Noble art? Not with blood on the canvas

Mick Dennis13 April 2012

It's been a dreadful week for the family and friends of Paul Ingle and a difficult one for the friends of boxing. The sport's supporters have been forced to talk complete and obvious nonsense to defend their sport.

There is no sense at all in some of the specious spouting which has been going on. It is just silly to defend boxing by pointing out other sports are dangerous.

Yes, people get paralysed playing rugby and they get killed showjumping and mountaineering, but only in boxing (and a few, fringe martial arts) is the whole point of the contest to hurt your opponent. Only in boxing is the idea to render your opponent unconscious - in other words to stop his brain working temporarily.

If boxing did not exist and someone proposed its introduction, he or she would be accused of being sick for coming up with such a grotesque idea.

"What? You want to have a sport where one guy hits another about the head? You need locking up."

It is equally gruesome to boast that boxers have brain scans before bouts, that teams of medics are on hand during bouts and that all sorts of high-tech paraphernalia is available if bouts go wrong.

The medical precautions were only made as rigorous as they are after three tragedies. First Michael Watson was left brain damaged and sued the authorities. Next Bradley Stone died. Then Gerald McClellan was blinded.

So the fact that the stringent medical checks and fast-response facilities have to be provided is a terrible testimony to what has already happened in boxing, not something to be proud of.

Nor is there more than a superficial appeal in some of the ideas being suggested to make boxing safer. For instance, head guards would stop cuts and grazes and would deaden the impact of punches, but they would not stop the damage caused to the brain - because the brain is damaged when it is set in motion within the skull.

Sometimes the likelihood of brain damage is increased because the jelly in which the brain is normally suspended has been dried up.

This can happen if a boxer dehydrates himself in order to lose excess pounds and get under a weight limit.

In those circumstances a boxer is in double danger.

Not only is there nothing to stop his brain spinning and jarring when he is hit on the head, but also he is more prone to exhaustion and so less able to prevent the other guy slugging him.

Horrendous, isn't it? And yet, and yet . . . This newspaper sponsored a major boxing contest last year and this year, perhaps unwisely, we gave away a trip to see Mike Tyson fight as a readers' prize.

So Standard Sport cannot be sanctimonious or hypocritical about boxing. We cannot call for its abolition because we have no intention of stopping covering it.

But we must, all of us, be quite clear what it is that we are watching when we turn up at a boxing hall or turn on our television.

We cannot hide behind euphemisms about "the noble art" or "the fight game". There's nothing noble about it, and it is certainly not a game.

Boxing is a brutal, primal battle for survival in which one of the combatants may get horribly hurt.

That, if we are honest, is part of its appeal.

Eventually, society will surely find boxing unacceptable. That day has not yet arrived, but we have probably moved closer to it because of Ingle's injuries.

Go forth and lose that official

But why on earth do we have fourth officials? We managed without them for decades and their role is entirely artificial.

Fourth officials are qualified refs, yet all they do is hold up the digital board when a substitute comes on and hold up the board again to show how many minutes of injury time are being added on to each half.

Not exactly onerous work and the amount of time being added is still decided by the match referee, so you don't need another referee to waive the board about. A steward could do it.

The fourth official also patrols the use of the technical areas, of course - and that's where the trouble starts.

The whole idea of "technical areas" (rectangles beyond which managers and coaches are forbidden to stray) is completely unnecessary and it is entirely inevitable that fourth officials police them over-zealously and provocatively. Think about it. The fourth official travels to the game, gets changed in the dressing room with the match ref and the linesmen and then has nothing to do until the exciting moment comes when he can hold up the digital board.

So if in the meantime he sees a manager's shoe crossing the line of the technical area, he's so pumped up by the occasion and so bored by inactivity that he's bound to jump up and tell him off. And after the fourth official has jumped up, the manager is going to think he's a jumped up little jobsworth.

Then, when the real ref or linesman does something controversial, the manager is going to remonstrate with the fourth official. After all, he can't get near the ref or the linesman, and the fourth official is their mate and is close at hand.

The fourth official's instinct and role in those circumstances is to restrain the manager, so the fourth official will place himself physically in front of the manager. So it is hardly surprising if the manager tells the fourth official to go forth or gets a bit hands-on with him.

The authorities could stop trouble with fourth officials at a stroke - by doing away with them.

Vega's Bhoy wonder debut speaks volumes

He's gone to Celtic and Spurs fans were hugging themselves with glee when the news broke (in Standard Sport, of course).

Spurs manager George Graham probably offered to drive him to Glasgow. Then Vega scored twice on his Scottish Premier Division debut as Celtic thrashed Aberdeen 6-0, prompting much hilarity among those of us who like to mock the Jocks. The Bhoys manager, Martin O'Neill, was sensible enough not to play Vega in defence.

He plonked him in midfield but Vega's instant Celtic celebrity still adds considerable weight to the view that Scottish football is a joke. Before the clans paint their faces blue and march on the Standard, I'd better make it clear that I do know the counter arguments. Supporters of Scottish football point out that Paolo Di Canio and Mark Viduka have enjoyed spectacular success here after playing in Scotland.

So English football can't be much better than Scottish, can it? But, in fact, the newly-sainted Di Canio scored more frequently for Celtic (12 goals in 26 league appearances) than he has in the English Premiership and Viduka was Celtic's top scorer last season. Besides, Viduka's an Australian and only the Scots, who idolise Mel Gibson because he acted in Braveheart, would use an Australian as their standard-bearer.

Anyway, the most damning statistic for Scottish football at the weekend was not the figure two besides Vega's name in the scorers' list, it was the figure 60,013 alongside Celtic in the attendance lists.

The crowd at Celtic Park for the Aberdeen match was 11,564 bigger than the attendances at all the other weekend Scottish Premier and Scottish League games added together.

Football in Glasgow may be alive and well but in the rest of the country it is being starved to death by the apathy of fans.

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