"your mother" and other lovely language

Now sport at school & club level always involves bad language.  It just does.  The level of it is determined by the sport itself.  As the amount of sporting equipment in my house will rival a branch of Sportsman's Warehouse, with Nic playing 7 days a week and Jess 5, I see a lot of matches.  

Let's start with swimming galas....this seems to be a very refined sport.  In the 10 odd years that Jess has swam on the school team I have yet, either home or against another school, to hear bad language.  The swimmer who comes 3rd does not lean over to the winner and bust loose in some description of her, her life, her family or anything else.  Ever.  

Then we have hockey.  This is not as refined I have discovered over the past 10 years.  Amazingly girls hockey seems to be the bigger problem here.  I see Nic play many schools and naturally there are the jibes and less polite comments but when the girls play ?  Sjoe!!  Now my kids' school plays hardball with kids who trangress the rule of how they behave both at home and away games, and our kids take it seriously.  However we have played some opposition that tempted me to bring along a good old cake of Sunlight soap and a bucket of water for those mouths!!!  These girls would make some sailors blush and I am often astounded by what Jess tells me has been levelled at them.  

Cricket is fairly gentlemanly ..... but it has that very special thing ...... the bowler's "stare".  It works like this .... really good bowlers bowl the ball to the batsman and then if it brings aforementioned batsman no runs, or is a ball that clearly means business, then the bowler walks back to his position in order to bowl again, whilst looking back over his shoulder and giving the batsman a look that would turn you to stone.  How do I know how tense this bowling thing is?  My son has been the opening bowler for years.  At professional level it seems the stare is also accompanied by a few words and they are not "so how is your day so far?".   It also seems to be quite popular for the batsman to be goaded by the fielders of the opposition ..... some interesting sentences come out of this as well :)

And then ...... then we have the greatest mouth game of all ....... football.  Now understand that soccer is HUGE in this house.  Nic plays for his school, a club and last year for the provincial team.  So soccer is a 7 day a week thing.  If I add up the time, I have spent at least 8 years of my life only next to a myriad of fields all over.  I speak soccer lingo, I get the rules but am never at a non-entertaining game.   Now this is where the real deal comes in in terms of "talk".  Soccer and mouthing off are synonymous.  Now firstly .... why is it that mother's are the centre of so many comments?  I never hear players making derogatory remarks like "your uncle is...... " or "your dad is ......." or "your cousin is ..........".  But "your mother", well this week some of the opposition have led me to hear quite a variety of things about each other's mothers.  Now let me tell you, some boys let it roll off their backs and concentrate on the game, no retaliation, no attention to it, nothing .... pretty frustrating for the one making the comments ..... and then there are those that turn into a special version of Mike Tyson during the game when the first comment about their mother is made.  Today in one of the older games, i increased my vocab by at least 20 words and watched some very heated exchanges.    I suppose this comes hot on the heels of all the movies filled with "your mamma" comments.  So there was jersey tugging, heated debates, wild language, almost fights, a red card ....... more entertaining then a Bruce Willis movie. 

Ballet anyone?

till next time
c'est la vie xxxxx