I must admit I watched "Howzat" last night... I was impressed by the performance of the actor playing Packer, unlike that of the one in "Paper Giant", that I only glimpsed in bits and too many drabs... The actor playing the part of John Cornell, Abe Forsythe , the son of the great actor Drew Forsythe was also excellent... All the acting was top notch actually, for what is a soap opera based on a real life event...  

But one question arises: "Is sport democratic?" 
It could appear irrelevant... But sport dictates our tastes and can shape our political opinions... When "we" win medals at the Olympics, we feel a million bucks and our chest puffs up as we get full of pride and this often reflects in votes — or forgiveness — for the chief monkeys in power... Sure not all of us is a sports fanatic, but, relatively, Australians are proud to be a "sporting nation"... More money may flow to sport than to pure scientific research for example...

Imagine an Aussie Rules Grand Final with 110,000 spectators in the arena. the amazing noise!... 
For those who don't know, Aussie Rules is a mega sport in this down-under country. It's played on an oval ground that's twice the size of a soccer pitch (100 metres wide by 150 metres long). Each team have 18 players at any one time and the score is enthralling, with goals and "behinds"... Kicks are massive and from the 50-metres mark, goals are often scored with the ball going pass another 30 metres... The game is a full-on two hours in full-quarters of 30 minutes. It's great entertainment for families — despite the players' outfits which would make a female volleyball team proud — while the biffo is relatively modest, though impacting, and the skills of these tall athletic men are high. At grand final times, teevees around the country are switched to the channel that has the exclusive rights to this sport and advertising dollars flow like honey...

Sport often occupy the mind of the populace away from political realities. 
It's easier to watch a football match for 80 exciting minutes, than waste three hours at a slow rabid hypocritical angry well-intentioned political drab meeting at your local branch of the party of choice. Even the scones there taste funny... Sport like war is all about the perceived glory. 
Remember when Rattus wanted to go and invade Iraq, he slowly but surely reinvigorated the Gallipoli massive defeat into a glorious victory for the fighting spirit — despite the huge losses and the stupid futility of the attack. That's the clever way of manipulating the way people think... See, one cannot deny the event happened, nor one can deny the "fighting spirit", the "medals" the "honour"... Should you reject these concocted values here or point out the stupidity of the attack, you become a traitor to our "gallant" soldiers... 
Sport does this on a similar level, except (usually) nobody dies and the victor is on the same side once the final whistle is blown... 

So watching (and remembering) the way Kerry Packer (whom I've met in one of my incarnations — he was charm, impersonated), pushed hard to get his way but sometimes was forced into doubt by others, and eventually used his instinctive cunning and the brute force of money to get his way, was interesting... Another episode to come next week. I can wait... Packer did not want to "steal the game" away from the cricket boffins at Lords but we wanted to create a parallel competition that would be more viewable on teevee than watching the grass grow, over the five days of test cricket, including tea... But which one is sport? And which one is more democratic? There is a certain historical "toffiness" in some sport, often having originated in public schools (private schools of England) where the sons of Lords and those of the higher classes were educated.  Rugby was used for example to teach future officers how lead men into battle, with a team spirit, while preserving one's toes... The scrums developed strength and camaraderie, while running helped general fitness...
There is though a difference between professional sport and sporting activities, those motions that keep us fit and away from our armchairs for two minutes... 
But when professional sport becomes our fare, money enters the fray... And I mean HUGE sums of moneys... 

These days a soccer player worth his salt gets transfer fees in the double figures of millions. 
I was first introduced to the art of cricket, that game of strange attrition, in England in the early sixties. I think it was a test match between Australia and the Poms... My English host was devouring the black and white teevee screen as if it was the ultimate contest between Hercules and Goliath... We were in Sheffield where all the factory chimneys  poured an acrid smoke into the air... All the houses in the area my friend lived in had been built at the same time, providing shelter for the coal and steel working class — dark brick with dark-tiled dirty roofs, all looking the same, in hundreds of streets and the only distinction was the street name and the house number... And the inside of these homes was full of useless trinkets bought in Torquay, UK, and ugly vases with pictures of Stonehenge — trinkets that one now can see go on sale for real money on Bargain Hunt... We went to a couple of football (soccer) matches, one of them was Manchester United versus Manchester City and the stadium was full of fighting spirit. Fights broke out amongst spectators... Streamers were made of unused loo paper rolls that, when thrown correctly, sailed across from the back rows to the sidelines... My friend supported City and "our" team lost — as usual... But one lived for another day of imagined glory... if only Smith had not passed the ball to Jones when...
This is the power of sport and of allegiance to a team of bums...

In 1908, rugby league was founded in Australia by rugby union players who could not afford injuries and hospital costs. Thus two branches of rugby suddenly appeared and separated the gentry from the plebs... Rugby union became the amateur game of real biffo for the higher classes — lawyers, doctors and other rich folks, while rugby league became the professional game for the working class. Paying the players helped limit the trauma of the hospital bills... 
In the 1990s, rugby union players became professionals and got paid enough oodles to attract more personnel willing to put their body on the line...
In 1997 (I think?), Uncle Rupe decided there was far more money to be squeezed out of rugby league... 
See, till then, matches were shown on TV mostly for a small fee paid by the channel to the association — or for free on the ABC, like, for example, the Shute Shield competition for rugby union. This comp is still going on, but only attracting a few hundred spectators — most being the support staff and families of players — while people watch the battle on teevee... This competition is used by the selectors to pick the cream de la cream of loosers against the All Blacks... But this is another story... Thus the relationship between players and spectators has shifted away from the playing fields to viewers — now comfortable in their own air conditioned lounge rooms, commenting on Jones and Smith's battles, while sipping beer or chardonnay...

The next big advantage of course — as alluded on "Howzat" — was the way cameras have been used to get into the thick of the action — where one can see the eye-gouging close-up and the ball-squashing grabs in the scrums. When one is sitting on the hard cold stadium seats watching a game while having to eat reheated three-day old bangers — despite the passion of waving the colour of our favourite team — one does not see as much action as someone sitting at home on a leather sofa... That's the catch...
Thus only the mad fanatics go to watch games inside the stadiums... We need these mad fanatics though, otherwise the atmosphere would be the death-knell of the sport, unless one feeds canned-crowd-noises like they used to do with "canned" laughter in sketch comedy on the box.... One has to also appreciate the cunning different colouring effect of the seating arrangement in stadiums that on the box looks like a million people crowd... 
One has to consider that a stadium that can seat 90,000 people and is only filled with 29,000 souls, the stadium appears "empty" — while a crowd of 20,000 in a stadium designed for 19,000 will feel crackers... This relativity is actually very important in the perception of various sports importance... And ones feels more democratic when seated in the peasants rows, than in the corporate boxes...

So in the end, if one wants to corner the home viewer market for sport — don't we love biffo, especially it someone else suffering, blown up on our super duper giant flat screen teeVees — one can make a shit load of money... "Traditionally" (in countries where commercial TV was the major player), the home viewer was free-fed whatever, through the advertising of product paying for the action in between — in TV commercials, on panels on sporting grounds edges, on the grass of sporting arenas, on the instruments of sports such as hockey sticks, bats and rackets, and on the uniforms worn by sport stars: the front, the back, the sleeves, the socks... 
It's not St George versus Penrith... It's Doodahya versus Hoseclipz... and so forth... 
We are subliminally enticed to buy something, whether we like it or not... 
And even if we go to the loo at the commercial break we still hear the name of the burgers "we have to eat" at a fantastically low price "for a limited time"... The "voice-over" is a formidable weapon and people who have that special gift of spruiking without being seen are paid huge amount of money... From time to time they will slide an underhanded subliminal political comment designed to make you annoyed at your preferred political party... It's not knew but it's part of the package when you're watching sport on the box... though there are rules about what can be promoted or not...

Now the smart idea to increase revenue from sport on TV is to sell "virtual tickets" on top of all the already very loaded advertised paraphernalia ... 
PAY-PER-VIEW... See, that's where cable TV comes in... Once on the feed, one becomes addicted to the far "richer" (in quantity) diet from cable TV... So much to choose from... and "exclusive" programs including "exclusive" sport matches... Say you are a fan of the Bulldogs, but the only match shown on free-to-air channel is a Souths-Dragons match... Yet, on cable TV, you can watch your beloved Bulldogs play the Eels FOR A SMALL FEE... The fee-structure of pay-per-view varies according to what the match is about... In the US when it's Super Bowl Final, the pay-per-view fees go in the hundreds of dollar per households... And the fees are generally extra to the rental of the cable. In various technological ways, the pay-for-view system knows the digits of your credit card and also knows if you are watching or not...  Thus multiplying this by millions of households watching the game, there is shit-loads of money to be made... And through clever advertising, one tempts the viewers to watch some more... relentlessly. The whole process, if well structured and smartly oiled, becomes a cash cow...

This is why Uncle Rupe wanted to get into the Rugby League payola in Australia... The Rugby league association (ARL) at the time was full of heroes but was light on real business acumen, though it made modest moneys... But there was a small problem too: the Australian government rite and left had supported "anti-siphoning" laws that stopped a "public sport" being exclusively shown on cable teeveeee... So, Uncle Rupe decide to create his own private league... That would show them you public service government morons... 
Thus, secretly, in between seasons, like Packer did with cricket, Uncle Rupe started to "buy" rugby players for more money than these biffo-ists had ever seen... And Murdoch eventually got a few clubs to defect from the association to come into his new private "league", plus he created a few new "clubs" by piggybacking on struggling smaller organisations, then changed a couple of rules and voila — a "new game", SUPER LEAGUE, was born and ONLY watch-able on cable TV... or from the cold stadium seats, should you have been a fan of the old clubs and a new fan of the new "clubs"... 
Thus the process needed to inject new enthusiasm for the venture, via loads of publicity, even controversy, and owning most the major newspapers in this country, Uncle Rupe could spruik for his own league and a dream run was assured... 

But the whole thing demanded a big injection of cash to get it going. Packer knew that and in the end it's a bottom line thing... Paying the clubs, the players king's wages did not come cheap... Meanwhile the original competition struggled on to survived with matches still being shown on free-to-air TV, while being often rubbished as second rate by the Merde-och-press compared to his Super League... People warmed up to his lot but not enough... Two years after the formation of Super league, Murdoch had bled more than three quarters of a billion dollars, and some of the original foundation clubs had made every effort they could to point out Super League was evil...
The national association (ARL) was nearly broke, Uncle Rupe was going deeper in negative financial territory, the clubs were at war, it was a confusing mess — in which fans did not know in which competition their club was playing apart from the ridiculous referee attire with stripes. The ARL and Super league decided a truce and then a "merger" (the NRL) with strict rules on which clubs were going to bite the dust and which ones were going to be included in the new merged outfit. Only a certain number of clubs would be allowed to survive...

This is the power of money, or lack of it, in sport... But one has to realise that not all sports are about stars biffoing on the field and being seen on the box... One needs to create sporting heroes and many clubs have had their structure since ancient times designed to encompass the growing of young kids into future biffoers... It takes some nurturing to teach young nine year olds how to go and tackle blokes twice one's weight in the middle of a paddock... So the older original clubs had many level of competition to create players who, once fully dedicated professionals would be offered more dosh from the Merde-och Super league, deserting to the enemy. This was non-acceptable...

So a set of criteria were devised with specific loading factors... For example in the criteria of money, a club that was turning over a profit would get higher loading than one who had many kiddies in training on their books... But then one could also tip the scale by just throwing buckets of dosh at some clubs and not at others... Totally undemocratic and underhanded as well... 
Some clubs were forced to merge unhappily and who can remember the Magpies amongst the Tigers?... Other clubs were shut down like North. Other clubs such as Cronulla were totally broke but for "loans" fed by Uncle Rupe... Thus with money Uncle Rupe could (and from my recollection did) manipulate the criteria result to suit which clubs he was going to allow to survive... In regard to Cronulla, and still on the books, is an over-development of flats and apartments on a block of land sold for a symbolic sum to the club by government as long as it was used by community sport and recreation... A ruling that the club as been trying to thwart ever since...
Meanwhile one has to realise that Packer was against super league and supported the ARL... But the animosity between media barons is not related to allegiance to the sports but to the amount of moneys they can make from it... For example, one year, the Packer camp aligned itself with the "evil" Murdoch's Fox cable network and Channel Ten to prise the rights of Aussie Rules away from Stokes' (another media baron) Channel Seven... This ended up with a massive court case which Stoke lost but was happy to make his point of the unfair association against him...
Meanwhile on the rugby league front, another war was looming... To an impartial observer one could see that some clubs were more equal than others... One club that Murdoch did not want to be in the new merged competition was South Sydney, a small vigourous outfit that made no money year in year out because it was a non-profit club not a business... South Sydney still has won more premiership than any other clubs and for the previous ten years before the kerfuffle had been struggling a bit, not having enough money to buy top players... But Souths were still "breeding" a lot of decent players through their comprehensive youth programs, including a lot of Aboriginal kids... 
Thus the merger was going to kill Souths, while retaining its youth program for "seeding" the future of the sport... One could go into too much details here about each and every way some clubs fulfilled the criteria to survive... but one can be assured that manipulation of finances were at the forefront of survival. Some had their begging bowls filled by News Limited (Murdoch's business arm in charge of Super League) while others did not.
Souths was broke but not bankrupt as per the charter of the club, though other clubs were bankrupt but then bankrolled by Murdoch... Democratic? I think not... But South was led by the pig-headed George Piggins, who decided to take Murdoch's news limited and other entities to court... The club had no moneys, only a disparate desperate mad bunch of supporters who fought each other on how to resolve the club's crisis... At the time, Alan Jones, bless him, wanted the club to merge with Canberra, while if my memory is correct on reading the history, that other Lamppost merchant (via his son) Obeid was in favour of merging the club with Cronulla (Obeid had a foot in all pies...)... But pig-headed Piggins stood firm... Court case it was going to be and money was organised by a variety of display games, dinner functions, auctions and hat collection... Russell Crowe, a fan of the club since childhood sunk a lot of money in this fighting fund, including buying the original bell that rung time for the earliest of games, 1908... The bell had been collected by a certain Albert Clift who by then was about 99 years old, older than the original league itself...
The court case was fought on trade practices act laws... white trying to bring a bit of "democracy" into the fray... At one stage, a large public demonstration of more than 80,000 people in the street stretching from Central to Town Hall, Sydney would have been the biggest protest march ever in regard to "sport"...
The court case was eventually ruled in Murdoch's favour by the judge and what did the little club do? Fight on or die! No to merger!... A few celebrities abandoned the club, those shall remain incognito, but the club carried on with money collection and went to an appeal which in a 2 to 1 ruling went in the club's favour...  By then exhaustion and also sensing public anger on many front — people had stopped buying the Murdoch's papers to the point they were being sold at 20 cents and no-one in certain areas would touch them, as well the Fox studio entertainment centre was losing money as most of the public it was designed to "entertain" were from the South Sydney area... In one year the complex lost about 50 million bux which may have been small bickies for some but eventually, graciously, Murdoch said enough is enough.... Bruised, battered, divided, bittered, the club was reinstated in the competition... With many friendships totally broken and new financial demands Russell Crowe and his mate had to refinance the club by making some deals that bruised the club some more... But the club survives... Still partly owed by Crowe and Holmes-a-Court...

But the club still retains the "franchise of the name" while still rebuilding its pride... This year, South Sydney is in the top four teams...
Meanwhile, we glorify our sporting heroes and those coming back from the Olympics, "stop the cities"... So our sporting men and women have their role in "democracy"... But is sport democratic?
I think not... when it's ruled by money that can pervert the value of the activity... Not strangely, the more "professional" the games become (including the Olympic Games) the less democratic they are. Sponsors become the important part of the activity, while the players become the beefy parts of machines in which coaches, trainers, chiefs, doctors, masseurs, managers, cheerleaders and agents, also need to get their cut of the loot of money and glory...
Like our "democracies" are ruled by money, sport at this level is also ruled by money. All designed to entertain us, while collecting money that will line the pockets of the rich... Like the gladiators fighting in the coliseum, our heroes do battle with rules and strange restrictions, offsides and forward pass. It subliminally educates us to the lawful restrictions we encounter in our daily fare... But it also give us the thrill of trespass and the comfort that trespass is "punished" by the referee... though we dream of getting away with it...  It gives us the excitement of the ruse, the swerve and the brute force beyond what we can dream of, ourselves, as we carefully walk one step at a time... Disinformation, secret payola to players to loose a game or two and silly mistakes can still affect our choice of team and its performance...

I nearly forgot... After having lost the second court case, the appeal, was a black mark against Murdoch's business diligence in regard to trade practices... Thus having reinstated South Sydney back in the bosom of the league, Murdoch went on to fight the result in the high court... Graciously or by agreement the club did not fight the case... Murdoch regained his full business colours and South was back in the league... What better result than this?... Well, George Piggins ego is still bruised despite overture made to him by the club... Apparently, in order to win the club membership over, Crowe and company "spied" on Piggins and his supporters... Piggins won a court case which was settled with more money from the Crowe camp... And on a slow news-Sunday, the Fairfax press rehashed this event recently, when the whole things happened quite a few years back...
Time for forgiveness? time for forgetting?... Money rules the roost of democracy... Money has powerful memory... and there is little democracy in sport... only enterprises in which we dream of winnings while betting on match results — another enterprise that complicates things up as well...
Welcome to the illusion of democratic choice in a sea of sharks, all after you money... Nothing new.
So in the end is sport democratic?... 

I have no idea... but sport is a tool that can sway our democratic understanding and aspirations... Watching a Saudi woman come way last in a running race at the Olympics was a strange sight. She was in overalls and wearing a scarf, while all the other runners were in bikini-style sporting outfits... Was this a defining moment in the democratisation of sport in Saudi Arabia, where women are not allowed to do much, including sport? And there was no chaperone running along with her... It must have felt like an extraordinary democratic moment in a submissive life. My guess. 

Gus Leonisky

Note: the image at top is from the time (around 2000) when Souths was at war against News Ltd...