanced view of how I need to guide my son, Ronan, in his future sporting life as well as the rest of his life. The biggest lesson, however, is not to get your son or daughter living your dreams or striving to attain your goals or levels of success. My childhood was rich and rewarding to live – albeit there was pain suffering and unhappy times, as all humans experience to some degree – but much of my days and hours were spent hitting cricket balls and tennis balls and kicking soccer balls around, and watching the TV and reading the magazines, comics and books that fascinated and entertained me. As these things excited me my youth was spent enjoying my choice of these various activities - but never did my father push me to do what he had done or to realise his unrequited goals or try to match his own successes.

If I had been forced to play and practice hockey (which my dad had played) or perhaps rugby (which was the popular sport at my school, even though soccer was my preferred sport – I’d play for my school rugby team in the morning and for my soccer club in the afternoon) I might have learned certain life disciplines or made different contacts and friendships that could have been valuable in later life… but I wasn’t, and I’m happy with the consequences. I wasn’t left playing sport and hating it, or wishing to be doing something else. I played it and loved it and thrilled to the experience. True, there was a lack of must-win-at-all-costs competiveness about my play and life in general – although I certainly played hard to win and trained with the worth ethic of a professional. Overall, I guess I played in more of a gentlemanly fashion, as that was very much my father’s background and influence coming through. Looking back I wouldn’t change it for the life I have lived. Sure, with hindsight if mom and dad could have tweaked their approach and attitude in a few small ways I think I might really have been able to achieve something in the sporting world that would match my ambition and drive, but hindsight is easy. They were great parents who gave love and support and encouragement and plenty of opportunities - and that is what I remember and that is what I most cherish. Their example also leaves me in a wonderful position to be able to try and strike an even better balance as I help Ronan develop as a sportsman and as a young man facing a world of opportunities and responsibilities as he grows through life.

The worst thing I can imagine is spending hours and days as a child growing up playing a sport or doing the violin or learning to fix a new air filter into a car… IF that was something I really didn’t want to do. Of course it’s important to have chores and to experience many different things in life, as sticking too close to what you know or love can be limiting and even dangerous, but there’s a balance that you need to discover for yourself.

We all live only our own dreams and there can be no better tribute to yourself and your child to honour them by giving them a balanced upbringing, sharing with them your past, your own dreams, the goals you achieved and dreamed about… and then cutting the emotional apron strings and allowing them to live their own dreams day by day.

© SIMON LEWIS • The Ball magazine  simon@theball.co.za • www.theball.co.za

SKILL VS INSTINCT

One of the great keys to enjoying and succeeding at sport is being able to balance your abilities and skill with your instinct.
By Simon Lewis

HOW TO HARNESS SPORTING INSTINCT TO RULE YOUR CHILD
It’s important to develop your child’s technique as well as their technical and tactical discipline… so you need to help them add to raw street-smarts to their technique and tactics. Technique and training is easy – hundreds of textbooks, magazines, websites and coaches provide it – but street-smarts means getting out more with a wider selection of different players of different ages and abilities under a wide range of conditions so that your child learns to adapt to some of the different conditions and competitors they will face in their career. This is brilliant training for sport and life in general.
Encourage them to play with older kids in the park, or play with kids below their ability but who play a tougher, more rugged version of the game. Your kid needs to compete against and play alongside players of different styles and approaches so that some of that can rub off in good ways when required. Play against the rich kids, play against the poor kids. Play against older girls. Every opponent and situation offers you opportunities to learn and progress… particularly if you’re in tune with the need to learn, rather than just mindlessly going out determined to win every encounter at all costs.
They will, at the same time, also learn by seeing these other kids making mistakes, naturally, and in terms of your role as parent-mentor-coach (PMC) there needs to be some counseling so that your child doesn’t break wild and lose all technique and discipline… or to prevent them from going the ‘other way’, where they might lose all their natural flair and power. You as PMC need to reinforce the lessons your Little Star will have learned or been exposed to out in the big wide world of sport.

SKILL VS INSTINCT TRAINING
There is a big difference between skills training and instinct training. Instinct training needs to be match simulation and should be done in a 100% scale environment with similar situations as you would encounter in a match. For instinct training you need to be in real situations with a real goal (soccer goal, rugby posts, cricket wicket, golf fairway, tennis lines) that you attempt to hit while the sweat pours and you run between shots or passes. Your body and mind needs that reinforcement of what it’s doing and what results its actions produce under pressure.
A rugby flyhalf should take a kick at poles and, if the kick is over, he should run back to his own half of the field before running to the next spot to take the next kick at posts from. If he misses he should run to the 25-yard line and ‘prepare’ for a counter-attack. Such reactive training ensures that the player practices his kicking under match circumstances, with his muscles aching and his lungs pounding. That is a form of instinct training, and it needs to be performed to build big match temperament and to work on technique under pressure of time and physical fatigue.
Skills training is where the player stands in one spot and simply kicks ball after ball in an attempt to groove a technique, build confidence and muscle/memory learning. That is the first step and is essential for building a technique, but to perfect the technique for match situations you have to include some form of instinct training so that your technical flaws are exposed under strain and tiredness.
 
© SIMON LEWIS • The Ball magazine 
simon@theball.co.za • www.theball.co.za

WORLD CUP DREAMS

We all dream of being the match-winner in a world cup final, but be careful of guiding your child by such dreams alone.
By Simon Lewis

WAITING FOR THE WORLD CUP FINAL
Remember that you are constantly building yourself up for YOUR World Cup Final. When a match is ‘dead’ you have a chance to experiment and to try things and to test yourself or to build your confidence of dribbling the ball past good defenders in order to create genuine goal-scoring opportunities. Sadly, too many teams keep taking potshots at goal when they find themselves in such a frustrating situation, and the ball flies into the crowd and the time keeps a-ticking by and they lose more opportunities for valuable match practice.
What can you do in such a situation? Make more positive attempts to break down the defence and ‘earn’ a goal, rather than stumbling upon a lucky strike. This applies equally if you are way ahead of your opponents and victory is assured: use those 20 minutes to practice more adventurous tactical goal-scoring opportunities or to try out movements or combinations you have practiced on the training field but have not yet had the confidence to try in a match situation. A lucky goal / try / wicket has no long-term benefits to you if the match is already won or lost.

MATCH SITUATIONS
If you work hard as a team and create a genuine goal-scoring opportunity and then score a good, honest goal (ie not a fluke or a potshot) then it’s a motivator for you for your next match or matches. Every extra goal / wicket / try boosts your morale, gives one of your players an extra notch in the season’s ratings, pushes one of your members up the list of goal / try scorers or wicket-takers and makes a slight dent in your goals / tries for-and-against ratio, which just might save you from relegation or ensure that you finish one spot higher up the rankings at season’s end.
Most importantly, it gives you an opportunity to totally enjoy your sport, even though you are losing. Ultimately, your sporting career (or Tiger Woods’ or Roger Federer’s) is not about winning or losing… it’s about playing and enjoying. Never lose a chance to enjoy playing your sport just because you are winning too easily or losing too badly.

TELL THEM ABOUT IT
If your child is depressed about losing a match badly, tell them not to worry because tomorrow the sun will rise again. And there’s always a more important match in the future. Even if they are playing in the actual World Cup final or at The Masters or Wimbledon or a Test at Lord’s… remember that unless they are about to retire, there will be another World Cup Final or Wimbledon. They might not have the opportunity to play in that event, but there WILL be another big match. Our society places a higher premium on winning than on developing yourself into being a long-term winner. For the individual, winning is secondary: what really counts is continually developing yourself into a better player in the aim of being able to win the next big match and to ultimately achieve in YOUR World Cup Final (not necessarily THE World Cup Final). Winning for the sake of winning serves only parents who are thinking about their own needs or expectations, or marketing people or people with a vested financial interest in a result. It is essential to have a winning attitude, approach and desire, but it’s more important to lose today playing in a way that is in some way helping to prepare you to win a bigger match tomorrow by playing in a more complete way. 

THE TIGER WOODS MOMENT
You don’t have to be Tiger Woods to have and enjoy Tiger Woods moments, although so many of us embark on sporting or artistic careers because of a flash of inspiration we get from seeing someone having a GREAT moment. The opportunities awaiting you in life are vast, but to achieve in any of them takes mammoth dedication and commitment to a select few personal targets.
To get to the final round of The Masters golf event take years and years and years of grinding effort, sacrifice, dedication and luck. It’s a full-time job, and one that doesn’t pay until you’ve put in a good few years of solid work at it – and even then you have no guarantee that your efforts will reward you financially any better than if you’d stuck at your job as an office clerk. To get to The Masters (or any sporting equivalent) you will be required to sacrifice countless other life opportunities, and for anyone embarking on serious sporting goals you must realize that your chances of success are so small that any effort you put in could well be with no financial or even emotional reward in the long run. Obviously sporting pursuits carry huge benefits for the body and mind, and if you have a love for the sport you are playing then it’s an extension of a hobby, in which case all your effort and dedication is not wasted in the even that your final goal is not met. If a child is forced into a pursuit they are not passionate about then you risk stealing and wasting a great deal of their life from them with little reward for them. A child’e time, fun, laughter and potential is too precious to waste on your own personal dreams and unfulfilled ambitions.
Many parents subtly (sometimes not so subtly) motivate their children by encouraging them with comments such as ‘I can see you winning The Masters one day, son,’ or maybe something like ‘It would give me the greatest happiness if you played for the Springboks one day, my boy’. Not so much of this pressure is passed onto girls, although equally they are seldom provided with any access to sporting fun at any stage of their life. The problem with such subtle encouragement is that children will often throw themselves wholeheartedly into a sporting pursuit in order to please or gain the love and acceptance of a parent. Children might need such inspiration to get them away from the TV and to provide them with some form of focus in life (and with the balance right sport is a wonderful diversion and pursuit for them), so subtle motivation like that is not, in itself, a bad thing, but as the Parent Manager you MUST be aware of the impact of your words and seek to effect damage limitation.
Your job is done when, on your death bed, you can simply save ‘I love you son / daughter’… rather than having to apologise for leading them along the wrong life path. A life is too precious to waste.

HOW TO LIMIT THE DAMAGE
It’s irresponsible to put any form of pressure on a child that might lead them to believe that they will gain your acceptance by being successful or achieving and pleasing you. Equally, it’s emotionally criminal not to follow up with heavy positive affirmations at a later date that will fill your child’s needs regarding that affirmation that they were seeking. If that is they case then they will have thrown themselves into a sporting pursuit and could get sucked deep into it with no chance of turning back before it’s too late and they’ve committed themselves to it too much. You need to provide an escape hatch for your child. Don’t leave them heads down trying to prove themselves on the sports field JUST to please you: tell them (repeatedly) they are your great pride and joy (in whatever way you normally communicate to them – they’ll know you mean it if you use your words or actions and not the direct words I use here) and express your love to them. If you can do this for them then your child will reach their goal of gaining your love and acceptance and will be in a position that they can, on their own, re-evaluate their sporting goals. Achieve that and you will both be proud of each other.
 
© SIMON LEWIS • The Ball magazine 
simon@theball.co.za • www.theball.co.za

THE BIGGEST LESSON

We all praise winners and try to teach our children to be winners, but often our greatest lessons come from defeat.
By Simon Lewis

TEACH YOUR KID TO BE A GOOD LOSER
Good losers make good winners, strange as that might sound. Sport is likened to war by a great many people, but it will never be like war. War sees mothers and fathers killed and innocent children and animals slaughtered in the name of (in most cases) pretty pathetic reasons. So sport is not war – you’re allowed to be friendly to the opponents off the field, and respectful on the field.
So what exactly does being a GOOD LOSER on the sports field entail?
Perhaps your rugby team is being thrashed 45-3 by the local private school’s rugby elite with 15 minutes to go, or your soccer side is 4-0 down to Chelsea. Either way you know it’s game over – you’ll never eat back the deficit in the time available against such a mighty opponent. Most teams would draw long faces, start infighting or resort to dirty tactics in frustration at their sporting fate. That’s a very normal and typical reaction, but it doesn’t serve your side well in the short term or the long term. In the heat of ‘battle’ it’s natural to drift into such a negative approach, which is why it is essential for the players to be managed to be prepared for such a situation and be ready to make the most of it. In essence, they need to be ready to be good losers.

THE MATCH SITUATION 
You will be in a situation where you can almost certainly not win a match in the time remaining. However, you CAN learn from those remaining 20 minutes and you CAN grow as a player in such a ‘hopeless’ situation. Forget winning or the fact that you are GOING TO LOSE. Allow yourself to just enjoy each moment of the match and indulge your sporting spirit by getting stuck into the pure intensity of raising your game for each tackle, each pass, shot or header. Get WINNING and RESULTS and LEAGUE TABLES out of your head: this is sport, and this is hopefully the closest to war you’ll ever come – so start battling.

TELL YOUR KIDS
Sport is about having a long-term goal but, to achieve that, you need to keep growing each day and each match,  so it’s essential to keep loving what you do and playing with passion. Use the last 20 minutes of a lost match to raise yourself to compete with the stronger opposition and get used to being adventurous and taking on their players, man-to-man or woman-to-woman. Allow yourself the opportunity of doing something unusually adventurous that you could not justify trying in such a match when the score is still at 0-0 and there’s ‘so much to play for’.
When next in your life will you have such a chance? Learn and enjoy from every sporting moment you can, for tomorrow you retire (and the next day you die!). Now, here, today, you have a match against Chelsea / Sri Lanka / Grey Bloem – and the average player will only have that chance 15-20 times in his or her career, so such an opportunity is an endangered species. Catch your opportunities, thrill to the excitement of the opportunity, and make the most of each and every one.

© SIMON LEWIS • The Ball magazine 
simon@theball.co.za • www.theball.co.za

GIRLS ON THE SIDE: Women in Sport

Women’s sport always seems to come off second best. If women aren’t having their bodies visually exploited, regardless of their ability, then they’re being ignored by the sporting world, or labelled lesbian. Where is the media coverage to boost women’s sport and, as importantly, where is women’s interest in sport.
By Simon Lewis (July 2005)

As with all change, there often needs to be a rebel who forces that change. In the world of women’s sport, Michelle Wie seems to be that rebel, in addition to being a 15-year-old occasional mall-rat who stands over six foot tall on size 10 (and growing) feet. When she’s not changing the world or tripping through malls with her mates, she manages to keep ahead of her studies and maintain a level head on her shoulders. The youngest person EVER to play in a (men’s!) PGA tour event, Wie already hits the ball the same distance as many men on the tour. She’s not going to sit back and let men rule the roost without a challenge: when she grows up she wants to take on the men in the PGA in a big way. She has a need to push herself to the limit, and she has the benefit that her generation no longer stands back while the pale male dominates everything. She’s cheeky, but not cocky. Another woman golfer who had a crack at teeing off with the men recently was Sweden’s Annika Sorenstam, but she was all a bit too apologetic afterwards, no doubt upset over not playing as well as she’d hoped. Sorenstam seemed to shy away, overtly proclaiming her desire to return to the women’s tour, to ‘her place’. Perhaps the weight of expectation on her had been too great. Certainly, there were many waiting for her to fail: she didn’t. In fact, she did rather well, better than many people had expected, but she did fail to make the impact she had hoped for. Ultimately, it knocked the wind out of her sails.
Wie has no such apologetic streak, and she seems to be less bothered by any expectation to match the men. She is, rather, inspired by the pure challenge to her own ability. Sorenstam is currently twice as old as Wie, so perhaps it shows that the new generation isn’t going to be blown by the wind so much as do the shaking up themselves. This new generation can do it easier: they travel lighter through life and carry less baggage.
A similar wind blew through golf in the late-90’s when Tiger Woods tore the opposition apart and ran around scything through the record books like a smoking chainsaw through cardboard. Woods opened up the world of CAN DO to people of all races and ages, one of whom was Wie herself, then a mere seven years old. So inspired was Wie by Woods’ Masters walkover in 1997 that she started playing golf with ‘greater enthusiasm’; she was clearly a seven-year-old with purpose and a lot of drive.
Wie’s approach is refreshing for one bearing the standard for women worldwide, smiling when she says that it would be “neat” if she could be a Tiger Woods that breaks down barriers and, in her case, makes it easier for women to compete against men. She is, however, diplomatically quick to stress that she is not suggesting that women SHOULD play against men. Nonetheless, the fact remains that over the past decade she has embarrassed battalions of boys and men on the golf course, and her development hasn’t been hindered by a love for sport that extends to her kicking a soccer ball around at break with the boys while her girlfriends sit chatting in the shade.

… OR NOT TO BE
One of the main ‘voices’ being raised against women taking part on the men’s tour is one subtle ‘threat’ that packs a mean punch. ‘They’ warn that if the best women join the men’s tour their earnings will only be a fraction of what they would have earned on the ladies tour (where they would more likely be winning and finishing high up the leaderboard). With the loss of the top women the LPGA – weakened and unable to maintain the interest of their sponsors – will wither, ‘they’ claim. It’s a great argument: get the other girls opposed to Annika, Michelle and any others who are keen to take on the men. Inspire division in the ranks. It’s a stupid argument, though, if you examine it. Until men and women are able to compete equally together, women obviously wouldn’t always play on the men’s tour - they need success on the ladies tour to boost their career portfolios and earning potentials. However, they ALSO need men’s competition in order to lift their own competitive levels. Women would, therefore, only appear sporadically at men’s events. But clearly many men are concerned that the difference between men and women is not quite as unbreachable as some would have us think.
Ellis Cashmore, Professor of Humanities and Social Sciences at Staffordshire University in the UK, an eminent proponent for equal opportunities for women, is quick to point out that men and women’s bodies respond in similar ways to training.
“Take a male and a female, same height, weight, build and similar physical condition, and subject them to 6 weeks of identical training and conditioning and you’ll find both bodies have responded in very similar ways,” says Cashmore. “Test the people involved and you will find the female’s muscular strength is within five per cent of the male’s. Five percent is a lot when it comes to sports where brawn is a crucial factor, but most sports are further along the continuum and involve a greater skill factor. The further along the skill continuum you get, the more women are able to compete with men as the difference in physical strength becomes less significant.”
Clearly women have great potential for change, but such change happens when there is power and intent behind it. Change happens when the marketing machine gets fired up.

A RAINBOW AT THE END OF THE GOLD
Unless you’re a really hot sportswoman with legs to die for and have learned how to pose with that delicious come-on smile as your thumbs tease your bikini down, you will struggle to get media exposure or big-time endorsements. Ironically, it’s the opposite for men. The good-looking ones with the great bodies don’t automatically get the support they need to fulfil their own potential. We’ve had more grim-looking sportsmen over the years than good-looking ones, but the only men who get the attention are the ones who win (damn them!). Not the beefcakes with no headline-grabbing honours. That’s because men are the consumers of those images, stories, and live coverage.
Ryk Neethling and his fellow swimmers have battled for so long for decent media coverage and support. Ryk is a good looking bloke, hell of a body, modest yet not a pushover. Oh, and a damn good swimmer. The perfect guy for any gal.
But endorsements, major sponsorships, decent funding? Well, precious little really, compared to mainstream sports. That is, until he, Roland and two other guys (not quite as good looking or hunky as R&R, ironically!) picked up some Olympic gold. Now it’s embarrassing – you see more of those two than Graeme and Minki. Ryk hasn’t changed nor become ‘better’ as a commodity, he just became a big-time winner. He has the same smile, same bod. Yet winning matters not in terms of who gets exposure and huge endorsement deals in women’s sport. Mrs Iglesias: case in point!
Obviously, though, swimming doesn’t pack them in like soccer, rugby, cricket, tennis or golf, so there’s less adspend and gate-money to make the swimmers rich, and the equipment sponsors aren’t going to be making gajillions from selling extra costumes at R60 a pop. So it’s about identity as a winner that matters in terms of earning male athletes and sportsmen big money, while for women it’s their identity as someone physically desirable for men.
I guess it’s understandable as both scenarios are exactly what appeals to the supply and demand needs of the male sports-buying market …

WERE WOMEN BORN EQUAL TO MEN?
A big bone of contention is that men and women are generally not allowed to compete side by side, and Cashmore claims that myths and male-dominated society over the past 120 years of organised sport have ensured the status quo. “Women and men could be competing at comparable levels,” he said, adding that women are advancing at a more rapid rate than men. Partly this is because women are pushing themselves harder, as they have a huge gap to close. They are chasing, and you often chase harder, as you know what your goal is.
“Women’s progress in sport has been retarded not by their own physiological frailty or bodily differences, but by myths about their physical capabilities. If we could turn back the clock and start organised sports again, except allowing men and women to compete in the same events, we would have a very different history of sports ... and women would be holding their own in mixed team sports by now,” claims Cashmore.
You don’t have to like sport and you don’t even have to try your hand at playing or watching sport: but you do HAVE TO have the opportunities and the choice either way.

THE SPIN CYCLE
Women’s disadvantage in the sporting arena is also largely an economic thing, and economic issues have two sides. Your market wants X, so you supply X. You give them a bit of Y and Z, but your focus is X. That is how you stay in business. If your readers aren’t interested in reading about black showjumpers, then you’re not going to feature them. If people aren’t interested in white swimmers who look like Greek gods but who lack any gold around their neck, then the public don’t want to read about them. You’re wasting space if you try to supply hockey or netball information while disregarding other mass-market sports. Of course, if your market starts to want more of Y & Z, why then the media starts to supply that. And that’s the second issue. It’s a vicious cycle, fuelled by media spin doctors and marketing moguls, but it is ultimately driven by what the market wants. Charitable benefactors are few and far between, so you need a sponsor who wants a bit of bang for their buck. A glimmer of hope remains in the fact that the supply and the demand for women’s sport will always balance out perfectly, as most supply and demand generally does in the long run. Supply (and advertising and marketing bucks) will follow when demand increases, and being led by demand ensures a more sustainable, long-term product.

WHAT A MAN WANTS
Any argument also has two sides: they don’t always balance, but there are always two sides. Why don’t men support or encourage women’s sport? Well, men’s interest in sport is extremely personal: it’s based on personal experience and personal aspiration. We generally like relating to the reading and photographic matter that we are provided with, or the sport we watch. This fact surely indicates that if women only played more sport, then they too would create a greater market for women’s sport as an industry and a career. Absolutely true, although if you cast your eye back a century you’ll see where things started to go pear-shaped, as Cashmore points out.
“The idea of sport, as we understand it, is a peculiarly western male creation, built in fact to validate masculinity. The main organisations that gave us what we now regard as sports were instituted in the late nineteenth century — around the time when the factory system was introducing machines to replace physical labour.  This meant that men’s physical work was less and less useful.  According to some views, men created organised sport as a kind of substitute, as if they wanted a forum to demonstrate their physical superiority over women.  Which is why women were excluded for the best part of the last century.”

AND THE ANSWER IS …
The only reason men have more power and money in sport is because MEN SUPPORT MALE SPORT. They turn up to watch, youngsters buy the memorabilia, they join fan clubs and own season tickets. Sure, girls and women also get involved, but it’s men en masse. And THAT is the key!
There’s nothing really stopping women from starting a whole new culture of sport. If that’s what women want then they now have the freedom to pursue it. It’ll still take time, but there’s room to build ... so long as women start by supporting women’s sport. Many might bemoan the lack of support from male spectators and male corporate companies ... but if women don’t start by building up a following and an infrastructure themselves then they can’t expect an insecure male population to encourage further self-emasculation. Women will have to keep the ball rolling… and take charge of speeding it up.
Think about the power of money and the greater power of supply and demand. I’ll bet my house, my job and everything I own on one fact - if women started to turn out in their thousands to watch the ladies provincial matches or national tournaments, there would pretty soon be big sponsors involved. There would be stadiums. There would even be a woman’s sports magazine. I’ll bet my life on it, cos it’s a pure economic fact. If you support it, they will support you.
Most men play or have played a number of sports, and this helps to build men’s sport as a whole, because in playing a sport you are more likely to be interested in watching the sport. You can relate to it, maybe even aspire to it. But we’ve never encouraged women to do the same, aside from encouraging them to take an interest in watching our men’s sport with us (think ‘dutiful wife or girlfriend’!).
“Men have excluded women; but not always by force,” reveals Cashmore. “Many of the eminent physicians in the first half of the 20th century warned against women participating in sport. They feared exercise and competition would lead to virilism (women taking on the physical characteristics of men) or infertility. The prohibitions on women’s participation in sport were quite subtle in their own ways: women simply didn’t want to get into something they thought was either going to hurt them physically or stigmatize them socially.”
Men also build themselves physically by playing sport. That gives them an increased physical edge over women, as well as an emotional one. A couple of boys are throwing a ball to each other. Little girl skips into the garden and asks them to throw her the ball. She drops it, or it klaps her on the head. The boys laugh, the girl feels stupid, and runs back into the house to help her mother out in the kitchen.
Of course she looks stupid, and she has little co-ordination. But then she hasn’t had the benefit of a lifetime of ball throwing, kicking, hitting and holding. Co-ordination is built up over a lifetime, as is physical conditioning. You don’t get as toned by dancing around the kitchen as you do out on the golf course, or playing touch rugby, tennis, or any of the other sports that men and boys have held the monopoly on. The more you do it the better you get. Why does Tiger Woods hit a ball so much better and with greater consistency than everyone else in the world? Probably largely because of all the effort and time he has devoted to it. Yes, he’s a genius, but his advantage is built on hitting hundreds of golf balls every day for the last 20 years. You get good like that. So the fact that some girls can’t catch a ball shouldn’t be embarrassing, as it just shows that they haven’t spent time catching balls.

STEP TWO
Having built your co-ord the same as little boys are allowed to, where do girls go from there? You have to watch women’s sport! Your mothers and aunts need to pitch up for netball or hockey in the same numbers as uncles and dads go to boys’ rugby and cricket matches. You don’t need to go mental like many sideline fathers, trying to relive their youth through their sons, but showing support en mass validates the girls and their sport. It shows an interest in them playing sport. With no spectators watching and maybe even cheering a bit, what are girls to think about sport? ‘Oh, we’re just doing this to keep fit and in reasonable enough shape to draw some male attention’? And your school peers need to also pitch up to watch. But aren’t most of the girls watching the guys play? Probably, and maybe that’s the way the girls want it, and if so, that’s great. No-one should be forced in any way regarding sport; it should be a pleasure and a privilege, not a duty.
Getting onto a more competitive level, with your fledgling sports you’re going to have to use a lot of ingenuity - and that’s something women have in buckets. You can’t expect, at this stage, to have 20 matches going on at 20 different venues and hope to have decent crowds at each game. Not at this stage of women’s sporting revolution. You need to play at central venues, where crowds can congregate at one stadium or ground and wander from match to match. People who come to your match will perhaps stay on to watch another match. That way you’re sharing spectators, and the players are being exposed to greater swells of spectators. Reputations start being built. One step at a time.

BOYS WILL BE THERE, GIRLS
With 600 girls at a stadium for a day of hockey or cricket or soccer or rugby, well, I’ll guarantee that you’re going to start pulling the guys to your matches – I’ll bet my next prosthesis on that fact. If you build it, the boys will come … in droves. They’ll go to check out the babes, of course, but before they know it they’ll start to notice how you play. They’ll get to know about the better players, and word will spread. Legends will be built. Stars will be born. Aquarius will rub the sleep out of her eyes and leap out of bed ready to kick some boy butt. But, better still, why not adopt the methods used by tennis and athletics: piggyback with men’s sport. Hijack their audiences and share their admin and marketing costs. Starting on a small scale, girls should ‘ambush’ the high profile schools weeks, like Craven Week rugby and Nuffield cricket. Select a couple of the best girls sides from around the country and let them play their own matches during Craven Week on surrounding fields. The audience that is there to watch the boys will start getting to know, appreciate and respect girls cricket and rugby… and so the girls will benefit from the exposure.

SO MRS MOHAMMED WENT TO THE MOUNTAIN …
The adult women could play curtain-raisers for professional soccer and rugby matches, while the lady cricketers could play 7-over slogs to fit in with the breaks of play during men’s matches. It would be a great way to expose the male audience to women’s cricket and its players, as well as giving the girls a chance to play in front of large crowds, building their reputations, experience and confidence.
Of course, this brave new women’s sporting world wouldn’t be built in a day, but then neither was the current men’s professional sporting world. It’s taken decades of male support and privilege to attain our pro sporting world, but as women have a goal in mind to chase as well as a blueprint to follow, so potentially they can fast-track their ‘own’ professional world.
Looking forward, the most exciting possibility is not equal money for the big professionals, or more development courses and clinics for girls: no, the most exciting thought is the possibility that sharing equal opportunities to enjoy the world of sports will encourage a breakdown in stereotypes and prejudice. In short, it will bring men and women, girls and boys, husbands and wives closer together in a more natural way. It’ll put us all on the same playing field. That’s fantastic because, although our differences do need to be appreciated and allowed to flourish … we all sure do love playing together!
 
© SIMON LEWIS • The Ball magazine 
simon@theball.co.za • www.theball.co.za

GIRLS ON THE SIDE: Food for thought

If the above article has you nodding in agreement then perhaps you'll need some help creating a Women in Sport Blueprint… or at least some more conversation pieces for the dinner table.
By Simon Lewis (July 2005)

HOW TO BEAT THE BOYS
• Compete fairly and equally for places along with boys, rather than only playing in your own team. This will help to raise your levels of play and competitiveness. How good would Jacques Kallis be if, for some reason, he had only ever been allowed to play in the women’s cricket league?
• Play tennis to five sets like the men and you’ll build up your stamina and strength. It will discard one more argument against men and women receiving equal prize money at events.
• Find your level to compete at and play against males of equal ability. Improve your play (and that of your male opposition) through genuine and tough competition.
• Play with a men’s side even if it means an SA woman’s Test player playing fourth league with men, or in a boy’s side. That’s how men improve their levels of competitiveness!

WHAT CAN WOMEN DO?
• Play sport, which will give you a frame of reference to …
• Support women and girls playing sport, emotionally or financially.

WHAT CAN WORLD SPORT DO?
• Schedule women to play short exhibition matches during or before high-profile men’s matches and tournaments.
• Include women’s teams at, for instance, boys schools tournaments. Women need the exposure of a shared audience.
• During the men’s major golf tournaments there should be 2-4 women’s two-ball groupings shuffled around the men’s field. The women could play for an informal women’s title if the men feel their participation is in any way unfair. It would be something different for the fans to enjoy and would give women a vital chance to compete on the same stage, even if not for the same prize, as the men. This would further raise their levels of play as well as the public’s awareness of the top women players. Perhaps in ‘exchange’ the women’s tour could include some men who aren’t able to make the senior tour on merit, or perhaps younger men or boys who need to raise their own level or gain a form of exposure. In turn that would give these women players an added incentive and spur to keep progressing themselves with the different challenge presented by having ‘different’ players competing against them.

WHAT WOULD NEVER HAPPEN, BUT COULD WORK?
Destroy all sexual segregation in sport. Let sportspeople find their own level in a newly graded system. Slightly weaker men’s golfers would play on what was the LPGA, along with women. The men’s tour can include any women who can hold their own on the tour and can sacrifice their women’s earnings compared to what they will earn on the PGA. What about the LPGA? The divisions could be almost like boxing. Weight and strength is a big factor in sport, so why separate men and women just by sex. Ok, so you can’t define it by weight, as most men’s sport is not divided around weight classifications, but there could be a ranking system of ability divisions. This could work well for many men who are unable to compete against the bigger male opposition, but who want a high level of competition, and perhaps a greater degree of exposure than they would otherwise get. There are many men who can’t make the men’s tour … why not open the ladies tour up to some of them? As soon as any man or woman dominates in a division, they earn the right to move up to the next division, or at least have a chance to play some events at the higher level, to see how they perform. The mixed sex competition should help both sexes, and it will certainly get the sexes playing together and getting an appreciation for one another. Sound crazy? Didn’t the thought of whites having to share ‘their’ buses and trains with blacks sound crazy not so long ago … or sharing ‘their’ sportsfields with blacks …

HOW DOES A SHARED AUDIENCE WORK
Most of the successful and best-known women sport stars are tennis, golf, swimming or athletic stars. All but golf enjoy the benefit of frequent shared stadiums and tournaments. Golf has, however, grown as women have started PLAYING the sport in such large numbers, and there is now greater media coverage of the women’s tour, but the crowds are pretty small compared to the men’s events, and the TV coverage is nowhere near as large as for the men’s tour. The average guy will struggle to name more than two current women golfers on the tour. One of the main reasons for the existing growth in exposure of women’s golf is that women now have a reference point and an aspiration towards golf, and they are the consumers of golfing equipment and paraphernalia.
In tennis, the men’s and women’s tours are separate, but there are a number of tournaments where they play at the same venue. This has helped to get the women stars known to men and women as well as helping them to become high-profile heroes. It’s perfect. There’s less division of ‘who are you paying or spending time to watch’, and marketers promote one event that draws a shared crowd. You pay, go in and watch. And the whole infrastructure is there to split the costs of admin, marketing, event organization and TV logistics.

IF GOD WAS A GAL
1) Male players would always appear topless in post-match interviews, even if they are sweaty and slightly out of breath …
2) Richard Snell would still be in the Proteas side and Bob Skinstad would still be playing for the Bokke… even into their 40s!
3) Women’s endorsements would be based on their ability; men’s endorsements would mostly take into account their listing in the Hot and Handsome 100 ratings.
4) Rugby players would wear cycling pants – shorts can be left in the locker-room.
5) Mark Boucher would be on billboards countrywide ... advertising just the jockstrap!
6) The women’s final at Wimbledon would be played last.
7) And they’d be paid equally!
8) The SA Sports Illustrated Swimwear Issue would feature Keith of Storm Models, Gareth of Outlaws and Rob of Max Models in an exotic location wearing teeny Speedos and tighty-whities.
9) And that’s the only time men would be on the cover of SASI: gals would be on all 11 other covers!
10) Ryk Neethling would be Yahoo’s “most-hit” sports star.
11) AND ... the gals would be channel-hopping through channels 21 to 27 on DStv while the guys would be dancing around in the kitchen wearing just an apron (and I mean, JUST an apron!).
 
© SIMON LEWIS • The Ball magazine simon@theball.co.za • www.theball.co.za