One of the beauties of sport and politics is the morality plays that they enact. They display in minor key all the basic human drives, passions and political moves that we find on the larger public stage. Melbourne (AFL) Football Club's sacking of coach Dean Bailey, and the forced departure of South Australian Premier Mike Rann, are cases in point.
The classical morality plays subverted large myths. The public heroes were kings and emperors who fought their way to power and then set out on a plan of conquest that made their names immortal and their kingdoms glorious. The plays presented a human being who was first attracted to wealth, and then used his wealth to gain a position of honour in order to have the glory of conquest.
In morality plays, this is shown to be a path of illusion. It hollowed out the humanity of the king and led him to disregard the humanity of the people he rules. His glory was secured by treating his subjects as expendable. The cost of victory was their suffering and oppression.
Ultimately, too, the glory proved fleeting. It was undermined by the motivation that inspired its pursuit. Because there was no concern for human values, the trust and the cooperation that were needed for large enterprises were lacking.
In Christian morality plays the way of truth was paradoxical. The good king was motivated by a vision of the larger, shared good of human beings as Christ's brothers and sisters. In the pursuit of this vision, the king welcomed poverty, lack of position and humiliation. Through these things a kingdom based in respect and constancy could be built.
Morality plays, of course, are just that. They dramatise an ideal and make available a spiritual rhetoric. Even good kings never embodied fully this large vision. But the values made a claim on the spectators.
And so to football clubs and political parties. Those who are attracted to football clubs are often fairly wealthy. The football club becomes their cause. So they are drawn to seek a position in the club in the hope that the club will glory in a premiership. Similarly, members of political parties are attracted to seek political office in order to share the glory of nation building.
The morality plays that are sport and politics can then be played in two ways. If the goal is to shape a club that develops the humanity of its