Now That Murray Mania Is Over Here’s A Question: Was It Worth It, All The Excitement That Is?

R.F.Wilson writes from Wimbledon: We should all thank our lucky stars that Andy Murray didn’t win at Wimbledon, outplayed by the great Roger Federer.

Come on, imagine what would have happened if he did. We would be overwhelmed by idiotic praise for him, his mother, all the people who stood by him and for his girlfriend who sacrificed her own tennis career to travel with Murray around the world and offer a shoulder to cry on. Not to mention listening to Andy talking about his greatness and how he played really well that day and how he intends to win more Grand Slam titles now that he is a real champion.

So any of you out there, who are now despairing that Andy has lost, get a grip on yourselves and think that it could have been much worse and he could have actually won.

Besides, what’s the big deal about Wimbledon? How come people go nuts over it? It’s just a silly game. Hard to understand really how all this fanfare can change anybody’s lives, apart from the players themselves earning some cash in prize money and then some more cash in sponsorship deals. But in the bigger flow of things, how does it exactly change anything?

I have always been surprised by folks who queue all night to get to into Wimbledon and spend the whole day there, wondering about and getting all excited about some player winning or losing. And how about those fans who sit on the hill at Wimbledon, even when it rains, and watch the matches on centre court on screen? How does that constitute time well spent? They could have just as well sat at home and watched it or gone to their local and done the same.

How bored do you need to be to devote so much time to tennis and sport generally? It’s just not normal. It simply means that all these fans have no life, none at all, and they could just as well follow darts or synchronised swimming or the gritty world of professional drinking when people try to outdrink each other in pubs and bars. It doesn’t really matter what it’s all about. It’s the feeling of being part of something big, I suppose, that drives them. One day you just sit there at home, watching trash on the box and eating junk food, and then the next day you become part of something big, associating yourself with an army of similarly bored people who say things like ‘we played well yesterday’ or ‘Murray nearly did it’ or some other rubbish.

Let me tell you about professional tennis and sport generally: people who go into it are basically hopeless at everything else. Millions of others, who could have become great athletes, don’t do it simply because they don’t consider it to be a proper profession and have enough brains and sense to do something worthwhile. (That is why we have so many crappy actors, by the way, because sensible and gifted people don’t consider acting a proper profession and leave it to mediocrities.) And as for plebs, who basically have no other chance in life to get anywhere apart from becoming professional sportsmen or turning to crime, well, it’s still better to keep them pushing the ball or running instead of mugging people.

And then there’s a supposed ‘intelligence’ that is attached to professional sport. Such as people saying that this tennis player or that footballer plays intelligently. How is that I would like to know? What has intelligence to do with any sport? If the people involved were intelligent they would have been doing something else.

Professional sport exists for the sole purpose of making money for the people who run it. There is no other reason why it exists. The entertainment factor is unfortunately quite limited. It’s basically a waste of people’s time mostly.

And you know what else proves that sport generally is one big waste of time? The celebrations when teams and individuals win trophies. Pathetic scenes of jubilation follow, ending up in one great piss up and then all is quickly forgotten. Does it warrant all that build up? Nope, it never does.

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