Articles by Tom Hollingworth

About Tom Hollingworth

Tom Hollingsworth is a former deputy sports editor of the Daily Express. For many years he worked in a sports agency, representing mainly football players and motor racing drivers. Tom holds a private pilot’s licence and flying is his principal recreation. More Posts

My Sporting Weekend

The Border-Gavaskar trophy between Australia and India has done much to enhance and elevate the status of Test cricket. India won the First Test in Perth – Australia levelled the series in Adelaide – and the Third Test in Brisbane was a washout draw. Australia won the Fourth Test in [...]

January 5, 2025 // 0 Comments

Man Utd: can they come back?

Students of history will know that the surprising factor is not that empires decline but that they last for so long. It’s not different in sport. Manchester Utd took a long time – and tried numerous managers – before achieving success after Matt Busby. Liverpool dominated the [...]

November 29, 2024 // 0 Comments

The Rugby weekend

Harlequins have always operated a productive academy and one of the greatest supporter’s joys in any sport is the emergence of youth talent. Thus on Friday night I watched with utmost interest the game on the Premiership Cup – yet another competition – between Quins and Ealing [...]

November 10, 2024 // 0 Comments

Rugby union’s medical crisis

In the context of moves in both the northern and Southern Hemispheres towards a global rugby union season – and a slew of potential (increasingly radical) changes in the laws of the game apparently being floated that might make it more spectator/viewer-friendly and thereby more profitable [...]

October 22, 2024 // 0 Comments

Premiership rugby v Premiership Football

Yesterday I watched Leicester Tigers v Gloucester Rugby (26-24) and Liverpool v Chelsea (2-1). Before the latter game Pargie called to say that the odds were favourable to back against Liverpool and a wager enlivens the game. I decided to watch from a different perspective, namely which offered the [...]

October 21, 2024 // 0 Comments

The state of Rugby Union in England

It is a well-known fact that the sport of Rugby Union across the board is in plenty of financial and other trouble at the moment. There is talk of making it a “summer sport” in the UK – and even the floating of the idea of it trying to create a merger with Rugby League in order to [...]

September 26, 2024 // 0 Comments

Saturday TV sport

My aspiration of a whole day as a couch potato sipping a Desperado lager was destroyed by the six-hour disappearance of our cat Maisie. As I was the last to see her when I slipped out to buy the papers I was held responsible by daughter Carla and wife Emma. Maisie is our fourth cat and each one [...]

September 8, 2024 // 0 Comments

My sporting Saturday

Although there was no breakfast match , the Southern Hemisphere game between South Africa and New Zealand, which ended 31-27, was worth waiting for. I have already said the All Blacks are a work in progress under new Head Coach Scott Robertson – with no Brodie Retallack or Aaron Smith – [...]

September 1, 2024 // 0 Comments

Natural talent versus coached

Prior to the beginning of the First Test, on TMS that know-all Michael Vaughan was holding forth on his view that the primacy of Australia, England and India enabled them to coach their best talent and thereby it was not a level cricket field. I agree with the first contention – but not the [...]

August 25, 2024 // 0 Comments

Sporting Saturday

With the Premiership back on a typically sunny hot day, there was always going to be loads of football to savour. However, my sports watch began at 8/05 with a rugby match between the All Blacks and the Pumas from Argentina. There is no more dangerous side in any sport than the avenging All [...]

August 18, 2024 // 0 Comments

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El Cid/The book and the film

January 12, 2025 // 0 Comments

I was recently given a new biography of El Cid, the Spanish 11th Century knight, by Nora Berend, a Cambridge University historian. Her thesis is that Rodrigo de Viva – [...]
The Tanner Report: Fulham 4 Watford 1

January 10, 2025 // 0 Comments

Reporting on this victory is secondary to commenting on the decline of the FA Cup in my lifetime. The year of my birth (1954) witnessed what many consider the greatest game [...]
Foreign detective writing

January 9, 2025 // 0 Comments

We tend to assume that only English-speaking writers can write detective novels. In Britain the genre is dominated by women – Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, Marjoriec [...]
Surprising actors in a 1980 TV series

January 8, 2025 // 0 Comments

On Monday I watched Bergerac, now shown at 3.00pm on the UK Drama channel. It featured – as Belle Young, an eccentric boatowner and smuggler – the 1970s actress [...]
The Tanner Report: Fulham 2 Ipswich 2

January 6, 2025 // 0 Comments

Against Wolves, Southampton – and now Ipswich – Fulham have earned just 2 points, but 5 against Liverpool, Arsenal and Chelsea. We do better against the big boys. [...]