Introduction: Sport and Animation: A Good Match?

Abstract

In the 78th minute of English Premiership soccer’s always eagerly awaited derby encounter between Manchester United and Manchester City in February 2011, formerly tonsorially challenged England centre forward, Wayne Rooney, rose majestically in the air, and in a dazzlingly executed overhead kick, thundered the ball into the City net. For Chelsea supporters like myself, already glutted on such goals by Eider Gudjohnson, Gus Poyet or Didier Drogba in the recent past, the moment passed without so much as a ‘not bad’ muttered to my son, but to the more objective critical cognoscenti in the sports press, this goal was suggestive of great skill and unparalleled talent. I thought nothing more of it until one evening watching television when an advertisement for The Sun newspaper was broadcast. It featured Rooney’s goal, but it was presented as an animation — the stadium and crowd removed, the opponents rendered as flickering grey ghosts, Manchester United players as painterly red blots and Rooney’s effort the focus of a persuasively rotoshopped animated sequence (see Figure I.1).¹ And there was more: plaintive piano music, and a commentary by former England manager, and Sun football writer, Terry Venables:

It was one of those times when you really do get those goosebumps; with a flash like a strike of lightning, he changed direction, his body is up in the air. It was like a right foot with an explosion but with the timing and beauty of a dance. Goal of the season.