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Sport

16 September 2023

4 min read

Why are sportspeople so superstitious?

Routine and rhythm help performance, but sporting superstition begs a question, writes Jonny Reid. Who do we really think is in control?

Jonny Reid

Jonny Reid leads the communications team at Christians in Sport.

A rugby ball sails towards a player in a striped jersey from the foot of a kicker who has a leg and an arm extended out.

England v. Argentina, RWC 2023.

RFU.

Guinness’ Rugby World Cup advert commands supporters: “Don’t Jinx It!” The advertiser explained:

“All of Ireland will be supporting the team with every fibre, but our campaign urges fans to remember that their actions are as important as the team on the pitch, they need to play their part too, don’t jinx it.”

Superstitions on the pitch are just as prominent as those off it. England legend Jonny Wilkinson always wore the same t-shirt under his match shirt as a lucky charm, the Welsh side used to ritually vomit before games and for decades club side Bath played without a number 13.

So why is it that sport is so fill of superstition?

A longing for control

We feel like we’re in control until a sudden injury or a major pandemic arrives and we realise that we may be less in control than we’d like.

Indian sports psychologist Ashis Nandy thinks this may be why cricketers are so superstitious. In a game full of failure, which has a high degree of luck, it is inevitable that players will turn to superstition to help regain a sense of control:

'No wonder cricketers lean on superstition as a crutch. They cannot accept the awful truth - that the game is governed by erratic umpiring decisions, random tosses and unpredictable seam movement - so they invent a coping strategy to persuade themselves they are in control.'

We want to be in control but we know we’re not.

Whether it’s a snapped Achilles tendon at a random training session, a contract not renewed at the end of a season or point deductions due to mismanagement by owners - sport is littered with examples which remind us we’re not in charge.

It’s worth saying that routine is different to superstition. US soccer psychologist Tim Perrin argues that routines are integral for the elite sportsperson. “Performance is about routines—they take us into performance, and superstitions are very much a part of that,” Perrin said. “They are a way we can very habitually, automatically, and unconsciously take ourselves into performance mode.”

Repetition and routine are a key part of sport. Not only do they improve our skill levels (think of the 10,000 hour theory) but they also help ease the mental pressures faced by athletes. As Perin explains, the emotional demands and strains of sport can be lessened by routines that “allow certain things (to be done) on a mechanistic, repetitive nature” and can thus be “put on autopilot.”

This is the reason for Jonny Wilkinson’s famous pre-kick routine or the even more extreme Dan Biggar’s version which has become known as the ‘Biggarena.’ His idiosyncratic routine once proved an Internet sensation.

When does routine tip into superstition? It’s when it becomes irrational and when a change to that routine leads to distinct mental torment or a level of discomfort.

Superstition, as we observe it, in the stands or the pub or on the pitch provokes questions for all of us: Is there a way I can be in control? Or am I actually under control from a higher power?

Who is in control?

When things don’t happen as we’d like, it’s easy to feel pretty disillusioned. But do our superstitious tendencies point towards something bigger?

Among Christians there is the belief that we humans are created in the image of God and that he gave us the weighty responsibility to live in the world and also to shape it. While we have responsibility for how we live, we only have penultimate agency. Ultimate power over events lies in hands bigger than ours.

The trouble is we chafe at our limited role in all this.

Dan Strange, in his book Making Faith Magnetic says:

“deep down we know we’re not divine and that we need something greater than us in which to find meaning and legitimacy. So we still invest in other things that can give us a sense of ultimate meaning and purpose.”

This could be our partner or family. It could quite easily be our sporting career. We load them with an unbearable weight of responsibility, that none of these substitutes for God can handle because they too are penultimate not ultimate.

In the book of John, Jesus calls himself “the good shepherd” - the one who guides the flock of sheep, whether they are aware of it or not.

The world is not controlled by luck or energy or even random chance, it is in the hands of a loving God, a loving shepherd who leads his sometimes reluctant flock to where they need to go.

In the stories of Jesus we see someone who exercises an extraordinary control over the world - over nature (walking on water), over disease (healing blind people) and over evil powers (exorcising the .disturbed) He shows us a world which isn’t just defined by fate or by an angry impersonal Deity but one in which there is a sense that we are both in control and under control.

Far from living in a world of randomness and luck, maybe after all we live in a world where a good God works through the details of our lives and is with us in the ups and the downs, in the injury, de-selection, contract confusion, dip in form and in the cup wins, record breaking, peak-performing moments of our sporting careers.

Routine and rhythm can help sporting performance but superstition ultimately leads us to ask a question. Who do we really think is in control?

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Politics

Trauma

War & peace

9 December 2024

6 min read

So, what are the prospects for peace and good will?

2025 will need the reconcilers, and their pain.

Emerson Csorba

Emerson writes on geopolitics. He is also a business executive and holds a doctorate in theology.

Two people down a table turn and listen to someone closer talk, against a wall mural.

Reconciliation event, Northern Ireland.

Telos Group.

As we approach 2025, a series of skirmishes are erupting that warn us of impending danger. In Syria, Turkish-backed rebel forces have overtaken Aleppo, taking advantage of Russia’s focus on Ukraine. Pro-Europe protestors in Georgia demonstrate at the country’s parliament in Tbilisi. And South Korea declares martial law in response to purported North Korean threats. President-elect Trump jokes – with much truth in jest – about Canada becoming the 51st state.

As the world awaits the inauguration of President-elect Trump on January 20, 2025, we are in an in-between state. But there is more feeling of foreboding than of future peace. A ceasefire has been agreed between Israel and Hezbollah, but with rocket fire continuing to be exchanged and Israel yet to respond to Iran’s October missile barrage while Iran pursues nuclear capability. In the United States, Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emmanuel warns of Chinese ambitions to take Taiwan not in 2027 – as commonly believed – but rather in 2025.

Even if only temporarily, there will be a pause in early 2025 from the conflicts we have been accustomed to over recent years. The inauguration of President-elected Trump will, in all likelihood, put an end to Russia’s war in Ukraine. Russian agreement for peace will be secured, however, only in exchange for Ukrainian territorial concessions. Israel will maintain a ceasefire with Hezbollah while American support helps to remove the remnants of Hamas in Gaza. With American backing, Israel and Saudi Arabia will restart the historic Abraham Accords process as we enter the Spring.

Yet this pause and these short-term successes will be ephemeral and deceiving, an interlude prior to the much greater threats in store. Antonio Gramsci’s ‘The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters” is often quoted with a tinge of optimism, as if the monsters are here for a moment, but soon to be overcome. Unfortunately, the monsters of our times are well-entrenched, and they are gathering energy for their next acts. And they appear from all sides, as the lesser rather than greater aspects of men and women take centre stage in our politics, whether in the political West or Global East.

In this world of monsters, division and difference is the default approach to human relationships. We have become numb to these words, but what division and difference signify is a profound weakness in modern men and women bereft of love. Too many men and women prefer basking in their own and others’ flaws, to a striving to overcome these in favour of what we may individually and collectively achieve – if only we tried. We are living in a period of darkness seeking to dampen the light and diminish the spirit of those pursuing the good.

Division is easy. It is natural. It is emotional. Its focus is the lowest element of ourselves and of others. In comparison, togetherness is faith. It sees the hidden potential of another. Togetherness is unnatural. Togetherness flows from faith and is the unseen-become-reality. It recognises the seeds of good in another, understanding that each person is composed of many contrasting sides, some bad, some good, but the good the more powerful of the two. Togetherness is a choice. It is a choice to water the seeds of faith with patience, to see what these seeds might become with time, consistency, and effort (while maintaining balance of personal space and social connections, as both are vital for emotional wellbeing).

There is no bridging of divides, no reduction of division, no togetherness, without pain. This is a lesson for the world’s current and future reconcilers across all walks of life.

In an age of growing division and conflict, togetherness is barely visible. Yet reconciliation remains possible. In fact, it is precisely in these times, when the odds are against the peace of togetherness, that reconcilers in politics, business, academic, non-profit and community sectors are called to step forward with purpose. It is precisely when there is little faith or hope in the future that reconciliation – an act of love – is demanded.

Reconciliation is the restoration of a favourable relationship between oneself and others. It is achieved through sacrifice. The reconciler experiences pain in order to restore relationships. Reconciliation is built on love for other persons, in spite of their flaws and their continuous resistance, as well as their lack of faith, love and hope at many times. It requires a healthy self-love, in which we seek the fulfilment of our own good as a basis for doing so for others.

Next to love, the main ingredient of reconciliation is pain, because those who have become estranged fight, they resist, they go back on what they said they would do, they vacillate between good and evil, and they contest the reconciler. The reconciler will die, or come close to dying, at certain points in the reconciliation process. And yet the reconciler is raised following death, defeat only a stepping-stone to the triumph of togetherness.

The reconciler turns the pain involved in bringing together otherwise conflicting groups, peoples or nations into something much more positive. They internalise pain, incorporating it into their being. This is achieved through love, which enables patience, always seeing the bigger picture and the potential of people. Love is the basis for action to bring others together and keep them together, appealing to their better sides, despite the human tendency to corrupt the good.

People talk nowadays about the need to ‘bridge divides’ and that we are ‘better together.’ We need, for instance, to bridge divides between regions and capitals, such as between Alberta and Canada, or Québec and Canada in the Canadian context, or between the North East and London, or with Northern Irish reconciliation, in the United Kingdom. But these are easy things to say. More difficult is realising that the process of reconciliation is painful and that leaders seeking reconciliation – at local, regional or national levels – must first become experienced in suffering.

This experience can only be the result of a prior education in the value of pain, knowing that the joy of togetherness is most profound when preceded by a patient and humble suffering. There is no bridging of divides, no reduction of division, no togetherness, without pain. This is a lesson for the world’s current and future reconcilers across all walks of life, as we enter a world even more replete with conflict. And in reconciliation, it is always unclear what the outcome is going to be. A person’s efforts could be all for naught, faithful efforts then a matter of failure and bitterness, rather than of sweet accomplishment.

Anyone seeking reconciliation in a more dangerous world must first die to their previous lives of division. They must leave this self in the past, shedding it. They must become new persons, imbued with love, believing in human potential, who want others to succeed and who are ready to fight to achieve this success. But reconcilers must always fight with love as the foundation of their efforts, and with faith that they will win in their fight, that their efforts will be successful. This faith goes against what is seen – the odds are rarely if ever in reconcilers’ favour.

We need reconcilers in our day and age. These individuals are in short supply, but they are key to the futures of nations and to the health of our geopolitics. They are the politicians - elected and those behind the scenes - the businesspeople, and the local community leaders who can see the bigger picture and articulate it, keep focused on the potential of those around them, and bear the suffering involved in fulfilling potential.

The present wars and skirmishes as we enter 2025 will temporarily lessen. They will even pause. We should not be surprised when these re-emerge with more intensity over the next year. This is precisely when many will be called to strive for togetherness in the face of division, knowing that reconciliation is strength in the face of the reality of human weakness. Reconciliation is always a possibility.