Time to play fair?

You can tell much about a game from what the commentators discuss over half-time tea. 

Yesterday, the indomitable Alan Green found so little of merit in Aston Villa against Fulham that he spent his cuppa debating Tiger Woods and the concept of ‘fair play’!

My abiding memory of my year as a student in Dijon is the football coach asking for a volunteer to swap teams, to even up the sides.  Everyone studied their boots, so I stepped forward.  “Voila!” he exclaimed, “Le fair play anglais!”

Now I’m not sure this is actually the best example of the genre:  I was trying to do the decent thing, but it was more about teamwork, social behaviour, maybe leadership. 

So what exactly is ‘fair play’?  I was surprised to find no clear definition of the term (no, not even on Wikipedia!). 

Isn’t it just obeying the rules?  That is necessary, it’s true – but not sufficient; it goes beyond the legal and into the moral - you must also act in the spirit of the law. 

Normally I would be scathing about such vague concepts:  surely it’s either allowed or not allowed, and that’s all there is to it?

But in sport (as in life?) it’s just not enough to obey the law - you also have to behave with honesty and integrity.  

Here’s my definition of fair play:  as well as following the rules, you must i) never try to gain an unfair advantage, and ii) admit it if you gain one. 

Thus in cricket, when a ball is slightly ‘edged’, the trajectory is unchanged – it can’t be seen, and can be heard only by the batsman.  He alone has the advantage of knowing if there was contact, and to play fair, he must admit it.  This is well-understood and powerfully important to the game:  you don’t wait for the umpire’s signal, if you know you are out, then you walk.

This explains the outcry when the English team adopted ‘bodyline’ tactics to beat the Aussie’s in the 1932 Ashes series – the aggressive, short-pitched bowling and intimidatory fielding were within the laws of the game at the time, but certainly not the spirit.  More recently, it was the Australians themselves who bowled underarm against New Zealand in 1981 to deny them a chance of hitting a six on the last ball – in the rules, but against the spirit.  Put simply, these were just ‘not cricket’.

But maybe I’m simply an old-fashioned romantic?  Perhaps the concept of fair play is antithetical to the single-minded will to win required to become an elite athlete in the modern age?

I don’t believe so.  For each villain there’s a hero:  for every cold-blooded cheat like Lance Armstrong, there’s Bradley Wiggins, refusing to take advantage of nails being strewn in the path of the 14^th stage of last year’s Tour de France.  For every cynical handball of Suarez or Maradonna, there’s a Miroslav Klose confessing to the referee that his goal was unfair, or Paulo di Caneo (yes him!) catching the ball when he could have volleyed a goal because the keeper was injured.

So we should be disappointed with Tiger Woods:  I don’t understand exactly what he did wrong, but it was clearly against the spirit of the game.  His final ranking in this year’s Masters will be quickly forgotten, but the level of integrity and honour in his response will not:  I hope Tiger Woods shows us he is a true champion, and decides to play fair.