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March 23rd 2016
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FLATS ON FRIDAY
Imagine that your job had to be performed in front of millions of people and that, because it’s 2016 and because lots of people are tossers, every mistake you made came back to haunt you in virtual form immediately afterwards. Not just mistakes, in fact, but everything you did that someone, somewhere, often with a fraction of the knowledge you have, might have done ever so slightly differently.
You would write their opinions off, right? You would ignore it and let it wash away, your subconscious mind unaffected. Or you’d turn your phone off.
Then imagine opening any newspaper, only to see your face with some aggressively critical words beneath it. Oh, and you’d better not turn the television on either, as that’s the most relentless medium of the lot.
I don’t want to garner sympathy for elite sportspeople, or even to elicit any extra portions of compassion. I merely want to establish a base level of empathy for what these people now have to go through. Criticism is more intense and widespread than ever before, and to assume that those in the firing line should accept it without pain or anxiety is both lazy and unfair.
So, with this situation in mind, make it 10 times more intense in its awfulness and call yourself Chris Robshaw. Journalists calling England’s Rugby World Cup a colossal disappointment was fine – that’s what the media are there for, and they were bang right. But that’s not where it ends these days. The abusive hammerings spray in from all angles, and they are horrid. Christ, England are winning and Mike Brown, England’s full-back, said last week that he’d stayed off Twitter “because of all the vile stuff”.
Just take a second to think – irrespective of results and performances – what Robshaw would have woken up to on the mornings following that tournament. I truly don’t know how he coped.
And this makes what he – along with his teammates – has achieved in this Six Nations all the more astonishing. He went back to his club and played hard, arguably in the position he should always have played: blindside. He did what he always did in matches, but turned it up a notch while turning the volume down by avoiding the media, both sporting and social.
You might think he’s a great player, you might think he’s ordinary, or you might just not care. But his rugby is not the point here. What he endured would have broken – or at least visibly dented – most of us, but he showed a strength of character that I think deserves rich applause.
He’s just another guy, just another rugby player. They come and go. But I do think it’s worth considering, from time to time, the stresses that these people shoulder and overcome. Certainly, they’re not tarmacking the M25 at midnight, but I wonder how we’d all handle such visibility and such freely spoken, public appraisals.
Read more at http://sport-magazine.co.uk/features/flats-friday-52#LXDQugH6tucHQwwF.99
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