When many people left school, they left the local sport they played through their school years and the media has the same lack of interest in local sport.
Why have former school and local area sports players deserted one of the few things which kept them fit and healthy? Why is it so hard to find local media, which covers these important local events these days?
It is true that by the time most people reached the ages of 15, 16, 17 and 18, they started to feel the pressure of life more acutely. Society let them know they had to show the world that they had become self sufficient and could find work, which they could hold. These ominous thoughts about the future would have made it much harder for many of them to concentrate on their sport.
Since Richard Nixon got rid of the gold backing on the US dollar in 1970 and most countries gradually floated their dollar as the years progressed, economic times became tougher as the the times floated by our eyes. Today an 18 year old might be less likely to continue with his/her local sport, compared with someone in the late 1960s, because of the current financial pressures.
When 9/11 hit in 2001, news media focused much more on the prevailing national and international news, in favour of many of the local events. Catchment-centric newsrooms started to die when the newspapers went digital. Unless you still live in an area, which has a very dedicated local newspaper, you probably don't know much about what's going on around you.
That's a great shame. Many people learnt to have pride in themselves because as a young person they had pride in their local catchment, pride in their local school and pride in their local sports teams.
Life today seems so fast that these things don't matter anymore and if you still think about these aspects of your charmed early life with pride, then you are some kind of very weird idealist! Society will shun those of us who think with idealistic pride, but you will never take away our belief that who we are and how we see the world originated from those early days when we felt happy and secure within ourselves.
This completely different planet of yesteryear generated a wonderful attitude of community spirit. I happily remember the Gala-day in the under sevens soccer, when all the teams from the year's competition paraded around the ground and held up their banners, while the Scottish bagpipes played marching tunes.
When my Grandfather died in 1979, my family was left without a car. I can remember every Saturday morning, without fail, the same Holden Kingswood motor car, stopped at my front yard to take me to cricket. One of the parents involved was happy to provide that service for me.
Local sport was a part of our lives. When I was in high school, there was a sports carnival. Inclement weather meant it might have been cancelled. We were told to listen to 2UE and they would tell us whether it was to go ahead, or if we should go straight to school instead. Such community spirit from mainstream media has long gone.
In high school I had an evening paper-round, when the evening papers existed. I can remember with fondness the caring and decent attitude from people to whom I sold newspapers. As a 56 year old, I can't imagine such well wishes and encouragement really still exist today, but sometimes I get this small glimmer of hope. I am glad to report one little bit of community spirit.
It was Saturday February 11, 2017. It was the heatwave weekend. Temperatures reached more than 40 degrees in Sydney. That Saturday was a terrible day and there did not seem to be much breeze to cool things down. Many local sports were cancelled.
I am not sure what was wrong with me on that day, but there I was in the crowd at the Sydney Cricket Ground. I was at the fence, near where the cricket players entered the field. I took photos, when I could have stayed home. It was pure madness on my part and I got very sunburnt. It was the Sheffield Shield between NSW and Queensland.
I have great hearing and so suddenly I witnessed this conversation from some other people in the crowd, also near the gate. They identified themselves as players from the local grade cricket. They explained their games were postponed due to the heat and they asked some of the players if there there was anything they could do for them, as they played on in the terrible heat. I thought that was lovely old fashioned commitment.
It is true, as with that example of camaraderie, that local sports events bring with them a very old school type of decency and it is a disgrace that media companies are not interested in all the many stories, which come out of the lower grades of our sport. How are we going to be world champions if we cannot celebrate these important events on a local level.
I'm not talking through my hat. Here is a list of local sports events in just one Sydney catchment - events which are not of corporate high level, but they're played by pretty average people of all walks of life:
Sailing, lawn bowls, rugby union, netball, soccer, basketball, rugby league, hockey, AFL, golf, tennis. touch football, ice hockey and swimming. Local Rotary and Lions clubs, Chambers of Commerce, churches, local members of parliament and councillors, police area command, local associations will often get behind these local sports.
When will our media come to the party and find the angles and the interesting aspects of these events and cover them? Sometimes local sport raises a fortune for charity and the media couldn't care less. When will we push to keep more people involved in local sports programs, past the age of 18? What is happening to our society? Don't you care? ― Joseph Walz