A long sporting day
In the old days before I wrote for the Rust and participated in the Great Debate (attendance v tv) it was a gimme that if I had a ticket – by no means easy to obtain – I would invariably go to the event.
In those pre-SKY days there was virtually no live football, cricket and the BBC had all the sporting court cards: The Open, Derby, Ascot, Cup Final, Wimbledon.
The move to satellite has not helped all sports, boxing has suffered, golf has had problems attracting sponsors, ladies tour events have recently been pulled in their absence, and there is saturation coverage of football. However there was a plethora of sport yesterday.
Duggie Heath had acquired a ticket for me for the Royal London final but I decided not to go, rather to watch the Lions test, a bit of golf, follow the cricket and the start of the Tour de France. All of this I could do from the comfort of my own armchair.
I won’t add too much to Sandra McConnell’s excellent report on the Lions test.
The Lions won the media battle in the week by putting the referee on notice of the All Blacks black arts.
The referee thrived on the attention the cameras gave him although he made no mistakes and it was no surprise he red-carded Sonny Boy Williams.
I’m old enough to recall Colin Meads getting an early bath against Scotland. Williams accepted the decision calmly, there was none of the histrionics of footballers jostling and gobbing away at the ref when one is dismissed.
The Lions won because the All Blacks were reduced to 14 men for 50 minutes and Beauden Barrett did not have his kicking boots.
These circumstances are unlikely to repeat themselves next week at Fortress Eden Park. Nonetheless a great performance and I was mightily impressed by Itoje who was always in the thick of the action.
I followed the Royal London final on TMS. They used their second team of county experts – Charlie Dagnall, Simon Mann, Kevin Norcross who were informative but I could do without analyst Adam Hollioake referring to Surrey as “we”.
Surrey contrived to lose their fourth Royal London final in succession.
It shows how the game has changed as Surrey once had an explosive hitter in Alistair Brown adjudged not to be test match standard but Alex Hales who won the game for Nottinghamshire with his 187 has opened for England, albeit unconvincingly, in tests.
He is in the top rank of white ball players and has a successful and lucrative career ahead of him.
Reading the coverage of the Tour de France, I was impressed by the German attitude to doping.
The tour started in Düsseldorf but twice winner Jan Ulrich was not invited because of his doping. They did not even show the event on German TV in the past few scandal ridden years.
Compare the SKY team revelations trickling out of what is in the jiffy bag? No one knows. Sir Bradley Wiggins is under the microscope too for substance abuse and the team is rocking with a culture of bullying. With Jalabert and Virenque tainted too but still prominent in the sport and Lance Armstrong railing cycling is in an unholy mess and I’m surprised it still attracts sponsors.
All the tv watching made me reach for a volume from my sporting library and I spent a pleasant hour or so with a gin and tonic in hand reading that cricket writer who painted in words John Arlott laud 25 of his favourite players starting with the Master, Jack Hobbs.
He scored more runs 61,257 and centuries (197) than anybody else.
Arlott pays tribute to him in prose and poetry in a essay not longer than 5 pages.
