Sports stars refuse to comply for the sake of conscience

What do South African cricketer, Quinton de Kock, and Serbian tennis player, Novak Djokovic, have in common? And so what? The answer is in the last paragraph, but hopefully you will first read on …

One of my gripes is that in this age of Corona, the powers that be find all sorts of reasons for getting people to comply with their dictates and / or suggestions, and there is a price to pay if they don’t.

I am a keen sports fan, following many sports (although not quite so enthusiastically these days) and back in the day participating in many, although I was never that good. Back in the summer and just prior to the Euro 2020 (football) finals, I posted “England football players take the knee” arguing it was an unnecessary and counter productive gesture because of it political roots and its clear links to the Black Lives Matter movement and its divide and rule agenda, which I regarded as bad, and said it cast a shadow over my enjoyment of the event. I also felt I earned the right to comment, having done more to show black lives matter than many.

The matter has not gone away, evidenced for example in the recent England Hungary football World Cup qualifier, with elements of the crowd expressing disapproval by booing when England players took the knee. Most recently, we have seen the gesture made in the T20 cricket world cup games. We would not know there was an issue except we read: “Quinton de Kock: South Africa cricketer misses T20 World Cup game against West Indies after refusing to take the knee”. One irony imho concerns the phrase “it is just not cricket”, which assumes (correctly) that morality and honesty are values at the core of the game and the fact South Africa are playing West Indies is evidence that black lives do matter.

Switching sports and issues, we have also learned “Australian Open 2022: Unvaccinated stars able to play in Melbourne – WTA letter”. We would not know about this if it were not for the fact that one tennis’ biggest stars, Novak Djokovic, had made it clear he would not take the jab. Given the Australian government are one of the leading examples of countries that take a view – do what we tell you when it comes to vaccines etc., or else, this story is significant and while we do not know much of went on behind the scenes, there being little doubt that the prospect of putting on a tournament, without its leading star, was reason enough to relax the rules and is an example of what can be done when people make it clear where they stand and are prepared to call bluffs and pay prices.

Quinton de Kock has already paid the price by not being allowed to compete on the international stage and who knows what the future has in store for Novak Djokovic? As I understand it, neither have given good reason for making the stand they did, but why should they? They are called to excel in their respective crafts (cricket and tennis); not be politicians or sacrificial pawns for agendas they do not support. We should be grateful that Quinton de Kock and Novak Djokovic made a principled stand through conscience and be inspired to follow suit in this or any other issue, mindful advocates of the so-called Great Reset, where we appear to be heading, are not interested in personal liberty but rather they are about forcing people to comply with nonsense and their nefarious agendas.