Tag: Sport

Eurovision sends a lesson to tennis

Compare the Eurovision audience’s delight at the banning of Russia with the behaviour of the two tennis bodies, ATP (men) and WTA (women). Both organisations currently adorn their websites with ribbons in the colours of Ukraine, but they have chosen to take action against Wimbledon for excluding Russian and Belarusian players from this year’s tournament.

War averted, but that’s not important

I’m a big tennis fan. Back in January, I was glued to coverage of Djokovic’s thrilling on-court tussle with the Australian government. I even downloaded several of the legal documents to get a better understanding of the evolving scoreline. (I do stuff like that.) But what on earth did the Beeb think was the breaking news story yesterday?

Two sides of the same story

A mathematical postscript to the fairy tale in New York that tells me I need to learn to relax more when I watch tennis. 😧

The audacity of youth

Shortly before 3 am today (UK time), a beaming teenager became the youngest woman this century to get to the final of the US Open tennis. Less than two hours later, she had lost that record to Emma Raducanu.

Raducanu is now the first qualifier ever to reach the final of a grand slam. That could quite plausibly be a record that is never beaten – unless there is another pandemic.

Football’s gone away again

When I get nervous watching football on TV, I usually turn to the match statistics in the hope of some succour. Last night I was very nervous. And from very early in the game. At first, the statistics seemed to be a real help until … well, until I realised that the BBC were showing Italy in the “home” team column, despite the match being at Wembley. (The Beeb obviously thought football wasn’t coming home last night.)

One moment in time

As a lifelong supporter of Queens Park Rangers, it is second nature to revel when local rivals, Chelsea, are on the wrong end of a result. So yesterday’s Cup Final result should have been a time of great joy for me. But the decision by VAR (the Video Assistant Referee) to rule out Chelsea’s equaliser as offside was, frankly, absurd.

Is that you, Bobby?

Like many people, I thought parts of 2016 had been something of a nightmare. It had been so unbelievable at times that, when I woke up on 1 January, a part of me even wondered whether I might find David Cameron back in Downing Street, Donald J Trump a rank outsider at the start of the Republican primaries and Bobby Ewing back in the shower. Could the whole year have all been just a dream?

FA Law

On a train journey this afternoon, I was reading Lord Bingham’s The Rule of Law. Later, back at my desk, I saw the Football Association’s most recent nonsensical disciplinary announcement. There seem to be some lessons for the FA in what I was reading.

Redknapp admits his guilt?

We all know that Harry Redknapp is innocent of tax evasion. A jury has decided that unanimously.

But readers of The Times newspaper may have been a little surprised by the verdict. Redknapp had, after all, admitted criminality. Or so the paper reported on 28 January 2012. Quoting evidence given during the trial, the paper reported Redknapp as saying in a taped interview with the police:

Beaten before we start?

Fabio Capello, manager of the England football team, says he realised before Tuesday night’s game against Wales that his team were about to put in a poor performance. It was the attitude of the players during the pre-match warm-up that told him what to expect.