The flag is handed over during the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games closing ceremony. Photo / Getty
The flag is handed over during the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games closing ceremony. Photo / Getty
OPINION:
Celebrating the Commonwealth Games has been the flavour of the sporting month, especially when the All Blacks have soiled the sheets and the Black Caps are playing against minnows. I mean, what else have we got?
The Games, which closed overnight, have given us the perfect chance to revelin victory and pay attention to sports that are normally drowned in the flood of traditional, high-profile exploits.
There have been numerous rants around the significance of the sporting festival, which over recent decades has had its worth slowly eroded by bigger, richer and more globally relevant events.
But what about the history of the Commonwealth itself? This unlikely and often unlucky band of nations is rapidly becoming an insignificance, its only real points of focus being the Games, the biennial CHOGM fashion event (where leaders of minor nations are coerced into fashion crimes) and, of course, the stain of the Union Jack on the corners of many nation's flags.
Add to this, the royal family is eating itself alive, reduced to tabloid fodder with a tenuous grasp on anything other than gossip columns set to be torn away when Queen Elizabeth II departs. It's a wildly costly and ultimately pointless cosplay family clinging to the fringes of relevance in a world that has left them behind.
Prince Charles reads a message taken from the Baton written by Queen Elizabeth II at the Commonwealth Games opening ceremony. Photo / Photosport
Like the Queen's reign, the Commonwealth is on its last legs, as it should be. It's a relic of the days where Old Blighty – armed with muskets, a bible and a flag – felt it necessary to sail to all corners of the globe and take whatever they want: resource, land, dignity.
And take they did. Slowly but surely though, the nations pillaged by Britain are reclaiming what was theirs in the first place; imperialist conquerors are being removed from stolen seats of power.
The Commonwealth Games has survived, but why? If there was ever a case of sports washing, this is it. The masters allowing the peasants to play against each other in the name of unity, in an attempt to strengthen ties that had no basis except that every nation had felt the wrath of expansionist greed from days gone by.
The sport is still fun to watch, as is competition at any level – especially when there's something shiny to be won. I celebrated with the rest of the country when Kiwis performed well, but the backdrop is impossible to ignore.
