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- BLOG: Rebuilding college communities through sport
BLOG: Rebuilding college communities through sport
As part of Colleges Week and the theme of colleges supporting their communities, AoC's Director of Sport and Student Experience, Dean Hardman, talks about how sport and physical activity can have a vital role in enhancing the college and the wider community it sits in.
The Everton football manager, Carlo Ancelotti, said, in the context of the current global pandemic, that “football is the most important of the less important things in the world.”
The phrase was almost a reimagining of his Merseyside predecessor Bill Shankly’s famous misquote, when, with a twinkle in his eye, it is claimed that he said “Some people believe football is a matter of life and death, I am very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that.”
Shankly was never seriously suggesting that professional football is more important than health, education or family, despite how his quote has been used over the years. Yet, to go too far the other way and dismiss the importance of sport would be a mistake and to suggest that it is trivial would be wrong.
I would argue that even Ancelotti’s view is not quite right in the context of participation in football or other sports or in being physically active by oneself or with others.