In a different set of Commonwealth games, the Queen (centre) greets New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern in the Blue Drawing Room at Buckingham Palace at a dinner during the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in London last week. Photo/AP
In a different set of Commonwealth games, the Queen (centre) greets New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern in the Blue Drawing Room at Buckingham Palace at a dinner during the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in London last week. Photo/AP
It may be just about time the quaint and slightly queer collection of disparate nations we call the Commonwealth was put out to pasture.
It increasingly seems like an eccentric old uncle who still insists on getting about in plus-fours — a relic of another time, when school kids were encouraged to take great pride in the prodigious land masses coloured red in their school atlases.
It still, of course, carries the stigma of all the colonial overtones and undertones that initially brought the institution into being.
But, that aside, while it once may have served some useful purpose as a vehicle for bringing together a polyglot bunch of peoples to pursue various political, economic, cultural and sporting interests, the contemporary world is now a totally different ball game.
Whatever initial advantages may have accrued to such a congregation of nations have now been largely rendered redundant by the passage of time and the march of technology.
The recent Gold Coast Commonwealth Games pretty much reflected the general state of affairs with this oddball league. Despite the usual optimistic predictions about how many gazillions the games would pump into the local economy, shop owners were left out of pocket when locals heeded warnings to lie low because of a predicted deluge of visitors that never materialised.
Despite a pretty extensive search, I couldn't find any figures whatsoever on attendances for the actual events – possibly because they were embarrassingly low.
I suspect the main beneficiaries were the athletes themselves.
Who wouldn't get a kick out of an all-expenses-paid jaunt to somewhere like the Gold Coast while you're in the prime of life, fighting fit, and there are several thousand fellow athletes of the same ilk all hot for some off-track partying? It would be like some giant Tinder box, plus sun and surf.
Missing from action, though, would have been a whole bunch of elite athletes for whom the games hardly register on the radar. In recent years, if the games conflict with training schedules or programmes for other major international athletic meets — including IAAF world championships — then the Comm Games gets kicked to touch.
This waning interest is also evident in the paucity of bidders to host upcoming games, with sometimes only a single bidder. South Africa was the sole applicant for the 2022 Games and, therefore, no surprise its bid was successful, even though failure to meet accompanying conditions saw its hosting rights stripped, and host status transferred to Birmingham.
Still, as an event, even if it were dropped tomorrow, it hasn't done too badly. Given the first Empire Games (as they were called until 1950) were held in 1930, that's nearly a century of games history.
Politically and economically, international trade and communication have superseded Commonwealth ties, and expensive junkets like CHOGMs (Commonwealth Heads of Government Meetings) have been rendered surplus to requirements.
Frank Greenall
The photo-op pic featuring Jacinda Ardern's partner Clarke Gayford fronting the collection of handbagged Commonwealth heads' WAGs neatly summed up the village-church-fair-committee ambience that now attends the CHOGM charade.
Better for Commonwealth nations to devote whatever energies they can muster in the way of international collegiality and co-operation into improving the one international organisation mandated to fostering a true Commonwealth for all — the United Nations. Nothing is more in need of some dedicated attention than this highly flawed specimen — initially carrying high the hopes of so many for the delivery of liberty, fraternity and equality, but now so sadly economically and ethically threadbare.
But just as, once, the sun never set on the British Empire, it may be time, in the best British tradition, to say to the Commonwealth: "Good innings, old chap – jolly well played, but now it's time for a nice little lie-down, what?"
