Category Archives: Sport

Making it Safe

Posted on by

There’s something a little unsettling about people indulging themselves in food and drink and having a rare old time whilst being entertained by animals racing themselves to death.

A dramatic statement, I know, but that is exactly what happened at the Cheltenham Festival this week and in all likelihood will be repeated at the Grand National meeting at Aintree next month.

Animal welfare groups protest that all steeplechasing should be banned but I think that that would be a step too far and I could never envisage horse racing being banned either in whole or in part.

What is needed are continuing efforts to make the sport as safe as possible. Not that the average race goer could give a damn, however. As long as he’s got a full glass in his hand he’ll be happy enough.

Doomed to Failure

Posted on by

Last Sunday, Manchester City defeated Sunderland to win the football League Cup at Wembley. Nothing surprising there, they are an excellent football team packed with star players. However, what grabbed my attention was the fact that not one player who took to the field in Manchester City’s colours that day was either English or British.

Among the substitutes were sat three Englishmen, all England internationals and their only involvement in the victory was keeping the bench warm.  Doesn’t it make you wonder how on earth our national side is going to develop and improve when our best players can’t even get a game for their own clubs?

Until we get back to the situation where clubs are compelled to limit the number of foreign players in their sides (how about a maximum of, say, five?) the problem will continue. English football will fail to develop and our national side will remain the great underachievers with their success limited to Fantasy Football and trophies won on children’s computer games.

 

Winning

Posted on by

You’d think that English rugby’s governing body,  the Rugby Football Union (RFU),  would be keen to develop youngsters and provide the national team with a constant supply of top class talent.

If so, they are going about it in a funny way since they have just announced to schools and clubs that  there will be no more trophies for successful under-11 sides and if any game appears to be too one-sided players will be swapped around at half time to balance things up. The emphasis is to be on developing skills rather than the result of the game.

What kind of a lesson is that to give to kids on sport, or on life for that matter? Of course the result matters and a determination to win the game is surely the biggest factor in the development of game-winning skills in any sport. This just smacks, once again, of political correctness and a desire to tell children how life should be rather than how it really is.

Whether our politicians, teachers and sports administrators like it or not, the fact is, life is a competition. From the lowliest single-cell organism to mankind life is a competition resulting in success or failure, victory or defeat and sometimes life or death.

As  Vince Lombardi, the legendary and hugely successful American Football player and coach once said  “Winning isn’t  everything, it’s the only thing”.

 

A Remarkable Feat

Posted on by

Late last week English schoolboy, Lewis Clarke, became the youngest person ever to trek to the South Pole. Setting out on December 2nd, some two weeks after his 16th birthday, Lewis, from Bristol, completed the 702 mile journey in 48 days. Though accompanied by an experienced polar guide he dragged his own equipment by sledge across the snows in temperatures as low as -40C and winds gusting to 120 miles per hour.

It is an amazing achievement that surely merited far more media coverage than it in fact generated, particularly when considering that he is only one of three hundred to have reached the South Pole on foot or sledge since the Norwegian, Roald Amundsen and the ill-fated Englishman, Robert Falcon Scott first succeeded back in 1911/12.

Lewis will return home later this week and then it’s back to school where he will face the somewhat more mundane challenge of his GCSE exams. What a remarkable young man.

 I wonder if he can play cricket?

 

Rabbits Caught in the Headlights

Posted on by

To be selected to play for your country must be the highest possible honour and ultimate accolade for any sportsman. What could possibly compare to representing your nation, knowing that you are carrying the hopes and aspirations of millions of your loyal countrymen, some of whom will have spent small fortunes travelling half way around the world to watch you perform?

If you were one of that select band you would surely give everything you’d got, summon up every last ounce of energy and fight for every ball or point to ensure that victory was yours. Even when faced by an aggressive, ruthless, determined and highly skilled opponent you wouldn’t flinch. No, you would relish the challenge, take a deep breath, grit your teeth and enter the fray with renewed vigour, refusing to take a backwards step until the contest was won, wouldn’t you?

Of course you would unless, that is, you are a member of the England cricket team in which case, when faced by such an opponent you would quail, quiver, collapse and capitulate, resembling more a rabbit caught in the headlights than a supremely fit athlete prepared to slug it out toe to toe and man to man. You would just roll over and have your tummy tickled, grateful that at least you still have a fat pay cheque, a fancy car and a nice house to return to when the whole pitiful shambles is brought to a close, as it was last weekend in Sydney. 

Humility in Victory

Posted on by

The events of this last sporting weekend got me thinking about the poem “If” written by Rudyard Kipling for his young son, an excellent poem that any responsible and loving parent would wish to impart upon his or her child. One of the key tenets in the poem is the need for “Triumph and Disaster”, which Kipling refers to as “the two impostors”, to be treated in exactly the same way. We will undoubtedly experience both at some stage and, as Kipling implies, the reaction of the boy to those impostors will ultimately define the man.

It has always struck me that this is sound advice for life generally and for competitive sport  particularly. Thus, a loser should behave with dignity and good grace (masking  a secret determination that it won’t happen the next time) and the winner should behave with humility and respect for his vanquished opponent, since it may well fall upon him to wear the loser’s mantle the next time around.

This is a lesson that every child – and many international so-called “sportsmen” – would do well to learn and remember.

Memories

Posted on by

Quite naturally, November 22nd is the date that most people associate with the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas. Today, that date is even more poignant since it is now 50 years since America’s charismatic and youngest ever President  had his life snatched away by the marksman’s bullet.

However, there are happier things to remember today, particularly, if you happen to be English, for this is the 10th anniversary of the 2003 Rugby Union World Cup Final. The day when England defeated Australia in their own backyard.

There will, of course, be sober and respectful thoughts today but when the evening comes my glass will be raised to the stars in honour of that moment on a dark Saturday night in Sydney when Jonny Wilkinson’s right boot broke the hearts of one nation and sent the other into raptures of ecstasy! Memories don’t get much better than that!

The Astronaut and the Monkey

Posted on by

Last  week, England’s football manager, Roy Hodgson, did extremely well in ensuring that a slightly above average football team booked a place at next year’s  World Cup Finals. Unfortunately, the celebrations were tarnished because one of the players  leaked details of the manager’s half time team talk to the national press. Evidently, the talk (a private affair obviously meant only for the players present) featured a joke involving two astronauts and a monkey and the player took offence at what he perceived was a racist joke.

I am familiar with the joke, having first heard it about 20 years ago. It’s reasonably funny and the joke is not at the expense of the monkey but at the two astronauts whose only job is to feed the monkey, thus inferring that the monkey is more intelligent than they are. The astronauts, for the purposes of the joke, could be any nationality you wanted, whether English, Scots, Irish, French, American or whatever. It was just a playful laugh at the nation of your choice and, as I said, compliments the monkey at the expense of the chosen nation.

Clearly, the footballer who reported the joke to the press wasn’t bright enough to realise that and, as with everything else these days, the assumption by the Thought Police (see the novel, “1984”) was that the joke was an example of racial discrimination based on colour. What complete nonsense. With hindsight perhaps it would have been more politically correct and acceptable if the monkey had been described as albino!

All that aside, the story doesn’t reflect well upon the team’s spirit and morale ahead of what will be an extremely difficult tournament involving at least a dozen teams better equipped to win the trophy than England. If I were Hodgson (an undoubtedly decent man) I would leave no stone unturned in my efforts to find the Judas who betrayed his manager and thus his team-mates in such a scurrilous and cowardly manner. I would then make it clear to him that he will never again be selected to play for England whilst I remained manager. Go on Mr Hodgson, seek him out. The huge chip on his shoulder should make him readily identifiable.

 

More Politically Correct Nonsense

Posted on by

The ITV sports presenter, Adrian Chiles, was in trouble this weekend after making a throwaway comment about Polish builders ahead of the England football team’s crucial World Cup qualifier with Poland tomorrow night. He outraged the PC brigade by inferring that if England were to win the game it would have a detrimental effect on the work currently being undertaken at his house by Polish builders.

Those humourless modern day puritans who, along with their equally dictatorial and boring colleagues from Health and Safety, dictate modern life didn’t get the joke but I wonder how many Polish folk took exception to Chiles’  comment?

Looked at from a different angle it could, in fact, be construed as a compliment. The fact that people refer to the hardworking Poles as their default builders is actually more a dig (no pun intended!) at the indolent English.

Perhaps he should have expanded his comment a little more; that many English are nowadays so lazy, so spoilt, so decadent and so reliant on state handouts that they cannot be bothered working and instead sit back, welfare-state purchased fag and beer in their hands watching Sky TV whilst Johnny Foreigner does it all for them. Just try finding a reliable English tradesman when you need one in a hurry. These days they are as rare as hens’ teeth in many parts of the country.

Perhaps the dullards who took offense at what was clearly a harmless joke (at least to anybody with half a brain) might like to consider that before they start criticising people like Chiles who, after all was only hinting at the unpalatable truth.

Still Summer But……

Posted on by

It’s been a great summer so far. We’ve actually had and are still having proper sunny summer weather. The national mood has been at an almost all-time high, we’ve had a Royal baby, a Wimbledon winner, an English winner of the US Open Golf, an emphatic Ashes cricket victory and economically, so we’re told, the dark clouds are beginning to clear.

Yes, things are going well at the moment. Such a shame that it’s all going to be tarnished by the return of the Sky TV – sorry, Premier – League football tomorrow. Overpaid prima-donnas behaving like spoilt children on and off the pitch whilst the tabloids greedily lap up and report every excess, as though we (or at least most of us) really give a damn. Oh well, at least there’s still some cricket left!