Rules Are Never 'Just Rules'

How I well remember sports in school,
though I wish I didn't. I now know
why I lost my sports kit quite so often.
It was deliberate. Natural ingratitude.

I got a natural allergic reaction
to how sport was organised and played.
Buried within the rules was the principle
that 'competition had to be without mentoring',
a deliberate unfairness which exposed the weakest,
and the most unsupported from home, first.

For being forced to participate
they were made to feel useless to themselves,
the better to support the few who knew all along
that sport was never  'just sport'-it was life,
'life chances' that they were playing for.

The few at the top then
was going to be there forever,
whilst the many fell away on the journey,
though it is believed that their failing efforts
were thoroughly worth it, for those who succeeded.