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Articles by Tom Hollingworth

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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

Crowd control

It’s an ironic issue that English football – having moaned the absence of crowds – is now presented with a tricky problem by their return. The problem is “taking the knee”. Gareth Southgate has consulted the England  players who are in favour. Fans are not and even [...]

June 13, 2021 // 0 Comments

The insularity of English football

Recently I followed a discussion on Gareth Southgate’s selected squad for the forthcoming Euros presented on Radio 5  by Steve Grossman. For over an hour a panel of so-called experts – including Karen Carney who took the safe option of agreeing with everyone else, possibly in order to [...]

May 27, 2021 // 0 Comments

Roger Alton/fan power

One of my favourite sporting columns is that of Roger Alton, the former editor of The Observer, in The Spectator. The Spectator has long had a sporting contribution from the more cerebral enthusiast whose view counters the popular grain. Below are Roger Alton’s comments  in this week’s [...]

May 3, 2021 // 0 Comments

Women and Sport (continued)

As regular Rusters will be aware, despite being an old-fashioned Neanderthal born in the 1950s, I like to demonstrate my continuing relevance to younger generations by monitoring and occasionally featuring on this organ bulletins from the brave new “woke” world as the “Monstrous [...]

April 28, 2021 // 0 Comments

The ESL – how it was reported

It’s an interesting and in its own way instructive if not informative process to review that reporting of the rise and immediate fall of the ESL. No one broke the story as a scoop and few bothered with the detail when the project emerged. There was a clue as neither Real Madrid nor UEFA seemed [...]

April 27, 2021 // 0 Comments

Thoughts on the European Super League

If nothing else the proposed European Super League (ESL) of the major clubs of England, Italy and Spain has done something unique: united the disparate and diverse elements of football in voicing its opposition. The devil, as they say, lies in the detail. I found the best coverage to be in The [...]

April 20, 2021 // 0 Comments

My “remote” sporting weekend

The most notable impression that I took away from my personal sports-following (via radio, television and newspapers) over the weekend was that – when the time eventually comes to look back upon the records of the years 2020 and 2021 – it will only be fitting to place asterisks against them to [...]

April 5, 2021 // 0 Comments

England v Poland

Can it really be 48 years ago since that night at Wembley when a 1-1 draw against Poland eliminated England from World Cup qualification? It was a game when England missed chance after chance – they had 53 against Poland’s 2. I recall Kevin Hector of Derby coming on right at the end and he [...]

March 31, 2021 // 0 Comments

Martin Johnson (journalist) – RIP

The sad reached me yesterday of the death of Martin Johnson, a great character and one of the most gifted fellow sporting pen-pushers (or should that be “keyboard-tappers”?)  to have graced media centres at UK sports grounds over the last four decades. As a tribute I can do no better [...]

March 20, 2021 // 0 Comments

The physicality of female sport (a postscript)

Earlier this month I posted on this august organ a piece listing some of the physiological differences between men and women (The physicality of female sport – 11th March 2021) and discussing how, in modern sport – attended as it is by the strains of extreme training and strength and [...]

March 19, 2021 // 0 Comments

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