Cape Town – A lack of values and moral character had become a defining feature of modern-day sports, according to panelists at the 2015 World Sports Values Summit for Peace and Development (WSVS) in Cape Town on Monday.
“When last did you see a football team ending a match and looking over to the other side to congratulate the other?” asked Tim Lankester, a panelist on the discussion ‘Sports Values, Finance, and Management’.
Lankester, the vice chairman of non-profit World Support for Development, discussed his most recent – yet rare – encounter of sportsmanship between teams.
“Last night I was watching the (Ram Slam T20 Challenge) with the Cape Cobras and the Highveld Lions and when the match ended, the teams walked off and hugged one another. It was such a wonderful thing for me to see.”
According to Lankester, there were values needed in sports, namely sheer enjoyment, excellence, learning, physical education, fairness and justice, competition, and community. Many of these, he said, were lacking in the sporting world today.
Lankester named the “professional tackle”, “berating the referee”, and foreign ownership as troubling factors.
“I am horrified when I hear a Russian billionaire buys an English football team. If you don’t understand the game you should not be allowed to own a team,” he said.
Also in need of an improved value system were spectators he said. “We have too many couch potatoes. There are too many spectators who have never played sport and they do not understand the values, they do not understand excellence.”
Joining Lankester in his call for a moral rejuvenation in sports – but not formally on the panel – was Lyndon Barends, the chairman of the Liverpool FC International Football Academy South Africa.
Barends said teams had failed many young sportspeople by not equipping them with skills to deal with success.
He added that the message of sports raising communities out of poverty was flawed and the real benefits of sports – such as keeping children out of trouble and building confident youth – needed to be highlighted.
“We need good people playing great football,” he said with particular reference to his work with the Liverpool football academy.
Similar messages were delivered by the rest of the panel at the WSVS discussion.
Independent Media Group’s Jermaine Craig, part of the 2010 Fifa World Cup Organising Committee, localised the global issue of a lacking moral compass in sports.
“What is baffling to me is that in South Africa we have all of the facilities and infrastructure, but we lack the desire to succeed,” said Craig, comparing South Africa to poorer, less developed African nations.
He said that although South Africa was home to massive inequalities, sportspeople needed to use the opportunities presented by their codes.
Of this, Craig made the example: “Benni McCarthy had that desire and he could see that through football he could get out of his situation.”
Another panelist, the University of Cape Town’s David Maralack said any discussion about sports, particularly in South Africa, needed to tackle socioeconomic issues.
“We must look at the context, at how sports contributes to tackling inequalities,” he said.
He said that any volunteer opportunities and commercial successes made during events in cities needed to translate into employment.
“The sad thing is, is that many of these people who volunteered [during the 2010 world cup] are desperate for jobs today,” said Maralack.
“We need to start looking at hosting events in the broader development framework.”
African News Agency