The Sporting Spirit

Concept: sport has a wider social significance than just being fun

Context (FC Dynamo Kyev) :

• A ukranian professional football team based in Kyev
• During the soviet era, the club was one of the main rivals, and often the only rival, to the football clumbs from Moscow. Its ability to challenge the dominance of the Moscow clubs in Soviet football, and frequently deafeat them to win the soviet championship, was a mother of natonal pride for Ukraine
• The Propaganda story is often told of how the dynamo team playing as "start, city of kiev all-stars", was executed by a firing squad in the summer of 1942 for defeating an all star team from the German armed forces by 5-1. This is now referred to as 'the death match'

• Sport is an unfailing cause - "it could only be to make them slightly worse than before"
• Cricket which demands grace rather than strength, can cause much ill-will - "as we saw in the controversy over body line bowling and over the rough tactics of the Australian team that visited England in 1921"

• Now- it is more useful to inquire how and why this modern cult of sport arose.
• Ancient times- olympic gameds brought "the nations together"
• Most of the games we now play are of ancient origin, but sport does not seem to have been taken very seriously between Roman times and the 19th Century
• In the middle ages they were played and probably played with much physical brutality

"roars"- animalistic, fury, burning passion

"kick each other on the shins"- very childish, do this to hurt people when you ask them to do something and then they dont. Shows ignorance