April 2, 2008
If you’re in a bar and dragged into a discussion over what constitutes a sport and the waitress can’t come quickly enough with your bill so that you can extricate yourself from the situation— without suffering a pounding headache in addition to the one you’ve already sustained from the pitchers of stale beer–here are two definitions that will serve you well:
1. If you perspire during play, it’s a sport (this disqualifies baseball and cricket).
[Editor's note: If the horse perspires, this doesn't count. If you're playing patio darts and you perspire, it doesn't count either]
2. If you’re able to quaff a beer without interrupting the course of play, it’s not a sport (this includes bowling, darts and the aforementioned baseball and cricket).
That being said, this doesn’t diminish the athletic achievements of one John Daly, spotlighted earlier in the first installment of our Boozing Athletes series, whose ability to swing a golf club while simultaneously pinching the bottoms of clubhouse staff and swilling beers, leaves him in a class by himself, at least as far as athletes are concerned.
Today, we turn our attention to the world’s most popular sport, soccer, or ‘football’ to those who take great pains in pointing out its proper name, despite this being news to absolutely no one. It’s quite common for the average punter to lament how athletes sign a big fat extension, and proceed to phone in their performance once the pen has graced the surface of the contract. Of course, there are exceptions. One guy who can’t be accused of dogging it, is Norwich midfielder Matthew Pattison, whose nightclub piss up the night before, or more accurately, three hours before, did not prevent him from attempting to make his morning practice.
What did, though, was the presence of cops tipped off by the hotel owner where Pattison was staying and, as a result, the first and only orange pylons he encountered that day were those of the roadside spot check.
It’s not uncommon for a night on the town to blur into a day at the office, but in many cases, say that of the ornery bus driver who burps a reply when asked for directions, they’re not the most physically demanding of jobs and you can blame your computer monitor for your bloodshot eyes if the bossman happens by the cubicle.
Now, if you’re a professional athlete, it’s a different story. Soccer players are well-known to shed 10 lbs during 90 minutes of play, and to keep up this level of match fitness, practice drills are intense enough to have even sober players rainbow retching all over the pitch. Luckily for Pattison, he was able to spend a few, less grueling hours, drinking coffee out of a Styrofoam cup and filling out police paperwork.
