28/1/03 Playing the Game, Feeling the Art

In January, George Huitker led a group of 37 Radford College soccer players and staff on an 18-day tour of England which included over a dozen fixtures against English schools and clubs from London to Manchester. The tour proved to be more than just a sporting adventure...

Between fixtures, on our tour bus, videos occasionally distracted me from the lush, green, picturesque English countryside. I had been dissecting our Radford squads recent round of fixtures against English schools in the Derbyshire region, when "Mean Machine", starring ex-Wimbledon forward and bad-boy Vinnie Jones graced the little screen above our driver. Vinnie played an ex-English forward and bad-boy who took a prison team to new heights against the mean-spirited wardens in a match of great macrocosmic implications.

Films about soccer - or dare I say 'football', as the English would - have been in the public limelight a lot lately: I recall some recent charming footy-flicks like Gurinder Chadha 's "Bend it Like Beckham", Khyentse Norbu's "The Cup" and Nick Hornby's "Fever Pitch" to name a few. In 2002, footballing themes (from various codes) appeared in international plays such as "A Night in November" by Marie Jones, "Alone It Stands" by John Breen and ??? (presented by Robyn Archer at The First 10 days On The Island) proving popular with audiences while following in the footsteps of our own Alan Hopgood and David Williamson. Even in high-brow Australian literary circles, football has caught the eye and ear of writers such as Peter Goldsworthy, Philip Hodgins and Peter Rose, again to name but a few.

As I began to ponder why football was beginning to impress itself so markedly upon the artistic psyche, in a serendipitous moment, while reading Italian-forward and bad-boy Paolo Di Canio's autobiography (Harper Collins, 2001), I was struck by this passage where the author mused over the 'beautiful relationship' between an actor and his audience:

"The parallels between (acting) and being a footballer are obvious. When I play football, I generate emotions, both inside myself, but, just as importantly, among the spectators. That's why some people compare a game of football to an opera: it grabs you, you feel a part of it, you become one with the action, rising and falling in synchrony with the events on the pitch. It is the ultimate communal emotional experience."

This made me cast my mind back a week earlier, when I sat in the Dominion Theatre in the West End, having taken the players to see the new Ben Elton/Queen musical "We Will Rock You". I remember sitting bemused as art imitated football: dazzling computer projections on big-screens, teams of synchronised silkily clad-chorus members effortlessly running through their moves, while the audience, having queued mercilessly for tickets anywhere - in the stalls, in the stands, close to the 'pitch', depending on their budgets - left etiquette at the turnstiles and kicked the seats in front of them to oblivion during the title-song. They were chanting Freddie Mercury lyrics as passionately as any of the Highbury faithful might immortalise any Freddie Ljungberg strike on goal.

Was this all that far from the terrifying spectacle I witnessed a week later in Coventry, where the homeside defeated the notoriously cantankerous Cardiff 3-0 in an F.A. Cup third-round fixture? As coppers in jackboots jumped from a truck behind us to confront a wave of dissatisfied Cardiff supporters - who could be heard chanting something incomprehensibly Welsh and littered with expletives throughout the entire game - I felt, for the first time in the UK, really scared. And I wondered, as I did at the Dominion, is anybody here at Highfield Road attending for the entertainment? For the football? For the art?

Thankfully, even films as predictable as Barry Skolnick's "Mean Machine" (a remake of "The Longest Yard" which starred bad-boy Burt Reynolds), ask us to look beyond the thuggery and into the more meaningful, lasting, refined if not soulful aspects of the game. "Bend It Like Beckham" even dared to dive-tackle the mainstream consciousness on themes about friendship, gender, race and identity. Later that week on the sidelines at Lymm, Cheshire - where both Radford teams were given a spanking by the locals - I realised that exploration of these universal themes and issues were the raison-d'etre of our own school tour. Our two-and-a -half weeks abroad were never about for-and-againsts, win/loss-ratios or the acceptance of girls soccer. It was about experiencing other cultures, places and people in the context of football. And improving, developing and growing from the experience.

The arts need not fear. If Oxfordshire was to be randomly used as a benchmark, football's influence on theatre, at the very least, was more fad than fashion. I noticed the Old Fire Station Theatre were performing works by Caroline Churchill, John Ford and Mark Ravenhill. As well as a few tacky musicals like "Fame". In fact, "Fame" was the closest thing on the programme to competitive team-sport. (It is also, fashionably cool about race issues.)

I laid the brochure down on my seat, checked that my team had returned to the post-video catatonia enhanced by their Discmans, and looked out the window again. I was anticipating with real excitement, the view of Cumbria's serene Lake District - as much as the approaching Villa/Spurs clash. England is, after all, a great country where you can appreciate Dean Holdsworth's goals and William Wordsworth's poetry with equal enthusiasm. And where art is allowed to imitate footy, and football permitted to be a salient form of art.