Boxing

Book review (a curate’s egg)

I bought Robert Colls’ new book This Sporting Life: Sport & Liberty in England, 1760-1960 about three months ago after both reading a review of it in one of the Sunday newspapers and having it recommended to me by a pal because of my general interest in boxing and its forebear – [...]

October 21, 2020 // 0 Comments

A farewell to two notables

At our stage of life – it comes with the territory – brushes with mortality in one form or another attend Rusters all too often but it is fitting that today we salute two Brits whose deaths were announced on Thursday. DAME DIANA RIGG Diana Rigg will remain an iconic figure in British [...]

September 11, 2020 // 0 Comments

On my way to the bedroom

It is an article of faith on the Rust that, despite my position as boxing correspondent, I am never under an obligation to report on any particular boxing bill or indeed address any issue of the moment relating to the sport. Indeed, if I feel like it, I can either ‘withhold my fire’ in this [...]

August 23, 2020 // 0 Comments

On sport without spectators

The somewhat weird experience of watching televised sport being conducted behind locked doors and without spectators has become a leading symbol of the Covid-19 era as Governments the world over wrestle with the seemingly contradictory imperatives of protecting populations against the virus and [...]

August 3, 2020 // 0 Comments

My sporting weekend

One of the ironies of the post-lockdown period – when proper live sports action is still so scarce – is that one tends to spend more time than ever seeking it out on the television. For me it’s been something of a curate’s egg situation – “good in parts” – albeit that there have [...]

July 27, 2020 // 0 Comments

The Professional/W.C Heinz

I can think of many excellent boxing films – Someone up There loves Me, Rocky and Raging Bull – and some great writers and writings on the Noble Art of Boxing, but it’s fiction is harder to find. This is why I enjoyed The Professional. It’s the story of Eddie Brown [...]

June 19, 2020 // 0 Comments

Remembering ROUND ONE

I too served my journo apprenticeship with Round One along with Jimmy Westacott and retain the happiest memories. Walter Schlumbermayer contributed a column he wired over in those pre internet days called `Stateside with Schlumbermayer’. He took us into the Garden, steaks at Jack Dempsey’s [...]

June 6, 2020 // 0 Comments

Tony Zale – hewn of rock

Many years ago I cut my teeth as a boxing hack on alternative boxing publication called Round One. It was comprised of wannabees like me and has beens like Walter Schlumbermayer. Uncle Walt as we called him was as well known and respected as AJ Leibling and to have met him was a considerable [...]

June 5, 2020 // 0 Comments

More variations upon an unfortunate sporting theme

Back in the day – I cannot recall exactly when, it was about 1980 I think – there was a sports magazine produced in London in which an article appeared imagining a future world in which taking performance enhancing drugs had long been legitimised. The sting in the tail was that main character [...]

April 21, 2020 // 0 Comments

Let’s get serious about where all this is going!

With some trepidation because I am steeping into dark waters today – if Tom H. and his crew on the Rust’s sports team will permit me – but I’ve suddenly come to realisation that I’m sure will also have occurred to some of our astute readers about the position to which elite sport [...]

March 22, 2020 // 0 Comments

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Leopard Creek

November 30, 2020 // 0 Comments

If you asked me to name my favourite golf course it would not be the great American ones like Augusta, Pebble Beach nor Sawgrass, nor the Scottish links St Andrews, [...]
Brighton 1 Liverpool 1

November 29, 2020 // 0 Comments

The furore over VAR has reached such a fever pitch that it is now the main discussion point of a match. That Brighton deserved a draw and held arguably the best team in the [...]
Newlands nostalgia

November 28, 2020 // 0 Comments

Watching England’s victory in the T20 yesterday brought back memories of my five trips to the Cape. I first went in 1995, the tour Mike Atherton captained. It’s [...]
Annie Hall 1977

November 27, 2020 // 0 Comments

The Diane Keaton/Woody Allen season continues at the Rosen Multiplex with Annie Hall. I was particularly interested to see if it was now dated. It had not due to the humour [...]
Keeping a perspective

November 27, 2020 // 0 Comments

As most Rusters will be only too well aware, we oldies often have to make difficult decisions in order to negotiate a careful balancing act between – on the one hand – [...]