Article
Community
Culture
Football
Idolatry
Sport
5 min read

The decade that defined sport 

What the sports stars of today owe to the eighties.

Simon is Bishop of Tonbridge in the Diocese of Rochester. He writes regularly round social, cultural and political issues.

Maradona runs in celebration, holding a hand aloft as an England player sits dejected on the ground.
Maradona celebrates, 1986 World Cup.
Dani Yako via Wikimedia Commons

If the 1980s were your formative years as a sports fan, you will carry many images with you even today.  Dennis Taylor potting the last black after midnight to beat Steve Davis.  Barry McGuigan defeating Eusebio Pedrosa in the ring at Loftus Road.  The races between Coe and Ovett at the Moscow Olympics.  The tie break between Borg and McEnroe.  Botham’s Ashes.  Diego Maradona versus England at the Mexico World Cup.   

You will undoubtedly have other memories, though these will have been controlled by a limited number of broadcast editors.  I clearly recall watching Viv Richards’ astonishing century in one cricket World Cup final against hosts England being regularly interrupted on BBC1’s Grandstand with coverage of a routine horse race meeting.  The introduction of the less fusty World of Sport on ITV was a route in for some sports that faced an implicit class bias, but it was all still far removed from the 24/7 reverencing of sport today. 

The eighties was an era of transition as sport began to gain a place in our cultural consciousness.  It was also a decade in which the relationship between sport and politics became cemented on paths we still walk.  In Everybody Wants To Rule The World, academic and journalist Roger Domeneghetti has written an entertaining and informative book subtitled ‘Britain, Sport and the 1980s’. 

In our branding of the twenties as the decade of polarisation, we forget how deeply divided Britain was in the eighties.  Recent commentary on the fortieth anniversary of the miners’ strike has been a reminder of this and how violent public life proved.  Football hooliganism was pervasive and after a riot at a Luton Town – Millwall game in 1985, Margaret Thatcher asked of football officials: ‘what are you going to do about it?’.  In a pithy and telling response, the FA secretary Ted Croker said: ‘Not our hooligans, Prime Minister, but yours.  The product of your society’.  Perhaps more than any other exchange, it symbolised the braiding of sport and politics, threads that endure to this day. 

The sports stars of today have become surrogate saints, held up as an inspiration for what can be achieved and frequently employed as motivational speakers.

The argument that sport and politics don’t mix has a familiar ring for people who live with the tired old trope that religion and politics don’t either, as if our experience of culture and values are sealed off from each other.  Sporting boycotts in the 1980s - from Olympics to apartheid South Africa – placed athletes in the unavoidable position of having to make decisions about participation that would reflect on their values and could affect their careers; positioning that other people were spared.  These were an early taste of the moral standing afforded to sportsmen and women today; a status that somehow asks more of them, perhaps because other professions have become so tarnished and mistrusted. 

Domeneghetti’s book is also a sobering reminder of how ugly and careless much of our shared life was in the eighties.  The Bradford City fire and Hillsborough disaster were awful losses that showed the low priority of health and safety and the culture of institutional cover up that continues to blight the nation.  The author locates these failings in the wider context of disasters like Kings Cross, Piper Alpha and the Marchioness boat as part of his bid to write a social history of sport. 

Yet in a sense, Domeneghetti chose arbitrary parameters.  Football in particular was on the cusp of a revolution with the introduction of the Premier League in 1992.  Cultural sympathy for the game was about to change with the writings of Nick Hornby in Fever Pitch and Pete Davies in All Played Out.  The nasty face of football was to be transformed into a highly marketable model. 

The ugliness of the era is laid bare in the prolific and casual racism, sexism and homophobia that coursed through every sport.  The Windrush’s second generation broke through in the 1980s, notably in football, but was met with staggering levels of prejudice.  Anyone tempted to think this has now been eradicated hasn’t spent any real time at a football ground or on social media.  Women’s sport had virtually no profile in the eighties outside of tennis and athletics and as recently as 1978, Lord Denning had ruled that an eleven-year-old girl should not be allowed to play competitive football against boys the same age even though she merited a place in her team.  Meanwhile, stars like Justin Fashanu, Martina Navratilova and John Curry were targeted for their sexual orientation.  It remains hard for present day athletes to identify as gay, despite the rhetoric of acceptance.  Sport then, as now, held up an unerring mirror to our faces. 

The sports stars of today have become surrogate saints, held up as an inspiration for what can be achieved and frequently employed as motivational speakers.  But there is the gloss of a hyper-individualistic, neo-liberal culture.  Sports stars succeed because of a combination of innate gifting (which cannot simply be replicated) and material advantage (too many Olympic medals are still awarded to wealthy and advantaged Britons). I won because I wanted it more is a dishonest assessment of sporting success in the UK and in this way also holds up a mirror to other walks of life.   

The powerful personal branding of today’s athletes in many ways have their origin in the 1980s and the way the likes of Ian Botham, Carl Lewis and John McEnroe transcended their sports.  The cult of the conquering superstar is a smart diversion from the reality that money usually wins.  Just look at the Premier League table. 

Article
Change
Community
Eating
4 min read

Why cafes are sacred spaces

Socrates had the agora, we have the cafe
People sit in a busy cafe.
Cafe culture.

Autumn’s here. I can smell it before I even find a seat. The waft of pumpkin spice lattes hangs in the air of my favourite coffee spot – the unofficial sign, for me at least, that it’s time to wrap up warm.  

Personally, I’ll stick to my batch brew coffee, but I get the appeal. 

And while these drinks may change with the seasons, the ritual doesn’t. We keep coming back to cafes and coffee shops. To me, it feels as if we’re craving something more than just the caffeine.  

Cafes that fail to ride the wave of seasonal trends suffer – as the high street giant Costa found this summer, when it failed to cash in on the  TikTok-accelerated bandwagon of matcha lattes as the summer “it” drink and saw profits plummet.  

But it’s about more than just what’s on the menu. 

Starbucks has just announced plans to close branches across the UK, citing an inability to create the kind of physical environment customers now expect. 

Indie cafés, on the other hand, are growing in popularity, with the Observer putting this down to the “lifestyle experience” they offer. This is certainly true, but only half the story. From where I sit, these seasonal drinks appear to be the latest frothy disguise for our very human need for meaningful connection. 

Socrates had the agora. We have the café. 

Think about it.  

Cafes have become shared spaces where people work alone together, catch up with friends, debate, discuss, purchase, and consume. We signal loyalty with stamp cards, publicise our purchases on social media, and even join communities that gather around the cafés – running clubs;, book groups;, new  parent meetups. 

A sweeping glance from my current table offers an insight into this hive of connectivity. 

The walls are home to a temporary art gallery paying homage to local landmarks. 

The noticeboard is stacked with volunteering opportunities, mental health classes, indie gig flyers, and an invite to a Halloween party. 

A mother attempts to photograph and feed her child a babycino at the same time. 

A job interview, or perhaps a painfully awkward first date, unfolds quietly in the corner. 

Two young women laugh at last night’s antics. 

The barista explains the tasting notes of the latest batch brew to a customer redeeming a fully stamped loyalty card. 

An empty chair sits opposite me, waiting for a friend who, I know, will soon be bearing his soul. 

It all tells me that cafés have commodified our desire to belong. And we’re more than willing to buy into it. 

But I reckon there’s still something missing. 

Coffee culture doesn’t just tell us about our habits. It tells us about our humanity. In a world that longs for belonging but can’t stop scrolling, cafés hint at something deeper: that we were made not just for surface-level connection, but for something more lasting.  

In ancient Athens, the agora wasn’t just a marketplace or social hub. It provided a context for people to explore big questions of truth, beauty, virtue, and justice. It was the setting for public dialogue and philosophical inquiry. It was noisy, informal, often disruptive but always a space for serious thought. 

I’m not suggesting you take a soap box with you on your next caffeine fix. But I do think our modern cafés, for all their cosiness and cinnamon, are agora-like spaces which offer us an opportunity to go deep.  

They invite us to pause, to talk, to really think.  

Could it be that cafés offer us a place not just to consume or connect, but to consider the unseen things? To get beyond the froth and to the things of real substance? 

Over the years, I’ve found cafés can be unexpectedly sacred spaces. 

I’ve sat across from friends as they’ve wrestled with doubt, grief, purpose, and belief. And friends have sat across from me as I’ve worked these things through too. 

One tells me he’s started going to church, but doesn’t exactly know why. 
Another wants to read through a Gospel with me and figure out who Jesus is. 
One doesn’t really know who he is any more after a breakdown but is glad for the company. 
Another says his doubts about God began when a childhood friend was killed in a car accident. 
One wonders if God might be nudging him toward a big move to Cardiff. 

None of these conversations happened in a church. They happened here, in spaces designed for comfort but used for something far more courageous. 

This isn’t a new idea. Some of the earliest stories about Jesus show him not just teaching in temples, but sitting at tables, sharing meals, asking questions, listening. Real life. Real conversations. 

In my line of work, if Jesus does something, it’s advisable to follow suit. And I’ve found doing exactly that immensely rewarding. So much of my own spiritual formation has happened within the confines of a café.  

So perhaps the café could be a place where the unseen comes close. Where, over a batch brew or a seasonal latte, you might find yourself not just connected, but known. 

Maybe, like my friend, you’re not exactly sure what you believe. Maybe, like many of us, you’re just trying to make sense of it all. 

Either way, next time you’re in a café, don’t be afraid to go beyond the froth and get to the stuff with real flavour. 

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