Every sinew on stretched on a Fermanagh sofa will be taut as the county wills its two rowing heroes over the finish line in the Men’s Pair rowing final. I hope BBC One make sure we can all watch it, or at least permit us all to watch it on RTÉ One.

Between Wimbledon, the All -Ireland Final of Senior Championship Hurling, the build–up to Armagh–Galway football final, the golf and the Olympics, I am, as a passive spectator, totally exhausted watching the level of commitment, expertise, stamina, concentration and competitiveness of those at the top of their respective games.

I am also in awe of the generosity of spirit of these athletes whether winning and losing. People would be entitled to lie down and cry when it doesn’t come good given the emotional, time and financial investment and maybe they do in the privacy of their own homes, sliding down the bannister singing ‘Champione, Champione’ at the top of their voices when it does, but faced with the camera they manage almost without exception to be publicly gracious in defeat or magnanimous winners.

Sports people acknowledge the skill and merit of the opposition and can discuss and critique their own performance including the weakness that may have cost them dearly.

You rarely hear them speak disparagingly of their opponents , and certainly not with the kind of meanness and disparaging disrespect of person that is common place in political discussion where the default position seems to be that everything that goes wrong is the down to the opposition.

The golden rule would seem to be that no political party but your own should be given any credit and your own should never accept any responsibility for things that aren’t working out too well.

Perhaps, politicians should be made sign up for training sessions with sports coaches, managers or players or whoever is responsible for this off-field sporting magnanimity in order to acquire the social skills that produce good behaviours, like positivity (next to negativity and physicality, my least favourite modern word in sports commentary); critical thought processes, and self-appraisal, not to be confused with self-praise which, as we know is no recommendation at all and in which, politicians and political parties already excel.

How to play the ball rather than the person or aim to reach the winning line rather than spend time trying to prevent the other guy reaching it at all costs would be useful learning too, along with solid and transferrable advice like not diving into deep water before you have learned to swim, or making grandiose pronouncements and predictions that come back to bite you and make you look like a twat, an example of which, was the New Labour Party Prime Minister, Mr. Starmer.

Confident of election, he pompously and prematurely announced to the world that, barring an invasion from Mars, the new job would not affect his priorities.

His time after 6pm Friday nights were booked up in perpetuity for putting his feet-up in front of the tele with the wife and kids.

As the Olympic Parade floated down the Seine with a ‘je ne sais quoi’ of French gaucheness last Friday night, I could have sworn I saw a glum and dejected Sir Keir Starmer watching the procession through the rain. His facial expression indicated the French may never be forgiven for not doing what they told and refraining from opening the Olympics on a Friday night.

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Politics is not a sport. I hear you.

Political parties do not exist for entertainment, despite their capacity for tragic comedy.

They are organisations which for all their rhetoric of democracy are hierarchical and institutional organisations that function from the top down despite the illusion and self-delusion that they do not. The exercise of power is the name of their game.

Internally, the degree of rigidity varies from party to party. Not toeing the party line is a hanging offence, metaphorically speaking , in the British Labour Party or Sinn Féin but the Ulster Unionist Party has a more laisse- faire sort of ‘anything goes’ approach on most things except the Union, of course.

On the other hand, while Alliance thrives on an external policy of no hard position on anything, most members I meet would admit that you wouldn’t want to be found arguing the toss with the boss or stepping over the party line.

While all are motivated by their own view of what constitutes the ‘greater good’, they all believe that what is good for the party is good for the people and that their own concept of the greater good is the one true doctrine, not unlike the way Churches assert religious authority of their self-serving opinions, although with the exception of the small evangelical Christian sects, political parties proselytise a lot more than Churches these days.

This long-standing culture drives parties to be both politically territorial and predatory. As a result, efforts to win allies and influence voters concentrate more on endlessly downgrading, trivialising, and castigating other political parties and politicians whose policies are barely distinguishable from their own and dishing out the dirt on behaviour often no worse, or at least no more prevalent than that within in their own ranks, or within the general population either.

All in all, it creates a very unhealthy approach to problem solving and makes actively joining a political party an unattractive proposition for idealistic youth or anyone else eager to change the world for the better.

Young people are not drawn to the idea of thinking one thing and saying another and in the main, give the appearance in their public interaction of being more interested in independent organising around issues that need attention, and collaborating for maximum effect in being listened to, and in finding potential solutions.

Maybe if we changed how we do politics we might have better results, be nicer to each other and enjoy the journey to the goal.