Sport is a form of warfare

but it is rarely recognised as such.
As anyone who knows me will recognise I am not a lover of "sport". I can't play it. I don't watch it. I do not follow a football team and I support the wrong side in the only game I have any mild interest in - cricket. (It is the psychology that interests me - not the actual game.)
The Senior Cat is the same - but worse. He does not even have a mild interest in cricket.
If it involves a ball one of my two sisters has played it at some point - at both state and national level - but even she is not a lover of sport. She does not watch it or support a football team.
My brother occasionally goes sailing with his son's father-in-law. It is a purely social outing. No competition is involved. He watches no sport at all. He has no interest in any game.
My other sister appears to take some interest in sport. She watches it on television - while folding origami boxes and flowers which she sells at a local craft market in her home town.
And yet I know there are thousands, indeed hundreds of thousands, of people out there who love sport with a passion. They follow it avidly. They analyse moves and matches and players. They display the colours of their team of choice and put labels on their cars announcing that "blue" (or maybe "brown") is best. It's warfare.
Commentators talk in those terms - wins and defeats and battles. 
I know, the ancient Greeks did it - and every other civilisation in history has had some such form of warfare.
It isn't harmless. People get injured and even killed. Drugs are taken. There is violence and cheating. Money is bet on the results.
And people worry.
My brother and his wife are currently on a catamaran off the east coast of Downunder. They are sailing close to shore. He and his wife are with experienced sailors. They have all the necessary safety equipment and then some. It was something his wife wanted to do and my brother was happy to acquiesce.
And the Senior Cat is worried, so worried he is not eating or sleeping properly. He won't be happy until the two of them are "safe" on dry land. I am looking forward to Thursday, the last day of the "adventure". The Senior Cat's levels of worry will return to more normal levels.
Sport is definitely a form of warfare - in more ways than one.