Because of how sports have unfolded over the years and from the time I first became interested in sports and sports participation in the 1950s, I need to add a preamble that is “situational” to my perceptions.

In these modern times, sports in all their forms are much more about business than recreation. It used to be that Sport was considered to be an add-on for those with skills and athletic capacities to display those skills after hours and the day’s work was done.

That’s all changed; Sport in its various forms is now a full-time occupation for those competing at the top and even middle levels.

Sport has become so business and finance-focused that athletes and sportspeople are competing against each other within the infrastructure of teams, meaning that advancement by one can depend upon a decline in form by another. In metaphoric terms, I think Sport has become almost a “dog eat dog“ proposition.

One of the disappointments to me, a person who has studied and followed sports since the late 1950s, is that the notion of “we as a team“ has now become “I and the others in the team”.

Very rarely in interviews with sports people do you hear those being interviewed deferring to other members of the team in a fulsome and holistic way. In answering the questions they will concede the contribution of others but overall they are being interviewed because they were standouts in whatever field of competition had taken place.

It seems to me that the desire to earn money has supplanted being an athlete or sportsperson for the love of the game in which they’re participating.

Sports people in all fields of endeavour in huge and ever-increasing amounts of money during the time of their place in the Spotlight. so the years of highlight are usually from the ages of SAFE 15 or 16 through to the ages of 33 to 35. Any top-level sportsperson in any field of endeavour aged more than 35 is a rarity. And that in a world where the average age of people (taking Australia here) is 81 years for a man and 84 years for a woman.

With sport being what it is, one’s earning life rarely exceeds 20 to 25 years, and there is a long long time left to hit the average age.

There is sadness about sports, for while earning money is great, devastation to the body (physically and mentally) can leave people far more broken than they should be at a very young age.

My appreciation of sportspeople does not extend to the modern era because of the changes in focus that have taken place. A sense of ‘entitlement’ seems to be pervasive among sports people.

My favourite sportspeople are all those who play for the joy of their sport, not worrying about fame, glory and money.