Condensed Sport is Still Sport.
It’s a far cry in this world for people to play footy in the winter and cricket in the summer, blokes especially. The options to play a greater variety of sports, even in Tasmania, are abundant. A classic example was when my eldest son was six, he saw Manny from Modern Family fencing and asked if he could have a go. Confidently I said, “yes mate, if I can find a club in Hobart you can have a go.” Well, there were two in the capital and here is a cheerio to Avery who took Stirling and our whole family on as coach and he has remained a good mate since.
What attracted us as a family to fencing was that it was an hour or two per week, high impact, lots of technique and discipline and cheap as chips considering the electronic scoring and amount of equipment carried by Van Diemans Fencing Club operating out of Glenorchy.
The reason I mention the two hours is that it is coming to pass that people are more and more “time poor”. I personally hate that term, I mean, what is wrong with busy? But the fact remains as families try and jam as much work, study, family time and extra curriculars into their calendars, sport and recreation suffers.
And world governing bodies, national and state sporting organisations are increasingly recognising this. One of the first to realise that the average punter has a short attention span and not many hours spare in a week was rugby when it brought out rugby sevens. Now we see AFL 9s, T20 cricket, hockey nines and even 3 on 3 basketball. Short games, maximum bang for your time and people are able to exercise and get those good endorphins flowing from a bit of huffy puffy.
Going indoors and taking the elements out of it has also seen an increase in participation despite ebbing and flowing clientele. Indoor cricket, hockey, futsal are examples of this.
Seemingly immune to this is soccer in its traditional form which has not, that I have seen, seen fit to play short handed or shortened matches to captivate audiences. This does baffle me considering you can watch for 90 minutes and nobody scores and this is considered art. I think I’ll stick to a game that last five days and neither team might win.
The point I’m battling to make is initially when the new short form overlords took hold, people were and some still are, reluctant to move with the times. I’ll admit I was one of them when it came to T20 cricket. It took, I think it was Richie Benaud, to say, “Dad’s take their boys to test cricket and kids take their families to T20,” for me to cotton on.
We at TASSACC are for all sport in all its forms. Be it short course 50m breaststroke or a three-day Premier League cricket final or the 160km Tom Quilty Gold Cup. Short form or traditional we believe sport is sport and not matter what you are coaching, playing or officiating, we are here to support you under the mantra we are here to improve the quality of sport and recreation in Tasmania by improving the quality of coaching.
