Emotional Attachment to Sport

Last week I was lucky enough to see St Kilda up close and personal twice in Canberra. On Friday I headed down to their open training and hung around and met all the players, and then on Saturday I went to the match and then hung around again and met them all again. After both occasions I could not wipe the smile off my face! And it got me thinking, we place so much emotional attachment on sport! Being able to meet the players, and being lucky enough to do it twice, was honestly something that I had wanted to do since I was a little girl, and I was definitely behaving like the child within me!

So what does sport provide for us emotionally? It can be much more than a hobby, game after game, season after season, year after year, we follow these teams and watch them play, train, and off field. It also provides us with a connection to those around us. My whole family, aside from me, support Essendon, and we will all often watch it together as a family activity. Not only that but weekly calls to speak about upcoming games, previous games, and players injuries give us another reason to connect to the ones around us. Sport can also be a very powerful social tool! The amount of friends that you can make through playing and watching sport is amazing! I have met some incredible people through joining the Hawks, and wouldn’t have been given that chance without sport.

Emotion is also a very powerful marketing tool. Through emotion, sporting companies can get us to buy almost anything! And they can put a large price tag on it too!

It also provides a good base of drive and motivation for athletes. If you ask an athlete why they play the sport they play, it will more often than not be at least partly an emotional reason. For example, I love football and I am keen to improve my skills all the time, but the reason I play is for the friends that I have met and the love that I have for football. If you ask them why they want to achieve what they set out to do, it will also have a very emotional attachment to it. Some may give the reason “Oh I just love being out and running around”, but If it was just the running they wouldn’t pay hundreds of dollars in fees to just run.

Having this connection is so important, and can be so amazing!! I cannot imagine not supporting an AFL team as crazily as I do!