Having got well and truly stuck into watching the Olympics, I’ve begun to realise that the sports I like best are the team games where two or more competitors work together.
Swimming hasn’t particularly grabbed my attention, nor has archery, shooting and only the gymnastics when it was for the team medal.
I’ve been much more captivated by handball, volleyball, hockey, football and other team sports.
I don’t include badminton in that list obviously. If you’re going to try hard to lose then you should try a bit harder than simply whacking the shuttle into the net.
And when I think about it, my other spectator sports of choice are football, cricket and rugby league and union. I’m not a great follower of golf, except when it’s the Ryder Cup and it’s Europe versus the USA.
I’m not sure what this says about me and my personality traits, although I’m sure some psychologist somewhere at some time will have done the research.
Probably something to do with primitive tribal loyalties as Desmond Morris once described in The Soccer Tribe.
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As a qualified psychologist, I note that you remain obsessed with handball. According to my notes, this is why at the age of nine your primary school teacher sent you out of the classroom. Your parents were none too pleased when they learnt what you had been doing.
Sports don’t resonate with me much, but that’s all in Morris’s book too.
Having said that, I got a kick (ha) out of karate from university up to about ten years ago. That was about the time I decided I was fed up with being bruised by the lower grades who had yet to develop their coordination and control.
You obviously are a fan of the Collective, which would make you some sort of socialist in the US.
That could be true Roger. But where does that leaves US fans of baseball, basketball and football?!