Sport Comment: Rugby has the ability to infuriate but when in full flow the game simply inspires like few others Many of you will have spent last Friday hunched over a computer pretending to be observing market trends and world news, when in fact you were trying to access tickets for the Rugby World Cup next year. Some will have been lucky. One or two will have given up after encountering the usual glitches that [...]
Sport Comment: Lack of boxing on free-to-air TV leaves stars marginalised BRITAIN currently has four world boxing champions. Between now and a few paragraphs’ time, the challenge is to see whether you can name them. That number rose from three to four at the weekend when, in front of the biggest crowd in history for a bout in Northern Ireland, the latest Belfast Boy Carl Frampton [...]
Sport Comment: Tsonga offers Murray resurgence barometer SOMEHOW, given that many people were starting to write his obituary, Andy Murray has made it in to the second week of the US Open. He is yet again the sole reason for a sizeable percentage of the British sporting public to retain interest in a grand slam tennis tournament, as the back-up troops to [...]
Sport Comment: World Cup has been huge credibility boost for women’s rugby August 17, 2014 IT IS the nature of our sporting world that football is the rich man from whose table every other sport has to eat the scraps, and so amid all the hoopla in the week of the resumption of the Premier League it has been particularly bad luck for English cricket and British athletics that their [...]
Sport Comment: Hail Harry, back in the top flight like a returning Mitchell brother August 10, 2014 IT IS one of the inexplicable inexplicablenesses of modern life that it’s far easier to ask a politician a difficult question about multiple deaths in Gaza or Iraq than it is to ask a Premier League football manager about an injured player or a disappointing performance. They intimidate their inquisitors with steely, dismissive or just [...]
Sport Comment: Resilient Cook deserves an award August 5, 2014 IT IS probably a two-horse race for Sports Personality of the Year at the moment, with Rory McIlroy a freckle ahead of Lewis Hamilton in the voting. But here’s a nomination that you probably haven’t considered, but who has another opportunity tomorrow to illustrate his strength of character and leadership skills, plus his not inconsiderable [...]
Sport Comment: Stripping Russia of World Cup is just not practical July 27, 2014 SPORT always has been and remains a political football. I have spent much of the past weekend at the Rugby 7s at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. I have been trying to explain to people who asked why Fiji were not competing as a team when some of their individual athletes were. Fiji were expelled [...]
Sport Comment: Commonwealth Games is a feast of variety and purity July 20, 2014 WHY DO you watch sport, play sport, talk sport, love sport? For 12 days, starting Wednesday, the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow offers another chance to question our commitment to something that is inherently, in a world of surface-to-air missiles and global conflict, just a glorious triviality. On Thursday you’ll surprise yourself, telling children and dogs [...]
Sport Comment: Fans shed crocodile tears over England’s World Cup woe July 13, 2014 SO THAT’S it then. Now we can get on with the real thing. The World Cup has been just an idle distraction. A catwalk of talent auditioning for parts in the main production which starts in just four weeks’ time. How many more players are Arsenal going to sign? Should Chelsea give a clearly burnt-out [...]
Sport Comment: Cycling’s boom makes need for planning urgent July 6, 2014 THE BRITISH sporting landscape is changing fast. There will be a surge, albeit a limited one, in usage of public tennis courts for the next few days, sparked by events at SW19 over the past fortnight. A few more people are kicking a football around on summer evenings imagining they are on the Copacabana. Office [...]
