Posts filed under 'sport'
July 19th, 2008
I’ve been listening to the radio this afternoon and it’s done my spirit a world of good. Speaking as a 53 year-old it’s just incredible to listen to the 53 year-old Greg Norman leading the Open Championship and doing it in style.
Here is a man who has played only 5 events this year and barely plays even on the Seniors tour; who has recently married one of the pin-up girls of my youth, the lovely Chris Evert, and who spends most of his time building a business empire. Here also is a man who should have won far more majors than he did but was outrageously beaten by a series of one-off shots when poised to add to his tally. He was a great champion at a time when there were lots of great champions – Ballesteros, Lyle, Faldo, Langer, to name just the best of the Europeans, let alone the Americans. Now, 8 years older than the oldest man to win a major, he’s 2 shots clear going into the final round. Forget Nadal winning Wimbledon or Spain winning the European Championships, if he wins this it won’t just be the story of the year it’ll be one of the stories of the century.
Some may say, and have on the radio, that Tiger Woods isn’t there, but conditions such as we’ve seen at Birkdale have blown Tiger away before – remember Muirfield? Woods is a phenomenal golfer, maybe even better than Nicklaus, but there is no guarantee that his swing would have survived the winds this weekend. And the fact is that his great length has come at the cost of his knee joint. Norman has a wealth of experience, vast knowledge of a variety of links conditions, and has nothing to prove. He shows every sign of being happy and content and can give this his all. Some might even say that golf owes him another major.
One radio pundit says it’s ridiculous that Norman is leading the Open, that the younger players are failing to step up to take Woods’ place. Having been struggling with a trapped nerve in my shoulder for a few weeks I know what it feels like to be getting old despite keeping fitter and slimmer than most of my contemporaries, so the thought of hitting golf balls 350 yards and maintaining the sort of touch around the greens that Greg has demonstrated is an awesome thought, but the modern obsession with youth over experience does get a bit wearing. A few weeks ago I heard a 29 year-old footballer described as a veteran with not long to go in his career. Insane. Clearly the commentator hadn’t heard of Teddy Sheringham, hadn’t watched Dalglish at the end of his playing days, or Roger Milla play for the Cameroon side in the World Cup. Within limits what matters is whether you’ve looked after your body and have the drive and mental attitude to make it happen.
But still, 53? Can he really do it?
By god I hope so. And I bet plenty of 50-somethings all round the country hope so too.
Go on Greg!!
May 23rd, 2008
What a pleasure to see that the Man Utd v Chelsea final was a good game rather than an exercise in not losing. As with any penalty shoot-out, those who take the shots deserve praise for bravery rather than blame if they miss – the pressures are unbelievable. Alex Ferguson must have aged 10 years during the match and shed 15 when they won. It seems that this tournament is the one that really matters to him. Having now won it twice, where now do we rank him in the list of great managers?
Jock Stein immortally won it first and lost a second final to an outstanding and emerging Feyenoord team. Amazing to think that Stein’s only major purchase in the Lisbon Lions was the sum of £30,000 for Willie Wallace from Hearts. Ronaldo would cost a thousand times that at least! It shows how impossible it is to compare different eras.
Brian Clough, with two European Cup wins, has to be considered in the same level, especially given the fact that the Nottingham Forest team that he took to European success was languishing in the second division when he became their manager. But perhaps the only man who can be claimed to be definitely above Ferguson was Bob Paisley, who guided Liverpool to three of their European Cup wins, though the man himself would doubtless have been far too modest to claim it.
As for Man Utd, it will be fascinating to see what Ferguson does next. Scholes will surely now move on or retire. Giggs too is coming to the end of a glorious career. Assuming that Ronaldo stays then the priority will presumably be an attacking midfielder, though another striker might be on the cards if Rooney continues to be played slightly behind the front line. If of course the Real Madrid rumours turn out to be true then there should be enough money for a complete recasting.
Meanwhile here in Scotland I wonder if the Celtic fans who have wanted rid of Gordon Strachan ever since he arrived will have changed their minds now that he’s delivered a third Premier Division title in a row. And will Mark McGee really take on the poisoned chalice of Lithuanian Hearts when he could be leading Motherwell into Europe?
May 20th, 2008
As a Scot and a rugby fan I was sorry to hear on the radio at the weekend of the injury to England’s very promising fly-half Danny Cipriani. The commentary sounded as though it was a bad injury with the liklihood of a substantial layoff. I’m sure every genuine Scots fan wishes him the best of luck and hopes to see him playing again before too long.
We may love beating the English but we’d rather see them playing enterprising running rugby when we do it rather than wasting talented backs in sterile grinding foward moves. Cipriani has looked like a breath of fresh air so far and rugby needs more like him. Pity he doesn’t have a Scots Grannie 
February 7th, 2008
So now everyone’s queueing up to criticise Andy Murray for not playing in the Davis Cup. He really can’t win can he? If he plays and aggravates an injury then they’ll slag him off for being injury prone. If he protects the injury then he’s lacking national pride. Good grief!
A few months ago before the wrist injury which put him out of Wimbledon I listened with disbelief as a Radio 5 tennis correspondent wrote off his chances of being a great player because he wasn’t as physically developed as Nadal. Nadal, as plenty of teenage girls will doubtless affirm, is not only a great player but has a musculature way ahead of his age. This criticism was at a time when Murray was winning tournaments, rising steadily in the rankings towards a top ten place and clearly developing as a player and a person.
As usual there were plenty of people quick to complain when he was knocked out of the recent Australian Open in the first round. Strangely enough no-one retracted that when his conqueror went on to reach the final with a series of inspired displays. No wonder Tim Henman retired early. Britain doesn’t deserve good tennis players if this is how we treat them.
October 21st, 2007
I mentioned in the previous blog that rugby was running into problems of fairness. The players are just getting too big.
Much was made in the media prior to the world cup about the fact that the entire Scottish team had changed their body shapes through heavy gym work over the last few months, yet Chris Paterson was being criticised during the tournament as being too small and light for a winger, though he would dwarf many forwards from the relatively recent past. It’s becoming hard for smaller men to compete, no matter how talented. Would such luminaries as Gerald Davies or Barry John get a game these days? Would the subtle skills of Mike Gibson be muscled out of contention? Heaven knows what they’d think of the small but elusive Jim Renwick and David Johnston, and I fear Andy Irvine would be considered far too light to be a full-back.
As I write this South Africa have just beaten England in a final that had no tries. Two incredibly big strong teams pounded away at each other and neither could come up with the creative spark that would have set the game alight. Much of the attractive rugby in the tournament – and there wasn’t very much of it by all accounts – was by the minor teams such as Fiji or Japan, but many teams seemed to either have ineffective back divisions lacking real pace and invention or were muscled out of it by heavy packs.
This seems to have been the way the game has been moving since it went professional but if it continues along these lines then it may find itself with fewer spectators. It’s becoming a thud and blunder game rather than the glorious running sidestepping spectacle that I grew up watching. Something needs to be done to make it easier for the lighter, quicker players to exist in the same arena as the 18 stone plus giants. The players who can beat a man by invention and sleight of hand rather than the crash-ball merchants who bulldoze their way forward.
Let’s hope for a few tries in the Six Nations, and some attractive running rugby. If we don’t get them then I fear the game is in trouble.
October 20th, 2007
Following on from my last entry I’ve been thinking about why we invest so much energy and emotion in sports and games. Whether it be as a player or a spectator, for a national team or a local league, we pour vast amounts of money and effort into activities which can often be easily made fun of by those who are less enthusiastic. Try objectively describing golf to a Martian!
While there is clearly some element of tribal, regional, or national fervour involved in some cases, there is also a deeper need being met. That need is fairness.
Humans crave fairness. Our philosophies are built on it, our religions declare it, our political theories profess it, and yet in practice in the real world it doesn’t exist. Whether the cause is natural chance; climate, water supply, famine or flood – or man-made; war, poverty, discrimination or persecution – there are plenty of reasons to declare that life isn’t fair.
Sport gives us that chance of fairness; a closed system with rules that all players must abide by in order to achieve success – that awful cliché, a level playing field. It gives us the feeling that there is a chance that our efforts will be fairly rewarded, that if we put in more effort, demonstrate more skill, that we can win.
That is why we care so much when the rules are broken; when a foul goes unpunished, when a referee makes a mistake and chalks off a goal or a try or an ace. We rail against unfairness in this, our one hope of a fair chance.
In some degree we can even measure a sport’s likely popularity with players and spectators by how intrinsically fair it is. Snooker is perhaps the perfect example of a literally level playing field – it is almost pure skill with only the occasional fluke spicing up the mix. Football scores high because while there are advantages being tall and strong there are also advantages in being small and nimble. Basketball, though wildly popular in some countries has never really taken off in the UK in a big way, and one reason must be that it is a sport exclusively for tall people. One of rugby’s problems now is the emphasis on sheer bulk – it is no longer possible to have a fair game between players of different sizes – more on this in the next blog posting.
Golf has a reputation as one of the most sporting of games and one of the fairest – apart from the chance bounce or gust of wind it is a fair context between 2 players or between a number of players and the course. It should be no surprise that it is popular. Indeed the strength of its fairness is shown by the very rare occasions when there is controversy – such as the unfortunate scenes of running onto the green in the Ryder Cup a few years ago when Olazabal still had a putt to take, or when a championship courses is tricked up by misguided administrators to make it “Tiger-proof” and they only succeed in reducing the number of possible winners.
Next time you go to play or spectate at your favourite game, consider how fair it is and which events raise the wrath of the crowd the most.
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