It’s going to work best for me to imagine that I’ve already been exiled from the sporting world, and to use these blog posts like post cards that I send into cyberspace as I’m being extradited around the place. I’ve always been told I’m homeless at heart and feel like a padded room would have been a good arrangement in comparison to where I was headed (the casino, most nights). In all seriousness though, I will be quite disappointed if my content doesn’t end up getting cancelled, as my ego is taken by the potential of becoming the poor man’s sporting version of Julian Assange. Luckily for me I know a thing or two about torture and social confinement, after all, I was an inmate at one of the world’s biggest sporting sausage factories.
There’s no need to fear here, I come to entertain, rationalise and reveal. I won’t bombard you with shoulds, pie charts, unsolicited advice, sport science, credit to the boys cliches, or any other regurgitated drivel you’ve come accustomed to swallowing from your favourite sporting heads. (Surely, you’ve got an inclination that it’s all a masquerade party by now?).
I’m feeling something a little more self-destructive, and Fight Club-esque with this blog space. Something like a halfway house for the irreconcilable and unimpressed.
I can hear the imaginary audience (me) in my head saying, ‘Why on earth would you do such a thing?’ (I hear this quite a bit).
Well, imaginary person in my head, like the famous country singer, Waylon Jennings said, ‘Going crazy is the only thing that’s kept me from going insane’.
And while some people feel what I am doing with this book is a gallant act of bravery, I can assure you that it’s coming from a very pure place of madness. (Oh no, I just lost my grounding points) But you’re in luck, because by me getting to do my worst, you just might get to watch the great sporting illusion burn. All I ask is that you me a postcard every once in a while, or speak to foreign affairs about sorting me some sort of asylum.
Todd
SMASHED: Tennis prodigies, parents and parasites – available January 2025.
