The obsession with sports in Australia is jarring. Friends getting together to have a contest is great. School teams competing against each other is great also.

However, I believe there should be no support for the Olympics from government or any government agency. There also should be no Institute of Sports or subsidies for athletic facilities outside of schools. From what I read in the papers those who play professional sports are mainly louts who are simply unfit to be in human society. I received a post from Jason Ball who was concerned with homophobia in footy directed at him. Homophobia is merely one expression of their basic loutishness.

The obsession with sports causes parents and various entities to push children's sporting development ahead of other interests. Sure, they are louts who are uneducated in the humanities, science and ordinary human interactions. They have had an unbalanced development.

I lived in the United States before I came here. My two sons were good enough to be on all-star teams in baseball. One was especially talented in that area. After a couple of seasons the boys decided they had enough. The coach hounded me to get my boys to play. He said they could be professionals. That certainly was not appealing to me. However, the main thing is that they didn't want to do it any more. The coach wanted me to force unwilling kids to do something they didn't want to do.

In last weekend's Sunday Mail the lead story concerned bullying of a member of the Olympic swimming team by other members of the team. Drunken brawls, gang rapes, sledging and general bad behaviour seem to characterise the hoodlums who make their living from professional sports. In the newspapers players are heroes, legends or by other inappropriate names. Not all professional athletes are hoodlums, but the proportion seems much higher than in the general Australian population.

The museum would be incomplete without a section devoted to unacceptable behaviour of athletes and obsession by the general public. Such a museum is needed as much as an appendix transplant.

I'm with David f on this one.

I find it morally and ethically corrupt for a government to support, financially, for what are more realistically professional athletes, i.e. those who participated in the recent Olympics.

Each medal returning home cost the taxpayer more than $1M, I am sure the funding could have gone to much greater deeds and needs within the community.

Unfortunately we live in a society that puts so-called 'sports stars' on pedestals and calls them hero's.

When I served in the military, someone was called a hero when they carried out an unswerving act of bravery that led to the saving of others or resulted in a victory against all odds in a very bad situation.

Edgar, you state "It is a cliché to say that Australians love their sport. Sport is such a fundamental part of who we are that it goes beyond love and becomes a part of our national culture and ethos."

This might be true in some sense, however from what I see of the broader population, their participation in sport would appear to be that of spectators given their apparent size and growing girth and resultant health problems, then again, perhaps I am wrong.

I think sport plays a part of the greater story, but certainly does not warrant any new edifice requiring taxpayer support for its design, construction, operation and promotion.

Perhaps all those wealthy athletes can build their own ivory tower and support it with their on-going endorsements that they appear to receive from the broader communications, media and advertising industry.

Sorry to rain on your sporting parade

Hi there DAVID F...

I'm an old man now and as such I don't follow much sport. I played League, in the Sydney (2nd Division) Comp., but because of work, shifts etc found getting along to training became a burden.

I tend to agree with you DAVID F, Sport is no longer sport, it's another form of industry. My belief, sport per se, should be just that, a game, to be pursued for pleasure and exercise.

Today, the young (gifted) players of any code or type (tennis, cricket, golf etc etc etc), are too young and far too highly paid. And more importantly, can't seem to handle the fame nor their money !

Consequently, they need to further their exitement and profile in ways that occasionally become anti-social.

At 17 I was in the Army. Told what to do, when and how,and for how long ! Had I been lauded as a great tennis player or something similar, with lots of money and fame, I'd be 'hared brained' enought to carry on like a real jerk. Simply because at that age (17), you really need expert guidance and good role models on which to pattern your future.

We were extremely lucky too in those days, there were very few drugs in the early fifties and sixties, to divert us from maturing properly.

The Olympic Games should immediately revert back to that of a purely amateur occasion. The operative word being 'games' not the Olympic Agency/Business/Corporation !

Winners should be permitted to accept prizes consisting only of; Medals, a motor vehicle, travel, and any other item(s) that are not immediately capable of conversion to cash.

I would have thought, for most competitors, world wide adulation and the travel that accompanies it, would surely be sufficient ?

In conclusion, sport should be just that, a game for pleasure and exercise, and nothing more.

Dear o sung wu,

We are somewhat similar.

You started your post "I'm an old man now and as such I don't follow much sport."

I'm an old man now (86) and as such I don't follow much sport.

You played League, in the Sydney (2nd Division) Comp., but because of work, shifts etc found getting along to training became a burden.

I played American football and baseball.

At 17 we both were in the army.

As a child I attended the 1932 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid. The athletes came to Lake Placid and had to find accommodations. There was no Olympic village, no segregation of athletes’ housing by country, no Olympic torches (Goebbels thought that one up.), free events and athletes were amateurs. The Stevens boys won the 2-man bobsled and were back at work in their garage next day. My Uncle Harry was the artist who did the designs in ice for the figure skating events.

In 1936 was the Nazi sponsored Olympics in Berlin with nationalism, racism, commercialism and other unpleasantness. It was downhill from then on.

Actually I think sports are great. My sons are still active in sports even though they are in their fifties.

Fowler’s “Modern English Usage” has this to say under Sobriquets:

… games & contests are exciting to take part in, interesting or even exciting also to watch, but essentially (i. e. as bare facts) dull to read about, insomuch that most intelligent people abandon such reading; the reporter, conscious that his matter & his audience are both dull enough to require enlivening, thinks that the needful fillip may be given if he calls fishing the gentle craft, a ball the pill or the leather, a captain the skipper, or a saddle the pigskin, & so makes his description a series of momentary puzzles that shall pleasantly titillate inactive minds.

What a bunch of old farts. I'm over 70, so can I join the circle? At 18 I was in the navy, learning to fly on & off aircraft carriers. I only had bit over a year operational when an accident made me unfit for carrier landings, & was back on civvy street. Lucky Hay! All that training & fun, & I got to survive.

I have no interest in a Museum of Sport, & am absolutely against anything that would add even one more Bureaucrat to the trough.

I am even more against anything more added to the already over funded area of Canberra.

If we must have a Museum of sport, it should be somewhere like Longreach, or Geraldton, or anywhere but Canberra.

While we are at it, it would be a good idea to move the institute of sport & most of the other stuff somewhere more worthy of public support.

Let the TV stations pay for a Sport Museum , they're the ones getting all the money by shoving nonsense activities down our throats if we want it or not. Definitely not one Cent from our Tax Dollar. Any political Party supporting a Government funded Museum of Sport should be put last on the ballot paper.
Having said that how about a Museum for bureaucratic Stuff-ups ?