MURRAY BEATEN BUT NOT BOWED; HE WILL COME BACK.

Oh Dear ! After all the hype (on the BBC, at least), Andy Murray has come second again, beaten by Novak Djokovic in the final of the Australian Open Tennis Championships.

 

This is not to say that Murray played poorly but he was certainly second-best. Having won the first set on a tie-break, he had a chance to break his opponent's service at the start of the second but failed to take it. After that, it was toe-to-toe slugging until a second tire-break levelled the match. The third set started off in a subdued way and it was pretty obvious that both players were taking a bit of rest. suddenly, Murray showed some frailty and Djokovic pounced; the Serb raised his game and quickly won the set before racing through the fourth to take the crown.

 

From early in the third set it was clear that Murray was a spent force though it took several more games and a lot of meaningless drivel before the BBC commentators seemed to realise. How John Lloyd and Andrew Castle have become so entrenched as commentators has to be one of the great mysteries of the modern sporting world; neither has anything useful to say and both have a range of quite ridiculous phrases which they trot out instead of talking English. 'Raised his level' and 'lovely change up', immediatley spring to mind though there many more. They seem alwasy to be slow in seeing the obvious and regularly come up with possible excuses as to why 'our boy' is losing, or suggestions that the opponent is beginning to struggle when nothing of the sort is happening.

 

A couple of days ago, Murray played his heart out to defeat the grestest player of the modern era, Roger Federer, over 5 gruelling sets. Today he simply ran out of steam. For 2 sets, it was nip-and-tuck between him and Djokovic and, in the continued absence of Rafael Nadal, these 2 must now be the top 2 players in the world. In the end, though, the easier semi-final and extra day of rest which Djokovic enjoyed may well have been crucial as his stamina lasted and Murray's didn't.

 

The French Open is always different and others may well come through to contest that final, but Wimbledon and the US open later in the year could easily have Djokivic and Murray slugging it out in the last match; my money'son Murray to win at least one of those tournaments and possibly both; he is now every bit as good as Djokovic, today he was simply not quite as fresh.

 

 

MAN UTD DRAW, FERGIE COMPLAINS; WHAT'S NEW ?

I've just watched a rather good football match between my team, Tottenham, and the best British side of the last 20 years, Manchester United. United took a lead in the first half and looked likely to win until a literally last minute equaliser from Tottenham took the gloss off of their day. Given the overall run of play, I think, admittedly I may be biased, that a draw was a fair result. Tottenham played surprisingly well and took the game to United for most of the time, though their finishing was lacking and their defence was a little suspect at times. Nonetheless, it was probably the Manchester goal keeper who kept the visitors in the game with several fine, if eccentric, saves, while the Tottenham goal minder was rarely troubled.

 

During the match there were a few debatable decisions by the officials as there usually are. However, trust Alex Ferguson to bring them up in his post-match interview on 'Sky'; at least, he brought up the ones that went against his team. Ferguson berated, politely for a change, the officials who had failed to see a host of offences against his side, while blatantly ignoring those committed by his own players. For my money, one blatant foul by Patrice Evra on Aaron Lennon should have seen the offender dismissed from the pitch but ....................... .

 

Ferguson regularly tells the world what he thinks about referees, surely in an attempt to intimidate them. Even if it's not his overt intention, it is the consequence of his words and there can be few referees or linesmen (or assistant referees, as I believe they're now called) who will be unaware when they're officiating at a 'Fergie' match. The subliminal pressure applied to these officials is impossible to see or measure, but it's there and undoubtedly effective.

 

Why is it that football managers are not only allowed but encouraged to publicly criticise the performance of match officials ? In any sane world, such criticism would be confined to post-match discussion with the official authorities but, of course, top-flight football is not played in a sane world. It is played in 'Fergie World', where cheating and intimidation are not only second nature but are encouraged and even coached. While I'm pleased that my team didn't lose the match, I'm less than sure that I didn't lose something simply by watching and cheering my bunch of cheats against another bunch.
 

It really is time that someone sat on 'Fergie' and his ilk and did something to turn football back into a decent sport.

 

 

ARMSTRONG COMES CLEAN-ISH.

Many months after he was initially pronounced guilty by the kangaroo courts of world cycling, Lance Armstrong has finally admitted that he did, indeed, partake of drugs and used other methods in order to maintain an advantage over his rivals. We can now, and only now, find him guilty as charged and condemn his actions.

 

Unfortunately, it appears that Armstrong has stopped short of going into any details about the extent of his cheating, its full nature and the complicity of others; there must be little doubt that at least some of his colleagues and management team were aware of what was happening and may even have been actively involved but, thus far, we have not been told the identities of any other miscreants.

 

There has been talk of Armstrong participating in a 'Truth and Reconciliation' process, a modern idea of little real value, and what such an exercise would achieve is anyone's guess. The one thing that we do know is that Armstrong is not alone as a cheat in this sport; the comments of Nicole Cooke in the last couple of days made clear that she believed her own career was seriously hampered by the presence of others around her who not only used banned substances and practices, but also encouraged her to do the same.

 

Cycling has been a sport rotten to its core for as long as anyone knows; Tommy Simpson's death during the 1967 Tour de France was merely one manifestation of the rampant cheating that has existed for many decades and Armstrong's disgrace is simply the latest. Cycling is, though, not alone and drug cheats pervade every sporting sphere; it is high time that automatic, unchallengeable lifetime bans were introduced for all offenders. Any nations refusing, or failing, to act should have their competitors and teams automatically excluded from all international competitions - that would concentrate their minds wonderfully.

'THE POWER' POWERS HOME YET AGAIN !

I'm not a great darts fan but it's difficult to ignore the astonishing dominance achived by Phil Taylor over the last 20 or so years.

 

In the dim and distant past, Eric Bristow brought darts to prominence through his domination of the game over a period of years, but his achievements pale into insignificance beside those of the man known as 'The Power'. In a game generally ruled by younger men, Taylor, at 52, is the grand daddy of them all, and yet he remains not just a force to be reckoned with but the man they all have to beat.

 

Yesterday, Taylor won his 16th world darts title, something almost unimaginable in such a highly pressured game. The tiniest fraction of an inch can be the difference between success and failure and yet Taylor, year after year, has managed to avoid making even such miniscule errors in his pursuit of glory.

 

In an era when superlatives are routinely used to described the mundane, Taylor's achievements stand out as being worthy of the highest accolades. He is a true champion.

CHRISTOPHER MARTIN-JENKINS

The death of Christopher Martin-Jenkins has deprived cricket of one of its brightest media stars of recent years.

 

Having started his broadcasting career in the almost forgotten days when the likes of Peter West, Jim Laker, John Arlott and Brian Johnstone adorned the commentary box, Martin-Jenkins served through a time of horrible change in our once great national summer game. Sadly, he could do little as the county championship was reduced to an almost empty shell and he was also obliged to sit by as the standard of radio commetary declined to the level of banal chit-chat between a bunch of former players whose abilities as reporters were questionable to say the least.

 

This said, Christopher Martin-Jenkins himself always maintained a highly knowledgeable and professional approach to his role, perhaps because cricket was a game he loved without ever having been quite good enough to play at the highest level. Others sitting alongside him tended towards the arrogance of those who had played at that level and knew all there was to know, rarely a recipe for success.

 

Martin-Jenkins will be missed very much by those true cricket lovers who prefer to hear about the match in progress rather than what the commentators had for breakfast or where they ate the night before. A sad loss indeed.

SPORTS PERSONALITY; OVERBLOWN NONSENSE.

Last night saw the BBC's annual review of the sporting year, broadcast as 'The Sports Personality of the Year 2012.' There was a time when I would have watched this annual event, glued to the television and desperate to hear of the exploits of 'my heroes'; not any more. In keeping with the modern mania for exaggerating everything to do with so-called celebrity, this programme has become an overblown, and very long, opportunity for the BBC to put on a ludicrous extravaganza at the expense of licence payers. Was all the noise and flashing lights really necessary, or was this a way simply to make the event seem far more important than it really was, in the same way that pop-stars are over-promoted ?

 

The viewing audience were confronted by 3 presenters none of whom has any great talent for presentation and all of whom have become increasingly innured in the horrible, smarmy world of sucking up to the 'stars'. There was a time when Sue Barker was a delight as the presenter of 'A Question of Sport', but no longer; now her sycophantic giggles at the stupid antics of the teams simply make me turn off. There was a time when Gary Lineker was a breath of fresh air as an expert on football and that's where he should have stayed. There was even a time when Claire Balding talked sense when it came to horse racing, but what on earth caused the BBC to believe she could front shows involving other sports or something so prestigious as 'Sports Personality' used to be ? 

 

Everyone was wonderful; everyone came through SUCH difficult times; everyone was so grateful to their coach, their physio, their medical team, their granny, their cat and so on. It was egregious and one longed for a Danny Blanchflower to walk on and tell them so. Instead, we had the nauseating sight of Sebastian Coe being given a lifetime award and trotting out his own stream of worthless platitudes and inanities. David Beckham, a man far more famous for being famous these days than for any sporting contribution, was called upon to string a few words together for no obvious reason other than who he was. We had the lunacy of the 'Team of the Year' award going to a team that didn't actually exist, the GB Olympic team; this was not a team, it was a bunch of individuals who happened to be at the same event. What madness !

 

When I read the sports' pages of my Saturday newspaper, I saw that Ladbroke's, the bookmakers' had Bradley Wiggins as odds-on favourite to win the individual award with Jessica Ennis and Andy Murray tipped to fill the minor places. That this was the exact result had me wondering what inside information Ladbroke's had; they are, after all, not so good when it comes to picking horses. 

 

I only watched bits of this over-long nonsense and listened to even less, but I don't think I'll be bothering at all next year. I don't need the BBC to tell me who were the stars of the year and I certainly don't need to listen to the oily and sycophantic tones of those whom they choose to force upon us, whether as presenters, stars or celebrities. All of this glitz and glamour is horribly overdone and our sporting performers ludicrously overvalued and overpaid; perhaps when we come to realise that sport is really of very little importance in the real world, we will start to grow again as a nation.

 

FOOTBALL : RITUALISED WARFARE.

Yesterday I read the news that the use of netting may be introduced at football grounds. This has nothing to do with the goals, but would be intended to protect players from the unwanted attentions of unruly spectators.

 

At a time when we have regular complaints of racism towards players, and high profile police investigations as a result, it's now been suggested that netting should be introduced in order to protect players from objetcs thrown towards the pitch. What this all says to me is that football is becoming far too significant in our society, a sure sign of overall decline.

 

The animalistic behaviour of many players has increased exponentially as the money to be made from this game has risen. Players foul and cheat as part of the normal game and shout abuse at each other and the officials as a matter of course. That this behaviour has fueled an increasingly sectarian response on the terraces is hardly surprising; spectators use whatever 'tools' they can find in order to encourage their own team while abusing and discouraging their opponents.

 

Spectators are now routinely filmed in order to catch those who misbehave and may soon be confronted by netting in order to prevent thenm throwing objects on to the pitch; next, it will undoubtedly be metal railings. How can this be considered civilized ? How can football be considered any longer to be a sport ? It is ritualised savagery, warfare between opposing factions and yet millions are now wedded to it.

 

There was a time when sport was just that, a pastime for the masses which gave them relief from the weekly drudgery of their working lives. More recently, a range of sports has been accorded an entirely different status and position in our society and some, like football, are wholly out of control. In ancient Rome, 'The Games' and similar spectacles became greater and greater as that mighty empire raced headlong towards barbarism and eventual collapse.

 

We should all beware lest we are headed down the same road.