I am one of these strange guys who do not particularly like watching male athletes, but love to watch women play. I do some of my writing on this topic and the politics around it. There is a little more good women’s sports lately but also some bad politics about it, so it is time for me to blog some more.
The most atrocious thing lately has been the banning of Russian athletes. If you are one of these yingyangs who spazzes out the instant they hear the word “Russian”, read no further. Block me on your Twitter and other media and go screaming to whomever/whatever that there is another ‘Putin Buddy’ loose on the net.
When my contempt for the propaganda campaign against the Russian people has ripened a little, I will lay down a blog specifically about it. But that is not what this post is about. I am merely sad that I cannot see the best Russian ladies showing their skills in international competitions.
I do not think the pro athletes of all other countries buy into this nonsense. They are undoubtedly forbidden to speak out about it. But I have heard none so far who have gone into one of these “Russians are eating Ukrainian babies” rants.
Nonetheless, I will not see Elena Mikhaltsova and her jolly crew showing their stuff on an international Rugby pitch any time soon. I will miss the ferocious attacking style of Olga Sosina in international ice Hockey rinks for awhile. However, I do not see this situation lasting too long, as I shall explain.
The world cup of Rugby 7s was held this September. As usual, CBC gem makes it hard to see the matches I really want to see. There is no published schedule and no way to record them.
The International Ice Hockey Federation is holding the annual women’s tournament again. For awhile they held only the men’s supposedly due to covid and budget problems. At least TSN lets me record the damned matches!
A big cause of electronically mediated mental diarrhea has been the Commonwealth games. The recent games were fairly successful; no scandals, no logistical botches. But to a certain mentality, anything “commonwealth” is bad because,… uh, “imperialism!”
All this was before the old Queen died. In fact QE2 did more to make the Commonwealth games a success than anyone else. The games seem to be better run than most of these international events.
This may be what most irritates the people who want them abolished. These seem to be mostly the hyper aggressive activist types, who see everything in symbols. The real people who live in these ‘colonized’ countries have no problem with the games and many of them went to Birmingham and even got themselves a medal.
There are other problems with sports leagues which do not involve global conflicts between old empires and rising powers. They are just about big money, bureaucratic behaviour and, to some extent, petty nationalism. Even in these, power relations seem to be shifting and women athletes are seeking to exert their own power.
The two sports I follow most closely are ice hockey and ‘seven a side’ rugby. They are the most watchable and exciting games, ideal for television. There are actual viable women’s leagues in soccer and basketball and I sometimes watch them, even though I find those sports boring.
While it is always hard to find and watch Hockey and Rugby games, it is getting a bit easier. I am not going to pay extravagant fees to watch the handful of games that I actually want, on a ‘premium’ channel. If it is not on cable or gem, to me it is on Mars.
I still get very annoyed with TSN and CBC. I do not know what criteria they use to decide which games they will run during a tournament. It is impossible to predict which games will be really good, so I wish they would run all of them.
Sometimes the games between the underdog teams are the closest and best. The Hockey game between the Japanese and Swiss women was the best of the 2022 international tournament. It was full of suspense and surprise, including the disappearing puck.
What happened was, there was a pile up in front of the Japanese goal. One Japanese defender got sent to the penalty box. Then they discovered that the puck had vanished.
So the refs thought maybe it was caught in the goalie’s equipment and practically strip searched her out on the ice. They called out to the stands if anyone had seen a puck fly by. They started looking at the play back.
Then someone noticed it was stuck in the skate blade of the Japanese player in the penalty box. She smiled sheepishly as they pried the puck out of her skate and returned it to the game; ah, so!
This interlude was hilarious; I do not know why it was barely mentioned in the game highlights and omitted entirely from those write ups of the game that I could read.
But there was more! The game went into three on three overtime and then a shootout, which Japan won. Banzai!
By the way, I love three on three hockey. I theorize that ice hockey would be a better game all around with fewer players on the ice.
It is the same with three on three basketball. Seven a side rugby is a much better game than fifteens. Team sports generally seem to improve when you reduce the number of players.
But back to the game in question, which was a really hard one for the Swiss. A team that has taken the bronze a few times has been dropped out of the ‘A’ group. Yodel-ady-hoo! Or Woe,-de-ladies-blue?
They were short handed throughout the tournament. Several of their best players stayed in Switzerland. Nobody would say for sure, but it seems team covid beat them this year.
The Canadian hockey gals are again consistently winning the gold against the USA team, which accords with the laws of nature. The USA ladies won their first game against ‘true north strong’; but for a couple of years now they have not been their old selves. Yet Hillary Knight became the highest scoring player in the history of international hockey, female side.
Shortly after Women’s Hockey World’s was the world cup of rugby sevens, or should I just say, Rugby. The Canadian team has recovered somewhat since early in 2021, when there was a revolt in the training centre. It is hard to understand just what had been going on, but it seems the younger players had issues, not just with the coach, but with some of the older players.
There was talk of a ‘bullying culture’ within Rugby Canada, men’s and women’s side. This explains much. Creating such a bully culture can get results for awhile, but it will break down in the end.
The players felt they were not getting their grievances addressed, so most of them quit. After some coaching changes, some of them returned. There is, of course, only so much about the internal politics of world class sports teams which is the business of the fans.
So the Canada women’s rugby team has been rebuilding. They have some great young talent and are performing well, though not as great as the team’s golden, er, bronze age. I admire the tackling techniques of Little Baldie, alias Olivia Apps.
They almost made it to the medal rounds, but lost to USA in a very tight match. Then, curiously, they got destroyed by the Fijian women in the ‘place’ game and are now in sixth position in the ‘rankings’. I do not know how this happened, but for some reason the Fijian women seemed much stronger physically than the Canadians.
I am glad the Australian rugby ladies are consistently beating the New Zealanders. It gets boring when one side always wins; except Canadians, of course. Maddison Levi is now my favourite Aussie lady. These two teams have a rivalry going on which is similar to the USA-Canada one in hockey.
So that is what I saw this summer and into the fall. With luck I will soon take in some PWHPA ‘Dream Gap’ games. Yet even when they get to Toronto again, I will not be seeing them live, because I refuse to be a covid casualty.
For those unfamiliar with PWHPA, the Professional Women’s Hockey Player’s Association is the temporary organization the players formed after the collapse of the Canadian Women’s Hockey League CWHL in 2019. I have written up a bit about all this, here and especially here. CWHL and now PWHPA include many American players, including Hillary Knight, and a few overseas players.
What they are trying to do is get someone, probably the National Hockey League (NHL) to create a proper league which they can make a living playing in.
On the surface, the NHL (National Hockey League) is not interested. This is foolish because there is every reason to believe that a WNHL would be quite profitable. There continue to be rumors of secret negotiations, but that the pandemic might have been holding things up.
Meanwhile, PWHPA organizes these ‘Dream Gap’ tournaments. They are getting better all the time. They may have a better model for running a sports league.
Instead of having a team in each city, and having them travel around to play each one game at a time, they have a few teams, each located in their own training hub. They hold tournaments several times a year in different cities. The directors of PWHPA may decide to forget about someone building a league for them and just go with what they have.
Given what is likely to happen in the next few years, this may be a more viable mode. People keep trying to pretend that the pandemic is over, when the pandemic age has barely started. In addition are the huge economic disruptions that fall out from the Ukraine war and Globalist attempts to reassert the dominance which is falling away from them.
The PWHPA model may better protect the players from the new covid waves. It may be more economical when new ‘lockdowns’ must be imposed, as is nearly inevitable, and when travel becomes more difficult. There will soon be a lot less money circulating in North American economies and PWHPA operates cheaply.
Internationally, we have the Women’s Soccer World Cup in Australia and New Zealand scheduled for 2023. We have Summer Olympics scheduled for Paris in 2024. These events may not happen.
We are living in the terrible twenties. I will not get into the politics of covid or of power politics here. I will state flatly that if the governments over ANZAC and EU do not change their policies, it will not be possible to hold any kind of international sports events there.
People are not going to travel to watch and play in sports competitions in countries where multiple infectious diseases are being allowed to rage unchecked due to political nonsense and subsequent collapse of the public health system. Or, where the economy is in a state of collapse due to the lack of fuel and the governments are under siege by the desperate populace. Or even, where there is insurrection or outright warfare going on.
They called off the Olympics for the world wars. They very nearly called off the Tokyo Olympics due to covid. If international travel becomes impossible these events are simply not going to happen.
There, very briefly, is where the politics of professional and international sports sits at this time. The world is changing, rapidly and turbulently.
Sports organizations will have to adjust to new realities. I think the players themselves will happily adjust to them. Professional athletes are usually fairly realistic people; especially the women.
Businessmen and old style bureaucrats behind sports organizations will generally be unable to adjust and will be forced aside. New and restructured sports governing bodies will quickly come into being.
As with most things, professional sports run on strict capitalist principles, with monopoly profits expected, is not a good thing. Treating it as more of a cultural thing, with leagues curated by government but expected to pay for themselves, would be better.
I think this will result in more women playing pro sports, getting paid fairly, and treated better. This will make many people happy, including me.
I also expect to see the imperial politics out of international sports fairly soon. I expect to see Russian players being invited back to competitions within a few years. In fact, begged to come back.
Conversely, it is quite possible in the next few years that USA teams will disappear from international competition. First of all, they may not be welcome; it should be no mystery as to why. Second, their country may be in too much of a state of domestic collapse to care about international competition.
Again, this assumes that there will be any international sports to speak of happening in the next few years. Take nothing for granted in the turbulent twenties.