Watching isn’t necessary
10-year-old me would be horrified by my secondhand fandom
I can picture them so clearly. Tony Adams’ half-volley at Highbury, Roger Federer’s tweener at the US Open, Andrew Flintoff’s over to Ricky Ponting at Lord’s. Each roll of tape commands a level of instant recall and cinematic crispness that belies the passage of time. So I fear 1998, 2005 and 2009 Jack would be disturbed at how the 2025 software update watches sport1. In that, I don’t.
I’m perfectly aware that Arsenal are favourites to win the Premier League, despite the famously chill fan base treating each dropped point as a moment of national mourning. That Carlos Alcaraz combines the raw power of Rafael Nadal with the rich variety of Roger Federer. And that England cannot bat to save a test match. But this is all secondhand knowledge.
The teenage boy who would routinely attend a football match and then go home to watch the highlights on Match of the Day, sit through marathon tennis matches without so much as nipping to the bathroom, and stay up late into the night for the Ashes, now consumes sport exclusively in audio form. Indeed, I occasionally consider the likelihood of a Truman Show scenario, in which sport no longer takes place and the chummy podcasts are produced solely for my benefit.
Is this relationship normal? Or is it akin to loving music but only listening to the snarky album reviews? In my defence, my better half, like many people, swiftly gave up on Lena Dunham’s newish Netflix series, Too Much, on the basis that it was just awful. Still, he absolutely devoured the press tour, with its slightly embarrassed cast fielding painfully social-first questions.
