We will have to admit it – the Danyang-Kunshan Grand Bridge in China is seriously impressive, being the longest bridge in the world, stretching over a railway viaduct for sixteen kilometres.
Indeed, it would seem that China can boast claim to many of the longest bridges in the world, all over ten kilometres in length. Other bridges though are impressive in their own way.
The Sydney Harbour bridge is seriously beautiful, iconic even, while the Golden Gate Bridge in the US and Tower Bridge in the UK are both seriously notable in their own right and manner.
These are serious bridges!
We must just throw in here that our own Birchenough Bridge, which is modelled on its Sydney counterpart, having the same designer, was the third longest single-arch suspension bridge in the world when it was built in 1935.
Seriously impressive in another way (not least for holding unsuccessful peace talks on a train carriage right in the middle of the bridge) is another of our bridges here in Zimbabwe, the Victoria Falls bridge, built in 1905, with all the parts being made overseas and shipped out by boat to Mozambique and carried by train to Victoria Falls.
Bridges are there to connect people or objects on one side of a gulf to another.
They allow passengers to travel further, thus bringing hope, fulfilment, safety, purpose, support and joy to all, expanding opportunities on both sides and creating new vistas.
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They are all about connection.
And so we come to Kevin Bridges – no, not a collection of bridges but a Scottish comedian by that name, who, from his love of soccer (or ‘fitba’, as a Scotsman would call it) amidst this year’s World Cup, set out in a documentary to find out why this game became the number one sport in the world, from his own roots in downtown Glasgow to the ghettos of Brazil.
In effect, Kevin Bridges was connecting sport with fun, both of which are close to his heart.
What really excited and challenged him was that in Brazil, soccer was not just fun but ‘serious fun’. And there is great truth in that.
As coaches and parents, we need to ensure that our children take having fun in sport seriously.
We must not casually, flippantly, passingly, complacently make sport fun; we must seriously make sport fun.
A prime reason for us introducing children to sport is for the fun that it brings.
Many will feel there is no fun when we lose or when we are injured when tackled dangerously or when decisions always seem to go against us.
But that is because we do not take seriously the task of making sport serious fun.
Instead, we take sport too seriously and omit the fun, meaning that so many youngsters will never play sport again after they leave school.
Some will no doubt wish to claim that we have to take sport seriously if we are to have fun but that would be missing the point; we need to take fun seriously if we are going to be successful.
Again, though, some will perhaps argue that many children just do not like sport; they hate cross-country and other physically stretching activities.
We forget though that children both run and fight as soon as they can stand on two feet and walk; no, they liked to run, even if sometimes it was out of necessity!
However, it is not so much the sport that is no fun but the way we present it to them, not least when all it appears to be to them is hard training.
Training is not sport; it is a part of it, often for the better ones, but the way people will get better (and be ready for training) is to play sport for fun.
There is a huge amount of serious fun to be found in playing in and for a team, in playing with friends, in achieving something new or different, even at the simplest level.
In changing slightly what was said earlier, sport, like a bridge, is there to connect people or objects on one side of a gulf to another.
They allow children to go further, thus bringing hope, fulfilment, safety, purpose, support and joy to all, expanding opportunities on both sides and creating new vistas.
They are all about connection. Sport is a bridge to fun.
George Bernard Shaw, the English playwright once declared that “we do not cease to play because we grow old.
We grow old because we cease to play”. We need to learn what Kevin Bridges learnt that we must build bridges for our children to continue playing sport, for fun (as well as for fitness and friendships) and to do that we need to make sport fun, serious fun.
Funnily enough, we are deadly serious about that.
If we do not, not only will Victoria fall but all our children will. Serious!
