Of cats and mice

Simon Barnes of The Times writes in his book The Meaning of Sport, writes on the relationship between athletes and sports writers:

Clive Woodward, when head coach of the England rugby team, onc told the assembled journos at a press conference: 'I have the greatest respect for what you do.' The response was an instance, instinctive belly-laugh, as spontaneous as the Redgrave round of applause. It's like mice saying they have the greatest respect for cats, or stomachs speaking of their admiration for nematode worms.

But not because they are prey and we are predators; or that they are hosts and we are parasites. It is because we are completely different life forms. We look for different things in life: we define our lives in different ways. There is almost no common ground at all. We certainly don't have sport in common. For the two groups, sport is a very different thing. Sport is our subject, sport is their object.