Signs

There is an old military maxim that says, ‘No plan survives first contact with the enemy’, something I’ve found to be true of life as well as on the battlefield.

I mention this because of the close-up interest that the cameras take in the hand signals that beach volleyball players give to each other, like the one on the left.

These are meant to indicate to their partner exactly where they want them to serve the ball, who to block and who not to, whether to come to the net or stay back etc.

But as far as my untutored eye can tell, the outcome is always the same. They knock it over the net (or not), someone on the other side hits the ball in the air and their partner then whacks it back with interest.

I’m sure there is more to it than that and you can read more about it here if you can decode the words, let alone the signals.

However, I mention this more to demonstrate that the BBC has covered much more than just British success and failure, despite Chrissy’s comment from yesterday. We’ve seen lots of sports that we’re rubbish at and other nations at play.

It is all due to digital, of course, that we have access to far more than coverage than the couple of terrestrial channels of previous games and it’s almost overwhelming.

Last night we had the athletics on one tv, women’s football on another (well done Canada by the way) and Andy Murray on my iPad.

And I am enjoying trying to become an aficionado of sports that I wouldn’t otherwise see which is why I must persevere with the beach volleyball and pay particular attention to those hand signals.