Why are sporting codes so deeply conservative? After all, games are mostly played by the young, who love innovation, writes Declan Kiberd.
Yet many women, Jews and people of colour feel less than welcome in certain clubs. Throughout the past golden summer, television commentators at the climax of events have extolled sporting traditions "which go back more than a hundred years".
It may well be that the hitters of sixes or sinkers of 20-yard putts don't worry unduly about membership rules or history books - but they operate, nonetheless, in a world of high Tory codes. Golfers and baseballers continued to wear plus-fours long after they had gone out of fashion on the streets. And the authorities at Lord's still insist on whites at Test matches: no "pyjama" cricket of the one-day match for them.
Some of this may be a form of instant archaeology, based on a tendency to invent "immemorial" traditions which turn out on inspection to be no older than the early days of television. (Peter Aliss seems to have "invented" golf's Open in much the same way as Richard Dimbleby did the British royal family).
But most spectator sports are old enough to have been codified in the 19th century and revel in their sense of history.
Sport appeals to patriotism, ancient virtue and epic notions of value. It offers a sort of public-school pageant now open to all (well, almost all) in a "democratic" age. You have only to walk into a golf or rugby club to see how many old sentimentalists in blazers and shiny shoes love these haunts.
They will put up with bad jokes, stodgy food and bar-room bores just to belong to that community. It's hard to imagine, say, a group of actors inflicting such privations on one another in their late-night clubs.
Of their very nature, sports attract disciplinarians, who are sticklers for the rules. (The first winner of the Tour de France was disqualified for taking not drugs, but a train). This may explain the widespread reluctance to update not just clothing, but the very laws themselves.
In recent years, the big serve and baseline game of many tennis players has made matches drearily predictable. Graphite rackets (a dubious blessing, admitted only after controversy) have led to faster serves, more aces and much shorter rallies. The fitness of players has improved, but games are a lot less exciting than in the days of Laver and Bueno.
Why? Because the laws haven't changed to keep pace with the technology.
The culprit is the second serve. It should be abolished. At this exalted level, a pro should be able to get the first serve in, relying more on accuracy and less on brute force (not to mention the odious grunting that is the accompanying soundtrack).
Since so much playing time is lost between the first and second serve, such a change would ensure more actual play and longer rallies. Nowadays, Gaelic games, like bad Dáil debates, are dominated by cheap point-scoring. Often a dull enough match ends 0-18 to 0-11. If goals were rewarded with five points instead of three, play would pick up. We would see more goalmouth incidents and less "smart bombing" from deep, defensive positions.
As with soccer, Gaelic officials still refuse to use the television replay in order to verify a disputed score. They fear that the authority of referees could be undermined by such calls.
That has not happened in either rugby or cricket, which use these replays - if anything, slow-motion pictures increase respect for referees by showing how hard their task, in real-time play, actually is.
Next year, Wimbledon - after years of refusing - will make the first tentative use of "Hawkeye" to adjudicate on dubious line-calls.
Too many such calls might, of course, be held to break up the fluency of a game (especially disrupting the flow of football matches), but the case for using the technology seems incontrovertible. At present, only referees or umpires can call for such replays, but cricketers feel that teams themselves should have up to three calls in an innings.
Those who control sporting organisations often know a lot less about the game than current players.
Some are officious mediocrities - "gin-sodden old dodderers" in Ian Botham's famous phrase - who like the idea of giving orders to demigods. Players are not supposed to have opinions about what they wear or about the way in which their sport is run.
A paradox ensues. An outraged contestant is honour-bound to give no opinion on being spear-tackled at rugby, or beaten by drug cheats at cycling, or simply denied victory by poor refereeing. The prolonged silence of sports people can lead to some strange after-effects.
Some, as soon as they retire, never stop talking. About everything - not just their specialist code. Dunphy, Robbie, Spillane, Coe . . . Like newspaper columnists, really - come to think of it, most are!