The great sports writer Jimmy Cannon once nailed his colleague Howard Cosell as “a guy who changed his name, put on a toupee and tried to convince the world that he tells it like it is”. For all his faults, Cosell, ABC’s top sports commentator in the 70s and early 80s, knew how to pick and hit his targets. He described himself as “pompous, obnoxious, vain, cruel, verbose, a show-off”. Cosell loved to rail against what he called “the jockocracy” of athletes and journalists, their asinine platitudes and narrow world view. “Rule number one of the jockocracy” said Cosell, is that “sports and politics don’t mix”. Cosell, who reported on the Black September attack on the Munich Olympics in 1972, knew as well as anyone how absurd that division is.
Cosell’s line is one of Dave Zirin’s favourites. Zirin, sports editor at The Nation and an occasional contributor to the Guardian, has spent his career exploring and exploding rule one of the jockocracy. And it is one of Zirin’s books, The People’s History of Sports in the United States, which Emma Pocock picks out as being one of the biggest influences on her husband David, whose superb form in this World Cup has helped take Australia all the way to the final. The respect between Pocock and Zirin is mutual. Earlier this year Zirin tweeted a link to an article about Pocock written by his Brumbies teammate Clyde Rathbone, adding that “the rugby player should be a part of every discussion about activist athletes”.
“People say that sport and politics shouldn’t mix,” Pocock said earlier this year, “but I think it is important that sportspeople are interested in stuff outside of sport and talk about it. Rightly or wrongly, kids look up to professional athletes and if I can get young kids thinking about those sorts of issues that is a positive thing.” When, as Zirin says, “we’re all just supposed to kick back, relax and enjoy the game”, Pocock stands out from the crowd of professional sportspeople because of his belief that he should use the status his success has earned him to help advance the political causes he believes in.
Which is a risk. As Rathbone wrote: “In a world where separating yourself from the herd is often scorned, we must celebrate individuals who refuse to mindlessly toe the line. Especially 26-year-olds thrust into the public eye by virtue of winning the genetic lottery. Dave did not choose to have 70,000 Twitter followers, but he does choose how to communicate with them.” Pocock, one of the greatest rugby players in the world right now, has what Zirin describes as “the power to influence the silent majority of the public and reach people who are completely alienated from politics”.
“Those sorts of issues”, as Pocock calls them, include LGBTIQ rights, environmentalism and agricultural reform. The Pococks have refused to sign their marriage documents until gay marriage is made legal in Australia. It was a personal gesture, but led to a public discussion. At the time they were thinking of getting married Dave and Emma were living with friends, a lesbian couple. “We felt that we’d rather stand in solidarity with couples like them who might like to get married but didn’t (and still don’t) have that option,” says Emma. “It’s only after the fact, I guess, that it has been so widely discussed. We’ve had a pretty broad range of responses, from letters of thanks from LGBTIQ couples or their parents, to religious folk who’ve either thanked us or told us we’re going to burn in hell, to guys saying things like: ‘Bro, sweet way to get out of marrying your girlfriend.’”
Take a look at Pocock’s blog. The last three entries are about a documentary on fair food, rhino horn poaching, and an ethically sound sports supplement company. Pocock ditched the firm that had been sponsoring him because they were unable to tell him whether they were using Fairtrade cocoa in their products. He switched to a supplier that did. Pocock, who often blacks out the manufacturer’s labels on his boots because he’s wary about endorsing companies he doesn’t believe in, wrote: “I understand that we’re all sick of people trying to sell us stuff – in posting about this my hope is that people who do use sports supplements maybe think about some of these questions.”
At the start of this week the story broke that Pocock had signed an open letter calling on world leaders to discuss a ban on new coal mines at the United Nations climate change meeting in Paris this December. His was only one of 61 signatures, along with the likes of the novelist Richard Flanagan and the nobel laureate Professor Peter Doherty. But, five days out from the biggest game of Pocock’s life, his was the name in the headlines. And because it was there, the story had a reach that it wouldn’t have had otherwise.
It wasn’t the first time. Last November, Pocock was one of a group of protesters who broke into the coal mine at Maules Creek in New South Wales. He, and they, were all with the group 350.org, a grassroots movement which aims to reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere from its current level of 400 parts per million to below 350 ppm.
Their aim on this occasion was to raise attention to the fact that the State government was investing public money in coal projects. Pocock spent 10 hours chained both to a digger and to local farmer and fellow protester Rick Laird. They were arrested and later appeared in court together. “I was given an 18-month good behaviour bond,” says Laird. “Dave got released without any restrictions at all, which must have pleased his coaches since they didn’t want to have it interfere with his career.
“Dave’s action really was the biggest single boost that we got,” says Laird, who has been campaigning against the mine for four years. “It created so much awareness about what was going on. People actually started coming out to have a look.” The ACT government has since divested from fossil fuels.
Laird found that the 10 hours flew by. “Dave’s a very likeable bloke and once you get into conversation with him, it’s not hard to find things to talk about.” Among other things, they chatted about Pocock’s plans to settle down and run cattle when he retires from the game. Laird understands the urge but still thinks it would be a shame. “Dave is someone who stands up for what he believes in, the sort of guy, now I think about it, you would want as your prime minister, if you had your choice.” He laughs, but he’s not joking.
