JUNE 27 — Finally, the greatest spectator sports event in the world has begun. Millions across the globe will be following intently as the ball traverses furiously from one half to the other across the grass. Already many eager eyes are watching for the added bonus of enjoying some of the most attractive athletes competing. Their performances will inspire enthusiasts of the beautiful game in every country, and from the great arenas we will hear the soothing civilised applause each time a point is won.
Wimbledon is back.
In the meantime, we have to continue enduring some other tournament in honour of a sport which is linked to hooliganism and corruption more than any other (the latter aspect so lucidly explained by English comedian John Oliver in a widely shared video on YouTube), though thankfully the time difference from Brazil is such that tennis matches are more likely to survive instead of being rudely called out as was the case during the South Africa World Cup four years ago.
Despite my bias in sports, I do concede that more Malaysians will watch the World Cup than the Wimbledon Championships, and it has resulted in some interesting phenomena. Because Malaysia aren’t (yes “aren’t”: it seems that only football teams are referred to using the collective plural, probably due to British usage adopted with the popularity of the English Premier League) in the World Cup, you get the same level of fanaticism that we see expressed for league or state teams, but attached to foreign national teams instead. Except it is worse: because the World Cup is a relatively rare event, people are more ostentatious about declaring their support by wearing the appropriate jerseys.
I was in a lift the other day and two strangers started commiserating with each other because they were both visibly fans of Spain. They looked at me as if inviting me to contribute something to the discussion: I thought of saying something about the legacy of Juan Carlos I (of whom Rafael Nadal has expressed effusive opinions) instead, but luckily the door opened to enable my exit. (I’m going to walk around with my Roger Federer hat throughout Wimbledon and see if any strangers commiserate with me if he doesn’t do well enough to obtain his 18th Grand Slam victory.)
And besides my bias, I do understand the higher purposes that football can serve. I’m not referring to the fact that so far it is only a victory in football that has triggered a federal holiday (after Malaysia won the Asean Football Federation Suzuki Cup in 2010) — but rather, the links between football and Merdeka.
The first president of Football Association of Malaya (FAM) was Andrew Caldecott (the district officer of Jelebu who composed the Negri Sembilan state anthem, and later the governor of Hong Kong and Ceylon), but the first local president was Tunku Abdul Rahman. He was the driving force behind a new stadium for the game, but before any football game was played there, it served as the venue for the Proclamation of Merdeka.
During his premiership of the country he made frequent reference to the importance of sport in general but football in particular, saying “in keeping up with the spirit of Merdeka we must wipe out racial discrimination and through football help to build a united nation”.
Team fanaticism aside, in our divisive times not even football is sufficient to sufficiently unite people across ethnicities and religions. In the past there were objections to offensive images or logos on jerseys, but now even the sport itself is deemed by some to be in contravention of their religious beliefs. There were also ugly overtones in discussions about our national badminton heroes on account of their ethnic background. If we can’t get our country to unite over sport — historically probably the most successful catalyst of unity as observed by our first prime minister — then the fractures running through our country are deep indeed.
In the meantime, thankfully there are still many efforts to ensure that sport remains a tool for national unity: not just the various programmes run by the government and private sector in getting young people to play more sport, but through cultural initiatives as well — such as the recent announcement of another season of “SuperMokh The Musical”.
Amidst the World Cup fever someone managed to unearth headlines from 1999 declaring FAM’s target for Malaysia to be in the World Cup in 2014. We read that now and chuckle, deriding ourselves for being so optimistic. But the real tragedy is that we could unearth so many lofty ambitions from our past and realise the extent to which we are still yearning to achieve our potential.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
