What is brown, shiny and radiates a sexy scandal? Welcome to the world of Conkers | sport

SMisty atmosphere and gentle fertility, close bosom friend of the ground vest. The leaves fall from the trees in bright colors and make their way directly towards the train tracks. Autumnal light spreads out at sharp angles, a harsh reminder that it’s always too early to put away your sunglasses.

It’s that time of year when sports fans’ minds naturally turn to one of the great annual showcase tournaments.

We’re talking, of course, about the World Conker Championships, which attracted more media attention last week than the England men’s and women’s cricket teams combined. Usually it’s small children who obsess over the shiny brown treasures collected on the footpath. But recent events have shown that adults are crazy about jerks too.

If you managed to miss the story – how exactly? – The headline is that newly crowned men’s world champion David Jakins, 82, has been accused of cheating. The runner-up was suspicious when his own conker shattered upon impact during their fight. When Jakins was asked to turn out his pockets, he was found in possession of a steel conker that had been painted to look like a real one.

The Champion, also known as “King Conker,” maintains his innocence and insists he is just using it to play pranks on children. The referee insisted that Jakins, like all competitors, blindly picked his nut from a bag full of tournament supplies. Treated conkers are simply not possible. But organizers now say they have expanded their investigation “after new evidence came to light.”

Is it perhaps proof that fraud generates huge publicity? After all, certain sports only attract national attention when there is a possibility that someone has broken the rules. Not many people can name the top three chess players in the world, but Hans Niemann, currently ranked 18th, has been famous since Norwegian world champion Magnus Carlsen lost to him in 2022 and immediately refused to play against him again. The ensuing uproar gave chess a sexy sheen of scandal for months.

Niemann was found innocent of all charges against him and has since settled the dispute with Carlsen after admitting to cheating in “random” online games as a teenager. But it’s not often that a 20-year-old is forced to sit down for an interview with Piers Morgan and answer the question: “Have you ever used anal beads while playing chess?” Then they have to decline, while Using a sex toy to receive secret messages while playing.

Say it ain’t all you want, Joe, but most sports fans love the drama of a cheating scandal. And we seem to particularly value them in the fringe sports that we would otherwise pass by. Somehow they manage to tickle both sides of our brains at once – both the sophisticated, self-aware part that recognizes the utter absurdity of the competitive pursuits we’ve invented, and the ancestral part that wants to drive evildoers out of our community and leave them alone Bears eaten.

Trivial pursuits can have serious consequences. Two anglers were sentenced to 10 days in jail after being found guilty of cheating in an Ohio tournament in 2023 by stuffing their catch with lead weights and fish fillets to claim the $30,000 prize. Video taken immediately afterwards as the organizers disemboweled their prey and exposed their wrongdoing suggests they were lucky to escape unscathed from their angry rivals.

Perhaps we are drawn to these episodes because, for a moment, we believe we are adopting a collective moral stance. So much cheating in modern sport goes unpunished, from financial shenanigans to institutionalized doping. Some of this is downright normalized: Witness the everyday sight of footballers falling to the ground and grabbing their faces like extras in a World War II film.

Theoretically, sport as a concept only makes sense if people practice it on equal terms and within the framework of arbitrary rules that they set for themselves. In reality, a millionaire entrepreneur is trying to create a version of the Olympics in which participants can go wild in every detail, and England’s most successful and, coincidentally, richest football club is facing multiple charges of violating the financial rules of its own league (IT) is investigating and denies the allegations). The modern line is that what benefits the individual—even the richest and most powerful among them—benefits us all. What’s good for the industry is good for the sport.

So as the World Conker Championships faces cheating rumors, perhaps we feel nostalgic for simpler times, the good old Wacky Race days when cheating was as easy as jumping in a car while running a marathon or winning a world ranking score a cup goal with your fist. Back then it was easier to see who the wrong people were.

And who could blame the conker world for helping get a little publicity for their event and fundraisers? I don’t want to say they’re in shape, but two years ago, when Jakins was preparing the Conkers for the women’s final, his daughter won the title and a similar “investigation” was launched. A spokesperson duly reassured concerned fans that no one had inserted anal beads (or presumably fish fillets) into their bodies.

What increases the awareness of a Conkers event also increases the awareness of everyone. Some, such as the Waveney Valley Conkers Tournament and the Peckham Conker Championships, have made it clear that they welcome intensive training, be it baking your nuts, soaking them in vinegar or even injecting them with resin. You could say it’s all about evolving the game. I say they’re just not conkers.