With painted faces, bodies and a cheesehead hat or two, Green Bay Packer fans always get dressed up for a game, regardless of the weather.
With painted faces, bodies and a cheesehead hat or two, Green Bay Packer fans always get dressed up for a game, regardless of the weather.

Lockouts or strikes regardless; play it, and they will come



They will be back, nearly all of them.

Yes, during lockouts and strikes that scuttle their games, they belt out the chorus of a rock and roll standard We're Not Gonna Take it Anymore and vow to forever swear off the impacted sport.

A few follow through, shifting to leisure activities - movies, concerts, yoga classes - unaffected by labour squabbles between members of the One Per Cent, as the Occupy Movement would categorise the super-rich athletes and super-duper-rich owners.

Others play hard to get, drifting away for awhile before circling back.

The rest, with one hand, might shake their fist in anger after a settlement.

With the other, they start channel surfing for windmill dunks and shake-and-bake moves on television, or swiping their debit cards to buy tickets.

That is why they are called fans - short for fanatics, defined as "a person with an extreme and uncritical enthusiasm or zeal".

The NBA, which decided late last week to stop biting the bloodied hands that feed them, ambitiously aims for a Christmas Day tip-off, which would salvage 80 per cent of the schedule.

If the pattern found in an examination of attendance in the aftermath of labour-related freezes holds true, the bulk of fans will forgive and forget.

Of the previous seven work stoppages across the football, baseball, basketball and hockey spectrum, only one suffered from lingering resentment, according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer newspaper - baseball required several seasons to fully heal from the late-summer cessation of games that wiped out the 1994 World Series.

The previous NBA interruption offers a clue. Opening day for the 1998/99 season was delayed until February 5, and teams were limited to 50 games apiece.

Average attendance dipped by less than three per cent.

The following year, it bounced by nearly one per cent and mostly has inched higher since.

Fans return because the magnetic appeal of sports transcends the repugnancy of outrageous athlete salaries, absurd ticket and concession prices, owners whining as if they are heading to the poorhouse, and a prevailing sense among customers that we serve as their automatic teller machines.

Many fans return because the games hold deeper meaning than a final score or a championship.

The attachment is not easily explained, and can sometimes seem irrational.

Cutting Kevlar comes more easily than cutting ties with a sport, or a team, or even a single game.

When Samuel Chandler was 10 years old, growing up a tiny coal-mining town in Kentucky, his father took him to see their beloved University of Kentucky play their adversary, the University of Tennessee, in football. The area was absent of professional sports, so this was a really big deal.

Fifty years later, Chandler vividly remembers cruising through the mountains to the game in the family's 1960 Ford Galaxy, listening to Ricky Nelson sing Travelin' Man on the radio.

And, at the hotel, rowdy fans brawled enough to be hauled away on stretchers.

Two years later, back for his third game, Chandler was a confused pre-teen looking around the store where they were shopping, seeking comfort and clarity when the radio burst with news that President Kennedy had been assassinated.

That weekend, it was business as usual for college and pro football.

In hindsight, the decision not to postpone games was insensitive.

But, in the moment, it was a sincere attempt to preserve a part of life that carried such importance to Americans, and still does.

The father-son outing to Kentucky versus Tennessee turned into an annual ritual.

In the mid-1970s, his father stopped attending, but Chandler carried on, sometimes with friends, sometimes alone.

He never considered not going, even in snow and bitter cold, or in driving rainstorms.

"A tribute to my father, I guess," he says.

For the first 25 years, he cheered six Kentucky wins.

For the next 25, Kentucky won not once in what became the nation's most lopsided rivalry.

Each Saturday, for half a century in late November, he had driven to Lexington, Kentucky, or Knoxville, Tennessee, flush with optimism.

Forty-four times, he had left disappointed.

Soon after the kick-off of his 51st game last weekend, Chandler's confidence flatlined when he noticed a career wide receiver for Kentucky line up at quarterback, a position ravaged by injuries.

"I had absolutely no hope," he says.

Somehow, some way, Kentucky Tebow-ed Tennessee 10-7, with the novice quarterback completing four passes and rushing for 124 yards.

As it ended, Chandler, a 60-year-old lawyer, and his companion found themselves inexorably swept on to the field by the maddening crowd - adding to the indelible memories he has accumulated from childhood, especially from the time his father died in 1995.

"I will keep going," he says, "as long as I can."

That is what fans do.

No matter the disincentive - and there is none greater than a strike or lockout - they keep going to games.

As long as they can.

BIGGEST CYBER SECURITY INCIDENTS IN RECENT TIMES

SolarWinds supply chain attack: Came to light in December 2020 but had taken root for several months, compromising major tech companies, governments and its entities

Microsoft Exchange server exploitation: March 2021; attackers used a vulnerability to steal emails

Kaseya attack: July 2021; ransomware hit perpetrated REvil, resulting in severe downtime for more than 1,000 companies

Log4j breach: December 2021; attackers exploited the Java-written code to inflitrate businesses and governments

At a glance

Global events: Much of the UK’s economic woes were blamed on “increased global uncertainty”, which can be interpreted as the economic impact of the Ukraine war and the uncertainty over Donald Trump’s tariffs.

 

Growth forecasts: Cut for 2025 from 2 per cent to 1 per cent. The OBR watchdog also estimated inflation will average 3.2 per cent this year

 

Welfare: Universal credit health element cut by 50 per cent and frozen for new claimants, building on cuts to the disability and incapacity bill set out earlier this month

 

Spending cuts: Overall day-to day-spending across government cut by £6.1bn in 2029-30 

 

Tax evasion: Steps to crack down on tax evasion to raise “£6.5bn per year” for the public purse

 

Defence: New high-tech weaponry, upgrading HM Naval Base in Portsmouth

 

Housing: Housebuilding to reach its highest in 40 years, with planning reforms helping generate an extra £3.4bn for public finances

MATCH INFO

Uefa Champions League semi-finals, first leg
Liverpool v Roma

When: April 24, 10.45pm kick-off (UAE)
Where: Anfield, Liverpool
Live: BeIN Sports HD
Second leg: May 2, Stadio Olimpico, Rome

Super Bowl LIII schedule

What Super Bowl LIII

Who is playing New England Patriots v Los Angeles Rams

Where Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, United States

When Sunday (start time is 3.30am on Monday UAE time)

 

The smuggler

Eldarir had arrived at JFK in January 2020 with three suitcases, containing goods he valued at $300, when he was directed to a search area.
Officers found 41 gold artefacts among the bags, including amulets from a funerary set which prepared the deceased for the afterlife.
Also found was a cartouche of a Ptolemaic king on a relief that was originally part of a royal building or temple. 
The largest single group of items found in Eldarir’s cases were 400 shabtis, or figurines.

Khouli conviction

Khouli smuggled items into the US by making false declarations to customs about the country of origin and value of the items.
According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he provided “false provenances which stated that [two] Egyptian antiquities were part of a collection assembled by Khouli's father in Israel in the 1960s” when in fact “Khouli acquired the Egyptian antiquities from other dealers”.
He was sentenced to one year of probation, six months of home confinement and 200 hours of community service in 2012 after admitting buying and smuggling Egyptian antiquities, including coffins, funerary boats and limestone figures.

For sale

A number of other items said to come from the collection of Ezeldeen Taha Eldarir are currently or recently for sale.
Their provenance is described in near identical terms as the British Museum shabti: bought from Salahaddin Sirmali, "authenticated and appraised" by Hossen Rashed, then imported to the US in 1948.

- An Egyptian Mummy mask dating from 700BC-30BC, is on offer for £11,807 ($15,275) online by a seller in Mexico

- A coffin lid dating back to 664BC-332BC was offered for sale by a Colorado-based art dealer, with a starting price of $65,000

- A shabti that was on sale through a Chicago-based coin dealer, dating from 1567BC-1085BC, is up for $1,950