Article

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Sport

16 September 2023

4 min read

Why are sportspeople so superstitious?

Routine and rhythm help performance, but sporting superstition begs a question, writes Jonny Reid. Who do we really think is in control?

Jonny Reid

Jonny Reid leads the communications team at Christians in Sport.

A rugby ball sails towards a player in a striped jersey from the foot of a kicker who has a leg and an arm extended out.

England v. Argentina, RWC 2023.

RFU.

Guinness’ Rugby World Cup advert commands supporters: “Don’t Jinx It!” The advertiser explained:

“All of Ireland will be supporting the team with every fibre, but our campaign urges fans to remember that their actions are as important as the team on the pitch, they need to play their part too, don’t jinx it.”

Superstitions on the pitch are just as prominent as those off it. England legend Jonny Wilkinson always wore the same t-shirt under his match shirt as a lucky charm, the Welsh side used to ritually vomit before games and for decades club side Bath played without a number 13.

So why is it that sport is so fill of superstition?

A longing for control

We feel like we’re in control until a sudden injury or a major pandemic arrives and we realise that we may be less in control than we’d like.

Indian sports psychologist Ashis Nandy thinks this may be why cricketers are so superstitious. In a game full of failure, which has a high degree of luck, it is inevitable that players will turn to superstition to help regain a sense of control:

'No wonder cricketers lean on superstition as a crutch. They cannot accept the awful truth - that the game is governed by erratic umpiring decisions, random tosses and unpredictable seam movement - so they invent a coping strategy to persuade themselves they are in control.'

We want to be in control but we know we’re not.

Whether it’s a snapped Achilles tendon at a random training session, a contract not renewed at the end of a season or point deductions due to mismanagement by owners - sport is littered with examples which remind us we’re not in charge.

It’s worth saying that routine is different to superstition. US soccer psychologist Tim Perrin argues that routines are integral for the elite sportsperson. “Performance is about routines—they take us into performance, and superstitions are very much a part of that,” Perrin said. “They are a way we can very habitually, automatically, and unconsciously take ourselves into performance mode.”

Repetition and routine are a key part of sport. Not only do they improve our skill levels (think of the 10,000 hour theory) but they also help ease the mental pressures faced by athletes. As Perin explains, the emotional demands and strains of sport can be lessened by routines that “allow certain things (to be done) on a mechanistic, repetitive nature” and can thus be “put on autopilot.”

This is the reason for Jonny Wilkinson’s famous pre-kick routine or the even more extreme Dan Biggar’s version which has become known as the ‘Biggarena.’ His idiosyncratic routine once proved an Internet sensation.

When does routine tip into superstition? It’s when it becomes irrational and when a change to that routine leads to distinct mental torment or a level of discomfort.

Superstition, as we observe it, in the stands or the pub or on the pitch provokes questions for all of us: Is there a way I can be in control? Or am I actually under control from a higher power?

Who is in control?

When things don’t happen as we’d like, it’s easy to feel pretty disillusioned. But do our superstitious tendencies point towards something bigger?

Among Christians there is the belief that we humans are created in the image of God and that he gave us the weighty responsibility to live in the world and also to shape it. While we have responsibility for how we live, we only have penultimate agency. Ultimate power over events lies in hands bigger than ours.

The trouble is we chafe at our limited role in all this.

Dan Strange, in his book Making Faith Magnetic says:

“deep down we know we’re not divine and that we need something greater than us in which to find meaning and legitimacy. So we still invest in other things that can give us a sense of ultimate meaning and purpose.”

This could be our partner or family. It could quite easily be our sporting career. We load them with an unbearable weight of responsibility, that none of these substitutes for God can handle because they too are penultimate not ultimate.

In the book of John, Jesus calls himself “the good shepherd” - the one who guides the flock of sheep, whether they are aware of it or not.

The world is not controlled by luck or energy or even random chance, it is in the hands of a loving God, a loving shepherd who leads his sometimes reluctant flock to where they need to go.

In the stories of Jesus we see someone who exercises an extraordinary control over the world - over nature (walking on water), over disease (healing blind people) and over evil powers (exorcising the .disturbed) He shows us a world which isn’t just defined by fate or by an angry impersonal Deity but one in which there is a sense that we are both in control and under control.

Far from living in a world of randomness and luck, maybe after all we live in a world where a good God works through the details of our lives and is with us in the ups and the downs, in the injury, de-selection, contract confusion, dip in form and in the cup wins, record breaking, peak-performing moments of our sporting careers.

Routine and rhythm can help sporting performance but superstition ultimately leads us to ask a question. Who do we really think is in control?

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Comment

Politics

Work

4 September 2025

3 min read

Who’d be an MP today?

A vulnerable vocation that we should all consider

Jamie Mulvaney

Jamie is Vicar of St Michael's Chester Square, London.

MPs sit and stand in a crowded parliament.

The House of Commons sits, and stands.

Houses of Parliament.

Last year, 132 Members of Parliament headed for the exit. Of course, the reasons for this vary, but the unsustainable nature of the role must be factored in. As the Westminster Parliament returns for another session, who on earth would want to be an MP in today's day and age?

Most starkly, we saw the murders of Jo Cox and Sir David Amess, with the latter writing in 2020 that the fear of attacks "rather spoilt the great British tradition of the people openly meeting their elected politicians". Herein lies much of the issue of being an MP today: accessibility. They might be highly insulated within the Palace of Westminster, but within their phones and outside of those gates they are always available, and always on, with slings and arrows that are verbal and violent.

The combination of abuse and accessibility is a potent force. It's not limited to the MPs themselves. Dr Ashley Weinberg, an occupational psychologist from the University of Salford, said that 49.5 per cent of MPs' staff suffering from distress was double the level experienced by the general population. Those in vocation-based work need some boundaries as capes don't come with the parliamentary pass.

And if the exit sign is so alluring, how do we remove barriers to entry? In Why We Get the Wrong Politicians, Isabel Hardman writes that seeking a seat is 'the most expensive and time-consuming job interview on earth'. Only to be met by remuneration that doesn't quite make up for the package deal. Of course, there's the uber-keen. Morgan Jones, writing in The New Statesman, notes 'People who want to be MPs really want to be MPs. They are willing to try and try again: in the footnotes of the careers of many now-prominent politicians, one finds unsuccessful first tilts at parliament.'

Being adopted, working class, a mum, a carer, and a cancer survivor didn't stop Conservative MP Katherine Fletcher from standing as an MP. In fact, it all contributed to it: 'You stand on a podium and say, "Vote for me please!" To do it properly you have to bring your whole self.' The sense of calling to a vocation comes from a frustration, where she found herself yelling at the TV, intersecting with our core experiences and values.

Even with five-year terms, there's an inherent reactivity in the daily nature of being an MP. Where is the space to think? To really reflect. In a plaintive but not totally despairing summer article, Andrew Marr, the veteran observer of politics, wrote more broadly about British society: 'What is new and disorientating is that we have so few storytellers to shake us or point a way ahead… This means that we push our anxieties, our frustrated hopes and our confusion even more on to the shoulders of political leaders who are entirely unsuited to bearing the weight.' As we lack imaginative drive, 'The fault is not in our stars but in ourselves.'

We need everyone from poets to plumbers to make this society work. And there's the question of vocation: where does my gifting and passion meet the needs of our society that solves problems or inspires others to?

We rightly have high expectations of our leaders, and project our hopes and fears onto their blank canvases. But their canvasses aren't blank. They are crammed with the urgent and important. We can't expect our politicians to do and be everything - and we all need to play our part. Our blame-and-shame culture finds hysterical, theatrical representation at Prime Minister's Questions. Sir Tony Blair said that 'A private secretary would come in and say: "Well, Prime Minister, a grateful nation awaits." I would follow him out feeling as if I was going to my execution.' The agonistic, antagonistic design of the House of Commons, where one side is pitted against the other, has ripples in our society with an increasingly antagonistic public discourse.

In pointing the finger we have three pointing back at ourselves. As Jesus famously said, 'Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?'

Our vote at the ballot box may be our exercise of judgement. But before scathing our members of parliament, it's worth us first asking 'what have I done as a member of the public?'

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