1. 100 BRILLIANT FACTS ABOUT BASEBALL 2. THE MAKING OF JÜRGEN KLOPP 3. SPOTLIGHT ON DAME LAURA KENNY 4. JAMES ANDERSON IN CONVERSATION 5. GYMNASTIC FANTASTIC: SIMONE BILES FOOTBALL Nige Tassell on a single season in ‘the toughest league’ ATHLETICS On your mark. The menfastestinhistory GOLF How to correctly follow The Open at St Andrews FORMULA ONE Palms, Marino and a false marina –welcome to Miami RUGBY The astonishing rise of ExetertheChiefs CROQUET The sport;thirdworld’sbestlawnmowed BOXING At arms length. The realitybrutalofreach “A CHAMPION IS AFRAID OF LOSING. EVERYONE ELSE IS AFRAID OF WINNING” BILLY JEAN KINGISSUE NO.1 JUL 2022 £10 UK €14 EUR $14 US $20 CN 1 3 2 4 5
In Pitch I hope you’ll find the best of both worlds. An enthusiast’s passion, all put together with a professional’s eye. Taking sport in the round. And making it singularlybrilliant through our shared wonder. Let me know if we’re getting it right.
And as magazines go, the best magazine maker of his or any generation, David Hepworth (column on page 12), once said to me, “Aff, I’ll take an enthusiastic amateur over a jaundiced professional any day of the week”. And with this being said to me at a time when I felt an enthusiastic amateur myself, it rang comfortingly true. And still does.
And as a consequence of this very specific set of circumstances, it has meant that over the years I’ve watched a lot-lot-lot of sport. To the point where I can look at anything in front of me pretty dispassionately. Objectively, even. Forensically, at times. But it doesn’t mean that I don’t love it. Or appreciate it. Or even still marvel at it.
EDITORIAL ANDY AFFORD
I oftheyou’llhopefindbestboth”
Sport is passion. The Red Bull Racing pit crew surround a victorious Max Verstappen. Bahrain, March 2022.
FRONT ROW 3
The writer in conversation with James Anderson, arguably England cricket’s greatest ever player, exclusively for Pitch magazine. Emirates Old Trafford, May 2022.
A SHORT LOVE LETTER. TO SPORT.
“
Enjoy your new favourite magazine. And vive les sport x
I’ve played sport. Coached sport. Written about sport. All professionally.
I’d guess that I’m pretty unusual in the above. Certainly unusual at Pitch. The case in point being that everyone else contributing to this magazine is absolutely mad about sport. Just like you are.
SPECIAL THANKS TO: Alex AndrewChamberlenDiggle at F1
Jack Bryan Greg KieranLandsdowneLongworth
has been at the forefront of magazine publishing in the South West in recent years. There’s no better guide to the delights of Devon and, in this issue, its insurgent rugby club, the Exeter Chiefs, starting on page 44.
Ruby Finklestein
The Hard Yards (page 70) tracks the joys and pains of the Championship. As
Tim Purcival at Northampton Saints
follow his
Jatinder Hanspal
Andy Cooper Paul Simpson Nige LauraBeckyTassellThompsonWybrow
Andy Afford Sam
EDITORIAL DESIGN
David Hepworth Steph Hilborne Ed Warner
Matilda Afford Harry Borden Ben PhotographyJoeCarlAndreKieraArianaHunterMarrin-ClealMcGroryMena-HebbertSukonikWrightcourtesy of Getty Images unless stated FEATURE WRITERS
&PHOTOGRAPHYILLUSTRATION
PUBLISHER Kevin Whitchurch
Richard Pitts at Getty Images
has written primarily about sport and music. A former professional cricketer. He’s in conversation with James Anderson on page 52.
has written for print publications
George Barton
LAURA WYBROW
was founding editor of FourFourTwo, and is a writer of books that include Who Invented the Stepover?: and other crucial football conundrums. He writes about Jürgen Klopp (page 34) and the 100m dash, starting on page 84.
ANDY AFFORD
ANDY COOPER
stencil-agency.co.uk
STARBURST and Slimming World Magazine. She now reviews tech for RadioTimes.com and for this issue of Pitch has profiled gymnast Simone Biles. Page 80
journalist and author. His
is a book a bonus, Twitter
PAUL SIMPSON
HARRY BORDEN is an iconic photographer of icons. His portfolio extending some 30 years. They include, well, you can see who they include on page 102
DanAmirMillieKateVickyBowlesElwickKusztalMatthewsPourghoureiyanWilkinson
COLUMNISTS
Terry Bowles
NIGE TASSELL
feed, it’s a riot of joy, recently discovered jewels, and undiluted common sense. CONTRIBUTORS 4
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Hittin’ Dingers And Stealin’ First The Pitch 100 facts about ‘America’s Game’ 23 CONTENTS 6
Career-defining portraits by one of the world’s best ’toggies 110 Snapshots, Potshots And Hotshots 2022’s moments that mattered 119 Obits
A tribute to Dame Laura Kenny
084 Sub 10
Ice and a slice; the NHL’s Bob Probert
Seven sprinters who passed their sport’s baton 093 Got. Need. Swap.
Recognising sporting lives lived 130 Baddies
052 Northern Powerhouse
Spotlight on Simone Biles
018 Pound-for-pound…
Boxing’s longest levers
Charting the recent highs and lows of the Exeter Chiefs
009 Against The Clock
060 The 150th Open
A minute in the company of Northampton Saints’ George Furbank 016 Pumped Up Kicks
A weekend of Team GB Olympic glory, KP, and Scottish football
Plastic Fantastic
Summer’s most wearable ‘wheels’ 017 Checking Out Improve your performance on the oche 018 Reach For The Stars
098
080 121 034
034 Herr Metal Klopp in Germany. Why it made him, and how
080 Rough n’ Tumble
Understanding why Ultimate Frisbee is in a world of its own
REGULARS
An unsung hero gets sung about 019 How Hard Can It Be Croquet made simple 020 Training Camps
Influential railway stations
022 Speech Marks
A season in the Championship
Runners, riders, hooks and sliders; navigating golf’s major Major 066 Life-cycle
In conversation with England fast bowler James Anderson
070 War Stories
60
Athletes running their mouths 102 It Takes A Lifetime
044 Local Heroes
London Revisited2012...
Greg Lansdowne loves Panini stickers. He tells us which ones he loves the most.
CONTENTS 7
But when you consider that pre-pandemic Forbes estimated Mercedes’ overall budget to be $484m, you can see that this is
Ed Warner is chair of GB Wheelchair Rugby and the Palace for Life Foundation.
Does the financial shift in this year’s Formula 1 regulations constitute topflight motorsport ‘levelling itself up’, or is it something else altogether?
WHERE THERUBBERTHEMEETSROAD
He writes weekly sportinc.substack.comat
Driver earnings on the track, which sit outside the team spending caps, vary wildly – more than $60m a season for Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen, maybe ten times greater than those trailing in their wake. And some of these also-rans only have their seats because connected parties have invested sizeable sums in their teams. The leading team principals themselves can add equity stakes in their enterprises alongside multimillion pound rewards, again differing hugely across the grid.
“ It is recognisedthat the absence of promotion and relegation in closed shops creates a need for sporting jeopardyto be stimulated”
The big American sports, including the NFL, have long embraced arrangements that compress competitiveness. These include salary caps, pooled commercial income and player drafts which favour teams that have performed poorly. There is still scope for financial muscle and intelligence to win the day, but it’s recognised that the absence of promotion and relegation in these closed shops creates a need for sporting jeopardy to be stimulated. Two horse races might be great for a season or two, but commercial and TV value soar when a bigger proportion of matches in a league matter. For proof, just look at the English Premier League’s broadcast rights.
If a combination of best car and best driver wins the day, then with the current budgetary rules I’d expect driver salary inflation to explode over the next couple of years. While there’s no reason for any team to lose money now, the temptation to compete on driver talent – up and down the grid – will be too much to resist. And the audience wouldn’t want it any other way.
COLUMN ED
F1 may burn brightly when two drivers and their constructors slug it out for the championship, but it needs ten teams to fill the grid at every grand prix. And not just to provide the backmarkers whose late spins might controversially affect the whole course of a season as in Abu Dhabi last year. The leading teams have a vested interest in the economics of the also-rans, hence the sport’s new financial and technical regulations that are having their full effect for the first time in 2022.
WARNER FRONT ROW 8
Thetransformative.trackisn’tentirely level. The heavyweight teams have secured special payments from the central pot under spurious pretexts – in reality, the price that the collective has had to pay to secure everyone’s buy-in. The biggest payment is to Ferrari who get a whopping $68m simply for having been around throughout the sport’s history.
After years of ballooning costs and a struggle to get 20 cars onto the grid, the strictures of Covid helped tip F1’s ten teams into agreeing reduced spending limits. This Concorde Agreement, signed in August 2020, limits each team to $140m of ‘core costs’. Various items sit outside this limit, most notably the salaries of the drivers and team principals.
Not that the smaller teams are quibbling. Guenther Steiner, Haas team principal and possibly the brightest star in Netflix’s Formula 1: Drive to Survive, said recently that “a business which is losing money after a while, you run out of money or you run out of passion, one of the two, so then you stop. But I think it’s a very good time at the moment for all the teams.”
“We’re just 32 fat cat Republicans who vote socialist once a year.” The late Art Modell, controversial NFL franchise owner, could just as easily have been talking about Formula One as American football. This F1 season is the most socialist yet. Costs are down, the grid has been shaken up and the racing is closer. Who says capitalism conquers all?
How do you like to spend your money? Food and drink.
WE TOOK 60 SECONDS OF NORTHAMPTON SAINTS & ENGLAND’S GEORGE FURBANK’S TIME TO ASK HIM A LIFETIME OF QUESTIONS
theWhat’smost expensive thing you’ve ever bought? and/or car table.Aaside?dining
MY LOVE by Florence And The Machine - James Anderson DOIN’ THIS by Luke Combs - Andy Afford FAMILY AFFAIR by Sly & The Family Stone - Andy Cooper BRAVE by Ella Henderson - Becky Thompson THUNDERSTRUCK by AC/DC – Ed Warner
Earliest sporting memory? The 2003 Rugby World Cup; watching the final at the club in Huntingdon.
Was there a performance?breakthrough In 2018, during an away game at Sale. I’d just started playing full-back then. How did you hear you had been picked for England? I got added to the team WhatsApp group.
WHIPPED CREAM by Ari Lennox
Now Playing.
NO WAHALA by 1da Banton - Kate Kusztal
RAPP SNITCH KNISHES FEAT. MR. FANTASTIK by MF Doom - Sam Bowles
- Kevin Whitchurch
Favourite current player and why? Antione Dupont. His consistency and ability. Arguably the best player in the world right now.
LAVA by Still Woozy
- Paul Simpson
Where are you from? Huntingdon
“Go with the one where the Liverpool fans change the words to sing about Klopp.”
- Laura Wybrow
Favourite sportsperson growing up? Andrew Flintoff. There was always something happening, or about to happen.
“It’s MY FAVOURITE SONG. I could listen to it 12 hours straight.”
OPEN THE FLOODGATES by The Smile - Greg Lansdowne
Where did you go to school? Kimbolton School and then to Bedford School for sixth form.
DO I LOVE YOU by Frank Wilson
BIG DREAMS by Bakar - Kieran Longworth
STRONGER (WHAT DOESN’T KILL YOU) by Kelly Clarkson - Steph Hilborne
“Takes me directly to Old Trafford. Anticipation, expectation and hope. All to be dashed...
When did you realise you had talent? Possibly not until right up to the point of signing my first professional contract at 18.
I thought that I was probably better than most of the players of my age, but it took that to make me think that maybe I had ability more than most.
- Ruby Finklestein
FRONT ROW 9
I FEEL FINE by The Beatles
Pitch Issue No.1 - the tracks that got us here…
Favourite other sport? Cricket. I live right near the cricket ground in Northampton. What do you like to do away from work? I like golf. And I’m not sure if ‘like’ is the right word, but I’m also in the process of finishing a degree in Environmental Science. Final year.
“Song? Current fave? Peasier than facing you in the nets (hah!).”
OH, HE’S A LUCKY GUY I WISH I WAS LIKE HIM
Ten minutes later it was all over. The final act verged on the comical: veteran first baseman Bill Buckner, knees stiffer than Judge Jeffreys’s sentences, let Mookie’s weak grounder creep between his legs, handing Davey Johnson’s men victory, and the springboard for the club’s first Series triumph.
They began just as horrendously. Come the penultimate contest, they were down 5-3 in the bottom of the 10th inning to the Boston Red Sox, who hadn’t won the Fall Classic since their owner, Harry Frazee, sold Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees in 1919 to finance a Broadway play: easily the daftest management error in sporting history.
COLUMN RUBY FINKLESTEIN FRONT ROW 10
‘CAUSE WHEN HE TALKS ABOUT ME HE DON’T LOOK THIS WAY
I could bang on, but I’d rather focus on my first date with cricket’s spiritual soul brother, baseball. It was 1986, and my sister had recently married a New York Mets fan from New Jersey. Alan had done his best to explain the rules, even the indecipherable infield fly rule (don’t ask). Nothing, though, could possibly have prepared me for Game 6 of that October’s World Series.
Sport, you see, has been incredibly kind to me. First footie match? The 1966 FA Cup final that saw Everton become the first team ever to win the old pot after trailing 2-0, a feat not matched in Middlesex until 2014.
That the Mets have yet to win another says it all. Mind you, having signed Max Scherzer, the game’s finest pitcher, I will spend the summer reasonably confident that their 36-year wait may be over. Reasonably.
Ruby Finklestein is the publisher of The New Londoner, and a sport and music writer, now living in Rotterdam, specifically. Not, ‘or anywhere’.
The swaggering Mets were staggering around the last-chance saloon when a smile on legs by the name of Mookie Wilson came to bat. The champagne was already in the visitors’ dressing room.
DA METS 1986
The field is flooded by Mets after winning Game 7 of the 1986 World Series against the Boston Red Sox.
First cricket match? That summer’s Oval Test, which served up both beauty (elegant centuries from Tom Graveney and JT Murray) and improbability (a lastwicket stand of 128 between John Snow and Ken Higgs). Sport in a nutshell.
Rickie Lee Jones was talking about Tom Waits when she wrote that verse in 1979, shortly after he dumped her, but she could just as easily have been referring to yours truly.
Channel 4, the new kid on the TV block, had screened highlights of the previous best-of-seven series, wherein the Kansas City Royals became the first side ever to prevail after losing the first two games of the best-of-seven showdown at home. But that was nowt compared to what the Mets conjured up in Game 6 the following year.
TUNEIN,TURNON,DROPYOUROBJECTIONS IllustrationbyMarkWaters YESTHESPFLTVDEBATEIS20YEARSOLD.BUTHEREISWHY–ANDHOW–ITCOULDSTILLPROVIDETHEWAYTOENSURETHEPROSPERITYOFTHESCOTTISHGAME.BYPAULMACDONALD ISSUE 24 OUT NOW 6 nutmeg June2022 June2022 nutmeg McDermidLadies �
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ThinkofDegas’pastelsofballetdancersrehearsing:alllegsandstretchesandskittishbustle.Nowreplacethesatinpumpswithfootballboots,andthepaletulletutuswithfuschia-pinktops,andyouwillhavesenseoftheMcDermidLadiesinthedressingroomofWindmillCommunityCampus,Kirkcaldy,onSunday,March20,2022.Everywhere:ablurofmotion.Tomyleft,right-backChelseaDuncanishavinghercalfstrappedwithKtape.Tomyright,captainTylerRattray–askelfofawoman,yetapparentlyunbreakable–isshoutingforhairspray,whileout-of-actionKatieDonaldsontellsthegruesomestoryofhowsheslashedherkneewhenshetrippedandfellonhermother’sgardenscissors.Atmyrequest,strikerDemiGearholdsoutherarmtoshowmehertattoos.Shepointstoone:aballamidstheartbeatpulsesonanECGchart.“That’showimportantfootballistome,”shesays.“It’smylifeblood.”McDermidLadiesarepreparingtotakeonCentralGirlsinthelastgroupstageoftheScottishWomen’sFootballLeagueCup,andtheyhaveeveryrighttobe
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PhotographsbyAlanMcCredie
TRANSFEROFPOWERWHATRAITHROVERSLOSTINTHEGOODWILLIESAGAINTERMSOFTRUSTANDCOMMUNITY,MCDERMIDLADIESGAINED.BUTFORGETTHELIMELIGHT,THEYJUSTWANTTOPLAY.BYDANIGARAVELLIMcDermidLadiescaptainTylerRattray.
Published every three months, Nutmeg is a high-class home for quality articles about Scottish football’s past, present and future. It offers opinion, reflection, interviews, insight, illustration, photography and poetry. It is a unique blend between 196 uniquely elegant pages www.nutmegmagazine.co.uk vergeofmeltdown.AlucrativespellofTVrevenuehadcreatedacultureofexcess,ofarrogance,andthebeliefthattheleague’svaluehadgrown,perhapsbeyondthesizeofthemarketinwhichitresided. £48m,In1998,Skyhadbestoweduponusafour-yeardeal.Withthatcash,clubspushedtheboundariesofwhattheycouldborrow.Andwiththat,wages-to-revenueratiosedgedeverfurtherintounsustainablelevels.Andyettheleaguewasarguablyneverbetterintermsoftop-to-bottomquality.CelticandRangershadstrongsquads,
GET FEELING.NUTMEGTHAT
A very experienced TV producer once told me that when you get round to it all the greatest TV programmes boil down to witnessing what he called “moments of disclosure on people’s faces”. He was right. Obviously the close-ups on the human face are what make TV drama work. Thunderstruck at the end of EastEnders. It’s also what makes studio-based shows work. Think Mastermind. It’s all about the closeup and the single bead of sweat. Consider for a moment reality TV. Every programme hinges on that moment when the contestants find out if they are going on to higher things or being let go and in that instant you see triumph or disaster written on their faces.
THE REASON WHY WE ALL CARE ABOUT TELEVISED SPORT
What you probably don’t realise is how much part it also plays in TV sport. The action and athleticism is all very well but the thing that really hooks the general audience is the drama and the drama is written on people’s faces rather than their bodies. That’s why football works so well. We zoom in for the mad exultation on the face of the player who just scored. We go searching for the despair written on the face of the goalkeeper who let him. We see the manager on the touchline contemplating the sack. It’s the purest drama. Helmet sports like cricket and Formula 1 can’t compete.
“ The thing that really hooks the general audience is the drama –and the drama is written on people’s faces”
Despair, frustration and elation: Rangers captain James Tavernier is defeated in Seville; Lewis Hamilton misses out on the World Championship in a dramatic final lap in Abu Dhabi; 19-year-old Emma Radicanu triumphs in the US Open.
Sky Sports News discovered years ago that you can even turn five blokes watching games you cannot see into the most amazingly gripping TV – just as long as they’re watching teams that they once played for –and therefore they still have skin in the game. Skin that their faces can never quite disguise. And now we all do it. Of all the millions of fan videos that are distributed via YouTube at least half are films of regular fans watching their teams either triumph or
David Hepworth audience.theBobrecords.forauthorandjournalist,Broadcaster,podcasterbest-sellingwell-knownhavingtoomanySwornatbyGeldofinfrontofworld’slargestTV
shoot themselves in the foot. Fair enough. I would rather watch them than watch any panel of experts in theThisworld.links to another great truth about TV. That most of the time you could turn the sound off and you would still understand whatever programme your were watching. It’s a visual medium and the only kind of language it understands is the language of the body. And this is the only kind of language that can’t stop itself telling the truth. That’s why TV adverts always get it so wrong. Their supporters in TV ads are always snuggling up on the sofa, barely able to conceal their delight. That, as every football fan knows, is a bare-faced lie. The truth is that real football supporters are always either consumed with tension or fluorescent with relief. Both conditions are written on their faces. There is no inbetween.
COLUMN DAVID HEPWORTH
FRONT ROW 12
Unhappy with the growing popularity of the female game, the men in charge put a stop to it. On December 5, 1921, the Football Association banned women from playing on FA-affiliated pitches claiming that, “the game of football is quite unsuitable for females and ought not to be encouraged". It was 50 years before that ruling wasUnfortunately,overturned.
Venus Williams recently stated that it “felt like a slap in the face” when as a young professional she realised she was not receiving prize money equal to men. In tennis, with leaders like Billie Jean King, Martina Navratilova and the Williams sisters, there has been real advances.
THE BYCHALLENGESEVER-PRESENTFACEDWOMENINSPORT
COLUMN STEPH HILBORNE
Steph Hilborne OBE is CEO at Women in Sport; committed to advancement.participant
And television audiences are voting with their remote controls – recent figures from the Women’s Sport Trust show a record 15.1 million people tuned in to watch women’s sport in the first three months of this year, triple that of the same period in 2021. Brands are also wanting in on the action. TikTok, Barclays, Kia and LinkedIn are among the companies to announce recent high-profile sponsorship deals. And although we must celebrate progress, we must also not forget it follows a long history of painful exclusion and resultant campaigning.Thesell-out crowds for this year’s Women’s Euros are not a new phenomenon. When women were called on to do factory jobs at the start of the First World War women’s football began to flourish, often pulling in more spectators than the men’s game. But when the war was over, the FA became more and more cautious of the success surrounding female participation in football. The final straw came on Boxing Day, 1920, when Dick Kerr’s Ladies played St Helens Ladies in front of 53,000 fans at Everton’s Goodison Park ground (with 10,000 more outside) –the largest attendance since records began.
FRONT ROW 13
FC Barcelona reach the UEFA Women’s Champions League Final, a match that attracted a world record crowd of 91,553 at Camp Nou.
The fastest culture change comes from those in power. Appointing strong women in roles of influence drives changes to funding, exposure and treatment of women. In the knowledge that where women and girls thrive, society thrives.
female exclusion from sport isn’t unique to football, neither is it new, nor fair. The founder of the modern Olympic Games, Pierre de Coubertin, even stated that he did not want women to “sully the Olympic Games with their sweat.”
A recent survey by Women In Sport found that half as many girls (30 per cent) as boys (60 per cent) dreamt of reaching the top in sport. Girls just don’t see sport as a viable career option. The relative lack of female role models, recognition and visibility of women in all sports, meagre pay, and limited investment is hardly appealing.
2022 is proving to be a turning point for women’s sport. In March, 91,553 fans gathered at the Nou Camp to witness Barcelona beat Real Madrid in the Champions League, smashing previous attendance records for the women’s game, whilst record-breaking crowds are gathering in stadiums each week as the recent rugby union Six Nations reached its thrilling climax.
MATICASCHE-
‘The Cathedral’, Milan FRONT ROW 14
1 Greenlit in late December 2021 as a new sport and leisure district, comprised of a pedestrian-only, 50,000sqm green space.
The stadium replaces the San Siro as the new home of AC Milan and FC Internazionale Milano.
2
5
Global design company, Populous, are its creators. Having previously designed Wembley Stadium, the main stadiums for the Sydney 2000 and London 2012 Olympic Games, the Emirates Stadium and Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, as well as the Yankee Stadium in New York.
3
4 Its design is said to be inspired by two of the most famous buildings in the city – the Duomo di Milano and the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele.
6
The project’s aim is ‘to consolidate and improve the image of the City of Milan and of Italian football’.
The architects are also responsible for the Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle; which is set to be the first-ever net zero carbon stadium in the
world.FRONT ROW 15
417 852 963
FRONT ROW / KIT 16
This year’s top trainers. By looks, form and function. According to Pitch’s tamed influencer.
Outfield RUSSELL & BROMLEY £175 In the ivory. In a waxy calf leather. Easy wearing. A mum or dad’s alternative to the Nike Air Force 1 – russellandbromley.co.uk / Dice Lo Sneaker AXEL ARIGATO £185 Modern-vintage vibes, and they’re designed to age gracefully. Cleaning them means distressing them to reveal the leather base level beneath – axelarigato.com / Club C Revenge REEBOK £64.99 A Reebok Classic, classic. Forever old. And new – office.co.uk / V-10 VEJA us$150 Modern profile, unpronounceable name, our top unisex buy – arket.com / All Star Hi 70 High-Top Canvas CONVERSE £79.99 If you chucked out your Chucks, then might we suggest you invest in some more. They go with anything. Making a statement, whilst easily fitting in. Unbreakable style – office.co.uk / Trainer Basic H&M £19.99 H&M’s white leather-look option. A weekender, or even smart enough for most offices. People won’t believe what you paid for them – hm.com.uk / Waffle One NIKE £99.95 Springy, with what the brand is describing as a ‘Citron Tint’, offering a great hybrid work/play look – nike.com / Sustainable Stan Smith ADIDAS ORIGINALS £75 Has this iconic shoe ever been off trend? A sustainability uplift means this new version has a vegan upper and an outsole made from rubber waste – asos.com / XC-72 NEW BALANCE £100 This is super-confident ‘70s retro done right. Hard to know where to start. ‘Out there’ enough to go with everything. In the black and calm taupe – newbalance.co.uk
Rated.
Using tungsten darts – heavier than brass and as a consequence with a slimmer barrel profile – they make things easier by being denser and compact.
One.
Two.
Five.
Three.
Concentrate on achieving a smooth release of the dart. The more exaggerated the movement, the more likely the dart is to veer off line.
Seven.
Eight.
Stand comfortably. Feel balanced. With your weight distribution favouring your front foot.
Play regularly. It’s all muscle memory.
Six.
Practice. If you can’t hit a double, you can’t finish the game. Dedicate an hour to it, if you’re serious. Dedicate ten minutes, if you’re not. Either way, you’ll improve.
Practice hitting all doubles. You never know what ‘out’ you might need.
Start with ‘double top’ (20), then go to 10, 5, 2 and 1. It takes you from highest to lowest, and creates a flow for you to work within.
They say it’s scores for show, doubles for dough. Here’s 10 ways to improve at darts’ hardest skill.
FRONT ROW / HOW TO 17
...Hit Your Doubles
Nine.
Ten.
Sharpen your darts by using a ‘stone’.
Throw first. In matchplay, having the first shot at a double gives a thrower a statistically significant advantage of winning. Get amongst it.
Aim by using the tip of the dart as a sight.
Four.
ATHLETES THAT OUT-PERFORM THEIR SPORT
Best...
Born January 11, 1979, few have dominated a sport like ‘King Henry’. At centre- or full-forward, Shefflin won 10 All-Ireland Championship titles – more than any other player in history – 13 Leinster Championship titles, six National Hurling League titles, and six Walsh Cups.
The men’s heavyweight boxing division – due to it being an open weight category - has always seen the ‘long, short and tall’ of the sport pitted against each Whenother.Anthony
FRONT ROW / LB-4-£ 18
Henry Shefflin.
Ballyhale Shamrocks, Kilkenny 1997-2017
He remains the only player to have won three Hurler of the Year awards, in 2002, 2006 and 2012, plus the small matter of 11 All-Stars, a position-by-position accolade, acknowledging his dominance in his particular role.
His 16-season senior career saw him make a record 71 championship appearances for Kilkenny, finishing as its leading scorer with 27-484. He currently manages the Galway senior hurling club, splitting his time working for a subsidiary of Bank of Ireland.
Joshua fought Andy Ruiz Jr at Madison Square Garden in 2019 it saw the 248-lb-andlean, 6ft 6in, 82in reach Brit, lose to the ‘fatter’ 268lbs, shorter (6ft 2in), shorterreaching (74in) US-Mexican. With an 8-inch reach advantage, it begs the age-old question, does length really matter?
Tough, committed and competitive, greats of the game acknowledge Shefflin as the greatest.
Second time lucky - ‘The Clash on the Dunes’ saw muscle winning out over, well… you decide.
THROUGH HISTORY
Basic, Better,
MarcianoRocky USA, 49-0,record1952-56,reign 68inreach10in,5ftheight Tyson*Mike reignedUSA, championtwo-timeaas inand1986-1990between no2(plus50-6record1996, 10in,5ftheightcontests),
•massive...
• The basic principle of the sport is for each player (or team) to hit a pair of balls through six metal arches (wick ets) twice - once in each direc tion - using a mallet. Before finishing the course by striking a ‘winning’ peg with the ball.
• There are a whole host of protocols around whether a player goes for the hoop or opposition players’ balls, amounting to tactics, but the basics are 12 times through the hoops, then go for the peg. There’s also a scoring system, but it’s still basically a dozen hoops; then the peg.
• There are two main ways of swinging a mallet. The simplest is to swing it like it’s a pendulum, from between the legs. The other is putter style, aiming sideways.
• In existence properly since 1851, croquet was quite the thing until tennis came along.
• You’ll need approximatingsomethingalawn,but don’t rule out the beach.
• As technical tips go, keep your eye on the ball is a pretty good starting point. Rushing to look at the target risks a poor contact or fresh air, as it does with all striking sports.
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There is also an official way to set out the course, but a ‘crazy golf’ set-up offers a good way to make best use of any space available.
• A pointer for beginners, aim to lay up short of the hoop, making the next shot a tap in. Going for broke means there’s a good chance you’ll end up on the wrong side of the ‘wicket, as it’s known, leaving yourself with a whole heap of fiddling about in recovering your position. On that, try to think ahead. It’s a game of strategy, as was said earlier. Leaving your ball too close to an opponent’s gives them an opportunity to ‘play off’ yours. Which basically means if they hit your ball, they then get a free shot to essentially leather it out of existence. 71inreach HolyfieldEvander USA, four-onlytheasreigned betweenchampiontime 1996-1993-1994,1990-1992, 2000-2001,fromand1999 draws,2(plus44-10record 2.5,6ftheightcontest)no1 77.5inreach AliMuhammad USA, cham3-timeaasreigned 1978,and19741964,inpion 3in,6ftheight56-5,record 78inreach UsykOleksandr Ukraine,, day,presentto2021reign 3in,6ftheight19-0,record 78inreach * HolmesLarry reignUSA, 69-6,record1978-1985, 81inreach3in,6ftheight KlitschkoWladimir Ukraine,, 64-record2006-2015,reign 81inreach6in,6ftheight5, LewisLennox reignedGB, championthree-timeaas 1997-19991992-94,between 41-2record2002,and 5in,6ftheightdraw)1(plus 84inreach FuryTyson asreignsGB, 2015-championtwo-timea presentto2020and2016 draw),(132-0recordday, 85inreach9in,6ftheight
Play Croquet.
• Described as requiring the precision of golf, the strategy of chess, and the angles of billiards, yet only the physicality of a barely-upright pensioner, its all-round and general acces sibility is a major draw.
• Official croquet pitches are twice the size of a tennis court, which must feel absolutely
Tyson beat Holmes on January 22, 1988, at the Trump Plaza Hotel in Atlantic City, New Jersey, Holmes had a 10 inch reach advantage 68in 71in 77.5in 78in 81in 84in 85in A PUB GOER’S GUIDE FRONT ROW / HOW HARD CAN IT BE? 19
TRUGO
Alt. Icons. SPORTING TR
So tight is the train station to Manchester United’s ‘forever home’ (since 1911) that demolition still appears more likely than redevelopment. Hold-ups in play caused by platform glass reflections at nearby Lancashire County Cricket Club were also increasingly problematic. To the point where a southerly reorientation of the wicket block happened over the course of the winter of 2010-11. The 90-degree shift accommodating low sunsets and the regular blinding by the light.
FOOTBALL & CRICKET
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Newport Melbourne, Australia
Tywyn Snowdonia, Wales
MULTI-TERRAIN RUNNING
The Train event sees runners do just that, as they attempt to make it ‘there and back’ from Tywyn to Abergynolwyn. Following the train line as they go, at its longest (the Rotary Challenge) it is a 14mile up-and-downer of a race. Started by the train whistle at the orders of the timekeeper, walking the course ahead of the event is strictly prohibited.
Tywyn Rotary Club’s Race
Old Trafford Manchester
Everyone knows handsport?Crewe.anBound’Simonsinger-songwriterthatPaulwrote‘HomewardwhilstawaitingonwardconnectionatButwhataboutSurely,thetwogoinhandrail?
There are two ‘games’ claimed by Melbourne for invention. One being Aussie Rules, the second being the unlikely sport of Trugo. Emanating from the railway’s repair workshops, it’s part golf, part croquet, but mostly a bit bizarre. Seeing a thick rubber ring swung at (between the legs) by competitors holding a longish-handled rubber-headed mallet. In an attempt to send said ring successfully between two posts. None the wiser? Us neither. It’s not even well known in Melbourne.
Home of a World Series event known as the Tournament of Champions, for ten days in January the thwack of rubber on plexi reverberates around the station’s Vanderbilt Hall. With its most-famous gilded walls, the location is regarded as the sport’s finest venue. With organiser John Nimick also holding a companion event at Justin Herman Plaza, overlooking San Francisco Bay.
FOOTBALL
Taking a throw-in has never been more hazardous. For players of TJ Tatran Cierny Balog, contending with the regular ‘choo-chooing’ of a narrow-gauge steam train just goes with the territory. The Cierny Hron railway was first laid in 1914. It stopped operating in 1982, with what proved just time enough for a football club to appear on what was then a disused line. The tracks now pass directly in front of the main grandstand.
AIN STATIONS
Cierny Balog Stadium Slovakia
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Grand Central Terminal New York City SQUASH
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• Bismah Maroof, cricketer for Pakistan and mother of one. May, 2022
It is the closest thing to feeling like a rock star you will ever feel without being able to sing.”
If there was a second chance and I had a choice whether to go out with the letter ‘Z’ on my chest or not, I would do the same. I saw it on our military and looked at what this symbol means. It turned out to be ‘for victory’ and ‘for peace’. I just wanted to show my position. As an athlete, I will always fight for victory and play for peace.”
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Wise and unwise words from the first half of this sporting year.
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My dad tells me the story about what it was like when I won my first world title where he was in a [prison] cell on his own - and the story was just so different to this one. I didn’t think I’d make another world final so I said you may as well come down and try and experience it.”
Quote Unf***ingquote.
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• Steve Kerr, coach for the Golden State Warriors NBA team, whose own father was killed in a shooting, speaking after the Robb Elementary School May,massacre.2022
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When you’re a professional athlete in a sport that sucks as
• Rose Galligan, England Red Rose and Harlequins player, on the severe meningitis infection she April,suffered.2022.
As coaches, as fathers, we have kids, people in this room have kids, elementary school; you can just think about what could take place with any of your family or friends at a school. This is on-therun job training, and we are going to try to play the game. We have no choice.”
I recently stepped into mother hood and my aim is to leave a legacy behind... To put up a good show for women’s cricket is an aim as well as a responsibility for me.”
Even when I won the US Open, there was nothing big or amazing that my parents did to celebrate – we just came home and ate dumplings, and that was it. We are very normal.”
, the Russian gymnast banned from the International Gymnastics Federation for wearing the prowar “Z” symbol on his chest.
• Rachael Blackmore on being the first female jockey to win the Cheltenham Gold Cup.
• Ronnie O’Sullivan, after winning his seventh world championship Snooker title. May, 2022
• Emma Raducanu, on being Emma Raducanu. May, 2022
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I was put into my own room, in quarantine, because of how contagious it can be. I can’t fault the NHS. They basically saved my life. They said if I came in one day later, I could’ve been amputated from the waist down.”
America’s National Pastime. It may seem all hot dogs and ‘take me out to the ballpark’, but how much is there really to know about arguably one of the world’s most ‘conservative’ major sporting 100Baseball.codes…FactsAbout… Writers ANDY AFFORD and KIERAN LONGWORTH BASEBALL 23
Each ball used in MLB has 108 hand-sewn stitches, the first and last of which are hidden inside the white leather.
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Jake Stahl catcher for the Boston Americans circa 1903.
At an altitude of 5,200 feet (1,580m), Coors Field is also the highest in MLB.
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It is comprised of two competing conferences. The National League, formed in 1876, and the American League (1901).
The Oakland Coliseum, home of the Oakland Athletics, is the largest stadium in MLB with a capacity of 56,782. As a multi-purpose stadium, it was also the former home of the Oakland Raiders of the National Football League from 1966 until the team moved to Los Angeles in 1981.
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Major League Baseball (MLB) was formed in 1903, with the first pro baseball World Series played between the now defunct Boston Americans and the ultimately PittsburghvictoriousPirates.
Coors Field, Colorado, is renowned as the most home run-friendly park and holds the record for the most runs in a season at 303 in 1999.
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Baseballs are traditionally rubbed in mud from the New Jersey side of the Delaware River. Described as ‘magic’, the dirt is fine enough to remove the factory shine, but not so abrasive to alter its general condition, and as a consequence affording pitchers a better grip and more control.
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There is no ‘caught behind’ in baseball, as per the convention in cricket. A snick that is ‘sharp and direct’ and held by the catcher is known as a ‘foul tip’ and constitutes a strike, not an out, as it would within MCC laws.
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Bonds has not been inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame due to protracted allegations of steroid use.
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A regulation game consists of nine innings, broken into half-innings described as ‘top of’ and ‘bottom of’. Both sides get to bat within each completed innings.
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He also holds the record for most career walks and most home runs in a single season (73).
September 1845 saw the rules of the sport ‘codified’ by Alexander Joy Cartwright of the New York Knickerbocker Baseball Club. The edit took the previously unwritten rules and regulations and stand ardised the infield’s geometric shape, the three-strike rule, it instated foul lines, and also outlawed the practise of throwing the ball at runners to tag them ‘out’.
Barry Bonds holds the MLB home run record with a grand total of 762. Plying his trade for the Pittsburgh Pirates and San Francisco Giants for a combined 22 seasons, Bonds knocked balls out the park between 1986 and 2007.
No.11 There are nine players in a team, andfield,positionedandthirdshortstop,secondfirstcatcher,ofmadepositionsteam’sfieldingwithupapitcher,baseman,baseman,baseman,outfieldersatleftcentrefieldrightfield. BASEBALL 25
Ending a half-innings is known as ‘retiring the side’.
Baseball’s playing field is known as a ‘diamond’ because of its similarity to the jewellery store version when viewed from above.
Once a batting order is picked, then it cannot be changed without deploying a substitute. This hitter then needs to bat within the line-up in the position they are replacing.
Baseball uniforms remain without third-party sponsorship and branding.
As terminology goes, there aren’t many more famous phrases in sport than “Let’s play ball’, shouted by the umpire at a game’s commencement, Or “It’s the bottom of the ninth (innings) with two outs” – meaning there isn’t much time left – not far behind.
Bonds receivedhasa total of seven NL MVPs, more than any other player on record.
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Historically, Tiger Stadium, home of the Detroit Tigers between 1912 and 1999, holds the record for the place of most homers. 111,111 to be precise.
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He also stole the not insignificant number of 514 bases, becoming the only MLB player with 500 home runs and 500 stolen bases.
against the Detroit Tigers at Navin Field in Detroit, on July 18, 1921.
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George Herman ‘Babe’ Ruth holds the record for the longest home run in MLB with a monstrous hit of 575 feet. This one-shot-blast came for the New York Yankees
The oldest ballpark is Fenway Park, home of the Boston Red Sox. Opening in 1912, it has hosted the World Series 11 times with the Red Sox winning six of them.
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Early Baseball Hall of Fame inductee, Ty Cobb, was elected to the sport’s repos itory of greatness, receiving a staggering 222 of the 226 votes available. The ‘Georgia Peach’s’ 98.2 per cent record stood for over 50 years before Tom Seaver shattered it when receiving his ‘yes’ from the membership to the tune of 98.8 per cent in 1992.
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Ty Cobb also holds down the all-time career batting average record in the ‘bigs’, hitting at an on-base rate of .366 per at-bat. He also holds the most batting titles with 12.
A private buyer reportedly bought a baseball card showing Babe Ruth in his days as a minor league pitcher for the Baltimore Orioles, and although the selling price remains undisclosed, the item itself was appraised at £4.3 million, making it the most valuable card of all time.
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On July 11, 2014, ‘The Cuban Flamethrower’, otherwise known as Aroldis Chapman, set the record for the fastest ever pitch at 105.1 mph when playing for the Cincinnati Reds.
Technology for measuring home runs in MLB was only made uniform in 2006. However, the longest reported hit of a baseball belongs to Joey Meyer, a minor league first baseman for the Denver Zephyrs. Meyer hit a ‘long ball’ that reportedly went 582 feet (177m) on June 3, 1987.
Young holds several records in MLB, including the most career wins (511), most career losses (315), most career innings thrown (7356), and the most games started (815).
Roger Clemens has won the Cy Young Award a remarkable seven times. With the title bestowed upon the season’s best pitcher, ever since Young’s death in 1955.
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Mike Leake was arrested for shoplifting in 2011, despite earning around $425k per year, whilst playing for the Cincinnati Reds. The pitcher had made an impressive start to his career in 2010 but was arrested for allegedly stealing $60-worth of clothing from a local store.
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MLB’s average pitch speed for high-level pitchers is around 90mph.
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Denton True ‘Cy’ (short for ‘Cyclone’) Young entered the Major Leagues in 1890 as a pitcher, picking up the record for being the league’s mostwinning player over a career spanning 21 years. He retired from MLB in 1911.
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Connie Mack holds the record for being the league’s most-win ning coach. Despite having a win percentage of just 48 per cent he won the World Series five times, managing the Philadelphia Athletics for the club’s first 50 seasons of existence. He retired with a managerial record of 3,731 wins to 3,948 losses.
During his career, he won 89 games and three World Series for the Boston Red Sox as well as seven American League pennants and four World Series with the New York Yankees. Still, the ‘Bambino’ is best-known for swatting homers and his .690 slugging record, still stands to this day.
Ruth made his major league debut at Fenway Park on July 11, 1914.
The 1992 movie, ‘A League of Their Own’, is the highest-gross ing baseball themed movie with a revenue of $107.5 million. Second place is held by the 2013 bio graphic ‘42’, managing to make $95 million. Followed by the 2011 Brad Pitt-fuelled drama, ‘Mon eyball’, in third place with $75.6 million in revenue.
Six of the 11 longest losing streaks have happened since 1960. The city of Philadelphia appearing prominently on this list with the 1961 Phillies holding the record with a 23-game drought. Crosstown neighbours the Ath letics has somewhat carelessly lost 20-straight on two separate occasions. In 1916 and 1943.
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MLB only allows the use of wood bats with ash being the timber of choice. This ‘woodopoly’ changed in 2001, when a maple version in the hands of Barry Bonds generated a record-breaking 73 homers.
The New York Yankees is the most valuable team in baseball, the franchise conservatively worth around $6 billion.
The 1916 New York Giants officially hold the record winning streak at 26 straight games. But the record is ‘disputed’ due to an unofficial tie agreed with the Pittsburgh Pirates after a weather intervention.
It is believed that lefthanded pitchers hold several ‘natural ad vantages’. Firstly, by facing first rather than third base when on the mound, it makes them poten tially less susceptible to on-base batters stealing to second. By contrast, the last lefthanded catcher to appear in the MLB was Benny Distefano for the Pitts burgh Pirates in 1989.
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Although just ten per cent of Americans throw lefthanded, lefties have pitched 28 per cent of innings since 2002.
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The St. Louis Cardinals is the League’s second-most-winning outfit with 11 World Series titles.
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1954 saw New York Yankees legend Joe DiMaggio famously marry movie star Marilyn Monroe. Described as ‘the ultimate AllAmerican romance’, the couple somewhat less romantically divorced nine months later.
Pre-1958, there were no MLB games played west of St. Louis, Missouri.
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In the early days of the sport, batters would make their own bats, experimenting with vari ous shapes and sizes. It wasn’t until the 1800s that the size of bats was regulated, fixing on 2.5 inches in diameter and 42 inches in length. The shape was regu lated further in the 1890s, seeing the banning of ‘flat’ bats and the diameter increased to 2.75 inches around the same time.
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First appearing in 1901 as the Baltimore Orioles, before rebranding in 1913 as the Yankees, the franchise has won the World Series a record 27 times.
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The League’s shortest is a pulsating 51-minute encounter between the New York Giants and the Philadelphia Phillies. Taking place September 28, 1919, it saw the Giants home in a sprint by six runs to one.
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Leroy ‘Satchel’ Paige is the League’s oldest. Playing his last match when nearly 60.
The rarest occurrence in baseball is an unassisted triple play. This being where a single fielder completes all three outs available during a single passage of play. With 15 instances ever recorded, it makes it rarer than playing out a ‘perfect game’. With the definition of a perfect game being when a fielding team doesn’t allow a single opposi tion member ‘on base’ at any stage during the regulation nine innings.
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Visiting teams always wear grey uniforms.
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Started by Philip Wrigley –owner of the Chicago Cubs and Wrigley’s Chewing Gum – it saw 600 players in ten teams playing matches throughout the Midwest.
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Joe Nuxhall of the Cincinnati Reds is the youngest ever MLB player, aged 15 years and 316 days.
Signed by DiMaggio and Some Like It Hot star Monroe in 1961, it was sold for an astonishing $191.200.
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The first women’s pro baseball game was played between the Blondes and the Brunettes in Springfield, Illinois on September 11, 1875.
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Only 18 players have ever hit four homers in a match. The first being Bobby Lowe for the evocatively-named Boston Beaneaters back in 1894, and the most recent being a fourblast-streak by JD Martinez in 2017 for the Boston Red Sox.
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The song Take Me Out to the Ball Game is the sport’s unofficial anthem. Written by Jack Norworth and Albert Von Tilzer in 1908, the chorus is traditionally sung during the middle of the seventh innings at every game.
The game between the White Sox and the Milwaukee Brewers is the League’s longest ever match. Played May 1984 in Chicago, it saw the home side finally winning after eight hours and six minutes of no doubt breathless action…
When Jackie Robinson started at first base with the Brook lyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947, he became the League’s first African-American player. An all-time great, Robinson also became the first player to have his playing number ‘42’ retired.
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Tech giants Nintendo owned the Seattle Mariners between 1992 and 2016.
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1943 saw the commencement of the snappily titled AllAmerican Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL).
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Baseball was part of the Olympics between 1992 and 2008.
Heritage Auction Galleries sold the most expensive autographed baseball ever on May 5, 2006, in Dallas, Texas.
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African-Americans were banned from competing in the MLB until the late 1940s, with ‘Negro Leagues’ created to accommodate what amounted to some of the world’s best talent.
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Cal Ripken Jr. holds the record for the most appearances,consecutivecompleting a 2,632-game run that started on May 30, 1982. Ending some 17 seasons later (September 19, 1998), it’s believed that only the intervention of Ripken’s wife and a few ‘close friends’ saw time finally called with the Baltimore Orioles.
Name-wise, three of the AAGPBL sides shared the descriptor ‘Belles’, two ‘Chicks’, two ‘Lassies’ and a single ‘Millerettes’.
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The Griffeys - Ken Jr. and Sr. - were the first father-andson combo to appear in the Majors, the pair playing for the Seattle Mariners.
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League attendance peaked at in excess of 900,000 total spectators in 1948.
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Managers Kid Gleason of the Chicago White Sox, and Pat Moran of the Cincinnati Reds embrace before Game 1 of the 1919 World Series.
A tool for peace, the World Series served to draw a close on the hostilities be tween the American League and the National League, where until 1903 they had competed as rival entities.
‘BlackisofenteringprecludingtheallpermanentlyMountain1921,receivingJoethe‘Lefty’‘Buck’Risberg,CharlesFelsch,Cicotte,‘Chick’foritgamblingtheCincinnatimatchesduringunderperformingdeliberatelyWorldSeriesagainsttheReds.Underinfluenceofasyndicate,sawthebanninglifeofArnoldGandil,EddieOscar‘Happy’FredMcMullin,‘Swede’GeorgeWeaver,ClaudeWilliamsandgreat‘Shoeless’Jackson.DespiteacquittalsinJudgeKenesawLandisexcludedeightplayersfromsport,ultimatelythemfromBaseball’sHallFame.TheepisodeforeverknownastheSoxScandal’.
OwnTheirofLeagueA Inc.Industries,PicturesColumbia1992©
1919 is the year of arguably baseball’s biggest controversy,ever a time when eight members of the Chicago White Sox organisation were accused of
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The AAGBL finally closed its doors in 1954, with the league’s final finishers comprising the South Bend Blue Sox, Fort Wayne Daisies, Grand Rapid Chicks, Kalamazoo Lassies and the Rockford Peaches.
Statistically, the AAGBL’s wassuccessfulmostteamtheRockford Peaches. With the club’s players superstarpictureOwn’,‘Amentionedtheimmortalisedchampionships)achievementsand(fourinpreviously1992film,LeagueofTheirthemotionfeaturingpopMadonna.
The World Series is baseball’s postseason playoffs; in place to decide the season’s overall champions. The showdown’s best of seven game format has been in place since 1922.
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Rose also holds the records for most career ‘singles’ (3,215), games played (3,562), at-bats (14,053) and appearancesplate(15,890).
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A Honus Wagner baseball card sold in May 2021 for $3.75 million. There are only believed to be around 60 ever printed, the scarcity caused by a combination of manufacturing error and copyright disputes.
A Wagner card described as being in ‘better condition’ sold three months later for $6.6 million.
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Cincinatti’s Pete Rose is the all-time hit leader with 4,256.
The 2003 Florida Marlins are believed to have received the most expensive World Series rings ever commissioned. A dazzling mix of 3.5 ounces of 14-carat white gold, 229 diamonds, a single teal-cut diamond, and 13 rubies, daywear wasn’t ever this hunk of undiluted bling’s intention. Valued in excess of $32,000 at the time, the rings regularly fetch higher than $50,000 when appearing at auction today.
Also part of Sheen’s collection is one of two original contracts selling Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees from Boston in December 2019. The item was bought by the Major League movie star in 2017, costing him a cool $2.3 million.
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Boston’s sale of Ruth to the Yankees, is believed to thirdhomematteronBambino’.‘Thefamouslysale2004,relativelystreakRedone-timedroughtyearamountedcontributedhavetowhattoan86-championshipforthebig-hittingSox.ThelosingonlyendingasrecentaswiththatoriginalofRuthbecomingknownasCurseoftheRuthwenttohitthesmallof714careerruns,placinghimontheall-timelist.
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The cities of Montreal and Toronto were granted major league status in 1969 and 1977 respectively, with Toronto’s World Series win in 1992 being the first for a non-U.S. team.
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World Series’ Most Valuable Player award came into being in 1955 and is regarded by many as the greatest accolade in the sport.
Hall of Famer Lawrence ‘Yogi’ Berra holds the record for the most World Series appearances, plus the record for most World Series wins. Playing in 14 World Series, he won ten of them, all with the New York Yankees.
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In existence since 1922, World Series winning teams are traditionally presented with ornate championship rings as individual recognition of their team’s collective successes over the season.
Babe Ruth’s sportmostischampionship1927ringbelievedtobethevaluableintheatavaluationof $2.1m. It was the first year ringschampionshipweregivento the Yankees, in a series that saw Ruth hit two home runs during the Yankees’ four-game sweep of the Pittsburgh Pirates. One of those famous home-run balls is owned by avid baseball collector, Charlie Sheen. The Hollywood star’s prize piece of memorabilia is valued at over $500,000.
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Baseball’s luckiest number is ‘32’. Deemed so after both league’s respective MVPs from the 1966 season –Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Sandy Koufax and New York Yankees catcher Elston Howard – shared the shirt number.
St. Louis Cardinals Hall of Famer Stan Musial retired in 1963 with 3,630 career hits. Then the second-most in league history, 1,815 of them were hit at home, and 1,815 on the road.
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Dating back to 1972, player-led strikes, or lockouts, or labour disputes, as they are known, have become part and parcel of the sport.
Baltimore Orioles great, Hugh ‘Hughie’ James, is the League’s most-bruised player, the legend ary short stop and first baseman registering 287 career ‘hit by pitches’. Described as ‘fearless’, the fiery Hall of Famer’s accolades include being struck three times in a single game; hit by 51 pitches in the 1896 season alone; and crusted so badly by a delivery from Amos Rusie that it resulted in a period of unconsciousness that lasted three days.
Catchily-titled broadcaster W2XBS is believed to have televised the MLB’s first games - a double-header between the Cincinnati Reds and the Brooklyn
Barry Bonds – him again - is the game’s most walked batter with 688.
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Founded in 1970, the Milwaukee Brewers is the oldest club never to win a World Series. They are one of only six current franchises without the sport’s most sought after pennant.
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A pinch hitter is a substitute player; his ‘announcement to the game’ seeing the replacement of the outgoing batter for the contest’s duration.
No.90 The winning’League’sMarlinsMiamiisthe‘leastclub.
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As of 2021, yearly broadcast rights for the sport are said to be worth around $1.6 billion a year.
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The sport’s longest ever road trip is believed to be the 50game jaunt undertaken by the Cleveland Spiders in 1899.
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Dodgers on August 26, 1939.
Pre-lockdown data shows that the Seattle Mariners are
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A designated hitter is a player who does not field and is only allowed to replace the pitcher in the batting order.
The League’s longest work stoppage saw 948 games and the World Series cancelled over seven months of the 1994-95 season. Brought about by the cessation of players’ collective bargaining agreement, a disputed salary cap proved to be the major sticking point.
Adding to the tallyGiancarlo Stanton can’t avoid defeat to the St Louis Cardinals at Roger Dean Stadium, March 2017.
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the team racking up the most airmiles, covering a staggering 58,241 miles of flight time over the course of the 2019 season.
The World Series was first televised in 1947.
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1963 saw San Francisco Giants pitcher Gaylord Perry declare, “They’ll put a man on the moon before I hit a home run.” On July 20, 1969, just 20 minutes after Neil Armstrong did just that, Perry hit his first and last career homer.
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EXILE FROM MAINZ STREET
WHEN JÜRGEN KLOPP ARRIVED AT LIVERPOOL, COMING UP FOR SEVEN YEARS AGO NOW, FEW COULD HAVE EXPECTED HIS IMPACT. THE CLUB’S CHASING OF A NEVER-BEFORE-ACHIEVED ‘QUADRUPLE’ BEING THE LATEST MANIFESTATION OF THAT LOVE AFFAIR. PAUL SIMPSON LOOKS BACK AT WHERE IT ALL STARTED. FOOTBALL 34
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Klopp has become such a familiar figure in British football that it is easy to forget how un likely his journey to the top of his profession has been. His charismatic father Norbert, an unsuc cessful goalkeeper turned travelling salesman, was so keen for his son to excel in football, ski ing and tennis, he set up a daily training regi men of heading and sprinting for young Jürgen. (It might be reading too much into this but you do wonder whether this is why running is so important to him as a coach.) Klopp said of his father: “He was ruthless. When we went skiing, I only ever saw his red anorak from behind. He
Jürgen Klopp sits and admires his work at Melwood Training Ground, Liverpool.
DORTMUND ACQUIRED A CULT FOLLOWING AND BECAME THE FOOTBALL EQUIVALENT OF KURT COBAIN’S NIRVANA”
“I am a normal guy” urgen Klopp likes to say.
That “little more” has helped him win six major competitions – the UEFA Champions League, Premier League, FA Cup, Club World Cup and UEFA Super Cup – at Liverpool. And that “little more” is exemplified by his team, as they have proven in two marathon cup final vic tories against Chelsea in 2O21/22.
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The Liverpool manager – who turns 55 this month – suggested as much in his first press conference at Anfield in October 2O15. This was in part a parody of José Mourinho’s self-pro claimed status as ‘the special one’ but it is also the kind of thing you can only say if you are absolutely confident that you are not normal. The Kop idol’s self-belief was honed as a player who routinely punched above his weight, dis covering that holding your own against a more powerful opponent was an “important experi ence for the mind and the heart, because it is at times like that you understand you’ve got a little more in you.”
first training session of the new season: 1O,OOO of them did. As one Mainz director put it, “He electri fied the city.”
This is one of the reasons, Hesse says, that he was destined to manage Liverpool: “He’d told me he wanted to manage Dortmund because he want ed to coach a team that played home games in front of that many fans and, although he recognised he couldn’t improve the regional economy – the un employment rate at the time was around 8 per cent – he could at least give people something to cheer about. I always thought he would enjoy English football – the language, the intensity of the game and of course the passion of the supporters and which club in England would most closely resem ble Dortmund, with a certain aura and mystique, a famous ground and famous support? I always felt he would coach Liverpool at some point.”
He is also adept at positioning his team as un derdogs. This was certainly the case at Mainz and Dortmund but doesn’t ring quite as true at Liver pool. It’s true that he has been competing against Abu Dhabi-owned Manchester City and Roman Abramovich’s Chelsea but his net transfer spend at Anfield exceeds £2OOm.
After such success, Klopp’s move to Liverpool –the footballing equivalent of the Beatles – seems almost inevitable (although he was on the short list to replace Sir Alex Ferguson in the summer of 2014 with United moving on after he signed a new contract at Dortmund.) What he has accomplished at Anfield – particularly ending the club’s 3O-year wait for a league title – has been remarkable al though he still insists that earning promotion to the German top flight with Mainz in 2OO3/O4 is his greatest achievement as a coach.
never waited for me. It didn’t matter that I was only a Norbert’sbeginner.”parenting paid off eventually – his son began earning a living as a footballer when he was 23. Although there are some YouTube reels of Klopp’s wonder goals as a striker, the most astute judge of his abilities as a player is the man himself: “I had a first division head and fourth division tal ent which is why I was a division two player,” he said once. Rather like his Premier League rival Pep Guardiola, he was a bit of a moaner on the pitch but their respective frustrations had different causes. While Guardiola couldn’t reconcile him self to the fact that some team-mates didn’t under stand the game as thoroughly as he did, Klopp was angry that he couldn’t execute the plays he could picture in his head. In his memory, sharing a train ing pitch with Andreas Moller clarified how lim ited his ability was: “He was world class, I wasn’t even class.”
He is fiercely competitive in a way that can make him seem as blinkered as Arsène Wenger who was notorious for resolutely maintaining that he couldn’t see whatever crime his players had been accused of. (Some observers say that Klopp is so passionate about winning because, in a Mainz side that usually struggled against relegation, he lost too many games as a player.) In January 2O21, he complained that City had benefitted from a two-week rest after a Christmas fixture against Everton was postponed because of Covid. To be fair to Klopp, when the pandemic struck, he was one of the first prominent figures in the game to say that the pandemic was exponentially more serious than football.
Indeed, that affinity is underlined by Klopp’s analysis of his time in Dortmund: “I’m not stupid. I know there are things that are more important than football. But it’s what I do and what I love, so I found it very attractive that football takes centre stage here and that people live the game so intensely.”Itisimportant to recognise that Klopp does not entirely break the managerial mould. He can be gracious and candid in defeat but he has a decent repertoire of excuses, notably “You cannot play football in this wind”, “I am convinced now that God is a Manchester City fan” and “The pitch was really dry” and injuries to opposing players “The injury crisis cost us our rhythm”, he insisted after an inconvenient draw against Manchester United.
FOOTBALL 37
You could argue that the real difference between Klopp’s Liverpool and Mauricio Pocchetino’s strong Spurs side was not so much the quality of the re spective coaches but Klopp’s ability to sign Mo Salah, Virgil van Dijk and Allison in 2O17 and
As a coach, he took on two clubs in crisis –Mainz (2OO1–2OO8) and Dortmund (2OO8–2O15) – and turned them round. There is, as Uli Hesse has pointed out in Tor!, his seminal history of German football, a Star Wars-style narrative in the German game in which Bayern are always the dark side (Darth Vader, the Empire) – and their most redoubtable opponents – Borussia Mönchengladbach in the 197Os and Klopp’s Dortmund in the 2O1Os – take on the role of the virtuous Jedi knights. Somehow, especially after Dortmund lost the 2O13 UEFA Champions League final to the Roten at Wembley, millions of fans across Europe came to regard Klopp’s Dortmund just as fondly. As Hesse says: “They acquired a cult following and became the football equivalent of Kurt Cobain’s Nirvana.”
Most football managers still have a ‘command and control’ attitude to supporters. Although in press conferences they might pay lip service to the idea that fans have every right to be angry after a disappointing performance, in reality they believe their supporters exist for one purpose and one pur pose only: to cheer on the team. In his first coach ing job at Mainz, Klopp showed that he had a com pletely different attitude to supporters. When the club narrowly missed out on promotion in 2OO3, he told 1O,OOO fans in the city centre: “We will prove it is possible to go up after such pain.” He then invited every single supporter to watch the
2O18. The same inequality applies to the clubs’ an nual wage bills. While City have the highest in the Premier League (£355m according to the Spanish sports paper Marca), Liverpool are not far behind (£314m), compared to Tottenham’s £2O5m.
Yet Klopp can rise above partisan and petty con cerns. In the summer of 2O17, he “cried like a baby” when he heard that his best friend – and the best man at his wedding – David Wagner had steered Huddersfield into the Premier League. After the recent 1-1 draw with Spurs, he told the media: “We should stop talking about this as if we’re at a funer al. We’re still talking about football. Much worse things have happened to me in my life and I’m still here.” This sounds as if he is challenging Bill Shankly’s most famous remark “Football is not a matter of life and death, it’s more important than that”, but there is a theory that the charismatic Scot was satirically commenting on the kind of fans who are so in thrall to the game they will post pone a wedding so as not to miss a match.
APPEARANCE.BEHAVIOURUNCONVENTIONALBYDETERREDBUTHIRINGCLOSEWHOHAMBURGMUNICHASBYAGAINSTITHISEARLIERINDEED,INCAREER,WASHELDHIMSUCHCLUBSBAYERNANDCAMETOHIMWEREHISAND FOOTBALL 38
JÜRGEN KLOPP “DEFIES THE STEREOTYPEGERMAN” AND
The legend of Liverpool as a ‘people’s club’, the Barcelona of English football, has helped Klopp too, as both Pep Guardiola and Thomas Tuchel have recently remarked. Yet one reason for his personal popularity with the public and press is that he completely defies the Germanic stereotype the British have constructed and curated over a century of wars and peace.
He is not obviously power crazed (although you cannot be as successful as he is in any line of work without understanding how, why and when to exert your authority), he has a sense of humour (even sometimes when dissenting: in Germany, he earned his first red card as a coach for asking the fourth official: “How many mistakes are you allowed to make? Because if it’s 15 you’ve got one more”), and is open, rather than defensive, even agreeing to be hooked up to a lie detector for an interview with a German football magazine. Nor does he – either as a person or a coach – embody what commentators and pundits, in less politi cally correct times, used to describe as “Teutonic efficiency”.Inanextraordinary love letter to Klopp, pub lished in The New European, Alastair Campbell, the Burnley-loving New Labour spin doctor, wrote: “I love your passion... I love it when you step onto the field with a giant smile and hug the players at the end of a match. I love that fist punch on your chest that you do in front of the Kop.” This all de fies the German stereotype and indeed, earlier in his career, was held against him by such clubs as Bayern Munich and Hamburg who came close to hiring him but were deterred by his unconven tional behaviour and appearance. (It says a lot about the conservative mores of German football that the Hamburg scouts objected to his appoint ment partly because he had a habit of shortening players names, calling Bastian Schweinsteiger ‘Schweiny’.)
Such episodes might be the price Klopp has to pay for the way he plays, coaches and understands football. When he took over a depressed, dishev elled Dortmund team in 2OO8, he wanted them to play with such intensity that it would vibrate in the stadium, telling his squad: “When you sit in your stand with your eyes closed, you should sense there is a passionate team on the field below.”
FOOTBALL 39
Emotion gives his teams a competitive edge. As the German newspaper Die Zeit observed, after Klopp’s Liverpool had come back from 3-1 down to beat Thomas Tuchel’s Dortmund 4-3 at Anfield in March 2O21: “Modern coaches like Tuchel and Guardiola are from the Louis van Gaal school of coaching. What they want above all is to be in con trol all the time and to have the ball. What Klopp likes is when things get out of control, because at that point it’s all about emotion, passion and how much you want it.”
Fusignano probably came as close as any coach ever has to solving what Terry Venables once called the definitive tactical problem in football: persuading 11 players to move up and down the pitch at the same time.
Sacchi described himself as a proactive coach, creating a system to make the most of the collective and finding the players to suit that system. Many coaches, including ironically Carlo Ancelotti, the engine of that great Milan team, have – either through personal choice or political necessity or a bit of both – done it the other way around, building a system around the players at their disposal. Sacchi has condemned this approach: “It’s reactive, not proactive. Today’s football is all about managing the characteristics of players. The individual has triumphed over the collective and it’s a sign of weakness.”
As a disciple of Frank’s, and a student of Sacchi, Klopp does not build reactive teams of galacticos. Sacchi’s Milan could be great to watch – as you would expect from a side illuminated by the likes of Ruud Gullit, Paolo Maldini, Frank Rijkaard and Marco van Basten – but they could also be too clin ical to set the pulses racing. (In 199O, when retain ing the European Cup, they averaged just one goal a game from the quarter-final onwards.) His stars – especially the Dutch masters – began to chafe against Sacchi’s restrictions and were relieved when, in 1991, he became Italy coach.
In his own eyes, his worst ever meltdown came in training at Mainz when he head-butted his friend and team-mate Sandro Schwarz. “He’d put me on the floor twice in training,” he told Rund football magazine. “I got up. All I could see was his face in front of me, and then he was down on the ground. I wanted to die, I wanted to die. I couldn’t bear the thought of what I’d done to him.”
He played his best football in the 199Os under Mainz’s innovative coach Wolfgang Frank who became his tactical mentor. At the time, German football culture was still dominated by the tradition of the libero – exemplified by Franz Beckenbauer, Lothar Matthäus and Matthias Sammer – but Frank switched Mainz to sweeper-less 4-4-2, the formation with which Arrigo Sacchi’s Milan had dominated and revolutionised European football in the late 1980s. The former shoe salesman from
Tuchel’s comment on that defeat – “It’s not logical” – highlighted his coaching philosophy but it does not mean that Klopp is one of those old school coaches who believes that success is entirely dependent on being up for it, getting stuck in and covering every blade of grass on the pitch (actually he does believe in the latter, but not entirely for its own sake).
That is not Klopp’s way. His football philosophy – which he once dubbed “heavy metal football” –is about winning but it’s also about entertainment. As he said once: “If games become boring, they lose their right to exist.” With that in mind, he has often found room in his teams for artists such as Mario Götze and Marcos Reus at Dortmund, and Mo Salah at Liverpool – with the important proviso that they work hard. He is more adventurous than most coaches even in such a critical defensive po sition as centre-back. Mats Hummels at Dortmund and Virgil van Dijk at Liverpool are so much more than mere stoppers. And he has helped Trent Alex ander-Arnold blossom despite traditionalists’ con cerns about the right-back’s defensive prowess.
There are times when emotion gets the better of Klopp. In February 2O2O, incensed that a Bournemouth goal had not been disallowed despite a clear foul in the build-up, he celebrated Liverpool’s winner by roaring in front of assistant referee Stuart Burt. (He regretted his antics after the match.) He has vented his spleen at many other Premier League officials, notably Stuart Atwell, Andre Marriner, Craig Pawson and Paul Tierney and been embroiled in a notorious touchline bustup with Arsenal coach Mikel Arteta. In September 2O11, as Dortmund coach, he was banned for one UEFA Champions League match for berating the fourth official over the time taken to allow a substitution. (Again, he was contrite afterwards, describing his outburst as “pathetic”.)
Here is Dortmund director Hans-Joachim Watzke explaining why the club hired Klopp back in 2008: “The reason was this Mainz team. They weren’t Real Madrid, but they were unpleasant opponents. They had a plan, they had an enormous will and they always seemed to have more players on the pitch than you did.”
As a player, one lesson Klopp absorbed from Frank was that the right tactics could help you de feat a better team. When he started his coaching career at Mainz in February 2001, he was quick to apply that lesson. What is startling, in retrospect, is how similar the blueprint he developed at Mainz is to the way Liverpool play now.
‘Gegenpressing’ – literally counter-pressing – is synonymous with Klopp. The tactic is rooted in the
Total Football played by Ajax and Netherlands un der manager Rinus Michels in the 197Os in which, as football writer David Winner put it, “players hunted in packs and defended on the halfway line”. Michels’ approach was refined by Sacchi who drilled his Milan side in what he called “ball-ori ented defending”. This wasn’t ‘gegenpressing’ as we know it today but it paved the way for it. In adopting this style, Klopp has usually set his teams out in the 4-3-3 formation favoured by Michels.
Fans GermanychampionsareafterJürgencongratulateKloppDortmundcrownedofin2011.
The tactic can be redefined depending on the quality and style of the opposition. Klopp’s Dortmund typically pressed high up the pitch in the Bundesliga but pressed further back – an approach Pocchetino calls the “medium block” – in the UEFA Champions League. Some teams only press near their own penalty area. It really depends on where on the pitch the coach wants his team to win the ball. Klopp’s Liverpool usual ly operate on the assumption that the higher up the pitch they press the better and at its best, as in their 4-O victory against Arsenal at Anfield last November, this tactic can suffocate and devastate opponents. It can be less effective against teams that park the bus, as Spurs did to earn their point at Anfield, but even then, Klopp enthused about the way “the boys” used the tactic, saying: “The counter-pressing was just incredible, if you could film that, you could sell it.”
It says a lot about Klopp’s man management skills that, as Hesse says, “Mladen never said a bad word about Klopp telling countless other players ‘I’d have loved to have played for this guy’. Mid fielder Florian Kringe, who had carried Dortmund through some lean years, was gradually pushed aside under Klopp and he still thinks the world of him.” Klopp may be one of the few managers in football today who can say something as corny as “I love human beings” and be believed.
He has brought that attitude to Anfield. As Liverpool full-back Trent Alexander-Arnold told GQ magazine: “He’s unbelievable. Just about everything about him in every way. As a person, as a manager. He’s a loving person. You can see that he cares about the people around him. He treats everyone as equals. He treats the captain the same as a young player. People have a conception that he may be very emotional. Heart on the sleeve. He is to an extent but he knows how to control it in ways
Klopp’s rationale for gegenpressing is simple: “When you win the ball closer to the goal, you are only one pass away from a really good goalscoring opportunity.” In his view, if you press in this way, you are likely to create more chances over a season than if you delegated that responsibility to a gifted playmaker in the No.10 role.
The counter-press helped Klopp’s Dortmund win the Bundesliga in 2O11 and 2O12 but it took a
while to implement. You can tell a player how to press but they can only really get the hang of it by doing it. In the early games, a Dortmund player would give a signal to indicate that the team should start pressing but it became more natural through repetition, as Klopp told Hesse: “You have to train the impulse to move into a ball-winning position after losing the ball. You don’t teach a situation, you teach the impulse until it becomes a natural reaction.”Thepress only works if everyone does it – and is willing to run the hard yards. That is why he turned down Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s offer to play for him on a free transfer. It is also why, in Klopp’s first summer in charge at Dortmund, he sold Mladen Petrić to Hamburg, even though the Croatian striker had just scored 13 goals in his first season in the Bundesliga.
FOOTBALL 40
Love sometimes shades into tough love. Unlike many coaches, wary of dressing room politics, who skirt around a player’s mistakes, Klopp will discuss them – and how they can be resolved. One reason that his brand of tough love works is that players believe his coaching will improve them. The step change in the performances of Mo Salah, Alex ander-Arnold, Andrew Robertson, Fabinho, i̇lkay Gündoğan and Robert Lewandowski provide am ple proof of that.
Buvač’s departure from Anfield in April 2O18 is more mysterious. The Bosnian had played with – and become a good friend of – Klopp at Mainz, assisted him in his first coaching role and then followed him to Dortmund and Liverpool. Yet, weeks before the end of the 2O17/18 season, the Reds announced that he was taking ‘temporary leave’ for personal reasons. His departure was later made permanent.
the match on video so that he could sound knowl edgeable when discussing it with players in train ing the following morning.
Although Mainz won six games out of seven to finish three points clear of relegation, it wasn’t what Klopp accomplished in the dugout that ruf fled feathers within German football, it was what he was achieving in the TV studio, as a pundit. Still only 38 when the Confederations Cup was staged in Germany in 2005, Klopp had only just steered Mainz into the top flight and, all of a sudden, there he was on the TV channel ZDF, pontificating alongside Beckenbauer, a world champion as play er and Sportingcoach.lavish sideburns, a T-shirt and jeans, Klopp clearly belonged to a different generation to Beckenbauer, who in demeanour and dress still showed why he had been nicknamed the Kaiser. What could have been a clash of generations soon became a mutual admiration society with the game’s elder statesman clearly approving of Klopp’s tactical diagnoses. As the programme editor Jan Doehling put it: “If the Kaiser thought he knew his stuff, he really knew his stuff.”
Klopp made it look easy – as he still does in press conferences today – but he worked hard at it, learn ing from the technicians and experts at ZDF. What he didn’t need to learn was how to explain the game. He was one of the few pundits who talked about what was happening on the pitch, eschew ing clichés about players lacking or having heart, and pointing out where a player was out of posi tion or why a team’s attacks kept breaking down. That was revolutionary at the time and is still a cut above much of the boiler plate rhetoric that passes for punditry in British football.
There has been much speculation about the split. Rumours suggest that either Klopp argued with Buvač because he felt his friend had taken too long to tell him about an offer to coach Arsenal or that the Bosnian lost a power struggle with Pepijn Lijnders, who succeeded him as assistant coach. What is not in doubt is that the experience left Buvac embittered. Now director of football at Dy namo Moscow, he told a Russian reporter earlier this year that, during his 17-year partnership with Klopp: “I did the job of manager, except for speak ing in public and giving interviews. Apart from that, I had all the functions and tried to influence my team as much as I could to help him succeed.”
After gaining a degree in sports science in 1995 – the year he switched from striker to defender at Mainz – he considered becoming a sports journal ist when he had hung up his boots. Then, in Febru ary 2001, with Mainz sliding seemingly inexorably towards relegation from the second tier, he accept ed sporting director Christian Heidel’s offer to take over as coach. As Heidel explained later: “He was not the captain but he was the emotional leader of the team.” By his own account, Klopp took five sec onds to accept, coached his first game – a 1-0 win over Duisburg – and then rushed home to watch
Yet Klopp’s success on screen proved a dou ble-edged sword when Dortmund fans heard he was taking over in 2OO8. “Most people only knew of him as a pundit. The guy who was then leading the chants for the ultras spoke for many when he said he was very sceptical,” recalls Hesse, a life long Dortmund fan. “He told me he was afraid
The two human beings who have made no secret of their lack of love for Klopp are former Liverpool centre-back Mahmadou Sakho and his long-term assistant coach Željko Buvač, who Klopp described as “the brain”. Sakho was sent home from a preseason tour of America in 2O16 for repeatedly being and, after moaning about his plight on social media, was loaned to Crystal Palace. (He now plays for Montpellier in Ligue 1.)
that are beneficial to everyone around him.”
The subsequent career trajectories of these former friends hardly supports Buvač’s claim that Klopp was more PR man than manager – although Dynamo Moscow did finish as runners-up in the Russian Pre mier League last season – but, oddly enough, it ech oes complaints made by German football’s old guard when Klopp was starting out as a coach.
“YOU HAVE TO TRAIN THE IMPULSE TO MOVE INTO A
TEACHAYOULOSINGPOSITIONBALL-WINNINGAFTERTHEBALL.DON’TTEACHSITUATION,YOUTHEIMPULSE ” FOOTBALL 41
“HE WAS MENTALLY AND FAÇADEPUTTINGINCAPABLEPHYSICALLYOFUPA ”
FOOTBALL 42
May 7, 2005. Mainz striker Benjamin Auer pours beer over Klopp after a successful season in the Bundesliga.
Whatever his next move is, Klopp will do things his way. At Mainz, he taught his players team spirit by taking them on a five-day break by a Swedish lake in cabins with no electricity, where they had to fish to eat. At Dortmund, after a disappointing result, he often walked home with his backpack so he could ruminate on what had gone wrong.
2001/02
that Klopp would turn out to be a ‘media manag er’ who talks a good game and knows how to sell himself. There were other fans like myself who felt he might give the club and the team a much-need ed shot in the arm. It’s easy to forget now but he wasn’t brought in to win stuff. Silverware was a distant prospect in 2OO8. We just wanted someone who would revitalise the club and a team that was all but Althoughcomatose.”results soon improved, the new coach’s personality helped win sceptics around. As Hesse says: “Every fan had a very personal Klopp story to tell about the day they met him in the streets or a café. And they invariably found out that the way he presented himself on camera was not a persona at all – he was really like that, he was mentally and physically incapable of putting up a façade.”
A very dayBerlinawaypromotiononlyofseescampaigndifferentaltogether,Mainzwinning20its37games,andmissingoutonaftera3-1defeatatUnionontheverylastoftheseason.
2003/04
The clearest continuing proof of that inability comes when journalists do the two things that con sistently annoy him – attribute his success to Harry Potter-style wizardry and suggest that other teams have fathomed out his tactics. The first claim is an affront to his Protestant – or to be specific, Lu theran – work ethic. The second is a challenge to his entire footballing philosophy. As he replied to one journalist: “Decode my style? Can you decode pace?”. (By ‘pace’ he meant not just physical pace, but speed of thought and speed of pass).
2002/03
After two seasons of nail-biting near-misses Klopp’s team finish es third, in doing so securing promotion to the Bundesliga. This time on the upside of a positive goal difference of seven goals.
WHEN KLOPP HUNG UP HIS BOOTS AS A PLAYER, HIS INFLUENCE AS COACH WITH FSV MAINZ 05 WAS CRUCIAL IN TURNING THE CLUB FROM PERENNIAL RELEGATION CANDIDATES IN BUNDESLIGA 2 TO THE PROMISED LAND OF THE TOP-TIER OF GERMAN FOOTBALL. IT’S A TIME THE LIVERPOOL BOSS STILL REGARDS AS HIS GREATEST SUCCESS.
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2000/01
There will always be more than one way to win a football match and, at some point, a counter tactic to counter pressing will emerge. At this point, it is hard to envisage what that antidote might be. Like it or not – and many fans don’t – football has become part of a global industrial complex in which clubs are perceived as brands. (Bayern Munich’s leaders, for example, now describe it as an entertainment
At Liverpool, he is so taken with the Kop’s new song about him – a twist on the Beatles’ classic I Feel Fine (“I’m so glad that Jürgen is a Red”) that he sings it himself. Klopp may call himself ‘The Normal One’ but in a city whose most famous sons are the Fab Four, he has become the Fab One.
Klopp takes over a side battling hard against aboveclubgamesseason’ssixrelegation.near-certainArunofwinsfromthelast12leavesthethreepointsthedrop.
brand, rather than a football club.) If football really is becoming part of the entertainment industry then winning ugly will, for the very biggest clubs, not be great for business. That suits Klopp, who sets out his teams to win beautifully. As he said of Antonio Conte’s defensively minded Spurs after the recent 1-1 draw at Anfield: “I don’t like this kind of football. That is my problem. I cannot coach it. I respect everything they do but it’s not me.”
Yet disappointmentmore as Mainz finish fourth in the league, this time missing out on promotion to the German top-flight on goal difference. And by just a single goal.
Klopp has signed a new contract which could keep him at Anfield until the summer of 2O28. It is hard to envisage the circumstances in which Liverpool’s owners, Fenway, would invite him to leave. Fenway president and Liverpool director Mike Gordon has said of him: “As a football manager, Jürgen is on the same level as someone you could choose to run your company.” The most likely scenario is that Klopp gets, as he did at Dortmund in April 2O15 a “gut feeling that something needs to change” and moves on. It is hard to envisage his career trajectory after Anfield – although his charisma, passion and style of football are a good fit for Barcelona.
Illustration ANDRE MENA-HEBBERT RUGBY 44
ChiefsExeter
The rise of the has been one of modern-day sport’s enduring fairy tales. As the club finds itself in choppier waters this season, season ticket holder Andy Cooper reflects on the amazing history of the team’s trophy-winning advance... and analyses where it goes from here.
RUGBY 45
When Rowe decided director of rugby Pete Drewett was not the man capable of elevating Exeter to the Premiership and dispensed with his services in March 2009, it wasn’t long before he was asking Baxter – then director of rugby at Exeter University but coaching the Chiefs forwards at the same time – to take charge.
Those of us with reasonably long memories can remember the Exeter experience back then. The club’s home was the County Ground, a hemmed-in plot of land shared with a greyhound and speedway track in what was pri marily a residential district of the city. Quaint, ramshackle and a little dusty round the edges, the ground certainly did not emit a professional vibe and for some time it felt like the team took their cue from the surroundings. I am not damning their will to win at all, but with a Cinderella-type home for a ground we were always going to, it seemed, take on the role of happy underdogs.ButRowe was not happy to play second fiddle to anyone. In a business career which had seen him success ful in both marine engineering and telecoms, he had shown a knack for spotting opportunity early, working damned hard and reaping the rewards. So, as he got more and more involved with Exeter, the reasoning followed that why couldn’t he apply the same principles which had served him so well in commerce to a sports franchise?
RUGBY 46
Not so this season. Six home defeats so far at Sandy Park have made it less of a fortress and more a feeding frenzy for visiting sides. At first the occasional re verse at the start of the season was put down to our international players still taking time out having been on over seas tours during the summer. Or some bad luck with injuries. But as home de feat followed home defeat something more sinister started to coalesce in the minds of Chiefs fans... maybe we were not as good as we once were?
Actually,Gate.Icall it dramatic, but I am not sure it was really, knowing what we know now. Grinding out unexpected results against supposedly superior op position, using a combination of brav ery, nous and playing to our strengths - as the men of Exeter did that night against the Bears - has pretty much become the standards Chiefs’ playbook in the glory years that followed.
We are not used to such behaviour in our section sat behind the posts at the western end of the ground. Normally, win, lose or draw we accept the result and move on. That’s probably because there have oftentimes in recent years been plenty of the former and not too much on the debit side. Sated by success, we took our occasional defeats on the chin, marked them down as a ‘one-off’ (because they likely were) and consoled ourselves with a pasty and pint in the Wigwam Bar round the back as we dissected the game and confidently anticipated the next visitors to Sandy Park when ‘normal service’ would be resumed.
Tony Rowe is the driving force who has successfully moved Exeter from
2010, to be precise. That was the night that the Chiefs elevated themselves to the dizzy heights of the Premiership with a dramatic 29-10 win over Bristol at Ashton
What has been smooth though has been Rowe’s selection of head coaches. And that’s because he has only ever had to make that decision once, and he alighted on the name of one Robert Edward John Baxter, already a Chiefs legend from his time packing down alongside brother Richie at a time when Exeter’s white shirts did not stay that way for long in games played on some of the mudheaps encountered in lower league rugby.
the semi-amateur era to professional in far less time than it took the wider sport of rugby union to complete the same journey. And arguably with a smoother trajectory, although that’s not to say there haven’t been bumps along the way.
Note my distinction between team and club there because there is a differ ence, even though they are mutually dependent on one another. And when it comes to shining the microscope on the distinct contributions both make to the success of the Chiefs then any decent examination of the issue would firstly come up with two names – Tony Rowe and Rob Baxter.
For an Exeter fan to write in such negative terms about their side when at the time of writing they sit sixth in the table and still have a theoreti cal chance of reaching the play-offs seems a little picky. And if one were a Bath fan that it would definitely be a viewpoint to be looked upon enviously after the season they have endured.
And yet, and yet... something does seem a little off in the 'State of Exeter' right now. And to understand why such a season of 'indifference' is hard for a Chiefs regular to fathom, one does have to indulge in a little time travel. Back to Wednesday, May 26,
groan emanated from the seat in front of me at the conclu sion of a recent Exeter Chiefs game at Sandy Park. Long, low and heartfelt, signed off with an exhalation of air, it felt strange to hear it coming from one of my fellow season ticket holders. To hear it accompanied by exclamations of a similar ilk from other Chiefs fans around me only added to the surreal nature of proceedings.
Rowe is the chairman/CEO of Exeter Rugby Ltd, the overarching entity which runs the organisation off the field. You can mess about with titles and structures all you like and call Exeter a “members’ club”, as Mr Rowe frequently does, but no-one doubts for a second that TR calls the shots. And it is no exaggeration to say that without his input off the field then the Chiefs would not be where they are on the pitch
Rowe recognised that staying at the County Ground was never going to provide the platform to grow the club in the way he imagined. And so, the
Initiallytoday.getting involved with a somewhat amateur organisation in 1998 when asked to provide some expertise (and no little cash) to mod ernise its outlook, over the 20-plus years of his involvement just about everything about Exeter Rugby Club –name, brand, ground, success levels, national profile – has changed beyond recognition. Heck, even the name of the club will soon be on its third itera tion in the time he has been in charge (more of which later).
And glory years they have surely been. Since that elevation to the top tier 12 years ago – when many pundits and armchair enthusiasts (guilty over here, your honour) predicted Exeter’s stay in the Premiership might be all too brief, or at least a struggle, the team and the club has grown beyond anyone’s wildest dreams.
And if this was Hollywood, there the story would end. But sport doesn’t stand still. And it has not stood still for the Chiefs since that ep och-making season. And there might be some in and around the club who wished to some degree it had, because in truth after the best of times, we may have witnessed some of the alternative since.
That victory in the driving rain of Twickenham to take the league title was exactly seven days on from the Chiefs running out 31-27 winners over Racing92 at Bristol’s Ashton Gate stadium to take the Champions Cup, meaning Exeter now bestrode domestic and European rugby as the best in the business. Talk about the ex ploits of Nottingham Forest in football all you like, but that ten years from promotion to double winners surely ranks as one of the greatest sporting tales told.
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world-famous pros. Add in the sublime talent of another ‘local boy done good’ in the form of Henry Slade, and it is this triumvirate of talent which has been at the centre of matters as the Chiefs collected the big prizes.
And two names spring to mind when mentioning the Duchy – Jack Nowell and Luke Cowan-Dickie. Leaf through back issues of Chiefs programmes and there they are in the infancy of their careers, two fresh-faced lads with the earliest versions of the wacky haircuts for which they later became known alongside, more importantly, a fero cious talent which not only prospered in the shirt of the Chiefs but ultimately wearing the white rose of England and the red jersey of the British Lions. Their journey in many ways encapsulates that of their club team – from talented yet unfinished auteurs to hard-nosed,
Dean Mumm, for example, the iconic Aussie forward who spent three seasons with Exeter – two of them as a captain – who brought a new sense of savvy and never-say-die to the side, is always greeted like the conquering hero on the occasions he makes it back to the UK and turns up to watch a game. And Mumm was not, ultimately, part of any squad which won the major prizes. But his contribution is recog nised as an intrinsic part of a story which now, with the benefit of hind sight, looks like it might have closed a significant chapter at the conclusion of the 2019/20 season.
Matters on the field still
move to the brand-new Sandy Park stadium on the edge of the city was proposed. Built on brownfield land with fantastic access to the nearby M5 and, importantly for future develop ments at the club, some expansion land adjacent, when the team moved there in 2006 off the field, at least, they seemed set fair to grow.
And this was where Baxter’s role was crucial. He recognised that the Chiefs could not only be a recruiting ground for players who hadn’t quite made the grade at other clubs, for an assortment of reasons, but could also be a beacon for development and promotion of home-grown players who had made their way through the club’s academy process having been spotted in the early stages of their fledgling careers on the sports fields of the South West, particularly in Cornwall.
The Simmonds brothers - Joe left and Sam - celebrate success after an epic 31–27 victory over Racing 92 in the European Rugby Champions Cup Final.
And what is that culture, a huge word in any successful organisation but, to my mind, even more so when melding the successful moving parts which make for a successful sports team? Take a look back at any of the so cial media posts from both players and fans alike at the time and the hashtag #chiefsfamily was prominent. It’s prob ably used less so by the players now, but fans still pride themselves on using it because as the Chiefs’ rose inexora bly through the ranks of the sport, it did feel we were truly one family.
All that was needed now was for the team to do the business on the field and here Baxter was to prove equally crucial to the Chiefs’ development. Slowly at first, but with growing momentum, the head coach changed the attitude of the team and their ap proach to matches without, crucially, changing the culture.
But the beauty of rugby is that sublime eye-catching skills alone won’t win the day. Some grit is needed on the field too and Baxter, himself a hard-as-nails forward when he played, recognised that. But not for him just any old lump smashing into people for fun – when he made his key decisions on members of the front eight, he went for what they could bring to the bigger picture at the club as well.
To add to Waldrom there are count less others who pulled on the jersey and seemed transformed by it. Or, more likely, transformed by Baxter and his team’s coaching methods, drawing out of each and every player who stuck around at Sandy Park the absolute maximum in terms of application of skill and effort. The Chiefs family was a seriously ex clusive club to be part of, but once you were in, you were in for life and not just while your career on the field squads.trophy-winningnotevennevertheonTheircomestillfinddaysParkAttendlasted.Sandyonmatchandyouwilllotsofveteransverymuchwelattheclub.contributionthejourneytobigprizesisforgotten,iftheywereactuallyinthe
Take Thomas ‘Tank’ Waldrom, a talented number 8 who had played for England but whose career with Leices ter Tigers was deemed on the slide, perhaps not unaligned with the size of his waistline. Baxter looked beyond the pounds and ounces and saw an unfulfilled talent whose greatest days in rugby were playing for the Chiefs, culminating in their first Premiership trophy win with a 23-20 victory over Wasps at Twickenham in 2017.
The Covid pandemic provided many surreal moments for everyone, I am sure, but for me the most obvious example was sitting in a packed sports bar at Waterloo station on October 24, 2020, cheering on my beloved Chiefs on a huge TV screen as they contested the Premiership final 12 miles away in an empty Twickenham stadium. Lock down restrictions meant we were able to gather in a bar but not at a sports stadium and so it came to pass that my men in black lifted the trophy after a 19-13 victory over Wasps whilst I was craning my neck around fellow exiles trying to see the screen.
had a certain familiarity about them as Chiefs advanced to their sixth Premier ship final in as many years. But on that bright day at Twickenham last year the stunning victory by a Harlequins side was achieved with a laissez-faire attitude to the game which was start ing to make them everyone’s favourite second team. Hang on, wasn’t that the Chiefs’ natural role?
ing, it looked like game over, and indeed it was. Late last year, the club announced it would be introducing new branding for the 2022/23 season, based on a Celtic chief logo which, one hopes, will offend no-one.
A campaign group called Exeter Chiefs4Change vociferously expressed the view – initially online, but then on the airwaves and in print – that the Chiefs’ logo was racist and disrespectful when it came to the views of the Native American community. Across the pond in North America, vigorous and heartfelt campaigns have been fought – often successfully – to persuade sports teams to change their branding.
It feels like a not-too-serious collec tive way of showing one’s support and backing to the men on the field in a novel and distinctive manner. But it is certainly not seen that way if one has campaigned for years – and over gen erations – for rights and respect to be afforded to the indigenous population of North America.
Initially, the club’s reaction was robust and defensive, arguing no racism or disrespect was intended. One suspects that as well as a genuine sense of bewilderment that the name of Exeter Chiefs was now being seen in headlines which were entirely negative and non-sport related, there was a commercial impediment at play here. I mentioned earlier the Wigwam Bar in the stadium… but one of a number of plays on words in and around Sandy Park heavily play on the logo. And im ages of ‘the chief’ are everywhere.
Although this controversy was entirely played out off the field, as a Sandy Park regular I do wonder whether at times it seeped through to matters on the field. It can’t be nice running out wearing a shirt stitched with a logo which is so associated with such controversy. And one won ders if, secretly, some of the players themselves felt uncomfortable with the branding. Was that reflected in morale and togetherness at the club, I wonder, which then transformed into performances on the field? Only those on the inside will know.
And a word on the Tomahawk Chop The reduction in the number of people singing it at home matches and what appeared to be the slightly tentative nature of those who continued to do so, seemed to dilute the effectiveness
one can see the naïve logic – in the South West we know the first team at a rugby club is known as the chiefs, so what could be more natural than to reach for the first image which came to mind to illustrate that? The club wanted to be branded better and to milk the commercial benefits which such a move might bring and yet the decision set in motion a process whereby some 22 years later it would be an issue which saw the club facing huge commercial and political pressures.
“ When the National Congress of American Indians formally wrote to the club, asking it to drop the branding, it looked like game over”
So, combine ‘The Chop’ and the branding and drive them headlong into the growing views of those cam paigning against their continued use and one has a car crash in the making. And the Chiefs may only just be crawl ing from the wreckage and checking if they are still intact.
But in a social media era it started to look like this was a battle the club just could not win, as bad headline followed bad headline, sponsors appeared to wobble a little and the campaigners just did not let up in their pursuit of change. What started out as a snowball of protest rolling down a hill pretty soon became an ava lanche. When the National Congress of American Indians formally wrote to the club, asking it to drop the brand
Maybe not any longer after some painful times off the field around the issue of branding. Who would have thought back in 1999 when some marketing whizz decided the best way to illustrate the Chiefs’ name would be to use the iconography of a Native American chief that such a manoeuvre would come to have huge ramifications for Exeter Rugby Club and the wider game as a Dispassionately,whole?
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And then there was ‘The Chop’. Attend Sandy Park on any matchday early enough and when the Chiefs players finish their warm-up they collectively gather and trot from the field to the strains of the Tomahawk Chop being belted from the loudspeak ers, with a fair proportion of those in attendance joining in. Come the game, if the Chiefs are in any way close to the tryline, or indeed look like they need a bit of a pick-me-up in a tight situa tion, ‘The Chop’ can be heard rolling around the stands.
with the ball and it feels like if the Chiefs were Superman then World Rugby has stolen their kryptonite. Yes, it’s the same for all teams and yes, it is the job of professional sports coaches and players to adapt and change the way they play for the bet terment of the sports (which these new laws were undoubtedly intended to do).
for other reasons why the Chiefs might be less effective this sea son, my eye alights on the law changes introduced. Now, my soccer-loving son says the reason he can’t stand rugby union is because of the numerous laws which are open to interpretation by the referee. When I tell him that even the players don’t get them completely, I get the retort that in the round ball game, elements of interpretation are at an absolute minimum when compared to my sport. He has a point.
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Rising above the rest – Exeter Chief and England lock Jonny Hill wins a lineout.
Sorry to get all technical on you here but with the new laws, simply put it’s a ‘get over the line first time’ change which means if the Chiefs don’t dot the ball down (or, crucially, the ref cannot establish they have) then the defensive side gets a kick to clear. Add in a ban on multiple players ‘latching’ onto their fellow forwards as he advances
The top 12 teams at the time had to take action and although the injection of capital from new league partners CVC Capital was going to help, it was never going to balance the books. The clubs were pretty much forced to agree to reduce the salary cap on playing budgets immediately - and for the foreseeable future - with somewhat unexpected consequences.
The phrase ‘transitional season’ in pro sport is generally seen as anathema and I am sure most top-level coaches will never admit publicly that is what their side is undergoing, although Eddie Jones appears to come as close as anyone in between World Cups.
That’s not a complaint, by the way. Any Chiefs’ fan who moans at their lot should have a long hard think. I know of one ex-Chiefs player who presciently told me when the Chiefs suffered a then rare defeat in front of a rather quiet Sandy Park three seasons ago that “the fans have got too used to us winning”. Sport is the great leveller at times and perhaps as fans we needed to be reminded of where we have come from and what we have achieved through the prism of a mixed campaign.
But one thing is for certain. Like all good families, the Chiefs will remain that glorious blend of character, opin ion, history, talent and a smattering of dysfunctionality... and long may that remain the case.
But for all manner of reasons, this season does appear to be one where we are taking stock and re-building for the future. I have seen the phrase ‘In Rob We Trust’ bandied around a lot by Chiefs fans and indeed we do. But with the recent sudden departure of defence coach Julian Salvi before the end of the season it is clear the great man himself sees a need for change. It will be fasci nating to see how that plays out.
Those consequences manifested themselves up front and centre when it was announced that Jonny Hill, the Exeter forward who had gone from young buck rookie in the Chiefs’ pack to full England international and Brit ish Lions tourist in the space of seven years at the club, would be leaving for rivals Sale Sharks next season. It was later revealed that ace winger – and Sandy Park favourite – Tom O’Flaherty would be joining him. Sam Skinner, Exeter-born but proudly representing Scotland, the land of his father, will leave too, heading for Edinburgh.
Other players have followed and although Baxter has already recruit ed some names to replace them who have the smack of previous signings with something to prove, the now director of rugby has admitted that changes to the salary cap have affect ed who the Chiefs can now recruit and, most importantly, retain.
which produced the likes of Nowell and Cowan-Dickie will, I am certain, continue to pump prospects Baxter’s way for him to mould and shape into a new squad. But these things don’t happen overnight and it has felt at times this season as though we are witnessing a slowing of progress on the field, reflected in results.
Where the pack is concerned though, changes to the laws were not so welcome for the Chiefs. Previous ly, a pattern could pretty much be established in matches whereby if the Exeter pack gathered the ball in and around the opposition’s tryline then it would only be a matter of time –and a few repeated attempts – before the ball would be dotted down for a score, often under the thunderous weight of many bodies who had joined the shove. And if the move was not successful then a scrum resulted to the attacking side and they tried again.
Some significant law changes from World Rugby came out in time for the 2021/22 season. The first – the 50:22 kick – seemed to be of benefit to everyone, rewarding a kicker with the throw-in if he managed to kick into touch indirectly (i.e. on the bounce) when kicking from his own half into the opposition 22m. With superstar Scotland full back Stuart Hogg and his unerringly powerful and accurate boot in the Chiefs’ side, this one seemed made for the team.
The Academy production line
of the team at times. No doubt many will think my view on this issue risible, but it did genuinely feel as though an element of Fortress Sandy Park was lost with the absence of the ‘The Chop’. And before anyone suggests I am calling for its return – I am not – I just feel something which made Exeter’s home games distinct and played to our dominance has gone. Clearly, we need a newSearchingsong.
But if you’re a Sandy Park regular like me, then that perverse pleasure gained from seeing a collection of 18-stone-plus forwards crashing over the line with the ball has been somewhat taken from us. Further muddying the waters for the Chiefs is the long-running issue of the salary cap, allied with the impact of Covid. In the midst of the pandemic, it was no exaggeration to say a number of Gallagher Premiership clubs might have gone to the wall without interven tion. Rugby club finances are pretty perilous at the best of times – factor in the loss of corporate sponsorship and gate receipts due to the banning of crowds – and one has the perfect storm.
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TheGettingChop
As sports bebrandingfranchisesadvance,andtheircaneasilyleftbehind. For teams with Native American ‘heritage’ it has been a particularly difficult decade.
KAA Gent captain Michael Ngadeu-Ngadjui.
The Native Congress of American Indians first called for change in the 1960s. That this struggle was finally addressed 60 years later shows how very-real it was.
Off the field, national conversation surrounding offensive Native American stereotypes has moved away from the Washington Redskins and Cleveland Indians. Focus is now on the Chiefs to implement change.
KAA Gent
Washington Commanders
“We’ll never change the name. It’s that simple. NEVER – you can use caps.” That’s according to club owner and American businessman, Daniel Snyder, when speaking in 2013. Despite such remarks, the NFL franchise formally known as the ‘Redskins’, announced its new name in 2022 - 18 months after dropping the racially insensitive title.
Brian Barren, the organisation’s President of Business Operations justified the change by saying that, “They’re [the players] protective of our city, they’re protective of the land and everything about it.”
In 2021 ‘Guardians’ became the fifth name in the franchise’s history – after Blues in 1901, Bronchos in 1902, Naps from 1903 to 1914 and Indians between 1915-2021.
When the Dallas Texans relocated to Kansas in 1963, they became the last professional team in the United States to adopt a name and logo with Native American characteristics.Thesidehave been imperious in the NFL over recent years, the Chiefs advanced to their second Superbowl title in 2020 – beating the San Francisco 49ers - the team surmounting a double-digit deficit in the last quarter to winThe31-20.franchise reached the final again in 2021 – this time losing out in a 31-9 defeat to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Change had been in the pipeline ever since the organisation scrapped the contentious Chief Wahoo logo from its jerseys and caps in 2018. With social unrest surrounding the killing of George Floyd sparking further intentions to change the club’s outdated iconography.
Streatham Redhawks
Originally founded in 1932, Streatham is one of the oldest ice hockey clubs in the UK. The club branded itself as the ‘Redskins’ in 1974 – becoming the first European name on this list.
An Indian Chief ident first appeared on the Belgium football club’s flag in 1924. Since the introduction of team mascot ‘Buffalo Ben’ in 2001, KAA Gent has existed seemingly free of criticism. That is until recently. The club’s take on their ident is that the figure (a white man wearing native American dress clothes) dates to a visit to the city of Ghent by Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show – a touring cowboy circus. In the team’s view, the use of Native American imagery sits in an entirely different context from the situation of re-evaluation that’s occurring in the United States.
Following 87 years as Redskins - changing the clubs name was always going to be a challenge – two years followed with the club playing as the ‘Washington Football Club’ until they finally settled on Commanders.
Cleveland Guardians
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Kansas City Chiefs
This changed in 2016 following fears that discriminatory connotations could discourage young ethnic minority players from joining the club. The name change saw the team face their second rebranding – this time as the Redhawks.
Tunnel vision – England's James Manchester,Anderson.May 2022.
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Writer ANDY AFFORD Photographer CARL SUKONIK
As a backdrop, the Red Rose is playing Warwick shire. It’s Day 2 of the Division 1 County Cham pionship match in early May and the home team has bowled the previous day and is still in the field, held up by former England opener Dominic Sibley. An derson isn’t featuring as, he says, successfully managing workload now involves taking games off at the right time. But that doesn’t mean he hasn’t already got through his share of overs when in the team.
With his game manage ment in mind, and having given it some thought, he describes his entire left leg as the subject for monitor ing and constant physio attention. But not to the point where it stops him bowling. Ultimately, he’s as fit and well as is possible to be, given what he’s done for a living for coming up 20Asyears.faras his actual bowling goes, he’s in his third life. From tearaway, to sultan, to now a speakingwithafter“Theofgive-nothing-awaydesert-drymastercontrolandconditions.thinkingcameaboutaconversationIhadPeteMoores,”hesays,ofhismentality
It’s about 20 minutes since watching the 39-yearold gesture, cajole and re monstrate his way through what needs describing as a ‘Conference-level’ game of football-tennis, played out on the outfield at Old Trafford.FromJames Anderson’s position, stood in the very centre of the roughly marked court, Lancashire’s collective staff of what must be 25 players and coaches has been subjected to al most continuous ‘perfor manceWatchingappraisal’.onfrom the press box, high up at the Brian Statham End of the ground, Anderson is the only player loosening up wearing brilliant-white shoes. His distinctive ‘tento-two’ gait exaggerated further by the tight fit of modern sportswear.
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10-year-old Anderson. The one that famously grew up in Burnley, worked in the football club shop, before going on to play, at time of writing, the small matter 169 Tests, and a total of 382 all-format games for his our-hair-sportingcountry.Thatmulti-col cove of 2003 is now a different sort of duotone. Flecks of grey having crept into the temple and beard, these being the only real indica tion of time having passed at all. And they’ve been good times, by and large. Extremely. Mostly.
He’s undeniably England’s greatest ever bowler. Arguably, even, the country’s best-ever cricketer, full-stop. So given all of the above, what is there left to achieve for one of the game’s most-talked-about, but quietest, top turns? A lot, it would appear.
AndersonJames
“I wasn’t sure what you wanted me to wear,” he says. Responding to talk of us doing some accom panying photos at some point. Pictures were okayed via a WhatsApp message the previous evening, but taking in the ‘vision’ that is arguably England’s greatest ever cricketer, it’s hard to believe the thought crossed his mind, let alone the text conversation. He looks like, well, you can see what he looks like.
The warmup game stops. Is stopped, is probably more accurate. With the low-fi loosener now concluded, players disperse in pursuit of more individual training. “I was always a good fielder as a kid,” he says later. The head-tennis game being followed by some running and throwing at targets, in which his enthusiasm and skill levels remain ever green. “I couldn’t really bat or bowl, but I was always a goodHe’sfielder.”talking about the
And speaking of plans, Anderson (and Stuart Broad) having been left out of England’s planning this winter, proved quite the topic of conversation among cricket fans. With few of them appearing in agreement with ECB’s as sessment of a need to look at options elsewhere.
“I try not to bowl balls that are easy to leave. And I try to challenge the batter’s forward-defense as often as I can. Hopefully asking the question one more time than they have an answer.”
The decision saw both of England’s greats stood down for what amounted to another series defeat, this time in West Indies. Them, alongside coach Chris Silverwood and supremo, Ashley Giles, the apparent fall guys for England’s four-nil defeat in Australia. Despite the opening pair finishing top and third of the tour bowling averages, respectively.Broadisbelieved to have been sufficiently disaffect
other way round,” he ad mits. “It’s generally a cross wind now, when it used to blow behind you. It’s a harder place to bowl.” And what of the famed James Anderson End? How does that sit? “It was supposed to be a painting in the pavilion long room,” he says, before elaborating. “The club broached the idea of an oil painting but ended up raising £50,000 towards it. On balance, myself and the chairman thought there might be better ways for the club to use the money than on a portrait of me. That’s where the idea of naming the end came up. To then justifiably put the money towards some cricket-based activity.” Another comedic pause follows. “As much as a fifty-grand painting of me would have been lovely, I’m sure…”He’s a much better talker than he’s given credit for. And far funnier. Especially so when relaxed. He misses nothing. He speaks slowly, but it’s a performance. His is a manner that’s all his own. He states the impor tance of the cricket-based podcast he does with BBC Radio 1 DJ Greg James and former Maccabees guitarist, Felix White. Now over 150 episodes and five years in, it’s the team’s love of the sport – Anderson describes all of the cast members involved in Tailenders
Joking aside. And evidently mutual. With the far end of the ground carrying his name, he’s as at home here as the transient nature of professional sport allows anyone to have the right to feel. However, “I preferred it when the ground was the
“To play here. With a great bunch of lads. My mates.
today, as well as the former England head coach’s advice. “The understanding was based around ca reer-long strike rates. I take a wicket every 60-odd balls. So, if I concede 20 runs in that time - knowing that throughout the history of my career I’ve taken a wick et every ten overs - then the maths part does the rest.
“I’ve been told by enough ex-players - enough timesto play for as long as I can. Saying to me that I’ll be a long time retired. And why wouldn’t I want to carry on?” He gestures in the direction of the window.
On a ground like this…”
as ‘cricket badgers’ - he says that their wide-eyed wonder when viewing the sport has given him a fresh perspective. “It’s easy to get cynical,” he adds. “I talk about the game a lot, about how to bowl at different batters, what fields need setting, the details of the sport, but being that deeply involved in something can mean you don’t always get to see the bigger picture. That being how great it is, as a Havinggame.”seen Anderson touring the podcast over the course of the winter, the value of it to him is ob vious. The show’s opening sequence – a musical piece – was his vision. That first scene casts him as one of the house band’s guitarists, holding down a ‘C’ chord for dear life, playing a red Fender Stratocaster. His face making him look like he’s batting out the last over of the day to save a Test. And doing so with his body half turned away from the audience, it’s definitively him. Shy, a bit reticent, but ultimately out of his comfort zone, playing a musical instrument in front of a thousand people. And the reaction of the audience to the show, particularly his place in it, is extraordinary. Even in Sheffield, the ‘love’ for this most self-effacing Lancastrian ‘is all around’. He says that he’s not
ed to explore his options outside the game. But Anderson; not so much.
A smile. It’s the ear-to-ear version. With Old Trafford undergoing further reno vation at the moment, and with no permanent end to the ground to our left (it’s an open space, set aside for concert staging, and when needed a temporary stand) and foundations in the early stages of completion to our right, it looks more like the council is making way to put a road through it, rather than the vision of loveliness that Anderson is ‘seeing’. And he’s not content to leave it there. Doubling down on the joke. “They say it’ll fly up when the building is out of the ground...”Butthe love is real.
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I’m sure, as they’re shaking my hand betterthinking,they’re‘I’mthan him’
“
looking forward to re tirement. Least of all the prospect of adding a few pounds around the middle. Vanity, he says, will mean he works hard to keep the weight off, and he means it. And as far as ambitions go, he says he has none. He reckons that he just takes most things in his stride. But not everything. How does he feel about being right up there in the game’s all-time wicket-takers list?
”
“Going past Glenn McGrath was the one that really hit me. And Courtney Walsh,” he says. “I’m sure when I meet people like that, as they’re shaking my hand they’re thinking, ‘I’m better than him’.”
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Imposter syndrome, it may sound like, but statis tics say otherwise. Not only the personal stats, but the team stats too. England’s tour to Australia in 2010/11 being a case in point. An derson was utterly brilliant on that trip Down Under. As was the rest of them. Their peak reached, even. “It was a perfect alignment of talent and experience,” he says. “The top 7 had all played 50 Tests, and all averaged better than 40. It isn’t just about ability – tal ent will only get you so far - it’s about finding a way to do well and knowing your game. That side had Paul Collingwood at 6, averaging 40. We caught everything.
Had the roll of the ball. It all cameAndtogether.”onluckplaying a part in sporting success, Anderson is quick to say that he’s had his share. A back injury at the start of his career, then a persistent calf problem more recently, but he’s generally been as fit as a flea. He makes the point about what happened to former team-mate, Simon Jones, his knee digging into the turf at Brisbane in a freak accident on an Ashes tour in 2002, meaning the 2005 Ashes winner accrued only a hand ful of the Tests that his talent warrant ed. By beenAndersoncomparison,haslucky.
But ultimately it’s a luck of his own making. High pace at the start of his career has enabled the 6’3’ pacemen to move down the gears and maintain effectiveness. If he’d played his first Test bowling 83mph away-swingers – however skillfully –he would have by now dropped below the pace tolerance for the type of surfaces Tests are generally played on, and the quality of the opposition faced. Now, he effortlesslyoperatesinthe low 80s. Quick enough for edges to carry to the slips, and for the inswinger to find a pad rather than an in side feather. But does the speedgun create pressure? “I think it’s an easy thing to say on commentary about a bowler, if you’re watching them operate below their perceived top pace. Particularly if the pitch looks flat and nothing is happen ing. It does cause a bit of pressure. But it’s not about pace. It’s find ing a way to be successful at any given time during the day. What you don’t want to see is a decline in
It’s further proof of their being room for specialism.
Loosening up in preparation of a return to Test action. England v New Zealand at Lord's, June 2022.
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pace over a day. That’s down to fitness levels. You want to see a bowler operating in peaks of activity, when the time is right, and an overall speed that indicates they’ve been putting in the effort.” We are getting to the back end of our time. The lunch break is looming and no cricketer – in the team or not – likes missing lunch. But still, a fairly long conversation ensues around cricket sweaters. The glorious nature of Lan cashire’s own ‘olden day’ version with navy, green and red bands. Not for the likes of Jack Simmonds (one for the kids), he says, are today’s modern uniforms. He speaks of his love of England versions of the past with lions and a single coronet. And also the dis aster that was the England cable-knit with the red band. “I don’t think about what I’m wearing when I’m out there,” he says. “The jumpers used to be made by a company that only made jumpers (Kent & Curwin). Now all of the kit sponsors provide their own version of an England jumper.” A pause, sigh and a bit of an eye roll follows. “But noth ing looked better, did it?”
Wickets: 646
Best Figures: 3-23 v Netherlands at Lord’s, June 5, 2009
T20Is played: 19
Wickets: 18
Extras: First first-class wicket was Sky commentator, Ian Ward, Lancashire v Surrey at the Oval in 2002. Anderson is the first player to reach 1000 first-class wickets after making their debut in the 21st Century. He has dismissed the batsman for a duck 105 times in Test cricket, the most by any Test bowler. Concussion substitute Matt Parkinson came in at number 11 in the first Test against New Zealand this summer. The last time Anderson batted higher than 11 for England was against Pakistan in 2015.
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Ten-wicket hauls: 3
ODI debut: v Australia at Melbourne, December 15, 2002
Test Debut: v Zimbabwe at Lord’s, May 22, 2003
Tests played: 170
First-class matches: 275
Five-wicket innings: 2
Five-wicket innings: 52
Best Figures: 5-23 v South Africa at St George’s Oval, November 29, 2009
Best Figures: 7-19 v Kent at Old Trafford, July 5, 2021
Club: Lancashire
First-class wickets: 1044
Ten-wicket hauls: 6
Wickets: 269
Full name: James Michael Anderson OBE
DoB: July 30, 1982
Five-wicket innings: 31
Best figures: 7-42 v West Indies at Lord’s, September 7, 2017
T20I debut: September 13, 2007, v Zimbabwe at Newlands, SA
The Burnley Lara – Anderson and Broad embrace after a hard-fought draw in Sydney, January 2022.
Style: Left-hand bat, right-arm fast-medium bowler
ODIs played: 194
*At time of going to print CRICKET 58
Wicket number 650 after bowling New Zealand’s Tom Latham at Trent Bridge during a memorable victory over the World Champions.
And that’s it. We did the photos. He got his lunch. And if you’re now not reading a footnote to the James.contrary,Jimmy.
And also of age being but a number. And a classic, remaining a classic. Forever. We touch on his batting. How he’s now a nailed-on no.11. We speak about nick ing a wide half-volley when on 81 against Australia at Trent Bridge. “My top-score before that was 49 not out, opening the batting when I was a kid. It took me 50 overs. I have no regrets about those last 19 runs. None at all.”
FOR THE RECORD WHERE HE STANDS; IN THE STANDINGS* Most matches in career 171 Tests for England Most balls bowled in career 46,402 Test, ODI and T20 deliveries Most wickets on a single ground 116 Test dismissals at Lord’s Most dismissals by a wicketkeeper 178 caught behind in Tests Most wickets in career 651 Test scalps Most innings before first duck 54 Test knocks Highest score batting at 11 81 v Australia at Trent Bridge, 2014#423#1353
Oh, Jimmy Jimmy. Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy Jimmy Anderson. Is possibly even right now, back playing for England.
‘A case of age being but a classic.remainingAndnumber.aclassic,aForever’
Only predated by sailing’s America’s Cup as one the world’s oldest major sporting titles, tells you all you need to know about The Open at St Andrews. And there’s more to it than some big-ass wine decanter...
The Pitch Bluffer’s Guide to the
ChampionshipOpen150th GOLF 60
Who are the main contenders?
Fuelled by the spirit of Seve, but dis playing a consistency all of his own, Rahm is rarely far from the top of the leader board. Already a winner of the Mexico Open in 2022, he finished top of golf’s overall rankings in 2021.
Scottie Sheffler (USA)
When does it start and how does it work?
“ Hey, if you want to win The you’veOpen,got to have a little bit more”
Open winner at Royal St. George’s in 2021, when eclipsing Jordan Speith by two shots, Morikawa became
What’s the secret to playing well at St Andrews?
It has been some little time since the now 33-year-old, four-time Major winner from Holywood played his finest golf. But he continues to put quality rounds together. He couldn’t, could he? At St Andrews?
World No.1 Sheffler registered his first Major success when winning the 2022 Masters in April. The 25-year-old resi dent of Dallas, Texas, looks the player to beat at St Andrews.
This year marks the competition’s 150th running, and fittingly sees it return to the Old Course at St Andrews where it all began. Although held at Royal Portrush in County Antrim in 1951 and 2019, the event historically rotates around a tight roster of courses in England and Scotland. 2022 marks the 30th time it has been held at the Royal & Ancient Golf Club, with American Zach Johnson the last winner when held on this course in 2015. The event will serve as host to 290,000 fans over its duration.
Three-times winner, Nick Faldo
Collin Morikawa (USA)
So, what is The Open?
So, in summary...
Where is it happening?
156 players will tee it up on July14, the early risers starting at a nearnocturnal 06.30am. With the remainder of the field following them at 11-minute intervals. Contenders will all play a minimum of two rounds of 18 holes duration, from which the field will be reduced - deemed to have missed the ‘cut’ - leaving the lowestscoring 70 players contesting the final two rounds on Saturday and Sunday. For those weekend rounds, players are paired off in new two-man groupings, tee-off times based on ‘least-likely’ to ‘most-likely’; by highest to lowest scores. The golfer with the lowest combined score after all four rounds - or in the unlikely event of a tie-forfirst, after an additional four-hole playoff - is declared the winner.
the wind? Yeah? Well, it can be behind you one minute and in your face the next. In this, it’s better to be lucky than good and have condi tions in your favour. But some players are definitely better at it than others. American legend Tom Watson was a serial winner when it was blowing a hooley. His approach was to ‘chip’ the ball around the course. Equally, Tiger Woods’ famous ‘stingers’ saw multiple balls bumped along fairways.
Diddirection.wemention
Jon Rahm (Spain)
The Open is a four-day golf tournament taking place annually in July. It is one of the sport’s four ‘Majors’; the others being the Masters, the US Open, and the USPGA. The eagle-eyed among you will notice that The ‘British’ Open, (which it should never be referred to as), is the only Major not taking place Stateside.
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Keep it low, keep it safe, watch the wind, avoid the odd wall, and then putt like your life depends on it. In that, it’s a course of massive greens, so you’ll be expecting to have the putter out a lot. When on the green, there’s a need to get that first putt close. It’s the easiest thing in the world to three-putt. Or worse.
What does the winner get?
And don’t take your eyes of The 17th, “Road Hole”. It means hitting your ball over the corner of The Old Course Hotel, as it sits between you and the flag. Missing the fairway will most likely find a bunker on the left, or on the road, or up against a wall on the right. And the recovery shots from either are no easier. And it’s the course’s narrowest fairway. For a club player, a bogey (one over par) is worth a lap of honour. Oh, and on the 14th hole is the devilishly difficult 'Hell Bunker'. The great Jack Nicklaus took four shots to get out in the 1995 Open, recording a ten in total.
Avoiding the rough is a must. On the TV it looks all wide fairways and giant skies, but when you combine everchanging winds and the pressure of 500 years of history, if your ball wanders left or right, it generally finds trouble. It’s a relatively short course by modern standards, but keeping shots low and in play is more important that hammering the ball miles, particularly if its in the wrong
Given 11 hypothetical £10 bets, Pitch thinks these fellas should give you a decent pitch-and-run for your money…
The total prize fund for this year’s event is set to top $12 million for the first time, with the player named Champion Golfer of the Year bank ing a cool $2 million. But money isn’t everything, right? So, on top of the cash, the Open champion has since 1873 been presented with one of sport’s most iconic trophies, the famous Claret Jug.
Rory McIlroy (Northern Ireland)
Tommy Fleetwood (England)
After a solid showing at the Masters in April, Southport’s very-own looks to be once again showing some glimpses of the form that made him good viewing a few years ago. Consistent without being in genuine touching distance of winning – ever since taking a Ryder Cup mauling in 2019 – the popular 31-year-old has looked much more likely.
50 per cent ‘mullet’, 50 per cent ‘dirty ‘tache’, and 100 per cent ‘pure ocker’, Smith’s style of play is even more flamboyant than his very personal sense of style. Described as having ‘the biggest balls in golf’, he’s a player to fear, preferring to risk losing the lot in his attempt to win it all.
Matt Fitzpatrick (England)
Sheffield’s $3m dollar man - US Open winner in June - became to first Englishman to hold the title since Justin Rose in 2013. It was a first PGA Tour win for the 27-year-old, but the second time winning at Brookline, after taking the US Amateur title there in 2013. He joins Jack Nicklaus as only the second person to win amateur and professional titles at the same venue.
Danny Willett (England)
Masters winner in 2016, Willett became only the second Englishman to wear a green jacket. Last October he won the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship, his first Tour win since 2019. A strong showing at the Masters, when finishing tied 12th, the 34-yearold’s game looks to be back to something like its best.
Cameron Smith (Australia)
Dustin Johnson (USA)
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the first tournament debut winner since Ben Curtis in 2003. Displaying a steadiness few can match, winning would see the 25-yearold Los Angeleno become the first back-to-back winner since Padraig Harrington in 2007 and 2008.
DJ is a two-time Major champion and golf’s most recognisable set of shoulders. A Masters victory as recent as 2020, South Carolina’s easy-swinging serial winner is married to Paulina Gretzky, daughter of ice hockey legend, Wayne, which must be nice.
Hideki Matsuyama (Japan)
‘Flamboyant’ Reed is familiar to European golf fans as the fingerwagging, crowd-shushing, shy-andretiring member of Team USA’s most recent Ryder Cup win. If confidence was bankable, this 31-year-old multi-millionaire Texan would be a… multi-millionaire. From Texas. Masters winner in 2018, almost everyone would certainly begrudge him an Open win in 2022. But sport just loves a bad boy, doesn’t it…
Japan’s first ever Major winner when finishing one shot ahead of America’s Will Zalatoris at the 2021 Masters, Matsuyama is already a winner in 2022 after success in Hawaii. Ranked 13 in the world, he looks to have the game to see him safely round the Old Course.
Patrick Reed (USA)
How can I follow the action?
BBC 5Live coverage is always top drawer, with the added delight of hearing sports personalities from other codes sharing the atmosphere whilst speaking in excitedly hushed tones around the course. And Sky Sports throw the lot at it. Your day one coverage will begin from first light.
After witnessing the Herculean effort of the game’s biggest name, almost willing himself through four rounds at Augusta National during The Masters, April saw Woods confirm his intention to play at the Home of Golf. Having won twice on the Old Course, it’s easy to see why he’s keen to drink it all in once again.
Phil Mickleson crosses the iconic Swilcan Bridge, on his way to the 18th green. open winners from top left Zach Johnson 2015 / Tiger Woods 2000 / Seve Ballesteros 1984 / Arthur 'Bobby' Locke 1957 / Sam Snead in 1947 / Jock Hutchinson 1921
On home turf, you’d like to hope so.
Are any Scots in contention?
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Is Tiger playing?
Grant Forrest and Calum Hill were both winners on the European Tour last season, but the spotlight most definite ly falls on Oban-born 25-year-old, Bob MacIntyre. A 12th place finish on Masters debut in 2021 (tied 23rd in 2022), plus successive top-10 finishes at The Open, means this former shinty-playing teen is a real chance.
A good drive is crucial, often into the wind, and your best bet it is aim just left the church spire in the distance. There’s a long carry to the fairway but get it right and you will be in prime position to steer clear of the many treacherous bunkers on this hole.
14
Standing 10ft deep and covering an area of 300 square yards, Hell bunker is the largest on the course. It’s regarded as one of the ‘big four’ at St Andrews and by operating on a four-year cycle, one of these is rebuilt every year.
Long.
Even the greatest can come unstuck when they tangle with Hell bunker.
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616 yds - Old Course, St Andrews, Fife
The critical shot on ‘Long’ - the drive
Jack chancesthusthegreatwhenthefromextricateattemptsneededNicklausfourtohimselfthesandduring1995Openhewasinapositiononleaderboard–wreckinghisofsuccess.
And finally... If you’re looking for a bit more detail on this great theatre of sport, look no thanfurtherPitch’s more andsome’,‘terriblethebreakdowngranularofOldCourse’stwoHoles1417…
It’s long by name and long by nature – a 616-yard par-5 from the back tee that’s the longest hole on the course. But it’s not the length that challenges the top players, it’s the fact that even keeping the ball straight can be fraught with danger. Right in the middle of the fairway, just waiting to catch your second shot, is Hell Bunker. No matter how good you are, it's bucket and spade time.
The drive
It’s talked about as one of the great Open shots… the one when Miguel Angel Jimenez, the charismatic Spaniard, had no place to go in 2010. His ball had crossed the road and was resting against the stone wall. Undeterred, he punched it into the wall, and it rebounded to the middle of the green.
Why would you build a hotel that’s right in the line of fire, blocking the path between tee and fairway? A curious decision in 1968 but it has helped earn the 17th its title as the toughest par 4 in golf. Flying your drive over the corner of the Old Course Hotel is actually much less of a challenge than what lies ahead… the infamous greenside bunker that has broken many a heart, and the road that runs immediately behind the green.
As with so many of the 112 bunkers at St Andrews, you don’t have to hit your ball directly into the bunker to find yourself with a problem. Many a top player opting to putt from off the green – including Rory McIlroy - has watched in anguish as the ball suddenly turned sideways and dribbled into the sand.
The Road Hole.
The critical shot2nd shot
Opinions vary as to which of the letters of Old Course Hotel that stare at you as you nervously tee up your ball is the best target to aim for. Whatever you decide, hitting the narrow fairway is essential.
The Road: Open history is littered with tales of woe as a chance to win the greatest title in golf evaporated when a shot finished on the road. There are no free drops available from here, even if the ball comes to rest alongside the perimeter wall.
495 yds - Old Course, St Andrews, Fife
The Road bunker is often referred to as the Sands of Nakajima, which dates back to 1978. Japanese star Tommy Nakajima had a real chance of lifting the Claret Jug before finding the sand but five shots later, he was an also-ran.
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Annotations TERRY BOWLES Illustrator JOE WRIGHT
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A good drive will leave you around 200 yards to go and the margin for error from there is ridiculously small. Slightly off-line to the left and the Road bunker will gather up your ball. Go right or fail to find the middle of the tiny green and you’ll be on the road.
5 x Olympic gold World record holder* 1 x Olympic silver 7 x World Champion 14 x European Champion 1 x Commonwealth gold 6 x European U23 Champion *3000m Team Pursuit World record: 3:14.051 set in London 2012 by the Great Britain team of Laura Kenny, Dani King and Joanna Rowsell CYCLING 66
BY KEVIN WHITCHURCH
DAME KENNYLAURA WhatLooksGreatnessLike…
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Four further Olympic gold medals have followed, making her the first British woman to win golds at three consecutive Olympics and the most successful fe male cyclist in Olympic history. Over and above her sporting success, Laura Kenny has become a clear, caring and forthright commentator on the challenges facing working Mums (son Albie was born in 2017), on how (when agreeing with team mate Katie Archibald’s view) she feels let
Laura Trott began cycling with her Mum, who started in an attempt to lose weight, and big sister Emma. Emma became a road racing cyclist. Born in Cheshunt in 1992, Laura, aged just 17, won
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Gold medallists Jason Kenny and then fiancée Laura Trott pose on the podium at Rio 2016 – Laura saw Olympic gold in both the Team pursuit and Omnium that year. With husband Jason in the Royal Box at the Wimbledon Tennis Championships.
British junior titles and, at 18, won a place at the 2010 Euro Track Championships. In 2011, there was her first World win, as part of the team pursuit.
orn prematurely, and with asthma, the woman who became Britain’s greatest ever female Olympian is now also a Dame.
down by her governing body, the UCI, on transgender issues and, most recently, posting news of her miscarriage. Com menting, she said: “I’ve always known I was tough, but sometimes life pushes you to an unbearable limit. If it wasn’t for Jason and Albie getting me through the day to day I’d have been broken. But here I am, with the support of my family, friends and teammates, on the podium of a nation’s Investedcup.”with her Damehood alongside husband Sir Jason, Laura Kenny will be competing at this summer’s Common wealth Games. It’s another opportunity to see Britain’s greatest living sportswoman in action.
But it was the London Olympics in 2012 that brought her to a wider audience. She won a gold medal in the team pursuit with Dani King and Joanna Rowsell setting a world record. And, after she’d finished competing, there was the photo of her kissing then-boyfriend, now-husband Jason Kenny, as they sat behind David Beckham at the volleyball.
Visitors to the landmark have a range of altitudes from which to admire the Parisian skyline. Those with the stur diest constitutions will make a beeline for the great glass elevators that take them to the tower’s peak – its summit, itsAsidezenith.from the occasional chink
IN THE HARD YARDS, NIGE TASSELL TELLS THE CHAMPIONSHIP’S HIDDEN STORIES, TAKING READERS ON AN EYE-OPENING TOUR OF THE 2020-21 SEASON.
FROM BOURNEMOUTH UP TO MIDDLESBROUGH, SWANSEA ACROSS TO NORWICH AND ALL POINTS IN BETWEEN, HE INTERVIEWS PLAYERS, MANAGERS, CHAIRMEN, BACKROOM STAFF, FANS AND BROADCASTERS TO DISCOVER EXACTLY WHAT LIFE IS LIKE ONE STEP BELOW THE PREMIER LEAGUE. “
Sometimes the highest view isn’t always the best.
of glasses in its champagne bar and the wind whistling past sightseers’ ears, the summit is a quiet place. It’s detached from the city, distanced from the scramble of the streets far below. Nearly 600 feet lower down, the second-highest viewing platform is where it’s at. It’s a busier, more popular vantage point; the architectural splendour of Paris can still be gazed upon from a more than decent height, but it’s one where visitors can also feel closer to the
Life rawindoesn’thereoperateabubble.It’sandreal” FOOTBALL 70
Take the Eiffel Tower, for instance.
The Warm-up
throbbing pulse of the capital.
Now consider the English football pyramid. The rarefied air of the Premier League might always be the ultimate goal for those with a head for heights, but it’s the second tier, the Championship, that matters most for many. Life here doesn’t operate in a bubble. It’s raw and real. Down here you can hear the hustle, feel the bustle.
The Championship’s formidable nature is almost universally acknowl edged by those who have played and
And it’s a league that means different things to different people. To the late-in-the-day, former top-flight pros, it’s an irrefutable signal that they’re coming down the mountain from their career peak. To eager young pups, it’s a high-profile crucible – the proverbial shop window – in which to forge reputations and turn heads. To wellseasoned managers, it’s confirmation that they’ve found their level, the madness of the Championship being a strange comfort zone that matches their talents. And to the new breed of bosses, it’s both baptism and audition.
Bloomfield’s subsequent signing kicked off this long tenure in Bucking hamshire. ‘I didn’t come here meaning to stay this long. I saw it as a stepping -stone. I signed an eighteen-month contract but, having dropped down from the second tier, I wanted to step back up again. But I soon got my feet under the table. I loved the club. When the opportunity came to leave when I was 21, I didn’t want to. So I stayed here for less money because I loved being here so much. And after 16 and a half years, I’m still having the time of my life.’
Andy Giddings
In the second minute of added time, Rotherham captain Michael Ihiekwe rises largely uncontested to head the winner from a corner. A point looked like it was in Wycombe’s pocket, but it was then gifted away.
To meet these people, and to taste the relentless chaos of the Champion ship, I set nine months aside to dive deep into the molten heart of English football. And the 2020–21 campaign turned out to be unlike any other in history. Yes, those trademark dramatic moments came fitted as standard, but the ongoing peaks and troughs of a worldwide pandemic – and its stadium -emptying abilities – produced the kind of season that no one would ever wish to repeat.
On Saturday afternoons during the football season, when these industrial units are shuttered up for the week end, the scene is at least enlivened by
the snake of Wycombe fans passing through en-route towards their field of dreams, each wearing the two-tone blue of their affiliation.
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Giddings is in work already because, when your patch covers a Premier League club, three Championship sides and a League One outfit, there’s no room to pause, little time to come up for air. It’s a Thursday, so there are three press conferences for him and a colleague to cover today. Then there’s
On this particular Saturday, how ever, the snake is in enforced hiber nation. With coronavirus restrictions demanding that all EFL matches continue to be played behind closed doors, this first match of a brand-new, box-fresh season feels eerie. The roads are quiet. The burger van is doing no trade at all. A dribble of journalists and broadcasters have their accreditation checked and their temperatures taken. This is how match days look and sound in a Lastpandemic.season, Adams Park was the home of Wycombe Wanderers of League One. Today, it’s the home of Wycombe Wanderers of the Cham pionship. This afternoon will see the Chairboys’ first-ever match in the second tier of English football.
That the side he leads now sit higher up the pyramid than Ipswich is particularly poignant for Bloomfield. A native of Suffolk, he came up through the youth ranks at Portman Road be fore being released a couple of months ahead of his twentieth birthday.
After 72 minutes, he makes another contribution to the club’s history books, becoming the first Wycombe player to be substituted in the Championship. But there’s no huffiness when his number’s up. For a man who’s done his coaching badges, and for whom a few decades in the dugout surely await, he stays on the touchline rather than heading up the steps to a seat in the stand.
Adams Park, residence of Wycombe Wanderers for the past 30 years, is located at the far end of an industrial estate, one that’s home to window fitters, biscuit manufacturers and pur veyors of part-worn car tyres. Glamor ous it ain’t.
Matt Bloomfield
managed within it. Gus Poyet once declared it to be the toughest league in England. Neil Warnock went further, believing it to be the tightest division in Europe. That wasn’t enough for Norwich boss Daniel Farke, who went further still: ‘The Championship, with out any doubt, is the toughest league in the Forcingworld.’your way to the top table of English football, where the cash sup posedly falls like rain, is the ultimate bounty, regardless of the goldfish bowl they’d be forced to swim in.
Bloomfield leads the team out to face Rotherham, not to the roar that everyone would like, but to a polite ripple of applause, mainly from the substitutes taking their places in the stand and the sponsors, guests and injured players in the Frank Adams Stand over on the other side of the Historypitch.is actually made 20 minutes later, when Bloomfield becomes the first Wycombe player to receive a yellow card in the Championship, the referee adjudging him to have followed through in a full-blooded challenge on the Rotherham number four, Shaun MacDonald.
It’s mid-morning and, at the studios of BBC Radio Sheffield, Andy Giddings is in work earlier than any employer would have the right to demand. As the station’s sports editor, Giddings was down in west London last night commentating on an EFL Cup encoun ter between Fulham and Sheffield United. He arrived back at the studios at 1.20 a.m., dropped off the radio car and headed home, reaching his front door 15 minutes later. This morning he’s sanguine about such demands; this is what’s required from the trav elling-wide-and-far occupants of the commentary box.
You can squint all you like. You could even slip on a pair of rose-tinted glasses. But there’s no way you could mistake Hillbottom Road for Wembley Way.
For the club’s long-serving captain Matt Bloomfield – a midfield stalwart whose 16 years at Adams Park have rightly earned him the title ‘Mr Wycombe’ – it’s all a bit surreal.
‘I was getting ready to go out to have a Christmas meal with the youthteam lads and I got a call from [then Wycombe manager] Tony Adams. I got out of the shower to an answerphone message from an England legend! I rang him straight back. He asked whether I wanted to come down to Wycombe to have a look around. “I’ll be there tomorrow morning...”’
‘In this league especially, when there are games Saturday/ Wednesday pretty much every week, we’re away an awful lot,’ explains Foster. ‘We’re in a hotel two or three nights every week. You’re pulling your hair out because there’s nothing to do.’
Ben Foster
*Includes twelve-point deduction # Team Pl W D L F A GD Pts 1 Bristol City 3 3 0 0 6 1 5 9 2 Reading FC 3 3 0 0 6 1 5 9 3 Swansea City 3 2 1 0 3 0 3 7 4 AFC Bournemouth 3 2 1 0 5 3 2 7 5 Watford FC 3 2 1 0 2 0 2 7 6 Blackburn Rovers 3 2 0 1 11 3 8 6 7 Luton Town 3 2 0 1 3 2 1 6 8 Birmingham City 3 1 2 0 2 1 1 5 9 Millwall FC 3 1 2 0 2 1 1 5 10 Brentford FC 3 1 1 1 4 2 2 4 11 Queens Park Rangers 3 1 1 1 5 4 1 4 12 Coventry City 3 1 1 1 4 4 0 4 13 Norwich City 3 1 1 1 3 3 0 4 14 Rotherham United 3 1 1 1 2 2 0 4 15 Stoke City 3 1 1 1 1 2 -1 4 16 Cardiff City 3 1 0 2 3 4 -1 3 17 Huddersfield Town 3 1 0 2 1 4 -3 3 18 Middlesbrough FC 3 0 2 1 2 3 -1 2 19 Preston North End 3 0 1 2 2 4 -2 1 20 Barnsley FC 3 0 1 2 0 3 -3 1 21 Nottingham Forest 3 0 0 3 0 5 -5 0 22 Derby County 3 0 0 3 1 8 -7 0 23 Wycombe Wanderers 3 0 0 3 0 8 -8 0 24 Sheffield Wednesday* 3 1 1 1 2 2 0 -8 FOOTBALL 72
would have been relegated.’
It’s late November. Watford play Bristol City at Ashton Gate this evening, but the Hornets arrived in town yesterday, more than 24 hours before kick-off. There are still ten hours to go, time that – other than a super-light stretching session – the squad will largely spend lounging around the hotel.
During the summer, Wednesday were docked 12 points for breaching spending rules, namely the inclusion of the sale of their Hillsborough Stadium in their accounts for the 2017–18 season, despite the sale – to their own owner, the Thai businessman Dejphon Chansiri – occurring a year later. In doing so, the club were able to post a pre-tax profit for that earlier season and thus avoid a points deduction under the EFL’s profitability and sustainability rules.
If Giddings and his two-man team only concerned themselves with mat ters on the pitch, their working days and nights would be full enough. But then there’s all the off-the-field she nanigans that need reporting and ana lysing. And few places have witnessed the level of off-the-field shenanigans in recent years that Sheffield Wednesday Football Club has.
‘I think across the city there is a certain sense of disbelief that the administrators of the football club and the owner had put them in a position where this was even a possibility. Across the course of 18 months, they had numerous chances to make this purchase between the two different companies set up by Mr Chansiri. They were afforded different meet ings with the EFL, who the records show gave them various warnings and opportunities to get this sorted out before the deadline and then after the deadline. And they still didn’t take them. Had the EFL not chased the wrong charge, Sheffield Wednesday
The current Wednesday manager, Garry Monk, has been in the job for a year and led the club to 16th place in his first season. That, to many Wednesday fans, would need to be improved upon were this a regular season. The points deduction, though, dictates it’s anything but. And it gives Monk some breathing space, a little room to enact the ‘cultural change’ he’s promised to bring to Hillsborough. Giddings agrees. ‘The points deduction does help him. People will look on the circumstances with a degree of sympathy. Not that all Wednesday supporters will be cutting the manager too much slack, though. ‘
In room 1251, on the second floor of the Bristol Marriott Royal Hotel, Ben Foster is climbing the walls. Or, in his own words, he’s busy being ‘bored out of my tree’.
the preparation needed for the games the station is broadcasting live com mentaries of come both Saturday and Sunday. Pray the caffeine works.
In November 2019, the EFL charged the club with misconduct and, a full eight months later, Wednesday found themselves with a points deduction anyway. They probably, though, felt a strong sense of relief. They had got out of jail. Had the disciplinary panel’s decision come in a more timely fash ion, the deduction may well have been applied to last season, when 12 points taken off their total would have meant relegation to League One. Having reported on the whole saga from very close quarters, Giddings is ideally placed to measure the sense of relief across the blue half of the city that Wednesday had dodged a bullet.
Wednesday’s start to the season has offered glimpses of optimism, most notably a win over Cardiff and a home draw against Watford. However, at best, this season will simply mean survival as a Championship club. It’s now 20 years since the Owls darkened the doorstep of the Premier League. It’s not so much that the club is a sleeping giant – more that it’s been in a coma for two entire decades.
This season, though, Foster has been relieving the boredom by setting up his own YouTube channel under the moniker of The Cycling GK. The twice-weekly videos he uploads cover both football and his other great sport ing love, cycling. The football element takes viewers behind the scenes leading up to each match – luxury coaches, well-appointed hotels, tempo rary dressing rooms in Portakabins, lockdown haircuts and nightly Netflix choices. One of the more eyebrowraising revelations is the amount that players eat before a match. After a generous meal on the Friday evening, a cooked breakfast will be enthusi astically polished off on Saturday morning, followed by, just a couple of
‘At the minute,’ Giddings concludes before heading off for one of today’s press conferences, ‘Sheffield Wednes day are an average Championship team. The support is there and is won derful. The people who have run Shef field Wednesday don’t really deserve it. The hope is that somebody one day will get it right. A lot of people – me included from a neutral’s perspective –thought it would be under Chansiri. Sadly, everybody’s still waiting.’
Isn’t there a chance of being too relaxed? Is a day of lethargy really the ideal preparation for a need-yourwits-about-you game against the third-placed team in the league? ‘Stop talking common sense,’ warns Foster. ‘It doesn’t fly round here.’
There’s nothing atypical about to day, though. Irrespective of the kick-off time – and regardless of the distance to an away game, even if it’s only a handful of miles down the road – Wat ford will always stay in a hotel the night before. That’s only the half of it. It’s a practice they even uphold for all home matches too. Whether a Saturday afternoon or a midweek evening, the squad will always have had a sleepover the night before.
If cycling represents valuable time away from football for Foster, it has also made a major contribution to his physical longevity. As he approaches his fifth decade on the planet – and despite all that hotel cuisine – his
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hours later, the pre-match meal. Here –on Foster’s plate, at least – a teetering pile of various delights from the buffet awaits.He’s a lively host on his videos, clearly one of the jokers in the Watford pack. A regular feature of each is the positioning of Foster’s GoPro camera in the back of the goal, with the footage it records offering a fascinating study of his art. ‘A lot of people said, “No, you can’t put a GoPro there. You’re going to get in trouble.” But I gave it a go to see what it looked like and it’s flown from there. The response was imme diate. No one had done it before. It’s a different, unique angle – the goal keeper’s perspective. Young, budding goalkeepers tell me they’ve found it so helpful: how I move around the goal, the instructions I give, the criticism I dish out.
‘Strictly speaking, broadcasting any material from matches is against the rules, so we’ve been speaking to the EFL, who have been brilliant. There’s not been a time when they’ve said, “No, you can’t do that.” They’ve always tried to help. They’re big fans of the channel and they want to keep it going.’These revealing videos have enabled football fans, deprived of seeing their team in the flesh, to keep the mach inations of the Championship at the forefront of their minds. And they don’t just appeal to Watford fans. Far from‘We’reit. playing Bristol City tonight. Over the past week, I’ve had loads of comments online from their fans: “Can’t wait for the Bristol episode.” They want to see behind the scenes at their club. They want to see me
walking around Ashton Gate. When we get off the coach, what entrance do we use? What do the changing rooms look like? They want to see all that stuff.’
After 19 years as a professional at Stoke, Manchester United, Birmingham, West Brom and now Watford (along with eight caps for England), at the age of 37 Foster knows how to avoid getting over-absorbed by the relentlessness of the season. He’s discovered his pressure valves: not just shooting the videos, but also getting on board one of his fleet of road bikes to lose himself on the country lanes of his native Warwickshire.
‘To walk into here for the first time was almost overpowering. It’s abso lutely magnificent. Even without a crowd inside it, there’s something about it. It’s a vibrant stadium. A few fans aren’t sure about the coloured seats, but I think they make it look special. They make it feel as though fans are there. They give it an atmos phere of its own, which not many new stadiums have.
Gary Sweet
In 2004, the BBC broadcast an extraordinary episode of Trouble at the Top, the documentary series that offered fly-on-the-wall access inside the boardrooms of notable companies and industries. This particular episode
To football fans in a particular corner of west London, Peter Gilham’s voice may well be as familiar as that of a close family member. For the past 51 years, he’s been Brentford’s man on the mic, the PA announcer in the dual role of minister of information and rabble-rouser. He’s 73 now, but age will not wither his love for his beloved team. ‘I bleed red and white. I’m Brentford through and through. And to be this close to the club for all those years has been very special to me. I’m the luckiest guy alive.’
October 1969. He’s the longest-serving PA announcer in English football.
‘And I love the fact that we’ve moved further towards central London. In the past, there was talk of moving out to Woking, out to all sorts of places. But we’ve been able to stay in our borough, unlike other teams we all know well. And it’s our stadium. That says everything. It doesn’t belong to the council. It belongs to Brentford Football Club.’
Gilham started supporting Brent ford in 1954 when he was seven years old. As a young adult, he became involved with the social club and, in 1967, took a leading role in protests against the planned merger with QPR. With that threat to the club extinguished, Gilham graduated to becoming master of ceremonies in
doors matches, so why would a PA announcer not be surplus to require ments? ‘I went in on a Friday and got talking to the stadium supervisor and his assistant. They told me that, while we’d have no fans, they still needed a PA announcer. Would I be happy to do it? I was almost reduced to tears. The thought that I could carry on seeing my beloved Brentford meant everything to me.’
The number of matches that Gilham has been absent from over the last half-century can be counted on the fingers of one hand. ‘I’ve only missed a couple of games in recent years. One was when I was going on holiday to the Maldives with my former wife, but we had a rearranged game against Col chester on a Tuesday night. I thought I’d rather be where I was going. In the end, the game got called off at halftime because of a frozen pitch. It was rearranged and I got to see it.’
Of course, almost all of those home matches (‘I’ve never kept a tally’) were at Griffin Park, Brentford’s characterful old ground. Now boarded up – even if its floodlight pylons continue to draw the attention of motorists on the elevated section of the nearby M4 – Griffin Park hosted its last-ever first-team match in July. After that play-off semi-final second leg against Swansea, the club drew the curtain on 116 years of history by moving to a purpose-built stadium less than a mile to the east. Ahead of that final game, Gilham was the one charged with saying the goodbye, the one to bid it farewell. He added a personal element, quoting the lyrics of Madonna’s ‘This Used To Be My Playground’. A pause. An intake of breath. ‘Thank you, Griffin Park.’
The deeper into the game, the more Bristol City pile on the pressure. ‘Too easy!’ is a recurrent message from Foster to his defenders. Despite that pledge not to corrupt the young ears of the nation, his language gets coarser during the closing minutes. The bleep machine will be working overtime when this latest footage gets edited.
The game ends scoreless. After nearly 30 hours in Bristol and all those long periods of boredom, a largely uneventful nil-nil is the reward. But this latest excursion is but one piece of a 46-match jigsaw. In a couple of days’ time, the routine is revived. Another luxury coach journey, another well-ap pointed hotel, another generous buffet breakfast, another equally generous pre-match meal.
‘Welcome to the last match of 2020. What an awful year off the pitch, but a great year on it.’
fitness remains extremely high, with his agility meaning he’s arguably the best keeper in the Championship.
Peter Gilham
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As the padlocks were wrapped around the Griffin Park gates for the last time, and anti-intruder paint applied to the walls and fences, it might have been the optimum time for Gilham, after more than 50 years’ service, to bow out. Not a bit of it. While richly acknowledging and appreciating history, he’s not an overly sentimental type. Clearly delighted about his services being retained, he’s fully embraced his new workplace. ‘We first started talking about a new stadium back in the mid.’70s, but this went by-the-by over the years. There was more talk around the turn of the century, but the financial downturn in the country made it get put to one side. So to see it come to fruition now just means everything.
Gilham had already understood the honour bestowed on him during that splintered season, having been in the sainted position of attending matches once play resumed after that threemonth, Covid-dictated break. He had feared that he might never set foot in Griffin Park again. After all, mascots weren’t needed for behind-closed-
Later that evening at Ashton Gate, the GoPro will record another master class from its owner in that dying art of on-pitch communication. Orders and encouragement are constantly barked out in equal measure. ‘Come on the boys!... Brilliant, Jeremy... Win ner! Winner!... Hey, Andre, oi!... Love that! Love that!... Craig, no!’
The main villain of the piece was an oily character by the name of John Gur ney, a businessman who was the public face of an anonymous consortium that had reportedly bought the club for the nominal price of four pounds. Gurney had big plans for Luton – or, at least, for the large patch of arable land the club owned adjacent to the M1. Here, Gurney grandly announced, the club would build a Formula One circuit with a 70,000 capacity football stadium at the centre of it, located above the motorway on stilts.
football club’s chief executive. His name is Gary Sweet.
One of the founders and main movers within the trust, an articulate young man in a Luton home shirt is still involved at Kenilworth Road 18 years later. Very much involved, in fact. Since 2008, he has served as the
And here he is now, sat in an empty boardroom ahead of the Hatters’ home game against Cardiff. On the walls are plenty of pictures from the club’s rosiest days. The 1980s are particularly well represented. More room might need to be found on these boardroom walls
‘Relegation just could not be something we experienced. We had to avoid it, so we brought Nathan back. He knew the players and we knew he would motivate them. There was always something very Luton about Nathan – apart from one decision he made which was very un-Luton.’ Sweet is referring to the Welshman ending his first spell in charge at Kenilworth Road by abruptly defecting to Stoke City midway through the 2018–19 season. He allows himself a smile. ‘But we’re forgiving creatures round here…’
Gurney, though, had zero support among the club’s fanbase – either for his pie-in-the-sky dreams or for his day-to-day stewardship. Just three days after the takeover, the popular manager Joe Kinnear and his assis tant Mick Harford had been sacked. Gurney had also revealed plans for the club’s name to be changed to London-Luton FC. The disgusted fans voted with their feet. En-masse, they refused to renew their season tickets while Gurney remained in his position. Without ticket income, and with no sign of the consortium depositing any operating capital into the club’s coffers, the staff’s wages were paid late two months on the trot. The situation was rotten. Bankruptcy beckoned.However, the consortium’s due dili gence ahead of the takeover appeared not to have been that diligent. A de benture held by an offshore company called Hatters Holdings, the club’s main creditor to whom it owed several million pounds, appeared to have gone unnoticed. The fans, in the shape of the newly formed Luton Town Sup porters’ Trust, saw their opportunity to outwit Gurney. By acquiring shares in Hatters Holdings – indeed, becom ing its majority shareholder – the trust called in the debt, thus placing the club into administrative receivership. Gurney’s control had been ripped from his hands.
The board’s decision to reappoint Jones was vindicated when he steered the Hatters to just a single defeat in the last nine matches of the season, including wins in their last two match es. A final-day victory over Blackburn pulled them clear. It was the first time they’d been out of the relegation zone since before Christmas.
WHILE WE’D HAVE NO FANS, THEY STILL NEEDED A PA ANNOUNCER. WOULD I BE HAPPY TO DO IT? I WAS ALMOST REDUCED TO TEARS.
Peter Gilham - Brentford’s long-serving Stadium announcer
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‘You can’t deny the progress,’ says Sweet. ‘We’re doing better than all right. We’re doing really well. We’re not sitting here bottom of the table sweating like hell. And if you look at this over a long-term period, which we always do here, in the scheme of things this is a really, really good chap ter. We have ambitions of climbing up the table at the end of every game. A lot of people might think we’ve got ambitions above our station, but let’s talk about that when we get to the PremierToday’sLeague.’mid-table position represents an astonishing turnaround. But they wouldn’t be here were it not
focused on the events of the previous summer at Luton Town, a time when the carpets of Kenilworth Road were soaked in blood.
for a decision made by Sweet and the board towards the end of last season. 12 months ago, Luton were 23rd in the Championship when football was put on pause as the nation went into the first lockdown. They’d been bottom-feeders all season and relegation seemed odds-on, so action was taken. Two and a half months into the enforced hibernation, one Jones was replaced by another as manager Graeme left the club by mutual consent, the vacancy being filled by his predecessor Nathan.
Lutonsoon.Town are a club on a steady in cline. A non-league outfit as recently as 2014, a series of promotions took them to the lofty heights of the Championship two seasons ago. This season, although currently occupying the anonymity of mid-table, the Hatters are already 16 points better off than they were at the corresponding stage 12 months ago. Onwards and upwards.
Chris Sutton - Former Norwich City striker
As a Norwich legend, one might expect Chris Sutton’s appraisal of the team’s season thus far to be slightly presented through mustard-yel low-tinted glasses, but such is their continuing domination of the league that no bias touches his words. There’s not a single objective observer who could disagree with the former strik er’s verdict. ‘It’s a brutal league, but their consistency has been absolutely remarkable. Compared to last time out, they’re much more solid defensively. That’s been the key. Ben Gibson has been an excellent signing. He went to Burnley with a bit of a reputation and a £15m price tag, but didn’t really get a game there. His partnership with Grant Hanley has been crucial. So too has the goalkeeper, Tim Krul. They’ve gone a bit more robust in midfield as well. They got Oliver Skipp in on loan, the boy from Spurs, and he’s been reallyAndexcellent.’thenthere’s the Canaries’ irresistible attacking force, personi fied by the trio of Pukki, Emi Buendía and Todd Cantwell. ‘Cantwell – the Dereham Deco – has come on to his best game, after looking like he wanted away at the start of the season and after Daniel Farke made a point of leaving him out. But Buendía’s been the best player in the Championship this season by a stretch. His link-up with Pukki has been top drawer. And, once again, Pukki’s been prolific. His movement is first class. He’s not neces sarily super-quick, but it’s all about his intelligence, the timing of his runs and the telepathic understanding that he and Buendía have.’
‘Plus, I think lessons have been learned in the past, when they signed players like Steven Naismith. There was a big outlay on him and he was a good player when they signed him. I thought things would work out, but they didn’t. Players were put on large contracts and the club paid for those mistakes. Now, theirs seems to be a sustainable model that would be the envy of many clubs across the country.’
No one is more qualified to judge how difficult attaining such a level of consistency is, week in, week out. Be fore the Finn rolled into town, Sutton was the last Norwich player to score 25 goals in a league season.
‘I take my hat off to them regarding how they run the club. The last time Norwich got into the Premier League,
So many aspects of the scene can be instantly recalled. Glover’s games teacher appointing himself referee, captain, centre-forward, penalty-taker and Bobby Charlton wannabe. The twig-like protagonist Billy Casper, stuck in goal, choosing to climb up onto the crossbar rather than attempt to save any goal-bound shots. Glover’s
Beyond the fence, the green, green grass of a football pitch remains unacknowledged, uncommemorated. McMillan, the celebrated poet and broadcaster, rightly feels it should be. For it was here that the most famous football match ever held in Barnsley took place. But it wasn’t a game involv ing Barnsley FC, McMillan’s beloved Tykes. It wasn’t a match en-route to their sole FA Cup win in 1912, nor one that aided their ascension to the Pre mier League in the mid ’90s. In fact, we aren’t even currently standing outside Oakwell, the club’s field of dreams.
Instead, we’re next to a perimeter fence that guards the playing fields of a secondary school a couple of miles north of the town centre. It was here in 1968 that Ken Loach filmed a PE-lesson game for the film Kes, starring a bunch of local schoolkids and the actor Brian Glover. It’s arguably the best-known football scene in British cinema histo ry, eclipsing those in Escape To Victory and Bend It Like Beckham
to change this model. Well, I’d be surprised if they do. No doubt there’ll be people over the summer saying, “We’re back in the Premier League. Let’s go and gamble fifty million quid. We need to spend, spend, spend.” But Norwich aren’t a club who can afford to work that way. They don’t have a rich owner. Delia Smith is wealthy within her own right, but I don’t think she’s football-wealthy. Norwich don’t have a huge war chest.
Chris Sutton
In the world of football, where short-termism increasingly determines and dictates the agendas of clubs, the patience shown by the powers-that-be at Carrow Road is welcome and im pressive. Perhaps it’s related to geogra phy, to the city being away from more heavily pressured football heartlands, but they do things differently here.
IT’S A
And they’ve not been hindered by selling off some of the family silver last summer, in the shape of those young defenders Ben Godfrey and Jamal Lewis. ‘You could argue that Norwich were worse off after those sales, but they didn’t flinch, they didn’t get flus tered. They’ve just got on with the way they work. They still play an attractive brand of football, but they’ve been more watertight too.’
Ian McMillan
As Norwich City maintain their double-digits lead at the top with a comfortable win at Nottingham Forest, over at his home near the north Norfolk coast, a certain ex-Canary is gushing over the way his old team are playing, at how they keep racking up win after win.
Ian McMillan presses his nose up against the fence and sighs. ‘I’m slight ly disappointed there’s no blue plaque.’
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a lot of people said that they had to chuck money at it. But who can you spend £30–£40m on at this moment in time to bring guaranteed success? So Norwich have done it their own way, nurturing young players, giving them the
REMARKABLEABSOLUTELYHASCONSISTENCY[NORWICH’S]LEAGUE,BRUTALBUTBEEN
‘They’reopportunity.notgoing
‘Anothertackles.
‘Last season, we stayed up by the skin of our teeth – the last kick of the last game at Brentford. So I didn’t have much hope for this season, but it’s been exhilarating. It really has. To see this rise up the table, to see us keep winning and winning, is amazing.
tactical change has been a few teams sitting back more. At Birmingham, they sat as a back five. I don’t think George Friend, playing at left wing-back, ran forward once in ninety minutes. They had no real intent to win the game, but if they had 25,000 Blues in there, they’d be egged on and spaces would open up.’
in 13 games. But any disappointment felt by McMillan at the scoreline is more than compensated by being back inside Oakwell on match day. ‘I’m a happy man, despite the fact that we lost and the great run ended. It feels like it’s my fault, but I did enjoy it and I’ll feed on that for the next few months.’
Today is a rare day for Jed Wallace. Football doesn’t need him.
Today, though, once we’ve paid our respects to a staged, fictional football match from more than half a century ago, we need to get back to life, back to reality. Down the hill at Oakwell, there’s a genuine game that needs our attention – and hard wooden seats in the press box that need our backsides on them. Sheffield Wednesday, Barnsley’s rivals from across the M1, are in town.
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It’s a fine time to be a Barnsley fan. Aside from nine-wins-on-the-bounce Norwich, the Tykes are the league’s form team, currently on a twelvematch unbeaten run. The streets might be quiet, but there’s a carnival breaking out in McMillan’s head, dreams of an unlikely return to the top flight.
Jed Wallace
‘But not to be there is heartbreak ing. It’s like there’s a fantastic party happening next door and you can’t go. I’m sat there on my own, when what I really want to do is turn around and shout at the bloke next to me. I miss that so much, the closeness of being with people at an event that is unrepeatable. Being at a match is an astonishing thing. You can guess the end of a film. You can guess the end of a play. You can’t guess the end of a match. A team can score in the last minute of extra time, but you wouldn’t write it in a script.’
stands, he claims, have changed the nature of what actually happens on the pitch. There are clear tactical differ ences between this campaign and the last. ‘For example, if we’re losing 1-0 at the Den and we’re shooting towards our fans in the last ten minutes, if I put a below-average cross in, it would get cleared, but because there’s pressure in the stadium and there’s pressure building on the opposition, it might be at the expense of a corner, from which we might score. This season, there’s not that pressure and so other teams aren’t being forced into making mistakes. Similarly, I don’t think there have been as many red cards as normal this season. Without the crowd getting on top of them, not as many players are losing their composure and lunging in for
Now, with just two more games, two more Saturdays left before the regular season closes, home life can get more of a Wallacelook-in.has been Millwall’s principal creative force this campaign, whether buzzing in crosses from the right wing, or helping himself to his highest goal tally in what is his sixth season in the Championship. His strikes are often spectacular but, of course, those goals aren’t the only thing that sets this season apart for Wallace. The empty
‘I didn’t even realise that there were only 14 months left on my contract until people started tweeting me about it. There’s not been a minute to think as we’ve been playing, playing, playing. I’ve certainly not overthought it. You typically overthink these things when you’re unsettled. But I am so settled. And that’s when these things take care of themselves.
The wooden seats of the press box are as unforgiving as the legendary stench of the toilets, but McMillan hasn’t a care about comfort as he low ers himself into place. Today will be the first time that he can study Barns ley’s manager, the appointed-fivemonths-ago Valérien Ismaël, in the flesh. ‘We like the fact that he seems to be some kind of hard man who shouts and swears a lot from the touchline. And he gestures. We like a gesturing manager. We don’t like stoics. We like windmill-armed bosses.’
A 2-1 defeat is Barnsley’s first loss
Instead, the Millwall winger – the club’s current top scorer and a man who’s been enjoying arguably his best season as a professional footballer – is on domestic duties at home in Cam berley. ‘I’ve had a man’s sort-out day,’ he reveals. ‘The car needed a service, and then the garage needed a clearout, so I’ve been up the tip and back. All those jobs that I’ve had an excuse to put Thisoff.’particular Championship season, this peculiar Championship season, has demanded every player’s full attention. They’ve barely come up for air. It’s been a continual cycle that’s rarely slowed. Travel, play, rest. Travel, play, rest. Repeat to fade.
While clearly loving life at a club whose Championship existence is not immediately in peril, at the age of 27, has the time dawned for Jed Wallace to leave his comfort zone and move on in order to fulfil his ambitions of Premier League football? He’s certainly a play er with both the credentials and the chops to hold his own, if not prosper, in the top flight. And does the fact that he’s just about to enter the final year of his contract at the Den suggest that such a move is actually imminent? His answers to these questions are both diplomatic and honest. ‘I’ve not really thought much about my own situation as I’m just looking forward to football being back to how I know it is. It’s been on the back burner. And that’s not me being a politician. I just want to get back to normality.
undisguised dive to win a spot-kick –and his commentary after converting it at the second time of asking, having ruled that the keeper had moved too early for his first (saved) attempt.
The clubs they’ve lost to in their three most recent play-offs – Fulham, Middlesbrough and Swansea – all came with a Premier League pedigree. Brentford, though, don’t have the strut of being a top-flight club in exile trying to regain their supposedly rightful place. ‘Psychologically, is there a deep-down feeling of inferiority? I don’t know. But it’s not “little old Brentford” anymore, as they’ve had such good coverage for the way they’ve gone about things
This afternoon, they need to side step that hoodoo, undo the jinx, break thePhilchain.Parry, BBC Radio London’s long-serving commentator/ presenter/ reporter, is another who knows his way here. He’s seen this hoodoo in action from the closest of quarters having, over the years, reported on six of those nine play-off attempts, ‘this tale of utter woe and heartbreak’. How does he explain the reliability of Brentford to implode at this stage of the season? Is it some kind of self-ful filling prophecy? ‘It definitely adds to the legend. I’m no psychologist, but I do wonder whether this constant talk just gets into people’s psyches, whether the squad just goes, “Oh, it’s another one. It’s another one.”
Irresistible stories can be found everywhere. Ethan Pinnock, the former PE teacher once of Dulwich Hamlet, is now a Premier League footballer. Pontus Jansson, after three successive play-off campaigns, is now a Premier League footballer. And star striker Toney, after a single, record-breaking season in the Cham pionship and earlier rejection by Newcastle, is back to being a Premier League footballer.
And Thomas Frank is now a Premier League manager. Phil Parry has just started the last of his innumerable interviews with the Dane this season when the Brentford players charge out of the tunnel to drench their manager in beer. It won’t be his last brush with alcohol on this most celebratory of days. ‘I just want to get very drunk tonight,’ says the King Bee, his eyes widening. ‘If I’m not home in the morning, my wife will have to look for me...
A twelve-foot-high plastic replica of the play-off trophy stands next to the halfway line. The real one sits in front of it, a modest prize. But the real prize isn’t metallic. It’s the invitation to join, or rejoin in Swansea’s case, the top table of English football. The play ers march out, quite possibly within earshot of touchline-prowling Quest presenter Colin Murray barking into his microphone: ‘There’s no game in world football like this.’ Two national anthems later, it’s game on.
On his right forearm, there’s a tattoo in neat, understated script: ‘Family is a safe haven in a heartless world.’ It appears that the notion of family isn’t just found inside the four walls of his Surrey home. At the start of each work ing day, it’s a concept that Jed Wallace also encounters in a certain corner of south-east London. There’s pride in being a Lion.
‘When I permanently signed for Millwall four years ago, my target was to play in the Premier League. I believe I can do that and I want to do that with Millwall. We’re a great fit. I love it.’
The Brentford coach driver doesn’t need satnav to get to Wembley. He’s been here quite recently. Just nine months ago, in fact, when the Bees last graced the Championship play-off final. That occasion – a 2-1 extra-time defeat to Fulham – marked their ninth attempt to get promoted via the playoffs. They’ve not been successful on even one of those occasions.
Were the stadium fitted with a roof, the roar would have blown it clean off when that whistle sounds. The gravity of the moment starts to sink in. Brent ford are in the top flight of English football for the first time in 74 years.
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If the script for the match was that it would be a tight, cagey affair, it gets ripped up as early as the ninth minute when the blue-booted Bryan Mbeumo latches on to a Sergi Canós pass, only to be hauled down by Swansea keeper Freddie Woodman. It’s a stonewall penalty. Undeniable.
Also undeniable is Toney’s preci sion from twelve yards. This might be the wearer of the Golden Boot versus the wearer of the Golden Gloves, but that trademark technique – slow and deliberate, passing it into the net from no run-up at all – hits the mark again. The eastern end of the stadium erupts. The western side is silenced and subdued.
The Climax
‘The statistics would suggest they are stronger than last year. They’ve got more points, they’ve lost fewer games, and Ivan Toney’s broken the Championship goalscoring record.’
A diving Ayew throws himself at a Connor Roberts cross but sees the ball go agonisingly wide. On the hour mark, Liam Cullen comes on for Kyle Naughton – a striker for a full-back. But this attacking enhancement has only a handful of minutes before there’s another setback for Swansea. The midfielder Jay Fulton, who hasn’t had his best game in a Swansea shirt, puts in an off-the-ground, two-footed chop on Mathias Jensen, earning him a straight red. It was an utterly unnecessary challenge to make in a benign area of the pitch – Brentford’s right-back position – although the video replay does make clear that Fulton slips before making contact with the Brentford player.
Now, though, everyone in the stadium pretty much concedes that the task is too great, the gradient too steep. As he paces his technical area, Cooper shrugs at the lack of real invention from his players. Bearing in mind the rumours surrounding his future, are these the last few moments of his time as Swansea manager?
Just before the break, an André Ayew header grazes the Brentford crossbar but that’s as good as it gets from the Welshmen in the first forty-five. Stevie C’s black-and-white army have very little to cheer as they leave their seats in search of halftimeAftersustenance.thebreak, Swansea are much more on the front foot. Steve Cooper, or one of his lieutenants, has clearly given them a rollicking at half-time.
as a club. People talk plenty about Brentford Football Club now.
It takes little more than ten further minutes for the effect to be doubled. A swift breakaway – inevitably featuring the ever-nippy Mbeumo – ends with Emiliano Marcondes finding enough space to sweep home Brentford’s second. Despite finishing fourth in the table, Swansea have scored more than two goals in a game only twice this season. The gradient before them is a steep one.
12 Luton Town 46 17 11 18 41 52 -11 62
28 - Adam Armstrong (Blackburn)
23 Rotherham Utd 46 11 9 26 44 60 -16 42
33 - Ivan Toney (Brentford)
19 - Lucas João (Reading)
15 Blackburn Rovers 46 15 12 19 65 54 11 57
Grant Hanley (Norwich)
Player of the Season
Alex Mowatt (Barnsley)
19 Bristol City 46 15 6 25 46 68 -22 51
1 Norwich City 46 29 10 7 75 36 39 97
18 Birmingham City 46 13 13 20 37 61 -24 52
* Includes six-point deduction
6 Bournemouth 46 22 11 13 73 46 27 77
Adam Masina (Watford)
22 Wycombe 46 11 10 25 39 69 -30 43
The Hard Yards is out on Simon & Schuster.
20 Huddersfield 46 12 13 21 50 71 -21 49
Manager of the Season
21 Derby County 46 11 11 24 36 58 -22 44
4 Swansea City 46 23 11 12 56 39 17 80
10 Middlesbrough 46 18 10 18 55 53 2 64
9 QPR 46 19 11 16 57 55 2 68
11 Millwall 46 15 17 14 47 52 -5 62
17 Nottm Forest 46 12 16 18 37 45 -8 52
24 Sheffield Wed* 46 12 11 23 40 61 -21 41
Emi Buendía (Norwich)
Ivan Toney (Brentford)
Asmir Begovic´ (Bournemouth)
8 Cardiff City 46 18 14 14 66 49 17 68
20 - Kieffer Moore (Cardiff)
14 Stoke City 46 15 15 16 50 52 -2 60
Sean Morrison (Cardiff)
Max Aarons (Norwich)
Arnaut Danjuma (Bournemouth)
26 - Teemu Pukki (Norwich)
Michael Olise (Reading)
Teemu Pukki (Norwich)
7 Reading 46 19 13 14 62 54 8 70
16 Coventry City 46 14 13 19 49 61 -12 55
Nige Tassell is a sport and music journalist and author. His twitter feed is a riot of joy, anddiscoveredrecentlyjewelscommonsense.
# Team Pl W D L F A GD Pts
2 Watford 46 27 10 9 63 30 33 91
Into the ‘promised land’Tariqe Fosu and Ivan Toney of Brentford pose with Championship play-off medals.
Emi Buendía (Norwich)
13 Preston NE 46 18 7 21 49 56 -7 61
5 Barnsley 46 23 9 14 58 50 8 78
Daniel Farke (Norwich)
3 Brentford 46 24 15 7 79 42 37 87
Final Championship table Leading scorers
Team of the Season
FOOTBALL 79
GYMNASTICS
One of four children born of a drug-addicted mother, Simone Biles has already faced many challenges in her young life. From her difficult start in Columbus Ohio, Pitch fills in some of the gaps around the woman many believe will prove to be one of the most important athletes of all time.
Writer LAURA WYBROW
When it comes to sporting superlatives, Simone Biles is world-class. At only 25, Biles is the most decorated female gymnast of all time with 32 Olympic and World Championship medals to her name – an astounding 19 of those gold. Biles has broken all the world records, has four gymnastic moves named after her, has spoken out against abuse, campaigns on child fostering, and mental health. Biles has even inspired a Subway sandwich – the appropriately named
WEIGHTTHE Simone Biles
GYMNASTICS 81
Her decision to withdraw came after Biles pulled out of multiple events at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics due to mental health issues. She later announced that she had experienced the ‘twisties’ – a phenome non that causes gymnasts to lose spatial awareness when they are in the air which can lead to serious injury. While she had had episodes before when on vault or floor, Biles said it was the first time she had experienced the sensation on the uneven bars and balance beam.
After another run of mistakes during the team finals, Biles walked out and although she quickly returned to the floor she later withdrew from the rest of the team competition, citing mental health issues. She later explained that she was inspired by tennis player Naomi Osaka, who had withdrawn from the French Open and Wimbledon Championships earlier in the year for similar reasons.
Hardly surprising then that Biles is now regularly spoken of as being the best fe male athlete ever – and that’s despite not stepping a toe on the mat since she an nounced her break from gymnastics almost a year ago.
And Biles’ astonishing stats speak for themselves. At the Rio 2016 Summer Olympics, Biles won individual gold medals in the all-around, vault, and floor, bronze on balance beam and gold as part of the United States team. In 2020, at the Tokyo Games, she won bronze on the balance beam and silver with the US team. She is a five-time World all-around champion, five-time World floor exercise champion, three-time World balance beam champion,
two-time World vault champion, a seventime United States national all-around champion and a member of the gold medalwinning American teams at four World Artistic Gymnastics Championships. She is also a three-time World silver medalist and a three-time World bronze medalist.
Biles was criticised in some quarters, particularly in the conservative media, and labelled a “quitter” who had deprived another athlete of the chance to compete. The U.S. team won the silver medal.
From the start of the Covid-delayed 2020 Games, Biles suffered several mishaps, bouncing off the floor landing and stumbling heavily on a balance beam dismount. Nevertheless, Biles still qualified, but stated on Instagram that she was “[feeling] the weight of the world on [her] shoulders”, and that she felt affected by the pressure of the Olympics.
By the end of July, Biles had withdrawn from the individual event finals. She per formed a scaled down routine in the beam final for which she won the bronze medal – a trophy Biles called her most meaningful be cause it symbolised her decision to focus on her mental health. “I say put mental health first… it’s OK sometimes to even sit out the big competitions to focus on yourself, be cause it shows how strong of a competitor and person that you really are — rather than just battle through it,” she said at the time.
Simone Biles shows off her Olympic rings at the AwardsKids’NickelodeonChoiceSports2017.
GYMNASTICS 82
Vaultwich (tangy Baja steak with cheese, peppers and onions since you ask).
Born in Columbus, Ohio, on March 14, 1997, Biles was the third of four siblings. Her mother, Shanon Biles was a drug addict, resulting in Simone, her sisters Adria and Ashley, and her brother Tevin, being taken into foster care as Shanon struggled to care for them.
STICK A NAME ON IT
But Biles’ mistake, if it can be classed as such, is that she does make it look so easy. Her peerless performances are a form of magic. She climbs almost half a metre higher than her competitors and her pirouettes defy much more than the law of gravity. Her dancing is bewitching and her seemingly effortless spins, som ersaults and jumps keep her audiences spellbound. But in reality her journey has been far from simple.
In 2000, Biles’ maternal grandfather, Ron Biles and his wife, Nellie, took his grandchildren to live with them in Houston, Texas. In 2003, he officially adopted Simone and Adria and his sister adopted Ashley and Tevin.
Romanian gymnast Nadia Comăneci’s signature move: a front support on high bar, cast with salto forward straddle to hang on the high bar.
After attending the local school, Biles decided in 2012 to be home-schooled so that she could dedicate more time to gymnastics, a sport she had started when she was six. She graduated and intended to go to the University of Cal ifornia after the 2016 Rio Games. How ever in 2015, Biles gave up her place at UCLA and announced that she was turning professional.
More widely, multiple gymnasts came out in Biles’ defence and relayed their own stories of struggling with the twist ies, and her decision was credited with starting a wider conversation about mental health in sports.
Biles has undeniably surpassed every goal she set herself as a young gymnast and she is now at a cross roads in her life. Next year she will wed her NFL star fiance, Jonathan Owens. She has signed a sponsorship deal with clothing brand, Athleta, and is about to star in her own Snapchat reality show. Social media is full of posts of Biles on various holidays with her fiance and their friends and at the moment gymnastics seems far from her mind.
Contrary to the name, this jump is a success!
The Comăneci Salto
Biles has credited them with turning her life around. “My path to success began the day my grandfather, Ron, and his wife, Nellie, officially adopted me and my sister Adria,” Biles told Elle “Dad, Mom, thank you for being brave and taking that leap of faith with us.”
American athlete Dick Fosbury popularised the high jump technique to clear the bar.
Named after Indian cricketer Vinoo Mankad, ‘Mankading’ is running out the nonstriking batter while they’re backing up.
Instead of kicking the ball to the left or right of the goal, the player attempts to chip it down the centre. Its inventor: Antonín Panenka.
In a post on Twitter in 2018, Biles re vealed that the former USA Gymnastics physician, Larry Nassar, had sexually assaulted her and she accused the governing body of allowing the abuse to occur, and of covering it up. “As I read more about the abuse other gymnasts had suffered, I realised that their stories matched mine,” Biles said in a recent interview. “I had to raise my voice and join them. Because we are survivors. We cannot remain silent in the face of aggression, we have to remain united. The system should not normalise these situations by looking the other way. We wore the medals, we did our part, they couldn’t do theirs?”
Biles was taunted with racist, sexist and transphobic comments in the Russian state-owned media and was called a drug cheat despite being cleared for taking medication for her ADHD.
As for the future, should we rule Biles out of Paris in 2024? Simply put, the force of nature that is Simone Biles, at just 142 cm tall and weighing 47 kilos, she has changed her sport for good. And history will record her as one of the most influential gymnasts – possibly athletes – of all time. So you wouldn’t bet on it, would you.
The Panenka
The Ali Shuffle
Able to 'float' and 'sting', Ali's almost fast-forward-and-backcomicmovementofthefeetwastheretodistract,everybitastodazzle.
In an interview with Spanish Elle mag azine in May, Biles said: “What we gym nasts do is not easy, otherwise anyone would do it. We are not just athletes, we are also humans, with emotions that we have to deal with behind closed doors.”
The Mankad
Five tricks, ticks and traits, and the sports stars who made them famous
The Fosbury Flop
GYMNASTICS 83
SPEED.LINE.STRAIGHT. ATHLETICS 84
ATHLETICS 85
PAUL SIMPSON LOOKS AT THE HISTORY OF THE MEN’S 100M WORLD RECORD; WHAT IT TAKES TO HOLD IT, BREAK IT, AND TO MOVE THE SPORT’S DIAL.
ATHLETICS 86
The first man to win the 1OOm at a modern Olympics was Thomas Burke, a second-year law student at Boston Univer sity who ran 11.8 seconds in Athens in 1896. That marked the beginning of an age of American dominance: the US has won 16 out of 29 Olympic golds in the event – and monopo lised the world record between 1968 and 1996. That said, for the past 17 years, the title of the world’s fastest man has be longed to two Jamaicans: Asafa Powell and then Bolt, who first broke the record in 2OO8, running 9.72 seconds in only his fifth professional race over that distance.
Donald Lippincott, (USA), Olympic Games, Stockholm, 6 June 1912
Winning bronze in the 1OOm and silver in the 2OOm in Stockholm was some feat, especially as in contemporary photographs Lippincott looks slightly bulkier than you would expect and has the hint of a teenage slouch. Yet this Olympic performance was no fluke: a year later, he set a new world record of 21.2 seconds in the 22O-yards (rough ly the equivalent of the 2OOm). In 1915, before joining the
Lippincott’s Olympic ambitions had almost been sunk by the Titanic, struck by an iceberg on 14 April 1912, less than three weeks before the Stockholm Games. Scared of losing her son at sea, his mother persuaded her husband to write to Donald saying he must help save the slumping family business. His parents finally relented when the 18-year-old sprinter raised enough sponsorship money to pay for his trip.
1976 knowing that a sniper had threatened to shoot him from the stadium roof. Their determination reflects the mythic dimension of the title “the fastest man on earth”. Owens, Bolt, Lewis – these are not ordinary athletes. It has been said of Owens that he changed the world in 1O.3 sec onds. Lewis deliberately confronted America’s macho ste reotype of athletic superstars. Bolt brought joy to the world – leaving many commentators gasping “Oh my god” – and, when he ran, he brought crime in Jamaica to a halt.
Here are seven – six of the best and one branded, possi bly slightly unfairly, as the worst – to have broken the 1OOm world record.
In his golden prime, Bolt knew that if the other runners weren’t at least two metres ahead of him after 3Om, he was certain to win. He knew that because, unlike his rivals, he could maintain his top speed beyond 8Om. What makes his feats even more remarkable – he also holds the 2OOm world record (19.19 seconds) and, with the Jamaican team, has run the fastest ever 4 x 1OOm relay (36.84 seconds) – is that he was born with the spine-curving condition scoliosis.
“I woke up around eleven. I watched television and had some chicken nuggets for lunch. I went back to my room, slept for two hours, went for some more chicken nuggets and came to the track.” Usain Bolt’s build-up to the 1OOm final in the World Championships in Berlin in the summer of 2OO9 wasn’t so much low key as no key. As a boy, his remorseless energy had so alarmed his mother that she took him to the doctor who assured her: “No, he’s hyperactive.” In Berlin, he was hyper-inactive, saying: “The more relaxed you are, the smoother and faster you’ll run.” A point he emphatically proved by shaving an astonishing O.11 seconds off his own 1OOm world record with a time of 9.58 seconds, to become the fastest man on earth. Which he still is.
Thousands of other athletes have shared Bolt’s dream of being the fastest man on earth. In pursuit of that honour, Jesse Owens worked as a lift attendant, Ben Johnson took steroids and Soviet ace Valeri Borzov raced in Montreal in
1O.6 seconds
Unlike most contemporary sprinters, Lippincott liked to crouch before the start of a 1OOm race. An economics stu dent at Pennsylvania State University, he never quite con quered his nerves, squeezing a cork to stay calm before the starting pistol sounded. After three false starts in the final in Stockholm in 1912 – including one where he ran the en tire race, finishing first before being called back – Lippin cott had to be content with bronze. In a preliminary heat, he had run the 1OOm in 1O.6 seconds (not 1O.35 seconds as is often reported), the first world record for this event to be recognised by the body now known as World Athletics.
An Olympic-class male sprinter will typically complete 1OOm in 43 to 46 strides, reaching a speed of around 27mph between 6Om and 7Om. In Berlin, Bolt took just 41, three less than the reigning world champion Tyson Gay who fin ished second (despite setting a new American record). At his fastest, Bolt was running at nearly 28mph. No wonder Gay, talking of the Jamaican’s earlier world record race, said: “It looked like his knees were going past my face.”
For Adolf Hitler, the Olympics was intended as a gran diose ‘sportswashing’ exercise which would prove, in the words of New York Times correspondent William Shirer, “the idiotic racial Nazi theories of Aryan supremacy which placed blacks, like Jews, among the untermensch”. Hitler got his propaganda coup but the racial experiment went awry as soon as Owens ran the first 1OOm heat in 1O.3 sec onds, almost equalling his own world record, finishing six and a bit metres ahead of the next runner.
In Stockholm’s Olympic stadium in 1912, Lippincott’s world record time in the 1OOm was recorded by three men in straw hats, clicking their thumbs on their stopwatches at the same time. As quaint as that sounds, it does not di minish the American’s achievement. As World Athletics official Imre Matrahazi observed shortly before the 2O12 Olympics: “If you imagine the quality of the clay tracks then – and they didn’t have starting blocks, they had to dig holes in the tracks – 1O.6 seconds really is an impressive time.” Indeed, the record stood for nine years until anoth er American sprinter Charlie Paddock ran 1O.4 seconds. Paddock was the first athlete to be dubbed ‘the fastest man alive’ by the media.
Having already struck gold in the long jump, Owens pro ceeded to dominate the 2OOm final. Heeding his school coach’s advice, he seemed barely to touch the surface of the cinder track, sealing victory on the first bend and smashing O.4 seconds off the Olympic record he had set in the heats, recording a time of 2O.7 seconds. He then clinched
Whenever Owens won a race, the enraged Führer turned his back on the stadium to talk to his cronies. He could hardly ignore the thunderous applause but he did not have to look on as the African-American star graciously acknowledged the crowd’s adoration. When an aide suggested it that shaking hands with Owens would be good PR, Hitler screamed at him. This attitude was reflected in some German newspapers which invariably mentioned that Owens and Metcalfe were black in their reports and pointedly listed the best white and European performances in each event.
1O.2 seconds
ATHLETICS 87
In the flickering black & white footage of the historic 1OOm final in Berlin, Owens’ victory looks effortless. In deed, the official report notes that he had secured gold after 3Om. He was not the best of starters – and his inside lane was muddy because of the bad weather – but he was quick off the mark in the Olimpiastadion and had the strength to hold off Metcalfe’s late challenge. The Olympic champion’s time – 1O.3 seconds – was a tournament record.
“Winning the 1OOm was the greatest moment of all – to be known as the world’s fastest man,” Owens wrote proudly in later life. He actually achieved that honour two months before the Berlin Olympics, when he ran the 1OOm in 1O.2 seconds at a meet in Chicago. He had already showcased his spectacular talent on May 25, 1935 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he broke four world records – the 1OO-yard dash; the 2OOm; 2OOm hurdle and the long jump – between 3.15pm and 4pm. He only jumped once but his record leap of 8.13m would not be surpassed until 196O. On arrival in Berlin, Owens was already so famous that he was besieged by local fans chanting “Wo ist Jesse?” (“Where is Jesse?”).
US Navy, he ran in the Pennsylvania State University team that set a new record of three minutes and 18 seconds in the 4 x 44O-yard relay. After finishing his naval service, he found a new career in finance, eventually becoming a bro ker with Merrill Lynch.
Jesse Owens, (USA), Chicago Illinois, 2O June 1936
should not compete in Berlin “if there are minorities in Ger many who are being discriminated against”. After much debate and protests, talk of an Olympic boycott subsided.
How good was Owens technically? Dan Pfaff, who coached Donovan Bailey, the Canadian sprinter who won 1OOm gold in 1996, says: “If you look at his lower leg mechanics, strike point on the track and general kinematics, he compares with today’s printers.” Indeed, David Epstein, author of The Sports Gene, says that biomechanical analysis of Owens’ joints suggests that, if he was running on the same surface as Bolt, he would be within a stride of the Jamaican legend.
As a young athlete at Fairmount Junior High School in Al abama, Owens had been taught by athletics coach Charles Riley to run as if the track was on fire. And that is pretty much what he did – in Michigan, representing Ohio State University, and in Berlin, representing the United States and symbolically, along with 1OOm silver-medallist Ralph Metcalfe, millions of African-Americans. He was certainly aware of the momentous political issues involved: months before the event, he had publicly declared that America
That ‘thief of starts’ tag caught up with him and, af ter protests from fans and journalists, the result was de clared invalid. Hary’s furious appeals were ignored until a journalist pointed out that the race could be rerun if an official had made an error of judgement, providing that there were two runners who were willing to race again. There were, so 35 minutes after his first victory, he won the rerun final in the same time: 1O. O seconds. If anything, the controversy seemed to calm Nary down, with Sports Zurich reporting he “ran elegantly, relaxed and like a machine away from his competition. He sped across the finish line a good three metres ahead of [Heinz] Müller.”
Nineteen sixty was Hary’s annus mirabilis. He became the first non-American to win Olympic gold in the 1OOm since 1928 and the last white man to set a new world re cord in the event. He had fulfilled his dream: he was the fastest man alive – it would be eight years before Jim Hines took that title off him – but he retired relatively early, at the age of 24, after injuring his knee in a car crash and falling out, again, with athletics officials. (He was suspended for padding his expense reports.) Recalling his Olympic gold 6O years later, he still missed the dramatic turbu lence of track and field finals, saying: “I would have loved to challenge the muscly competitors of today on a tartan track.”
ATHLETICS 88
invalid because the track’s gradient was one millimetre steeper than regulations permitted. In June 196O, with the European Championships looming in Zurich, Hary was not initially selected for Germany, possibly because he was being saved for the Rome Olympics later that summer, or because he had quarrelled too often with the bigwigs who ran German athletics.
1O. O seconds
In an age when runners nailed their own starting blocks to the track, Hary liked to perform this ritu al flamboyantly and eccentrically: in Rome in 196O, before he won the 1OOm final, he nailed his starting block down wearing a stetson and a checked shirt. “He worked on an offbeat image of himself,” British finalist Peter Radford said: “The idea was that because he didn’t do things like anyone else, his performance wasn’t like anybodyGrowingelse.”up
Like many sports stars, Hary found life after the track a challenge. At the Rome Olympics, he had caused con troversy by taking sponsorship money from adidas and their deadly rivals Puma. In 1981, he was convicted of defrauding the Catholic church, although his two-year jail term was reduced to a fine when parts of the initial judgement were overturned.
If Hary hadn’t been so obsessed, he probably wouldn’t have become, at the age of 23, the first man to be officially recognised as running 1OOm in ten seconds. When he first achieved that milestone in 1958, his time was declared
The irony of Owens’ golden Games, as Shirer not ed, was that he “had made mincemeat of the Führer’s outrageous racial theories – and I might add, of sim ilar views held by some Americans at home.” Owens had already confronted such prejudices – although he smashed all those records in Ohio State University col ours, he wasn’t allowed to live on campus. When he re turned to America after his triumphs, he was lionised and discriminated against. During the 194Os, he took odd jobs to make ends meet Hitler didn’t personally snub Owens – he had stopped personally congratulating athletes after the International Olympic Committee had told him he couldn’t just shake hands with German winners – but president Franklin D. Roosevelt did. As the sprinter remarked later: “He didn’t even send me a telegram.” Owens’ ambiguous status in America at the time is even reflected in the name by which he is still known. Family and friends called him JC (for James Cleveland) but a teacher, unfamiliar with his southern drawl, misheard that as ‘Jesse’.
Armin Hary (Germany), European Championships, Zurich, 21 June 196O
On the morning of 21 June, with the 1OOm race sched uled for that evening, Hary began his shift in a Frank furt department store. After some frantic negotiations and string pulling – a passenger was bribed with two football tickets so he could get a seat on the only plane to Zurich – he arrived in Switzerland that afternoon and promptly fell asleep. That evening, Hary accelerated quickly to win the race in 1O. O seconds. A new world record – or so he thought.
his fourth gold, winning the 4 x 1OOm relay in another world record time: 39.8 seconds.
in a poor village in southwest Germany, Hary was determined to become the fastest man alive. This wasn’t a dream, nor an ambition, it was an obses sion that drove him, over the winter of 1957, to train, run ning through frozen forests. His obsession sometimes undid him. His nickname – the ‘thief of starts’ – reflect ed his habit of jumping the gun, although he insisted that his reactions were sim ply, just much faster than anyone else’s.
Carl Lewis (USA), World Championships, Tokyo, 25 August 1991
ten seconds flat in Tokyo in 1964 before flourishing with the Dallas Cowboys (he remains the only athlete to win an Olympic gold and the Superbowl). Sadly, Hines struggled at the Dolphins and later at the Kansas City Chiefs. He was fast, but his lack of basic footballing skills earned him the nickname ‘Oops’. At 24, Hines returned to track and field but never made another American Olympic squad, finally hanging up his running shoes for good in 1984.
That grudge may also have been inspired by the fact that, months before the Olympic Games in Mexico City, Hines concluded that, to support his family, being a journeyman gridiron player was preferable to being the fastest man on earth. He had almost turned professional footballer in 1967, but his family talked him out of it, arguing that the Olym pics was his chance to make history.
“We think Carl will be bigger than Michael Jackson,” Lewis’s agent Joe Douglas had predicted in 1983, after it emerged that the sprinter and long jumper had been taking singing and dancing lessons. That prediction never quite came true, although one of Lewis’s albums sold 1.5m copies in Sweden. Instead, he had to settle for becoming the first track and field athlete to accrue four gold medals at a single Olympics since Owens in 1936: winning the long jump, the 1OOm, 2OOm and 4 x 1OO relay at the 1984 Olympics.
ATHLETICS 89
Twenty years earlier, Hines had been feted as the best high school sprinter in America, having never lost a race at 1OO yards or 22O yards. Winning a scholarship to Tex as State University in Houston, he was coached by Bobby Morrow, a white American sprint legend who, inspired by Owens’ example, won three Olympic golds – in the 1OOm, 2OOm and 4 x 1OOm relay – in Melbourne in 1956. Yet by the time he returned from Mexico City, Hines felt he had run his last race. A burglary of his Houston apartment – in which his medals were stolen – must have unsettled him, even if his prizes were later returned anonymously in a brown en velope.Inthe 1ate 196Os, endorsements and shoe deals in track and field were less lavish and less numerous, perhaps par ticularly so for a black American athlete. As an Olympic champion and world record holder, Hines was famous in the late 196Os but, as Owens had discovered decades be fore, glory doesn’t pay the bills. That said, it is a measure of Hines’ genius that his 1OOm world record stood for 15 years.
Instead of defending his 1OOm title and world record, Hines signed for American football franchise Miami Dol phins. He had confided to one journalist in 1967: “I’d love to compete in the Olympics but it’s a matter of eating.” He probably hoped he would emulate the success of another American sprinter Bobby Hayes who had run the 1OOm in
9.86 seconds
Jim Hines (USA), Olympic Games, Mexico City 14 October 1968
The 22-year-old black Arkansan arrived in Mexico City as one of the favourites in the 1OOm and 2OOm. He was the fastest qualifier for the 1OOm final, but the eight runners’ best times were only O.18 seconds apart. Many athletes had struggled to adjust to the high altitude but the thin air suit ed others, and probably helped Hines – his record time of 9.95 seconds stood until 1983 when Calvin Smith ran 9.93 seconds in the heights of Colorado Springs.
Before the Los Angeles Games, ‘King Carl’ – as he was known to adoring fans in Europe – had publicly declared that he intended to break the world record in the long jump. Instead, knowing his first attempt, 8.54m, was enough for victory (but not to break the record), he passed on four jumps. Thousands of disgruntled fans in the Los Angeles Coliseum jeered him. American sprinter Edwin Moses even admonished him that “a little humility is in order.” Lewis became so unpopular in America – the media, responding to rumours about his sexuality, even referred to him as the ‘Flying Faggot’ – that Coke withdrew their offer of a spon sorship deal and Nike dropped the quadruple Olympic champion from its roster.
Built like a boxer, Hines was the best of a new genera tion of power runners to emerge in the 196Os, and the first Olympian ever to run the 1OOm in under ten seconds. It is possible that he had broken that barrier before. On 28 June 1968, at America’s national; championships, he, Ronnie Ray Smith and Charlie Greene, were timed at 9.9 seconds by judges with stopwatches. Sadly, the automatic timing machine said otherwise. Hines, the fastest, was given a new time of 1O. O3 seconds. (World Athletics has since recog nised all three ran in 9.9 seconds.)
Americans led throughout the 1OOm final in Mexico City. Although Hines got off to what he described as the best start of his career, he initially trailed Mel Pender. About half way through the race, with Pender fading, he and Charlie Greene were vying for the lead. Greene was slightly ahead until Hines overtook him on 8Om and sprinted away, fin ishing O. O9 seconds ahead of Jamaican silver medallist Lennox Miller. Five days later, Hines stormed home in the 4 x 1OOm final, taking the USA from sixth to gold in the final leg and helping to set another world record: 38.24 seconds.
Every sprinter needs a competitive edge. In Hines’ case, it wasn’t just his blistering pace, it was his habit of turning every race into a grudge match. He said of one rival: “If we ran ten races, I’d beat him ten times.” To Hines, that wasn’t boasting, it was a statement of fact. That attitude turbo charged his running style. He always maintained that the 22O-yards (roughly equivalent to the 2OOm) was his best event and as Sports Illustrated put it: “He does not run the 22O, he runs at it, as if some rascal had placed a brick wall between him and humanity.”
9.95 seconds
For the world’s fastest man – as Johnson was in 1987 and 1988 – to be stripped of his 1OOm gold medal and world record for taking stanozolol is a bit like gangster Al Capone going down for tax evasion. When tests showed traces of this steroid in Johnson’s urine, his long-time coach Charlie Johnson was baffled, saying: “Stanozolol? I don’t have my guys taking Stanozolol on a race day, it tightens them up and I want them loose.”
ATHLETICS 90
In retrospect, what is most extraordinary about Lewis is not the controversy that swirled around him but his longev ity. In 1979, when he was 16, he enrolled at the University of Houston, immediately qualifying for the US Olympic team. (He missed out because America boycotted the Moscow Games.) In 1991, at the age of 3O, he became the first man to run the 1OOm in under 9.9O seconds, when at the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo. When his world record time – 9.88 seconds – was confirmed, he wept, saying later: “The best race of my life. The best technique. The fastest.” Five years after that, his hair flecked with grey, he won his ninth Olympic gold in the long jump in Atlanta.
What nobody knew at the time was that Lewis himself had failed three drugs test in trials for Seoul and should, by the rules of the day, have been banned. The amounts of stimulants in his urine were so small that an athlete would not be banned today and American officials appealed, suc cessfully pleading inadvertent use.
9.79 seconds
Ben Johnson (Canada), Olympic Games, Seoul, 24 September 1988
In effect, Francis was admitting that Johnson had taken steroids – albeit not that particular one – to improve his performance. And the drugs worked – for a time. The Jamaica-born athlete, who emigrated to Canada as a teenager in 1976, ran the 1OOm in 11 seconds in 1978, 1O.62 in 198O, 9.83 in 1987 and, one year later at the Seoul Olympics, 9.79 seconds in the 1OOm final.
Francis first suggested that Johnson tried steroids in 1981. The athlete initially demurred but, three years later, reluctantly concluding that ‘if you don’t take it, you can’t make it’, he changed his mind. The 1988 1OOm final in Seoul is notorious as ‘the dirtiest race in history’. Sprinting, so it seemed to Stan Huntsman, America’s track and field coach, had ceased to be a sport and become a form of chemical warfare. Six of the eight 1OOm finalists have failed a drugs test or been banned for drug use over the course of their careers, be it as players or coaches, including four of the first five runners to finish –Johnson, Lewis, Linford Christie and Dennis Mitchell. The exceptions were American bronze medallist Calvin Smith, who insists he was the rightful gold medal winner, and Brazil’s Robson da Silva.
Christie narrowly avoided disqualification even though he tested positive for pseudoephedrine after the 2OOm final, saying he had taken it in ginseng tea without realising.
Johnson’s lab report was not shown to Canadian officials at the time and they, out of shock, naivete or a bit of both, accepted the commission’s assurance that their testing procedures were flawless. We now know that parts of the report – including a finding that the Canadian had tested for oxandrolone – had been scratched out and/or amended by an unknown hand. Officials initially refused requests for tests on Johnson’s water bottle (which, when they relented, proved to be clean).
Inspired by their moral certainty, Lewis began to speak out against drugs in athletics, saying: “There are a lot of people coming out of nowhere and running unbelieva bly, I don’t think they’re doing it without drugs.” Some re garded his outspokenness as sour grapes, noting that this long-standing problem only seemed to bother Lewis when he lost, but he was spectacularly vindicated in Seoul in 1988 when Canada’s Ben Johnson was stripped of his 1OOm gold after testing positive for drugs.
Lewis’s personality didn’t change but his image did. Affable in person, his self- confidence in public often alienated fans, journalists and other athletes, but through sheer endurance he became one of track and field’s elder statesmen. His final gold, in the long jump in Atlanta, had the crowd roaring in approval. Sports Illustrated, which had damned him as “vain, shallow and self-absorbed” in 1983, recanted, calling him a “gentleman”. It was the very least his Olympian feats deserved.
The stanozolol found in Johnson’s urine was later found to be pure, which suggests that he had not ingested it, supporting Francis’s claim that the sample had been tampered with in the testing area. The Korean doctor in charge of the doping control centre later discovered that the IOC had planted samples with “massive amounts of steroids and stimulants” without his knowledge.
The question that hangs over this race today is not whether Johnson was clean – by his own admission he wasn’t – but whether he so much dirtier than the rest that he deserved immediate disqualification. It has since emerged that eight American athletes – unidentified but probably including Lewis – suspected of drug infractions by the Olympic medical commission in Seoul were not sanctioned.
Lewis’s parents William and Evelyn, who had been track and field stars at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, were teachers and civil rights activists who had marched with Martin Luther King. After moving the family to Philadel phia, they founded their own track and field club.
Johnson’s world record time of 9.79 seconds was deleted. If it had stood, it would have been broken in Athens in 2OO4 by Asafa Powell who, nine years later, tested positive for oxilofrine. The Jamaican sprinter was cleared of suspicion when a manufacturer admitted putting the stimulant in a nutrition supplement without disclosing it.
Usain Bolt (Jamaica), World Championships, Berlin, 16 August 2OO9
“Is he clean?” That question haunted Sports Illustrated correspondent Tim Hayden the day he saw Bolt crush his own world record in Berlin. The Jamaican’s joy was infec tious, in the stadium, before that historic run, he played im aginary drums, winked at the TV cameras and yelled: “I’m ready. Are you ready?”
9.58 seconds
Usain Bolt takes home Olympic gold, Beijing, 2008.
ATHLETICS 91
In retrospect, the startling aspect of Bolt’s career is not how great he was but how great he might have been if he had taken the 1OOm more seriously, and sooner. At first, he saw himself as a great fast bowler in the style of West Indi an legend Courtney Walsh. Although his talent as a runner was obvious at high school, he didn’t quite fit the physical
Such concerns were understandable but misplaced. There is, as one veteran track and field journalist observed,
a pattern to the careers of athletes who take performance enhancing drugs. After years of being so-so, they suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, become magnificent. Their phy siques – even their voices – may change and their form may fluctuate depending on the stringency of the testing regime at a particular event.
With his unprecedented pace, lightning bolt celebrations and his manner of, as Hayden put it, “generally behaving as if the world’s track stage is just another Kingston dance club”, Bolt had come to embody athletics. If he was not clean, Hayden fretted, “the blowback would probably be fa tal for track and field.”
Bolt does not fit that profile. In July 2OO2, a month before his fifteenth birthday, he became the youngest world 2OOm champion and those who saw that race already began to talk of him as a prospective record breaker. The Jamaican broke records – in his age group, in his country and in the world – consistently throughout his career. And unlike Lewis, Christie and Gay, he has never failed a drugs test.
Behaving as if the world’s track stage is just another Kingston dance club - Usain Bolt reflects on a new 100m record time of 09.58.
If Mills had had his way, Bolt might never have rewritten the history of the 1OOm. The coach saw his protégé as more of a 2OOm or 4OOm runner, questioning whether he had the technique to excel at the shorter distance. Bolt disa greed. Coach and athlete made a wager: if the runner broke Jamaica’s 2OOm record – set 36 years earlier by the fabled Don Quarrie – he could race in the 1OOm. At the Jamaican championships in 2OO7, he shaved O.11 seconds off Quar rie’s 2OOm record with a 19.75 second finish. In his third 1OOm race, he set a time of 9.76 seconds, earning the right to represent Jamaica in Beijing where he stormed to gold in a world record 9.69 seconds.
mould. Traditionally, the ideal height for a sprinter was thought to be around 6ft1in (185cm). At his peak, Bolt was 6ft5in (195cm) tall.
Mills trained Bolt to recalibrate his body, not leaning so much in the bend, identifying the perfect stride length and developing a style where he seemed to glide along the track while other pounded it. Pleased with his work, Mills said: “The real secret is the power he generates from his hips”.
Race plays its part too. As sportswriter David Goldblatt has observed: “What is incontrovertible is that two ethnic groups have bossed Olympic running. The best sprinters have West African ancestry and the top long-distance run ners are almost invariably East Africans. Scientists point out that West Africans, and their American, Caribbean and European descendants, tend to have narrow hips, well-de veloped musculature and an unusually high proportion of fast twitch muscle fibres.”
Under his new cantankerous coach Glen Mills, Bolt be gan to train harder in the winter of 2OO7. Yet the following spring he still seemed ambivalent, telling one journalist: “I liked cricket better. Now I see what I can do if I train.”
ATHLETICS 92
That rather prosaic explanation is supported by results –no white man has held the 1OOm world record since 196O –but does not diminish Bolt’s genius. Maybe his secret sauce had less to do with muscle fibres than with his laid-back attitude. Many of the greatest sprinters of all-time – includ ing Owens and Morrow – were famously relaxed. Bolt rarely appeared to suffer from the self-doubt that plagues many athletes and never looked like he was feeling the pressure. Even before he crossed the line in Beijing in 2OO8 he spread his arms wide as if beckoning the world to come to him. It was the confidence of a runner who knew he had another world record in him. Which he did.
A biomechanical marvel, Bolt’s genius has inspired a va riety of reductive explanations from his penchant for yams (a simple vegetable full of complex carbohydrates), the miles he walked to and from school as a boy, the importance of sport in Jamaica’s curriculum, and the fact that not only did he take fewer strides but he took them almost as quickly as shorter runners.
“Zlatan’s figures speak for themself really; his extravagant personality only adds to this. Zlatan was playing for Malmö in the Swedish second division in 2000 making this card even rarer.” This sticker has sold for £31,200.
Kieran Longworth talks to ‘lifer’ Greg Lansdowne about the crazy world of sticker books, to ascertain whether they’re an investment or just a hugely expensive and rose-tinted look at the past. We’ll leave you to decide which side of the line you’re on.
AS A CONSEQUENCE, THE VALUE OF THESE STICKERS HAS SINCE SKYROCKETED. GREG WALKS US THROUGH SOME OF THE MOST VALUABLE, DESIRABLE AND VERY-RAREST STICKERS PANINI HAS EVER RELEASED.
FOOTBALL 93
GREG HAS PUBLISHED BOOKS EXPLORING THE NUANCES OF PANINI, CHARTING THE HISTORY OF FOOTBALL STICKERS THAT HAVE BROUGHT JOY TO SO MANY COLLECTORS. PART NOSTALGIA, MEMORIES OF SCHOOL PLAYGROUND TRADING, AND THE SENSE OF TRIUMPH AT UNPACKING A ‘SHINY’, PANINI STICKERS, IN PARTICULAR, HAVE MADE A RESURGENCE IN RECENT YEARS, ESPECIALLY SO SINCE THE START OF THE PANDEMIC.
“However talented Haaland might be, he’s just pure potential at this point. We don’t know if he’s going to get to the legendary levels like Pelé, Maradona, Zidane. But if he does, well that’s a different story.”
Panini Fotboll 2000 - Swedish Allsvenskan, Malmö FF.
Panini Fussball 19/20 – Bundesliga, RB Salzburg.
Erling Haaland
WHETHER BUILDING YOUR DREAM XI OR TRYING TO COMPLETE THE LATEST STICKER ALBUM, PANINI STICKERS HAVE BEEN IN HIGH DEMAND IN THE UK SINCE THE LATE 1970s. AND IT WAS PANINI FOOTBALL 79 THAT FIRST SET OFF A SPARK FOR ENTHUSIAST GREG LANSDOWNE. WITH WHAT STARTED OUT AS A HOBBY BECOMING A LIFE-LONG OBSESSION.
Zlatan Ibrahimović
Panini Voetbal 95 – Eredevisie, PSV.
“Beckham’s career epitomised the perfect storm of talent, success, and fame. Beyond his iconic right boot there’s a big appeal for Beckham because of his presence in America, his stickers are massive over there.”
AZIONIPERSOCIETÀPANINIoftrademarkaisPANINI FOOTBALL 94
Ferguson appeared in every Panini sticker album between 1978 and 1991, featuring for both St Mirren and Manchester United.
“For a manager who has won as much as Ferguson it’s no surprise that he finds himself on this list. A lot of the time managers don’t make it into Panini albums, this makes them even more desirable.”
Panini The Official PFA Collection 1997 – Premier League, Manchester United.
“He was a good player but nowhere near the level of some on this list. Bolchi makes the top ten for being the first ever card Panini produced. To be the first card of a brand that is still going 60 years later is iconic and very desirable.”
Panini Football 78 – English First Division, Nottingham Forest.
Kylian Mbappé
“You won’t get many Ronaldo stickers from the Voetbal 95 album, never mind stickers in mint condition.”
“His legend is growing year by year as he continues to be in the spotlight. If not the greatest player in the Premier League era, Henry is at very least one of the best. I think only Tottenham Hotspur supporters would disagree with that. His first Monaco sticker is very rare and one to watch.”
Ronaldo
Panini Foot 97 – Ligue un, AS Monaco
Brian Clough appeared as manager for Nottingham Forest in every Panini sticker album between 1978 and 1991.
David Beckham
Panini Foot 2016-17 – Ligue un, AS “HisMonaco.stickers already go for a hell of a lot of money. There’s plenty of boxes and packets out there that could have this sticker in, buying them will set you back a bit.”
Thierry Henry
Ten boxes of Panini Foot 2016-17 sold for $19,200 in October 2021.
Panini Foot 92 – Ligue un, Cannes. Zidane’s imperious skill and that infamous headbutt in the final moments of the 2006 FIFA World Cup certainly made heads turn.
Paul Gascoigne
Panini Football 78 – Scottish Premier Division, St Mirren.
Brian Clough
Panini Football 87 – English First Division, Newcastle United.
A Brazilian legend, and pictured in his early days at PSV Eindhoven, this sticker is super-rare.
Bruno Bolchi
“Whilst 2006 might be Zidane’s most memorable episode, it is his rookie card from ‘92 that is the most desirable and rare.”
Panini Calciatori 61-62 – Serie A, Inter Milan.
“He was such a good manager. Clough has had a film made about him, countless documentaries, and endless books. Anyone growing up in the ‘70s and ‘80s knows how iconic he was.”
Zinedine Zidane
“His first sticker at Newcastle is super-rare, you won’t get many high-quality versions. His iconic celebration at Euro ‘96 and reputation off the field only adds to the desirability of this sticker. His Italia ‘90 sticker is also very desirable, it being his only World Cup.”
Alex Ferguson
A Panini Foot 92 sticker in mint condition has sold for $54,000.
FOOTBALL 95
“ Bruno Bolchi makes the top ten for being the first ever card producedPanini”
“Once players break records their value seems to go through the roof, so for Messi it’s no wonder he’s so high up this list. People will always seek out Messi stickers simply because of how good he is on the pitch.”
Panini Mexico 70, England.
“A World Cup-winning Bobby Charlton card from 1966 - a year in which he also won the Ballon d’Or - has got to be one of the most desirable pieces of footballing memorabilia out there.”
Johan Cruyff
“The 2011 Women’s World Cup was the first female album to be produced by Panini and was only sold in the host country Germany. Rapinoe and Morgan are currently fetching the highest prices because they were the best American players at that tournament.”
2004/05 Panini Colecciones Este La Liga – Barcelona.
“It fluctuates between Ronaldo and Messi over who has the most expensive sticker at any given time. The value of these stickers is rising exponentially. For Ronaldo having visited more clubs, his cards have more chance to be of higher Cristianovalue.”Ronaldo’s rookie sticker
Captain Bobby Moore famously took England to World Cup Glory just four years prior to the release of his first and most valuable Panini sticker.
“ Cruyff is a name that will always conjure up a lot of mystique and magic ”
Football 72 – English First Division, Manchester United.
Lionel Messi
Panini Campioni Dello Sport (Champions of Sport) 1966-67.
Cristiano Ronaldo
Panini Football 72-73, München 94 sticker.
Bobby Moore
Futebol 2002-03 – Liga Portugal, Sporting Lisbon.
– Italian release
George Best
Bobby Charlton
Panini Campioni Dello Sport (Champions of Sport) 1966-67.
Whilst Messi currently holds the record for having the most Ballon d’Or trophies it is Ronaldo who has the more desirable Panini sticker.
– Italian release
FOOTBALL 96
Megan Rapinoe and Alex Morgan
“1974 is the only World Cup where he played; and starred. Many people consider that Netherlands team to be the best team never to win a World Cup. Cruyff went on to be a legendary manager at Barcelona, he’s a name that will always conjure up a lot of mystique and magic.”
Stickers from Mexico ‘70 fetch the highest price due to the World Cup being Panini’s first sticker album.
“Best is one of Britain’s greatest ever players. Unfortunately for collectors, he wasn’t part of the Panini era, this makes his card one of the rarest out there and pushes it into the top 5. Panini first printed stickers for English domestic football in 1972, so this truly is first edition.”
“The first World Cup album is iconic, so the legendary players of that tournament are going to stick out and be the most desirable.”
Panini Women’s World Cup 2011.
Pelé
“This one needs little explanation, widely considered one of the best players ever to grace the football pitch, he is among the most successful sports figures of the 20th Century. Pelé’s cards are some of the most valuable out there and it’s no wonder why.”
at Sporting Lisbon has recently sold for £59,000.
“America has the best market for collectables the most expensive cards are from American sports, football or ‘soccer’ is just starting to compete. It would have been completely alien to ask someone to pay £50 for a sticker a decade or two ago but that has completely “Nochanged.players
“It’s Maradona’s first ever Panini sticker in the best of quality and it’s super rare, it truly is Inspecial.”anauction
held by Goldin Auctions, a 1979 Calciatori Sticker Diego Maradona slab, widely considered his rookie card, sold for $555,960.
Most Desired: Diego Maradona
FOOTBALL 97
Argentina – Calciatori 79-80 (in the ‘world stars’ section)
could compete with the likes of Pelé and Maradona on the pitch or in terms of the price bracket their stickers fetch. They were the best.
“Now a Maradona sticker has sold for this amount it will become a mythical sticker so the price could still rise.
Offering a deep dive into the historic world of sticker books, Panini Football Stickers: The Official Celebration: A Nostalgic Journey Through the World of Panini by Greg Lansdowne is out now on Bloomsbury Sport.
INSIDE WORLD:MAGICALMY A GUIDEMUGGLE’STO FRISBEEULTIMATE ULTIMATE FRISBEE 98
Canada’s Becky Thompson is a worldclass player, journalist and communications executive, the 27-year-old athlete introduces Pitch to the hurly-burly-beautiful world that aficionados refer to as ‘Ultimate’.
ULTIMATE FRISBEE 99
sometimes appear overly simple, Ultimate Frisbee –colloquially known as Ultimate – is a unique and some would say complex game that brings together the best of athletic activity and as importantly, community.Ultimateis unlike any other field sport in that it is self-officiated at the highest level. The game teaches communication and respect,
Imagine chasing a circular piece of plastic weighing 175 grams around a 110-yard-long by 40-yard-wide pitch. For fun. Can’t quite picture it? This is my reality. And the reality of athletes, like myself, who compete in the competitive, sometimes quirky, and always beautiful world that is Ulti mateWhileFrisbee.toan unaware, untrained eye the sport can
This year, I will captain Iceni, accepted as one of the best wom en’s teams in the United King dom. A club with a rich history, we are preparing to compete in the biggest competition in Ulti mate Frisbee, the World Ultimate Club Championships (WUCC), which takes place every four years, and features the top club teams from all over the world.
While the excitement for WUCC is palpable and for many teams, it is their priority for the season, my club’s central goal is to return Iceni to the top of the UK podium by winning the national championships, held in early September. It has been
Fundamentally, as the competi tive levels have grown, the com munity and the spirit of the game has remained the same. Another huge attraction.
Getting involved in the sport is becoming easier, as there are more and more teams in com munities across the globe. While a welcoming sport, the biggest barriers to entry - at least at the competitive level - is the lack of funding. Ultimate is a self-fund ed sport and with tournaments around the globe, costs of com peting can be a consideration.
while competitors still strive to win. It also provides the unique opportunity to play the game, competing on women’s teams, men’s teams or mixed gender teams. As such, it is the only field sport in the world that plays mixed gender at its highest level. That being the World Games. This, as an athlete, is truly special.Ihave been playing Ultimate for a little over 14 years now, having gotten into it in my first year of high school back in Vancouver, Canada. I grew up as a multisport athlete. My parents encouraged me to do everything. From cross-country to basket ball. Volleyball, football, swim ming, tennis, track and field, field hockey – you name it. And despite starting young , it wasn’t until I was 18 that I truly fell in love with the sport and began to structure my life around it.
“ REMAINEDSPIRITTHELEVELSASFUNDAMENTALLY,THECOMPETITIVEHAVEGROWN,COMMUNITYANDTHEOFTHEGAMEHASTHESAME ” Canada's ThompsonBeckyinaction.ULTIMATE FRISBEE 100
A sport that requires ath leticism, cardio and hand-eye co ordination, the level of athletes competing in Ultimate is rising as more and more people are focusing their training on Ulti mate-specific programs – a long time removed from the days of calling it a hobby.
The sessions in the gym, the sessions on the track, the time spent practising throwing - all of these factors are setting apart teams and athletes in a game that sees success and failure defined by fine margins.
Despite this, Ultimate contin ues to grow and sponsorship and more professionalised teams are
As an athlete, there are many intense emotions that come with competing within a sport that you love. But for me, Ultimate has brought me so much more than the joy of competition alone. It has taught me how to communicate, how to be a part of a team, and has helped me to grow as a person. It continues to reinforce these values, showing me the true meaning of friend ship and community. Ultimate has allowed me incredible opportunities to travel the world and has invoked a rollercoaster of feelings, at times, both good and bad.
a few years since we have won nationals, which speaks volumes of the development of women’s Ultimate in the UK and the increase in parity, and winning nationals against such a deep field of teams, against such in credible women athletes, would meanUltimateeverything.hasbeen growing as a sport exponentially over the last decade but pinpointing exactly why the sport has been growing as it has is difficult, as there as many aspects that have contributed.
‘Worlds’, for me, is a dream come true. Four years ago, I was at WUCC but as a commentator rath er than as a player. Balancing my career as a journalist and an ath lete has always been a challenge. But the opportunity to return to an event where I began to truly dream of my athletic potential while watching is beyond words.
Many people following their passions know that it is not always that straightforward a pursuit. These journeys are not linear and that joy we seek in what we pursue is not always consistent. But throughout ups and downs, falling in and out of love with the sport – and sometimes myself – I have always found myself back at the heart of Ultimate. Playing with the people I love most and now competing with one of the best women’s teams in Europe.
building on that momentum. There is some divide in the Ultimate community about the value of professional leagues, with the use of referees versus self-officiation is not agreed upon by everyone. But one thing we can agree on, is the exposure of the sport in leagues is pushing all of us forward.
Cat Phillips (Australia) Claire Chastain (USA) Elizabeth TomMasahiroKhalifJackAshleyOctaviaLauren(Colombia)MosqueraKimura(Canada)Payne(USA)Yeo(UK)Williams(USA)El-Salaam(USA)Matsuno(Japan)Tullett(Australia)
Even now, these professional leagues do not provide much income for players. However, the ability for travel costs to be covered in order to play Ulti mate feels previously unparal leled, creating opportunities for less privileged players to access elite-level sport.
For many, myself included, Ultimate has provided a wel coming haven. A friendship group I didn’t always have, a self-confidence and belief in myself as a player and a person, and a true sense of happiness.Ultimate, like all sports, is not for everyone. But for anyone who wants to see what the fuss is about chasing and throw ing a circular piece of plastic weighing 175 grams is, I can’t guarantee you will fall in love with it immediately, but I can promise that at the heart of Ulti mate is a community waiting to embrace you.
The multi-talented Cat Phillips steals the ball whilst playing for Melbourne Demons Aussie Rules Football Club.
Ultimate is becoming more featured in the media. ESPN and Sports Centre often schedule it in the States, while media-specific companies like Ultiworld and Ulti TV are bringing free and subscrip tion-based coverage from across the world. As Ultimate continues to grow and change, as all sports do over time, the supportive community within it will remain the same.
MossAndrewandUltimateTran/USATinoofcourtesyImages ULTIMATE FRISBEE 101
*Footnote: Ultimate is a team sport. With players unable to run with the disc (similar to netball), they rely on their team. The best players’ reputations are built upon the pillars of phenomenal teammates and unbreakable friendships, allowing them to become the best they can be.
THE ULTIMATE ULTIMATE Ten Best Players in the World
The truth is, with little money in and exposure for Ultimate, success comes from playing this game because people truly love it. Success, for me, is one day retiring and being able to look back and remember the pure joy I felt. While competing alongside my teammates.
left America’s Khalif El-Salaam – his name is firmly on this list.
SHOWREEL PITCH TALKS TO THE WORLD’S BEST SPORTS CREATIVES ABOUT THE WORK THEY DO, HOW THEY GOT THE SHOT, AND WHAT IT SAYS ABOUT THEIR FAMOUS SUBJECTS. IN ISSUE NO.1 WE LOOK AT THE PORTFOLIO OF HARRY BORDEN PORTFOLIO 102
Photographed by Harry Borden in South Africa, 2011
Oscar Pestorias
The ‘BladesilhoutteunmistakableoftheRunner’,
PORTFOLIO 103
David Beckham England,
2000 PORTFOLIO 104
‘By February 2013 he’d become a tragic figure and a convicted murderer. Prior to that he was an international athletics superstar, nicknamed the ‘Blade Runner’. This was a commission for American magazine, Outside It happened in Johannesburg, with the magazine’s expectation that the shoot would have ‘high production values’. To that end, we had a van filled with lighting for the job and more light than we needed. I’d never normally ask someone to take their top off, but it was boiling hot, he had a very toned body, and I thought it would make for a simpler picture. The magazine only went with more obvious photos for the cover and feature. But I was pleased to get the shot because it’s so simple. Whilst the ambiguity and the hint of darkness means it still resonates.’
‘A cover shoot for The Observer Sport Monthly, this was the second occasion I’d photographed the then Manchester United & England star. It took place at Alderley Edge in Cheshire, where the Beckhams were in the process of developing a huge mansion, whilst living in a very expensive penthouse flat. I took a series of headshots first – them being good for syndication – then went outside. Not filling the frame with such a famous and handsome face makes it more interesting.’
David Beckham SEPTEMBER 2000
Oscar Pistorius AUGUST 2011 (previous page)
PORTFOLIO 105
Track and field athlete Denise Lewis photographed for the BBC, England, 2000.
JULY 2001
Kevin Garnett
‘For sportspeople, a shoot isn’t exciting or a novelty, it’s just a pain in the neck. This was a bit different, as the basketball player was being photographed for a magazine feature linked to the launch of his own clothing brand. A huge name in America, he played in the NBA for 21 seasons, and this was a job for American GQ. It took place at Red Earth Studios in London. The place had a tall ceiling with skylights, and with good available light and a subject like Kevin Garnett, you’re already halfway there. He was just 25 at the time and a huge physical presence, standing just short of 7ft tall. I had to stand on a chair to shoot him at eye level. At one point, Garnett picked up this weird ‘30s dummy and stared into its eyes. There’s definitely an element of homoeroticism about it. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t used in the GQ article. As a general point, I’ve noticed that portraits that do well in competitions and find themselves as part of the visual competition often result from things that happen unexpectedly. More contrived images often go down better with a magazine team, but they don’t stand the test of time, because on some level they lack authenticity.’
PORTFOLIO 106
‘Nine months prior, the former world heavyweight champion had suffered a much-publicised nervous breakdown. Famous for his ‘know what I mean, Harry’ routine with boxing commentator, Harry Carpenter, he was understandably much more subdued when I saw him. It was a commission for The Observer Sport Monthly, and took place at an event in Camberwell, south-west London, publicising his participation in that year’s Sport Relief. He was very compliant and easy-going. Tall, broad built, a gentle giant – but clearly a complex, likeable person. The shot was used on the cover.’
PORTFOLIO 107
Frank Bruno JULY 2004
PORTFOLIO
‘I was contacted by Russian magazine, ProSport, via the editorial desk at Esquire. They were, by all accounts, after the name of a good portrait photographer. He was probably the biggest name in the Premier League at the time, and the Chelsea manager. I drove to the club’s training ground at Cobham, Surrey, for the shoot. It was a bit of a mess – as not open properly – and I was given 15 minutes with him. When I asked how I should pronounce his name, he shot back, ‘Call me what you want’. A frosty start, that changed when I asked him if he had any children. There’s often a moment like this. I took some shots of him at his desk and some in an odd-looking room, later to become, I believe, the boot drying room. With portraits that are shot this quickly, I often think they’re the most revealing. If a stylist had been involved, they would have told him to lose the flip-flops. As an aside, I was never paid for the job by the commissioning magazine.’
IF A STYLIST HAD BEEN INVOLVED, THEY WOULD HAVE TOLD HIM TO LOSE THE FLIP-FLOPS”
José Mourinho
“
JULY 2005
Six-times golf Major winner Sir Nick Faldo in 2001 for The
Observer Sport Monthly PORTFOLIO 109
WILL PROVE2022TO BE A LANDMARK YEAR FOR SPORT? PITCH CANTOHAVEMOMENTSTOGETHERPULLSOURTHATMATTEREDDATE,SOYOUDECIDE. END ZONE 110
A
A capacity crowd – 4000 of them in from Ireland –saw two champions sharing the spotlight, splitting the $2m purse, and going toe-to-toe on the fight game’s most hallowed of ground.
At ringside it was felt a draw would be fair. Taylor’s points decision only making a rematch more likely.
1
Ireland’s Katie Taylor and Amanda Serrano of Puerto Rico lock eyes in front of a packed-out Madison Square Garden, New York.
The middle rounds saw 35-year-old Taylor in all sorts of trouble, her 33-year-old opponent looking odds on to force a stoppage. But Serrano, the harder puncher, was seemingly caught in the moment and failed to make her advantage count. The pause allowed the Irish fighter to clear her head, and drag her way back into the contest. After the more-even early rounds, it would now need a grandstand finish to ultimately make reparation.
END ZONE 111
The contest itself, and the appetite for the contest, more specifically, proved that the sport of boxing had well and truly arrived as a commercially viable career for female athletes. And not just for the boxers. For the whole industry.
BOXING / TITLE FIGHT / MAY 2022 Ireland’s Katie Taylor completes a split-decision win over Puerto Rican, Amanda Serrano, to retain the WBA, WBC, IBF and WBO lightweight titles. In front of a sold-out crowd of 19,187 at Madison Square Garden in New York. 94-96. 96-93. 97-93. Ten two-minute rounds of action saw Bray-born 35-year-old Katie Taylor outpoint Puerto Rican opponent Amanda Serrano in front of a sell-out audience at boxing’s spiritual home, Madison Square Garden in New York City.
The tenth and final round saw Taylor sail into her opponent to the point where a stoppage looked likely in reverse. At the bell - a fight of staggering intensity and staggering punching - it saw both fighters open-mouthed with fatigue, neither deserving defeat.
The bravery and brilliance of these two fighters serving only to enhance the reputation of their sport. Their embrace at the final bell showing the compassion, humility and admiration that few sports can match. These two soul sisters of boxing. World.Gardener’s
END ZONE 112
The Bernabeu holds its breath in anticipation of an unforgettable semi-final clash between Real Madrid and Manchester City.
Maybe it was the two near-misses from substitute, Jack Grealish, as the match approached full-time? Or even as far back as Karim Benzema’s nerveless ‘Panenka’ during the tie’s first leg in Manchester? Or maybe it was just not meant to be? Either way, it was Madrid’s night in the world-famous Bernabéu; not City’s.
2 END ZONE 113
Football’s Fickle Finger Of Fate.
Quoting The Guardian’s opening paragraph when reviewing Manchester City’s apocryphal Champions League semi-final exit on May 5, at the hands of Real Madrid, ‘Two goals to the good. 90 minutes on the clock. The tie’s second leg. A final in Paris against Liverpool the prize. Where did it all go so wrong?’ Pretty-much says it all. And understanding where exactly it all went so badly wrong for the Premier League giants is not easy to nail down.
FOOTBALL / CHAMPIONS LEAGUE / MAY 2022 Real Madrid 3 - 1 Manchester City
Karim Benzema’s 15th goal of the Champions League campaign – his tenth in the knockout rounds alone – saw the France striker reach 43 goals in 43 appearances. Outplayed by both Paris Saint-Germain and Chelsea in previous rounds, it was his side’s collective force of personality that saw them through the semi-final.
With Rodrygo scoring twice for Real, after Riyad Mahrez had given his team that two-goal ‘worst lead in sport’, City to that point had looked every inch the competition’s Clubchampions-in-waiting.football’sgreatest prize once again illudes Manchester City and Pep Guardiola. But it can only be a matter of time until that changes. Sometimes, wanting something too badly has a consequence. Certainly for City. For Real Madrid, ‘want’ didn’t really come into it. It was just a case of keeping faith in their own sense of fate.
F’cough...
TENNIS / AUSTRALIAN OPEN / JANUARY 2022
According to Australia’s immigration authorities, Djokovic’s belief that he had valid vaccination exemption through medical exception remained without dispute. “I just didn’t comply with entry rules, as they saw them.” When Djokovic arrived in Australia on the evening of January 5, he believed that a visa granted on November 18, alongside a medical exemption approved by Tennis Australia and a Victorian government independent expert panel, would be sufficient. Again, not the case. And after an extended spell in a Melbourne detention hotel, it saw the Serbian board an Emirates flight to Dubai on Sunday January 16. Game. Set. And match.
3
END ZONE 114
Yer goin’ home in a taxi... Novak Djokavic is denied the chance to defend his Australian Open title.
How does tennis’ greatest ever player get himself deported from Australia? It’s pretty straightforward really, that’s according to Australia’s prime minister, Scott Morrison. Speaking at a time when Serbia’s Novak Djokovic was on a flight from Melbourne to Dubai, “…you either have to be vaccinated or you have to have a valid medical exemption and show evidence of it,” said Mr Morrison. “This is about someone who sought to come to Australia and not comply with the entry rules at our border. That’s what this is about.”
It was a 92nd-minute winner from former Palermo man, Aleksandar Trajkovski, scored in Palermo, that saw the home side fail to qualify for Qatar. Meaning an away win for the 67th-ranked team in world football, in a campaign that also saw them best Germany. Playing home games at the Toše Proeski National Arena in Skopje, the win meant a first-ever World Cup qualification for this nation of two million people.
Not Even The Whole...
FOOTBALL / FIFA WORLD CUP / MAY 2022
4
North Macedonia’s Aleksandar Trajkovski slumps to his knees as his country records its finest moment on a football pitch.
END ZONE 115
Reigning European champions, and ranked sixth in the FIFI World Rankings, Italy’s defeat by North Macedonia meant that since winning it in 2006, the Azzuri have been eliminated twice at the group stage, and have failed to as much as qualify on two other occasions for the last four World Cups.
Italy 0 - 1 North Macedonia
Time stands still for Lance Stroll in one of the best-looking cars on the grid – his dad’s Aston Martin.
END ZONE 116
AOneStateside.BreakingLapAtTime.
Race number five of the 2022 season saw Red Bull’s Max Verstappen win in front of a capacity 82,500 motorsport fans at the Miami International Autodrome. The Dutchman passing onpole Charles Leclerc, after sensationally splitting the Ferrari drivers at the first opportunity. It proved a vital move in the context of the contest. By lap 12 Verstappen was two seconds ahead and essentially clear of the field.
5
END ZONE 117
The race proved less of a spectacle than the event itself. The weather was ‘Florida hot’. Miami Dolphin’s legendary quarterback, Dan Marino, handing out the trophy. The traditional winning caps replaced with NFL style helmets. But all was eclipsed by the fake yacht marina added to the circuit hinterland. Welcome to Miami, as the song goes.
It’s said that in a 23-race season there is room for ‘a Miami’, it being the first time a GP has been held in Florida since 1959. That occasion famously witnessing Jack Brabham push his outof-fuel car over the finish line at Sebring for a fourth-place finish and the overall Withchampionship.Americaremaining F1’s toughest nut, race goers in 2022 certainly seem to have made their mind up.
F1 / THE MIAMI GRAND PRIX / MAY 2022
END ZONE 118
SHANE KEITH WARNE 1970 –CRICKET2022
matic ‘few scouts out’ approach. His complete mastery of line and length –and of a notoriously difficult art gener ally - was only bettered by an even more potent weapon. His magic trick. That all-seeing leg-break. Where under its examination, few passed the test.
THIS ISSUE OF PITCH IS DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF 13-YEAR-OLD FOOTBALLER, SAMUEL AKWASI. HE SUFFERED A MEDICAL EMERGENCY AND DIED WHILST PLAYING FOR FC CAVALIERS AT THE FOREST RECREATION GROUND IN NOTTINGHAM ON MAY 8, 2022.
A few. Never forgotten.
His strength as a bowler was the square-turning leg-spinner, delivered at a good pace. Powerful shoulders and strong spinning fingers, allied to a ‘give it a rip’ mentality, saw this argua bly most famous son of Victoria able to operate to conventional field placings when others resorted to a more prag
The great Shane Warne – Day 1 at Old Trafford, Ashes 2005.
lief.” This ‘Ball of the Century’ delivery, bowled against England at Old Traf ford in 1993, was probably ‘bettered’ by the bowler across his 708 Test-wicket haul, but none left as big an imprint on the sport he so clearly loved.
Australia’s Shane Warne singlehand edly resuscitated the all-but-dead art of leg-spin, when bursting onto the Test scene in the ‘90s. This quote from an article by the great Mike Selvey, when writing for The Guardian at the time, pretty-much saying it all. “Twothirds of the way down the pitch the ball dipped into the leg-side, opening Gatting up like a can of beans, before ripping diagonally across his body to clip the outside of off-stump… Gatting stood his ground, not in dissent or dis appointment but in total, utter disbe
OBITS
As ‘Aussie’ as they came, to the point of him being almost ‘lab built’, the home-dyed hair, a notoriously terrible diet, run-ins with authority at every level, and a ‘smoking behind the bike sheds’ attitude to fitness, it was all seemingly countered by his skill
with the ball, his obvious joy at play ing cricket, and his ability to interpret what’s happening in any given game like few could. Or can. The public loved him for it all.
He was inspirational in the commen tary box, especially so when properly engaged. With few able to match his sense of fun, his reverence of the game, its players, and his insight into what the viewers were actually watching un fold. He finished his playing career as he started it; a winner over England.
1935-2022
HORSE RACING
Smiling as ever – Shane Warne relished hand.toopportunityanyhaveballin
Few loomed larger over their sport than Wantage’s own, Lester Pigott. With 4493 wins on the UK flat, including nine Epsom Derbys, he was undeniably the most combative rider of his generation, if not any generation. He infamously favoured the whip, was a renowned smoker of weight-suppressing cigars (being tall for a jockey at 5’8”), he also served one year of a three-year sentence for tax evasion when convicted in 1987. He died in hospital in Geneva, Switzerland. He was 87.
Few were able matchto his sense of fun and gameofreverencehisthe”
LESTER PIGGOTT
Post cricket, he played poker, coached within franchise cricket, and travelled the world. Always the same Shane Warne. Always entertaining. Always at the extremes of convention. The Hall of Famer died of a heart attack when on holiday in Koh Samui, Thailand. He was 52.
END ZONE 119
A wing-half for Cork United, West Ham United, Preston North End, and the Republic of Ireland (nine caps between 1952 and 1959), O’Farrell played over 300 Football League matches before injury saw management come calling in 1961. Famously at Manchester United, he stewarded the club to back-to-back First Division relegation and promotion, managing the likes of Bobby Charlton, Denis Law and the legendary George Best. Aptly, before football he was a firefighter. He was 94.
BASEBALL
FOOTBALL
Known as ‘Gentleman John’ (never sent off in over 400 appearances), the Hull FC and latterly Hull Kingston Rovers loose forward is one of only 28 names in the Rugby League Hall of Fame. A World Cup winner in 1954 and 1960, Whiteley is also the last Great Britain coach to win an Ashes series. Doing so Down Under in 1970. Coaching both Hull clubs with distinction, Whiteley was made an MBE in 2005 for services to rugby league and the community. Regarded as the ‘black and whites’ (Hull FC) greatest ever player, he was 91.
1930–2022
JEREMY GIAMBI
AMERICAN FOOTBALL
Brother of five-times All-Star, Jason, Jeremy Giambi was a major league baseballer, most successfully with the Oakland Athletics. Six seasons in the Majors, he was a member of the 2002 Oakland team immortalised by author Michael Lewis in the 2003 bestseller, Moneyball. Latterly a major motion picture (2011), actor Brad Pitt was nominated for an Oscar in the lead role of Billy Beane, depicting the A’s general manager trading the ‘talented but challenging’ first baseman to the Philadelphia Phillies, despite having accumulated 20 home runs. Born in San Jose, the troubled star was one of the first ‘major leaguers’ to admit taking performance-enhancing substances. Giambi was found dead at his parents’ home in Claremont, California, having died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the chest. He was 47.
1927–2022
WHITELEYJOHNNY
1974–2022
END ZONE 120
O’FARRELL‘FRANK’FRANCIS
RUGBY LEAGUE
1997–2022
An impressive college career with Ohio State, the New Jersey-born quarterback was a 2018 first round pick for Washington Commanders in the 2019 draft. He started seven games in his rookie year, four more the following season but was released by Washington later that season, before signing with the Pittsburgh Steelers in January 2021. The 24-year-old died when struck by a dump truck, attempting to cross the westbound lanes of Interstate 595, near Fort Lauderdale, when at training camp in South Florida.
DWAYNE HASKINS
END ZONE 121
1 1:21 ATHLETICS: Reigning Olympic champion LaShawn Merritt is out of the men’s 400m. The American fails to complete the heat six race after pulling up.
10:25 CYCLING:
10:00 ATHLETICS: The preliminary heats of the men’s 100m begin. Bolivian Artur Bruno Rojas wins the first, Congolese athlete Devilert Kimbembe also progresses to round one, having finished second.
1 1:30 ROWING: The men’s coxless four final begins at Eton Dorney, with Alex Gregory, Tom James, Pete Reed and Andrew TriggsHodge gunning to retain Great Britain’s title won at the previous three games.
1 1:45 ATHLETICS: On her third and final attempt, Jessica Ennis jumps 6.48m, to finish second in the event and stay in the lead overall. Having fouled two of her three jumps, defending champion Natalia Dobrynska is out of the running for Ukraine.
Back at Eton Dorney, the women’s lightweight double sculls begins with Katherine Copeland and Sophie Hosking competing for Great Britain.
06:OO ROWING:
10:36 ATHLETICS: South African Oscar Pistorius is on his mark for Heat one of the men’s 400m, about to make history as the first amputee runner to compete at the Olympics.
1 1:00 CRICKET: England’s men start Day 3 of the Second Test at Headingley on 48-0 with Alastair Cook and Andrew Strauss having seen out yesterday’s final session once South Africa were bowled out for 419.
10:35 HEPTATHLON: Ennis jumps a disappointing 5.95m on her first attempt, whilst Russia’s Tatyana Chernova, one of her main competitors, jumped 6.44m.
1 1:40 CRICKET: Cook is out plumb LBW for 24 to Vernon Philander, wasting a review in the process. Hawkeye showing the ball hitting half way up middle stump. Jonathan Trott arrives at the crease to join Strauss. England 65-1.
08:30 HOCKEY: Begins penultimatethe day of the women’s group stage, seeing Australia take on South Africa.
1 1:02 ATHLETICS: For her second jump, Jessica Ennis records a distance of 6.40m.
1 1:55 CRICKET: Rain stops play and an early lunch is taken. Play resuming at 13:25.
10:27 TRIATHLON: The athletes in the women’s triathlon have begun to reach the transition area again. As they rush to start the 10km run, they swap their bikes for their running shoes.
10:00 HOCKEY: Australia are 1-0 winners over the Saffers, courtesy of that single Jade Close goal.
1 1:25 ATHLETICS: Round 1 of the men’s 400m concludes with heat seven, which is won by Belgian Kevin Borlée, joining his brother Jonathan, who won heat three with the second fastest time of the year, in the next round.
END ZONE 122
09:00 TRIATHLON:
10:32 HEPTATHLON: Great Britain’s Jessica Ennis is introduced to the crowd ahead of the long jump.
09:19 TRIATHLON: Briton Lucy Hall completes the swim fastest, with the rest of the athletes following in the next couple of minutes. The transition onto the bikes begins.
It’s sun-up at Eton Dorney, the host venue for the Olympic rowing event. No-one knows what lies ahead.
10:37 ATHLETICS: Pistorius makes it through his heat in second place with a time of 45.44 seconds. The Dominican Republic’s Luguelin Santos finishes first.
The 250m flying lap, the men’s omnium first event begins. British Cyclist Ed Clancy wins with a time of 12.556 seconds.
1 1:54 ATHLETICS: The women’s steeplechase3000mheatsbegin.
1 1:38 ROWING: Gregory, James, Reed and Triggs-Hodge beat Australia by just over a second to win Great Britain’s first gold of the day.
1 1:50 ROWING:
10:45 BASKETBALL: The first of six men’s games for the day finishes Tunisia 69-73 France in group A.
1 1:01 TRIATHLON: Swiss athlete Nicola Spirig and Swede Lisa Nordén cross the line with the same time. The judge awards Spirig the gold, with Nordén taking silver. Australian Erin Densham wins bronze.
10:00 CYCLING: The men’s sprint (200m) begins with the qualifying round. Britain’s Jason Kenny, who would go on to win the gold medal two days later, sets a new Olympic record with a time of 9.713 seconds.
10:27 ATHLETICS: Women’s pole vault begins.
The women’s event gets underway at Hyde Park with a 1500m swim. This was only the fourth time a women’s triathlon had been part of the Olympics, the first having been in Sydney in 2000.
12:21 ROWING:
13:20 ATHLETICS: Round one of the men’s 100m concludes with heat seven (minus Kim Collins) which is won by Britain’s Dwain Chambers. America’s Ryan Bailey and Justin Gatlin are the only two athletes to record sub-tensecond times in this round.
15:00 SCOTTISH FOOTBALL: Heart of Midlothian v St Johnstone, Kilmarnock v Dundee, Ross County v Motherwell and St Mirren v Inverness Caledonian Thistle kick off.
14:18 TENNIS:
12:56 ATHLETICS: Jamaica’s Usain Bolt wins heat four of round one with a time of 10.09 seconds. Antigua & Barbuda’s Daniel Bailey and Britain’s James Dasaolu also qualify for the semi-finals.
14:07 ATHLETICS:
15:10 CRICKET: Trott edges to Graeme Smith at slip off Steyn for 35 seeing Ian Bell join Pietersen after another promising stand is broken. England 142-3.
12:19 ATHLETICS: The javelin in the women’s heptathlon begins.
The British pair sees Denmark’s Mads Rasmussen and Rasmus Quist Hansen pass them during the last 300 metres to win gold by 0.61 seconds.
Strauss is caught behind by de Villiers off Dale Steyn for 37. With both openers now gone, Kevin Pietersen joins Jonathon Trott, both players up against the country of their birth. England 85-2.
15:55 CRICKET: With five minutes until tea, Bell edges a flat-footed drive to Smith off the bowling of Jacques Kallis for 11 and things start to look wobbly for England. Debutant James Taylor finds himself facing a ‘TLS’ (tricky little session) just before tea. England 173-4.
12:10 ATHLETICS: Reports emerge from the BBC that St. Kitts & Nevis sprinter Kim Collins has been sent home from the games after failing to stay in the Olympic village. He later said that he was being punished for spending time with his wife.
END ZONE 123
1 1:58 ROWING: Copeland and Hosking win Team GB’s second gold medal of ‘Super Saturday’, finishing over two and a half seconds ahead of China, who pip Greece to the silver medal.
12:45 ATHLETICS: The women’s heptathlon competitors come out for the javelin.
13:00 BASKETBALL: Russia’s men defeat Spain 77-74 in group B.
The women’s singles final between America’s Serena Williams and her Russian counterpart Maria Sharapova begins.
15:22 TENNIS: Serena Williams wins 6-0 6-1 against Maria Sharapova, taking women’s singles gold.
12:45 SCOTTISH FOOTBALL: The 2012-13 Scottish Premier League season kicks off, the first ever without Rangers, who would start their season in League Two the following week. Celtic beat Aberdeen 1-0 in the opening game.
Just a few metres into the race, the men’s lightweight double sculls is stopped after a seat in the British boat breaks.
13:32 TENNIS: In a quarter-final meant to take place the previous day, Team GB’s Andy Murray and Laura Robson are victorious over Australia’s Lleyton Hewitt and Sam Stosur 6-3 3-6 10-8.
12:28 ROWING:
12:15 HOCKEY: Eventual gold medalists The Netherlands win 3-2 against South Korea.
The men’s lightweight double sculls restarts, and despite the earlier issue, GB’s Mark Hunter and Zac Purchase are amongst the favourites.
The javelin in the women’s heptathlon finishes. Having thrown a new personal best of 47.49m, Ennis is still almost 200 points ahead of her closest competitor, Austra Skujytė, the Lithuanian having won silver at Athens in 2004.
13:30 CRICKET
12:12 ROWING:
12:30 ATHLETICS: Round one of the men’s 100m gets underway with American Tyson Gay winning heat one.
13:52 FOOTBALL: Full-time in the Olympic men’s football quarter-final between Japan and Egypt. Japan win 3-0 with goals from Nagai, Otsu, and Yoshida. Egypt finish with nine men.
16:38 CYCLING:
18:27 ATHLETICS: Gold in the men’s 20km race walk is won by China’s Chen Ding with an Olympic record time of 1:18.46.
19:30 CRICKET: Play closes for the day. Pietersen walks off to a huge ovation, finishing the day on 149, made from 212 balls, giving England a great chance in the match. England close on 351-5, just 68 runs behind on first innings.
16:41 CYCLING: Jason Kenny beats South African Bernard Esterhuizen to reach the quarter-finals.
19:18 ATHLETICS: The men’s 400m hurdles semi-finals have all been run. Britain’s Dai Greene, and America’s Kerron Clement - who won silver in Beijing - qualify as fastest losers. Defending champion USA’s Angelo Taylor is also through.
18:51 FOOTBALL: Full-time, Brazil 3-2 Honduras in the third men’s football quarter-final. Honduras, finishing with nine men, took the lead twice, but a Damião double and a Neymar penalty see Brazil through.
16:20 BASKETBALL:
19:34 SWIMMING: Ranomi Kromowidjojo of the Netherlands wins gold in the women’s 50m freestyle with an Olympic record time of 24.05 seconds.
17:33 TENNIS: Andy Murray and Laura ÃRobson reach the mixed doubles final beating Germany’s Sabine Lisicki and Christopher Kas 6-1 6-7[5] 10-7.
END
19:00 ATHLETICS: Men’s 400m hurdles semi-finals begin.
19:30 FOOTBALL: The last men’s Olympic quarter-final, seeing Great Britain face South Korea, kicks off at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff.
18:09 CYCLING: King, Rowsell, and Trott beat the USA in the final winning women’s team pursuit gold, beating their previous time. Setting a world record 3:14.051.
Final score 99-94.
17:30 HOCKEY:
17:39 TENNIS: Brothers Bob and Mike Bryan win men’s doubles gold for America, beating Michaël Llodra and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga of France in straight sets.
17:41 CYCLING: The second event of the men’s omnium finishes. Germany’s Roger Kluge wins the points race, Briton Ed Clancy comes eleventh.
16:30 CRICKET:
17:10 CRICKET:
17:00 SCOTTISH FOOTBALL: Full-time, Heart of Midlothian 2-0 St Johnstone, Kilmarnock 0-0 Dundee, Ross County 0-0 Motherwell, and St Mirren 2-2 Inverness Caledonian Thistle.
18:54 CYCLING: France’s Bryan Coquard wins the men’s omnium elimination race. Halfway through the event, Ed Clancy is fourth.
17:30 CRICKET: A century for Pietersen off 142 balls sees him accelerate through the second 50 in just 52 deliveries. England 263-4.
18:00 BASKETBALL: China lose 59-98 to Brazil.
17:05 FOOTBALL: Eventual gold medalists Mexico win the second Olympic men’s football quarter-final to eliminate Senegal. The final score is 4-2 after extra-time.
19:36 ATHLETICS: The first of three women’s 100m semi-finals is won by World Champion Carmelita Jeter, the American posted a time of 10.83 seconds.
Great Britain, who would go on to win bronze, lose 2-1 to China in the women’s tournament.
The game between the USA and Lithuania’s men’s teams finishes.
Pietersen reaches his fifty off 90 balls. England 191-4.
18:05 CYCLING: Canada beat Australia to take women’s team pursuit bronze.
Britain’s Dani King, Joanna Rowsell, and Laura Trott win the first round of the women’s team pursuit with a new world record time of 3:14.682. ZONE
19:02 FENCING: USA win bronze in the women’s team épée, defeating Russia.
124
18:55 CRICKET: James Taylor’s 104-ball supporting role ends on 34, bowled by Steyn. Pietersen pats the debutant on the back as he walks off, seeing wicketkeeper Matt Prior take guard. England 320-4.
Pietersen reaches 7000 Test runs, breaking the record as the fastest player to reach the mark. England 239-4
19:58 FOOTBALL:
21:02 ATHLETICS: Jessica Ennis wins gold in the women’s heptathlon after running the 800m in 2:08.65 and earns a British and Commonwealth record score of 6,955 points, 306 points ahead of the German silver medalist Lilli Schwarzkopf.
20:09 TENNIS: America’s pair Serena and Venus Williams beat Russia’s duo Maria Kirilenko and Nadia Petrova 7-5 6-4 to reach the women’s doubles final.
China win gold in the women’s team épée. South Korea have to settle for silver.
20:57 ATHLETICS: Greg distancefourthcompletesRutherfordhisjump,aof8.31m.
19:44 ATHLETICS: Defending Shelly-AnnchampionFraser-Pryce of Jamaica is first in semi-final two, with a time of 10.85 seconds.
20:05 FOOTBALL: Goal! Despite protests from their opponents, Team GB win a penalty, which is scored by Wales midfielder Aaron Ramsey, then of Arsenal.
Goal! South Korea take the lead in Cardiff through Ji.
20:32 TENNIS: Belarusia’s pair Victoria Azarenka and Max Mirnyi defeat Lisa Raymond and Mike Bryan of the USA 3-6 6-4 10-7 to qualify for the mixed doubles final.
20:12 FENCING:
20:19 SWIMMING:
20:58 ATHLETICS: Jessica Ennis steps onto the track ahead of the heptathlonwomen’s800m. She is greeted by cheers and applause from all corners of the stadium.
20:42 SWIMMING: The USA win in 3:29.35. Phelps bows out with an eighteenth gold medal.
19:58 SWIMMING: China’s Sun Yang wins men’s 1500m freestyle gold, beating his own world record with a time of 14:31.02.
20:39 SWIMMING:
END ZONE 125
20:03 ATHLETICS: Team GB’s Greg Rutherford jumps just 6.28m on his first attempt in the men’s long jump final.
20:37 ATHLETICS: The women’s discus final is won by Croatia’s Sandra Perković with 69.11m.
19:52 ATHLETICS: Blessing Okagbare of Nigeria wins semi-final three in 10.92 seconds.
20:35 ATHLETICS: Greg Rutherford takes his third jump, but fails to improve on his previous distance, this time jumping 8.14m.
Yet another world record is broken in the pool, as the USA set a time of 3:52.05 to win gold in the women’s 4x100m medley.
The final swimming race of the London 2012 Olympics, and the final race of legendary American Michael Phelps career begins. The men’s 4x100m medley.
20:19 ATHLETICS: Greg Rutherford jumps 8.21m in the men’s long jump final, overtaking fellow Brit Chris Tomlinson who had been leading with 8.06m.
21:45 BASKETBALL: Great Britain is beaten 75-106 by Australia. Brooklyn Nets’ Patty Mills scores 39 points against the hosts.
The day’s action concludes at the Basketball Arena, the final score between Nigeria and Argentina is 79-93.
21:20 ATHLETICS: The 10,000mmen’sbegins.
The UK wakes up for day nine of London 2012. Most are full of pride, some perhaps still celebrating, and others in disbelief. Breakfast television and the Sunday papers reflect on a historic day for the country, whilst looking ahead to another bumper day of sporting action.
23:55 BASKETBALL:
08:30 HOCKEY:
10:45 BASKETBALL: France and Russia’s women’s teams are the first to play their final group stage game, the French beating the 2008 bronze medalists 65-54.
10:00 HOCKEY: New Zealand and Belgium draw 1-1.
21:33 ATHLETICS: About halfway through the race, Britain’s Mo Farah is 10 metres behind the race leader, having been 20 metres behind just a couple of minutes prior.
06:00 SUNDAY
22:13 FOOTBALL: Great Britain’s men are eliminated from the Olympic tournament after losing to South Korea 5-4 on penalties, the game having finished 1-1 after extra-time.
10:41 BADMINTON: Long Chen of China beats South Korea’s Lee Hyun il to win men’s singles bronze.
21:46 ATHLETICS: Mo Farah completes an incredible day for Team GB with the country’s third gold medal in just 44 minutes. The runner topping the men’s 10,000m podium with a time of 27:30.42, ensuring that ‘Super Saturday’ would forever be etched into British sporting history.
21:30 HOCKEY: New Zealand grab a late winner against the USA. Final score: 3-2.
1 1:00 CYCLING: Brit Victoria Pendleton finishes first in the qualification round of the women’s sprint, setting an Olympic record time of 10.724 seconds. The first step towards the silver medal she’d win two days later.
21:59 ATHLETICS: The final event in the Olympic stadium for the day is the women’s 100m. Jamaica’s Shelley-Ann Fraser-Pryce defends her title with a time of 10.75 seconds, 0.03 seconds ahead of Carmelita Jeter.
21:08 ATHLETICS: Ennis and her fellow heptathletes begin a lap of honour.
The day’s first men’s hockey match gets underway with New Zealand facing Belgium.
09:00 ATHLETICS: Jessica Ennis announces she will not compete in the women’s 100m hurdles.
1 1:02 CRICKET: Kevin couldn’tPietersencontinue where he left off, trapped LBW by Morne Morkel from the second ball of the day without adding to his total. England 351-6.
21:45 ATHLETICS: With 500 metres of the race to go, Farah attempts to break away from the pack of athletes. With 300m metres to go he leads.
22:45 HOCKEY: Argentina, who went on to win silver, get the better of Germany, 3-1.
09:56 FENCING: Great Britain beat Egypt 45-33 in the last sixteen of the men’s team foil to set up a quarter-final against world champions Italy.
END ZONE 126
21:24 ATHLETICS: Greg Rutherford secures gold in the men’s long jump, despite having fouled on jump five and jumped just 6.33m on jump six, with a distance of 8.31m.
1 1:07 ATHLETICS: The women’s marathon gets underway in rainy conditions.
13:47 BOXING: A historic moment as Russia’s Elena Savelyeva beats North Korea’s Hye Song Kim to become the first women to ever win a women’s Olympic match.
15:06 BADMINTON: In a second successive Olympic men’s singles final between the pair, China’s Lin Dan is once again victorious over Malaysia’s Lee Chong Wei 15-21 21-10 21-19.
13:48 TENNIS: The Williams sisters win women’s doubles gold beating Czech’s Hlaváčková and Hradecká 6-4, 6-4.
13:00 FOOTBALL:SCOTTISH
12:10 TENNIS: The women’s doubles final in which Serena and Venus Williams take on Czech pair Andrea Hlaváčková and Lucie Hradecká begins.
1 1:10 CYCLING: The men’s omnium 4km individual pursuit finishes with Ed Clancy coming second behind Denmark’s Lasse Norman Hansen.
127
13:00 BASKETBALL: Angola lose 47-82 to the Czech Republic, finishing bottom of group A.
15:45 GYMNASTICS: Romanian Sandra Raluca Izbaşa wins gold in the women’s vault final.
14:55 BOXING British boxer Natasha Jones defeats the USA’s Queen Underwood 21-13, to qualify for a quarterfinal against Ireland’s Katie Taylor.
14:17 TENNIS: The men’s singles final gets underway. The game is a repeat of the Wimbledon final from four weeks earlier as Andy Murray looks to this time defeat Roger Federer of Switzerland.
14:35 SAILING: Ben Ainslie wins his third, and Great Britain’s fourth consecutive gold in the men’s Finn, narrowly beating Denmark’s Jonas Høgh-Christensen at the Weymouth & Portland National Sailing Academy. The medal is Ainslie’s fourth gold overall.
14:00 SAILING: Briton Ben Ainslie and co. begin the men’s finn medal race.
13:24 ATHLETICS: Ethiopia’s Tiki Gelana wins women’s marathon gold. Silver goes to Priscah Jeptoo of Kenya. Bronze to Tatyana ArkhipovaPetrovaofRussia.
12:35 CRICKET: James Anderson is last man out with England closing on 425. It amounts to a six-run lead. Prior’s rapid 68 receiving precious little support from the tail.
14:45 HOCKEY: South Korea beat India 4-1.
14:55 CRICKET: Play finally restarts, only possible after the Leeds ground staff remove 2880 gallons of water from the outfield.
15:00 FOOTBALL:SCOTTISH Dundee United 3-0 Hibernian.
15:05 GYMNASTICS: China’s Zou Kai retains floor exercise gold ahead of Japan’s Kōhei Uchimura who won all around gold a few days earlier.
13:35 SAILING: Sweden finish first in the star race, with Great Britain eighth, meaning the Swedes take gold and GB’s Ian Percy and Andrew Simpson get silver.
The Scottish Premier League match between Dundee United and Hibernian kicks off.
15:41 GYMNASTICS: The men’s pommel horse final takes place with Great Britain winning two medals, as Louis Smith takes silver and Max Whitlock takes bronze.
1 1:38 FENCING: Great Britain lose 4540 in the men’s team foil quarter-finals.
12:15 HOCKEY: In group A, Pakistan’s men win 5-4 versus South Africa.
12:45 CRICKET: South Africa get the second innings underway. Only 10 minutes are played before an early lunch and an extended rain delay.
16:05 FENCING: Japan beat Germany 41-40 in sudden death in the men’s team foil semi-final.
18:54 CYCLING: Ed Clancy wins bronze in the men’s omnium, finishing first in the 1km time trial.
17:48 HANDBALL: Great Britain’s women lose 37-14 to Croatia, and are eliminated.
19:35 ATHLETICS: Heat five of the women’s 400m hurdles finishes.
19:15 WRESTLING: Iran’s SoryanHamidwins gold in the wrestling.Greco-Roman55kg
19:00 ATHLETICS: Heat one of the women’s 400m hurdles begins.
The 1km time trials in the men’s omnium take place. Britain’s Ed Clancy finishes first to win omnium bronze with 30 points.
16:20 BASKETBALL: Australia, who won silver in Beijing four years earlier, finish their group stage campaign with a 72-63 win over Canada. Both sides qualify for the quarter-finals.
20:05 ATHLETICS: The Men’s 10,000m victory ceremony, Mo Farah collects his gold medal (and does the ‘Mo-bot’.)
18:00 BASKETBALL: China lose 66-114 to defending champions the USA, who top group A having won all five games.
Reigning champion Melanie Walker of Jamaica qualifies from the final heat behind GB’s Perri Shakes-Drayton.
Rain ends play for the day with South Africa closing on 39-0. A draw now looks the most likely result come Monday.
19:05 ATHLETICS: The men’s high jump qualification begins.
The British duo face Victoria Azarenka and Max Mirnyi of Belarus in the last tennis match of the games.
18:50 ATHLETICS: The men’s long jump medal ceremony sees Greg Rutherford collect gold.
Jason Kenny qualifies for the men’s sprint semi-finals, eliminating Malaysian Azizulhasni Awang. The following day he beat Trinidad’s Njisane Philip and then Grégory Baugé of France to win gold.
20:03 ATHLETICS: Semi-final three finishes. Yohan Blake is first, joining Usain Bolt and Gatlin as semi-final winners. Britain’s Adam Gemili just misses out on the final as the slowest third placed competitor.
16:34 CYCLING:
16:30 CRICKET:
The penultimate part of the men’s omnium, the 15km scratch race begins. Ed Clancy finishes tenth.
Andy Murray beats Federer in straight sets ( 6–2, 6–1, 6–4) to win the men’s singles gold on Centre Court at Wimbledon.
The Netherlands are victorious 3-1 against Germany, guaranteeing top spot in group B. However, Germany would go on to beat the Dutch team 2-1 in the gold medal match.
18:49 TENNIS: Murray and Robson lose 6-2, 3-6, 8-10 to Mirnyi and Azarenka, who win the first mixed doubles tournament at the Olympics since 1968.
19:39 FENCING: Germany defeat the USA 45-27 in the men’s team foil.
16:15 TENNIS:
END ZONE 128
19:40 ATHLETICS: Britain’s Robbie Grabarz clears the first bar, set at 2.16m in the men’s high jump. It’s his first jump and one that would see him win silver.
19:45 ATHLETICS: Semi-final one takes place, the USA’s Justin Gatlin wins it.
17:00
17:30 HOCKEY:
17:35 TENNIS: Murray returns to Centre Court with Laura Robson for the mixed doubles final.
19:00 HOCKEY: Great Britain’s men begin their penultimate group stage match versus Australia.
16:10 CYCLING:
21:37 ATHLETICS: Women’s 400m final victory ceremony. Ohuruogu collects silver to a great reception.
END ZONE 129
And it’s over. When the nation sat down alongside an estimated tv audience of 900 million viewers worldwide to watch director, Danny Boyle’s epic opening ceremony, few could have dared believe that Team GB would account for 65 of the total medals won, 29 of them gold. This total placing the host nation behind only the USA and China in the overall team standings. Team GB remains the only nation to win gold at every summer games of the modern era. With 2012 being the country’s thirdhighest cumulative total behind the London Olympics of 1908 – when winning 146 medals - and the 2016 version, held in Rio, realising 67. But as days and weekends go, none has surpassed those six golds won on ‘Super Saturday’. Truly, the times of our sporting lives.
21:52 ATHLETICS: Usain Bolt wins his second men’s 100m gold with a new Olympic record time of 9.63 seconds.
24.00
20:45 ATHLETICS: The men’s 400m semi-finals. Oscar Pistorius finishes last in race two.
21:45 BASKETBALL: Group A is wrapped up by Croatia and Turkey, who finish fifth and third in the group respectively. Final score, 65-70.
20:30 ATHLETICS: Women’s 100m final victory ceremony. Fraser-Pryce receives her gold medal.
23:55 BASKETBALL:
20:15 DIVING: China win gold and silver in the women’s 3m springboard courtesy of Wu Minxia and He Zi.
21:45 WATER POLO: Spain’s women defeat Great Britain to reach their first ever Olympic semi-final.
20:15 ATHLETICS: The semi-finals of the men’s 1500m begin. The two races are won by Taoufik Makhloufi of Algeria and Morocco’s Abdelaati Iguider who won gold and bronze in the final respectively.
21:10 ATHLETICS: Sanya Richards-Ross wins the women’s 400m racing for the USA. Britain’s Christine Ohuruogu gets silver.
20:33 WRESTLING: Roman Vlasov of Russia wins gold in the 74kg Greco-Roman wrestling.
21:35 ATHLETICS: Ezekiel Kemboi wins gold in the men’s 3000m steeplechase. 2008 winner and fellow Kenyan Brimin Kiprop Kipruto finishes fifth after crashing into the gold medalist.
20:30 HOCKEY: Great Britain’s men come back from 3-0 down to draw 3-3 with Australia and join them in the semi-finals.
22:45 HOCKEY: Spain come from behind to defeat Argentina 3-1 and end the day’s men’s hockey action.
20:48 FENCING: Italy win gold in the men’s team foil beating Japan 45-39 in the final.
In a battle to avoid finishing bottom of group B, Great Britain lose to Brazil 66-78.
21:15 ATHLETICS: The women’s triple jump victory ceremony, Olga Rypakova of Kazakhstan has gone one better than she did in Beijing and collects her gold medal.
On Sunday April 9, 2017, his family scattered his ashes in the Red Wings sin bin at the Joe Louis Arena.
A motorcycle crash in 1994 led to a drink-anddrugs driving conviction. He failed to return to hockey in 1995 after violating the League’s substance abuse policy, finally retiring from the sport in 2002.
inset
of the other ‘inductees’. In an era – the ‘80s and ‘90s – filled with hard nuts, Probert was described by Eddie Olczyk, a former teammate and concerns.ithappenedmates,questionedcontributionWiththeyasBlackhawkscurrentbroadcasterbeing,‘astoughaswere’.hison-iceneverbyteam-itwaswhatawayfromthatcausedmoreSuspended indefinitely by the NHL in 1989 after arrest on the Canadian border attempting to smuggle cocaine into the United States.
He died in 2010 at the age of 45, suffering a massive heart attack whilst on a boat on Lake St. Clair near the family home in Windsor.
In a sport where penalty minutes is a stat like goals scored and assists, being regarded as one of the National Hockey League’s greatest ever enforcers is more of an accolade than it sounds.
Playing over 900 games across 17 years as a pro with firstly the Detroit Red Wings and latterly the Chicago Blackhawks, this forwardmotorcycle-lovingtough-as-teakpowerrackedupthe fifth highest (3,300) number of minutes spent in the penalty box, despite playing far fewer matches than any
No1.Baddies.BobProbert
A parking violation in June 2004 led to a street altercation and the subsequent need for Windsor’s police force to mobilise in larger numbers than would ordinarily prove necessary. Where in 2005 it was a breach of the peace arrest, as well as a further probation violation when consuming liquor in a bar in Tecumseh, Ontario, that saw Probert once again spending time in the Longtimecooler.Red Wings executive Jim Devellano said, “In my 12 years with the organisation, we’ve never spent more time on one player and his problems than we have on FellowProbert.”‘Bruise Brother’ and team-mate, Joe Kocur said of Probert, “My favourite memory of Bob would be sitting down before a game, going over the opposing line-up and picking and choosing who would go first and if the goalie would be safe or not.”
“ He was as tough as they were”
Who
'Going' with New York Rangers' Tie Domi at Madison Square February,Garden,1992. ICE HOCKEY 130
you lookin' at? BobBlackhawks'ChicagoProbert.