I like pretty much all sports. I love baseball season. I've also become in the last few seasons a hockey fan again. I like the new enforcement of the old rules that were not enforced for about a generation. The hockey today is very exciting. There is still something about hockey that annoys me. Okay there are two things. The first is Todd Bertuzzi, but I'll leave that till another time. The other one is all the pushing that goes on after every whistle. Why is this part of the game of hockey. It seems so childish. You don't see it in football to anywhere near the same degree. It happens, but not after every pile up. Hockey players seem to have this need to prove their toughness at every whistle.
I do have an anecdote about this as well. I used to referee football. One year we went up to Lake Cowichan to do a game. Lake Cowichan was a new team to the league and it was their first ever game. The first play of the game after the kickoff was a running play. There was a pileup at midfield and we referees blew our whistles to end the play. A seemingly harmless regular run of the mill football play until the whistles went and then the Lake Cowichan team all started pushing and shoving. We settled them down and got ready for the next play. The same thing happens. The whistles blow and then there is all this pushing and shoving. I'd never seen that on the football field.
We stopped the game and had the coach of the new team come out on to the field. We along with him explained that when the whistle blows you stop and go back to your huddle. Things got better. What was going on? It turns out the Cowichan Lake team were all hockey players getting their first taste of football. They didn't know any better. The poor saps.
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Boy, post one day later than "usual" and it throws all of us for a loop! Where are all the comments? The witty repartee?
ReplyDeleteLittle Jackie Showers, I had a similar (different sides of same coin) type experience regarding football/hockey conduct. A few years ago, I attended my first BC Lions game (and was new to actually paying attention to football--Dean is a CFL fan and kindly explained the rules of the game to me), I was really struck by the behaviour I observed on the field--it was impressively sportsmanlike, even gentlemanly. I had always [wrongly] assumed that football was brutish and uncouth. Much to my surprise, I saw players helping up other (fallen) players from the opposing team. No fights broke out after penalties were called (or at any other time). The players did not argue ad nauseum with the referee.
This was a revelation to me--having grown up watching Hockey Night in Canada, I had, sadly, become accustomed to seeing fights break out, seemingly for any minor infraction and at any opportunity. I didn't particularly like it; I had simply resigned myself to it as a "normal" part of the game. And when I went to see the football game, I [wrongly] made the assumption that the behaviour would be much the same (not sure why--I just did). I'm glad I was so wrong, and I really enjoy watching Lions games. We go a few times a year.
Could part of the reason [that hockey is so fraught with fighting] be that so many fans seem to love it so much? Go to a pub to watch the game, and the whole place erupts in cheers when a fight breaks out. Is it the booze talking (that whole drunken brawl thing) or a higher proportion of hockey fans (over, say, football fans) have some sort of bloodlust?
I do not know why the hockey fans have come to love the fighting. I do know I have felt quite repulsed at a Junior hockey game as the mostly adult audience screamed their approval as two teenagers tried to knock each others teeth out.
ReplyDeleteThat really IS repulsive. But how to fix? Are NHL players the new gladiators?
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