Michael Calvin: Sport shows human side in tragic week

COMMENT: From the Phil Hughes tributes, to Danny Ings, QPR and Rayo Vallecano, sport has shown it does have a human side

Look at his face. Just look at his face. Words, however heartfelt and evocative, cannot match the power of the image of overwhelming grief which consumed Michael Clarke, the Australia cricket captain, when he paid homage to Phillip Hughes.

“Do your job,” he whispered to himself, as he struggled to maintain his composure in vowing to honour his friend’s memory. Those words will live with him as a timeless reminder of the leadership he has shown in extraordinary circumstances, from the privacy of the death bed to the platform of the valedictory address.

The loss of Hughes has been a catalyst for a global demonstration of sport’s latent capacity to stir the deepest emotions and pose the most profound questions. The strain of reminiscence has appropriate symbolism today, on what would have been his 26th birthday.

Cricket is experiencing its Diana moment. Social media, so often a cesspit of reflexive rage and repulsive intolerance, has become its field of flowers, a shrine to innocence. The #putoutyourbats movement, involving a simple gesture of respect and affinity, is an international phenomenon.

It is different when death has the context of longevity, as it has in the case of former British & Irish Lion Jack Kyle, hailed as rugby union’s greatest fly-half when he passed on just before his 89th birthday on Thursday. The tributes to him were warm and lavish, without having wider resonance.

The premature loss of a public figure confirms legend and confers an intimate form of immortality. Since every aspect of modern sport is over-exposed, the tragic player leaves a legacy of multi-media images but continues to exist, most powerfully, in the imagination.

The overpowering response to the death of Hughes, a young Australian batsman few neutrals could have identified in a team photograph, says something about us. It whispers about common humanity, the quiet fear of fate and frailty. He went to work and didn’t return home.

He had so much to live for but died doing something he loved, something which defined him as a man and suited his maverick nature. It is that purity of purpose which should linger if his mortality is to have meaning. He reminds us of the creeping danger of cynicism, the need for escapism.

I felt a sudden, instinctive desire to accentuate the positive as his story developed remarkable momentum, and was drawn to another unforgettable impression, of the almost incomprehensible joy which consumed Joe Skinner last year when Danny Ings, his hero, gave him his football boots and a kiss of instinctive tenderness.

That poignant illustration of the bond between a disabled boy and a privileged athlete has enduring significance. On Tuesday, the day Hughes suffered the fatal blow on the Sydney Cricket Ground, his field of dreams, Ings spoke of being inspired by the look on Joe’s face.

He launched a self-funded charitable foundation to help schools specialising in special-educational needs. He has also overseen the formation of Burnley’s first adult disability football team. The good is there in sport if you look for it.

Consider the selflessness of another local hero, former Brighton footballer Guy Butters, who slept on the streets to highlight the work of a homeless shelter which offers holistic support and meets basic survival needs with food, sleeping bags and clothing.

Let’s not overlook the QPR players who clubbed together and donated £30,000 to a charity addressing the Ebola crisis. Their counterparts at Rayo Vallecano in La Liga organised a flat for an 85-year-old widow (below) mercilessly evicted by a bank because of a debt over which she had no control.

Rayo Vallecano organised a flat for evicted 85-year-old Carmen Ayuso

Sport is a people business. Hughes’s funeral, which has led to the inevitable postponement of the First Test between Australia and India in Brisbane, will bring the nation to a halt on Wednesday. It is only natural we should share the pain, and resolve to pay greater heed to our conscience and good fortune.

Agent fees indefensible

No one should dispute there are reputable agents working in football. What anyone who cares about the game should demand is clarity about their cost and the influence of the malign minority. Proportionate reward for justifiable support services cannot be reconciled by confirmation of the payment of £115 million to agents by Premier League clubs over the past two transfer windows.

The figures were released on Friday evening, a conveniently congested time in the news cycle. The transparency they are supposed to represent is an illusion. Collective figures are headline fodder. They arouse understandable distaste and anger but merely offer a keyhole view of the issue because they anonymise those who benefit.

For us to have faith in the process, an individualised account of the activity of agents and their clients must be shared. Conflicts of interest must be exposed and agents’ use as intermediaries in opaque situations which involve third-party ownership challenged.

No one wants to deny an individual a fair living. But the siphoning of inflated, arguably unearned sums of money from a game which lacks adequate funding at grass-roots level is indefensible.

Name and shame abusers

The principle of naming and shaming does not apply only to football. Two individuals, banned from Twickenham for two years after being found guilty of homophobic abuse towards referee Nigel Owens at the recent match between England and New Zealand, were allowed to remain unidentified. Their gesture of each paying £1,000 to charity is futile when they escape the full consequences of their actions.

A lesson in contempt

Sadly, the resolution to look on the bright side does not survive the intervention of Michael Gove. The former education secretary wants to see more pupils engaged by competitive sport. Since his idea of an Olympic legacy was to cut £164m from school-sport funding, his political opportunism should be treated with the contempt it deserves.