Now that we've all had to adjust to the fact that practically everything in the world is either cancelled or postponed, can I suggest that the one thing that shouldn't be cancelled is sport? Since we're all going to be stuck inside anyway, then why not give us all the mass distraction of giving us something that absolutely does not matter, to take away our worries from the thing that does? Sport should matter even more than life and death precisely because it matters diddly-squat. How is it possible to be worried about the world outside, when you can watch the Bananaville Bears come back from an impossible position at half time to beat the Silver City Snakes in the last minute of extra time?
Of course the elephant in the room is that if we're all stuck inside because of a pandemic, then nobody is going to be at the game.
I put it to you that the elephant in the room can be solved by putting an actual elephant in the room.
The World Health Organisation has said that the artist formerly known as Coronavirus and currently known as COVID-19, is only specific to humans and to a few select animals. That means that cats, dogs, rabbits, lions, tigers, bears, cows, sheep, goats, and donkeys, are all free to go outside if they like. It also means that we can put elephants into sporting grounds because they can't get COVID-19 either.
We know that elephants have a long and proud history of sporting prowess and interest. Elephants have been used in racing, in polo, and as part-time madman and full-time empire builder Hannibal found out, elephants even like alpine skiing.
Don't believe me? In 218 BCE when Hannibal was squaring off against the still nascent Roman Empire for control of the western part of the Mediterranean Sea, he went through the Iberian Peninsula and over the Italian Alps with elephants. How do you get an elephant over the Alps? Skis! I know that that sounds odd because your average elephant lives in Africa where it is very hot but that doesn't mean that they can't dream. You've got to dream - you've got to hold on to the dream!
The beautiful thing about putting elephants in place of humans at sporting fixtures is twofold. Firstly, elephants take up more space than a human; so you need less of them. Where you previously needed a crowd of thousands of people, you only need a few hundred elephants. Secondly, elephants are ridiculously passionate and vocal about what they do and don't like. I once saw an African Cup Of Nations football match (being contested by people), between Côte d'Ivoire and Nigeria, and the loudest section of the crowd was some elephants in the next field. The match was pretty dire and dour it must be said and the people weren't all that loud but the elephants weren't going to be subdued from giving their opinion. They just bellowed out their disapproval. Do you remember the 2010 World Cup with those vuvuzelas? How about a whole tournament with elephants instead? How jolly would that be?
Also, because elephants are so much larger than people are, if you put coloured coats on them, then on the telly, the crowd doesn't look all that different. Elephants don't particularly care who they barrack for (they are quite ecumenical and non-partisan in that regard); so you can have the same elephants in multiple coloured coats at different matches. People are quite prejudiced and won't turn up at matches where their team isn't playing (and even when their team is playing a lot of the time) but elephants are simply happy to be there.
To be fair, sports like Rugby League and Sheffield Shield Cricket have already been playing before crowds that could have arrived in a single bus and a lot of stadia like the Gabba, Brookvale Oval, and the SCG, already have multiple colours of seats to give the illusion that there's a crowd there when in actual fact the number of people is in the tens.
I do of course realise that having elephants inside a sporting stadium would normally raise a public health risk but you have to remember that if the humans aren't there, then the risk that they pose are only to each other. Elephants aren't likely to get drunk and want to get in fights (unless the subject of the election of King Of The Elephants comes up) and although they may occasionally stampede, at least we know that they are passionate about what they are watching; which is more than can be said about your average Rugby Union crowd who only seem to get excited when the cucumber sandwich kiosk opens.
Oh wait... what? We don't have several million elephants to put into sporting stadia? How come I wasn't informed of this? Maybe the elephant in the room in that we actually start needing to take care of both each other and the planet, so that there are enough elephants in the room to put in the room.
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