Hamish’s Portfolio Theory of Sport Following

This is quite a simple idea, but can be very effective.

One of the great things about sport is you are admitted into a world of vicarious highs and lows. This leeching of the emotional experiences of elite athletes is enhanced if you follow the athlete/team, and moreso if for a long time. In the World Cup, because the athletes are so good, and the fans so involved, it’s the ultimate sporting spectacle. But if your country happens to qualify, you top up your enjoyment account manifold. If you have followed your country’s vain attempts to qualify or progress for three decades, the ante is upped again. And the World Cup is special because your emotions (limited as they are to the sporting spectrum, but valid nonetheless) are shared by many of your countrywomen and men.

The problem with sport is the lows can be a bit a of a bummer. First of all, it can be genuinely heartbreaking seeing some losses. This is one of the easiest, sure-fire way to get one of those ‘replay the scene in your head’moments, or more likely continuing episodes. If it was a bad loss, you may temporarily forget failure and imagine what would have happened if they hadn’t lost after all. You may even map out future opponents and results of these games, if only... Interestingly, such counterfactuals are largely involuntary, and can indeed be hard to suppress. Second of all, bad moods can follow losses, which disrupt your interactions with loved ones and colleagues, and may impair your productivity, thus draining the economy of the wealth it so richly deserves. Lastly, it is frankly downright embarassing to admit a sporting team’s influence on your person. After all, are we sports nuts any better than those pond scum who indulge in gossip magazines? P’raps. I know there are many things I’d feel in my soul of souls more pleased doing - playing guitar, singing, listening to Mars Volta, playing Druglord, cooking for my wife - the list goes on. But back to sporting failure, and how to hide it under your bushel.

This is where the portfolio comes in. Having a sports portfolio - a range of teams or individuals to follow - means somewhere, sometime there is always someone winning. You black out the failures and take the winners on board. My portfolio has consisted over the years of (in rough order of frequency of support and importance) the Bulldogs in the NRL, the Socceroos, the Golden State Warriors (NBA), the Sydney Kings (NBL), and then a range of lower tier ones: Sydney Swans (AFL), River Plate and pretty much any team from Sydney, NSW, or Australia. This takes in tennis players (although for Lleyton Hewitt I’m willing to make an exception), golfers (especially Appleby, Allenby and Ogilvy), cricket teams and whatnot. In the English Premier League I generally support a team with (decent) Aussies - Blackburn, Liverpool. Because of the GS Warriors, I even retain a modicum of satisfaction when the Oakland Raiders win in the NFL - and I haven’t watched an NFL game in about 15 years. (In fact I spent more time in my youth playing the superb NFL PC game where you could make your team really fast, or fat, and we had a guy called My Main Man Maxwell, and one season later in the draft we were shocked and delighted to see that his brother had turned up - Rick Main Man Maxwell, or something like that. Tas, where are you? What was his first name?) So by having a sports portfolio, you can have success all the time, and credibility is just around the corner.

Of course, if you subscribe to the underdog school of sports supporting, you’ll rarely be pleased. But it’ll be worth it when you are. But it’ll be lame most of the time.

An added bonus is that if anyone questions why you follow so many different teams and sports, you can rationally justify it and return to the sports section unfettered.