It is one of professional sport’s most ridiculous requirements that managers and even players are put through post-match interviews and pre-match press conferences where the questions tend to be inane, provocative, wearisome, irrelevant, unnecessary and ignoble. They come off the field after an intense experience and have to answer questions. Why do we need to know what the manager or player think? Will it change our own minds to hear them give their thoughts? We watched the match so why do we need to hear what they saw? Will it make any difference if the manager thought a penalty should have been given? Who cares if the player thought they deserved to win?
Brendan Venter, a 1995 World Cup winning Springbok rugby player who became a successful rugby coach, no doubt agreed with this sentiment when he decided to take the mickey out of the process in a television interview after his Saracens team lost 21-24 to Racing 92 back in 2010. Somehow, he managed to keep a straight face as all he did was agree with the interviewer: “Yeah, really good, really good. Yeah, really poor, really poor.” He was asked if he was happy with the loss and when he simply said “Very happy with everything, yeah, very happy” the interviewer responded “but you didn’t win” to which Venter replied “That’s true. Very true”. The interview was going nowhere.
The sad conclusion was that Venter was fined for speaking as he did – actually, he should have been paid for his responses! Such interviews are not worth anything. Speaking soon after a match can be dangerous. When England lost a rugby match against South Africa, enabling the latter to wrap up the series 2-0 with one match to play, the English scrum-half Ben Youngs walked away from a television interview after just one question, explaining later (after he was heavily criticised on social media by a former England coach) that he “Obviously was very emotional and disappointed with result.”
Hugo Lloris, the French soccer goalkeeper and captain, had strong words to say about some controversial chants sung by the Argentinian national team about the heritage of French players in the aftermath of Argentina beating France to win the 2022 World Cup: “It doesn’t matter if you are in a moment of euphoria because you have won an important trophy. It demands even more responsibility when you are a winner.” They should have held their tongues as victors.
In the light of the above experiences, we do well to listen to such people as Tom Brady (the hugely successful quarterback) and Coach Lee Corso, who have advised that “When you lose, talk little: when you win, talk less”. There is very sound reasoning behind such advice, even if we ignore the points above that there is little point to the comments. After a match, those who have won and those who have lost tend always to be very emotional (as Youngs recognised later). When emotions are high, people will say things they regret later when they see the events in the cold light of day. They cannot think clearly; their minds are still buzzing with what they have been doing on the field. They cannot stand back and see the events from a different perspective than their own. As a result, their responses can be offensive or derogatory to the opposition or officials.
One consequence of such questioning is that players or managers simply come up with meaningless cliches, like “I’m sick as a parrot” (do we know how sick parrots are, by the way?), “It was a game of two halves” (well spotted, sir!), “I’m over the moon” (as in a cow jumping, perhaps…?) or the classic “The boy done good”. More seriously, however, the immediate reaction when we win is to brag or boast, or even belittle, while if we lose, we are more liable to blame and besmirch others, neither of which is a characteristic that we would like to see in fellow humans. We would do well to stay silent.
Let us be clear: a player only has to answer to his manager; a manager only is accountable to his employer. There is no judge or jury involved. Pythagoras is attributed as once saying “a fool is known by his speech and a wise man by his silence”. While at least we do not (mercifully) suffer ridiculous post-match interviews after school matches (and let us never even give such the briefest of thought), there is great wisdom in ensuring our children and coaches learn that “when you lose, talk little: when you win, talk less”. Tom Brady also reflected that “I’m not a person who defends myself very often. I kind of let my actions speak for me.” We should do the same.
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