Lessons from Football

I must confess at the outset that I am not an active sports person. The closest I have come to participating in competetive sports was when I played on a volleyball team at school three decades ago.

This notwithstanding, I get fascinated with sports, especialyl football. In 1985, when I was a student in England, a colleague of mine, Marcus Johnson, introduced me to Liverpool Football Club. Then Liverpool was a true world class team, with very few teams that could match its achievements. The following season, the new Liverpool trio of John Aldridge, Peter Beardsley and John Barnes was pure delight to watch on the pitch.

Whenever opportunity presents itself, I watch English football on TV. My sympathies still lie with Liverpool, but I do not feel out of place watching the likes of Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester United, Tottenham Hotspurs and practically the rest of the Premiership clubs. What I find particularly intriguing is the the total commitment with which the players approach their matches. They literally throw themselves into the game. A player will occasionally pick up a yellow, or even a red, card not necessarily because he is a bully but, more often than not, because he has applied himself fully to the game and in the process finds himself in a situation where he poses danger to another player.

When a player gets injured - and they often will - a team of medical officials may be called onto the pitch to administer "first aid" treatment to him. It is not uncommon to see a player who, a minute previously, was visibly in excruciating agony, rise up, jump around, and continue to play. A great attitude indeed. If the same injury happened to some of us, we would literally spend weeks in bed and suspend all our activity.

This attitude of players contrasts sharply with what I often see in Malawian organisations. If an employee lands on an opportunity to stay away from work, they will seize that opportunity with great zeal and will often play all manner of trickery to maximise their stay away. Whereas a footballer thinks he belongs to the play field and will, at the slightest opportunity, return to it, a Malawian worker thinks he/she does not belong to his/her employment environment and will utilise the slightest opportunity to stay away. God help us.

Thankfully, this generalisation does not apply to all and sundry; there are some who are committed, very committed indeed, to their work. It is these individuals who will propel Malawi to greater prosperity.