Mouthpiece: Our alternative summer of sport
Already bored by the impending summer of sport? Our regular columnist Kevin Fullerton has some suggestions to make the season of ball-thwacking a tad more interesting
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Victorian England’s wokerati-in-chief Karl Marx observed that football is an opiate for the masses. But if he were alive in 2026 and provided with a Sky Sports package, he’d conclude that the 24-hour-a-day contract negotiations and internecine drama of the beautiful game is more akin to a rapid-fire feeding tube brimming with Red Bull and crack.
Surely we need a moratorium on the same eight sporting events repeated ad nauseum? I’ve got plenty of ideas for sports that should replace our current crop and, once I’ve found sponsorship for the games below, popular footballers will either have to retrain or be culled with the righteous zeal of a foot-and-mouth outbreak. Failing that, I’ll hire some friends on Gumtree and play them myself.
Time Olympics: A true feat of endurance, everyone at the Time Olympics has to outrun the icy hand of the Grim Reaper. Athletes stand in a row in a giant stadium and, after a starting pistol is fired, wait for old age to catch up with them, each participant gradually weakening and crumpling to the ground after a period of days, months and maybe even years. Every now and then, one of them is shot, just for a laugh. Last person standing is endowed with a smug awareness of their capillary system’s marginal superiority.
Corpse boxing: We all know that bloodsports can have a horrendous impact on the living, so why not replace them with the dead? Two corpses are controlled by highly trained puppeteers in a feat of ingenuity that makes Weekend At Bernie’s look like amateur hour. High-profile matches would include celebrity cadavers. Who wouldn’t want to see the skeletal frame of Elvis face-off against the worm-infested abs of Hulk Hogan?
Pokémon tennis: Pokémon, the world-conquering celebration of trapping large animals in tiny cages, is yet to be introduced to the world of sport, mainly because it doesn’t exist. But what if we could fit animals inside tennis balls to give Wimbledon some oomph? Each player (or combatant) will be given five highly perishable ‘pokéballs’ filled with a potentially deadly species, which they’ll then volley towards another player in the hope of inflicting a fatal injury. Imagine a swarm of killer bees emerging from a tennis ball as it cracks open against your opponent’s racket, flying into their face and stinging them beyond human recognition. Good family fun.
Flag shagging: Let’s convert our rocket-fuelled spiral into ultra-nationalism into a fun pastime. First competitor to wear down the material of their flag with constant friction wins.
Football but the ball makes farting sound effects whenever it’s kicked: Self-explanatory. Undeniably brilliant.
Picture: Mark Stewart