Any who believes sport socials to be anything but theatre surely casts themselves as the fool

‘A play is something that goes on behind closed doors between consenting adults’ – Tom Stoppard

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Across the land, Wednesday afternoon rolls into Wednesday evening. The actors don their outfits; not the period costumes of Shakespeare or Marlowe, but more contemporary ones, of blue shirts, beige chinos and ties for the leading men, and a variety of types of polo shirt and shorts for the leading ladies.

The roles they play do not much change, each week a reprise of the last.

As with all great dramatic productions, it draws its audience in. They are swept up in the plot and its intrigues, they live the story.

And then, at the end of the play, the actors return home, remove their garb and go to sleep.

The 21st century’s answer to the Bard

Herein lies the problem. This week, came a groundbreaking piece of investigative journalism from our friends and neighbours at Exeposé, revealing that footballers were “forced” to “bolt” pints of lager at their first social. They have spectacularly missed the point.

I do not write here to question the motives of these brave young men, to quote one commenter “walking into the lion’s den of a room full of freshers”.

Under their apparent understanding, investigating exactly what the screaming tyrants who run socials make their subjects do, is a worthy use of their time.

But in this case, their misunderstanding is not dissimilar to a member of the public wandering on stage during Hamlet’s soliloquy and asking him what he’s having for dinner.

Nor do I write in defence of forcing people to do anything that they really don’t want to, not only because it’s essentially indefensible, but also because at the end of the day, that’s fun for no one.

A prominent member of the actors’ guild

The crux of the issue, to finally elucidate the now fairly obvious metaphor, is that those who condemn sports socials as being all that is worst about British student culture, have bought into it all just a little bit too eagerly.

For whatever reason, although I’m willing to stick my neck out and say that I think it’s because they want to believe the worst about, and slander, the sort of people who attend sports socials, they think that it’s all some kind of procession of violating the basic rights of freshers, bullying and intimidation.

For that to be the case, and their concerns to be valid, it would require us to believe that there was no element of theatre involved in the passing of a Wednesday night.

The dressing up in costume. The assumption of various roles within the group. The yelling, and ritualistic ways of drinking. I shall leave you to draw your own conclusions on that one.

The catalyst for misunderstanding

Second year French student Alex, a regular attendee of two different sports socials, put the point rather more scathingly.

He said: “If they honestly believe for a minute that the whole standing on chairs, screaming ‘I am Spartacus’, bolting pints and necking on with fish is anything more than a parody of their view of social-goers, then they’re quite frankly bonkers.

“In my opinion, they either resent the popularity of sportsmen and women, or more likely find it so intolerable that anyone could enjoy doing such things or disagree with their awfully twee idea of fun, that they’re driven to try and engineer the downfall of such practices.”

To most people’s mind, bolting the odd pint, or generally being loud and obnoxious, will not kill you. ‘Twas ever thus, and will probably continue ever to be.

To recycle the quote from the top of the article, “A play is something that goes on behind closed doors between consenting adults.”

Peeking in through those previously closed doors and attempting to make a splash by presuming a lack of consent in whatever action, is surely more worthy of comment and reproach than the actions themselves.

As I say. You decide.