It was in England that I heard for the first time of a football player being charged with bringing the game into disrepute. I was amused. From an outsider's perspective the whole aim of rugby was to bring the game into disrepute. And the spectators seemed to relish its most disreputable features.
I can now see the point of the charge. If suspicion persists that players were encouraged to take drugs whose long term effects are unknown, it would lead parents actively to discourage their children from playing the game at senior level, with incalculable commercial consequences. Disrepute and disaster are twins.
Games are games. It is a much more serious and potentially dangerous thing to bring a nation's polity into disrepute. And that sadly is what the military rulers of Egypt appear to have done when crushing the protests by the supporters of the elected and desposed President Mohamed Morsi. Over 400 people died, perhaps many more.
Egypt has a long tradition of military influence in politics. Gamal Nasser came to power following a military coup. His successor, Anwar al-Sadat was one of the original revolutionary officers, and was killed by army officers. Hosni Mubarak, previously an air force officer, was eventually deposed by the military after popular protests. The military enabled the civil elections that led to the presidency of Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Morsi in turn was deposed by the military after protests that revealed widespread disaffection with his authoritarian rule and with the perceived sectarian goals of the Muslim Brotherhood. The army promised to take power for a month in preparation for another election, hoping to broker a new settlement.
But the deposition and arrest of Morsi led to widespread protests by his supporters. Fatefully the army, which had shortly before appointed officers as governors to the majority of provinces, decided to disperse the protests at the cost of a massive civilian death toll as troops fired into the crowds with shotguns, machine guns and sniper fire.
Since these events the acting prime minister, the liberal Mohamed El Baradei, has resigned. The army now rules by default, its strong-man general and defence minister Abdel Fattah al-Sini enjoying much popular support.
It is hard to imagine anyone bringing a national polity further into disrepute than the Egyptian army officers. They promised to return to a less autocratic polity than Morsi, and the monument to their own style of government will be the