Spectator Sport
The evenings are getting darker, someone called Libor has nicked all our money, and Scarlett Johansson’s got married. There’s little to smile about. So in a spirit of pro bono here are some reasons to be cheerful.
For starters, rugby is becoming absolutely fantastic. Not quite the new football, but I wish. With a packed crowd in the purpose-built stadiums at Worcester, Leicester or Northampton you get a better atmosphere than at Old Trafford with a quarter of the numbers. The standard of the top games is awesome, and with someone like Dan Carter at Perpignan you can see the best players in the world on tap. And this weekend the superlative Heineken Cup gets going. On Sunday alone you can watch the Ospreys, which is more or less last season’s Six Nations-winning Welsh side, play Leicester; there’s Toulouse against Bath; and Wasps, starring Mr Kelly Brook, against Castres.
Danny Cipriani is quite a guy: it turns out he once talked drop-goal techniques with a sensational model called Danielle Bux, shortly to become the new Mrs Gary Lineker, allegedly, so he gets around. He was lovingly interviewed the other day by the equally gorgeous Gabby Logan, in a miraculous meeting of fabulous bone structures, for her show Inside Sport, the best sports programme on TV, and tragically relegated by the bloated BBC to a ludicrously late night slot on Mondays. And take a look at French table-toppers Stade Français’s new strip. It’s the pinnacle of rugby fashion: multi coloured Warhol-style images of someone called Blanche de Castille, wife of Louis VIII. It makes even their own pink floral kit look as dated as Wavell Wakefield’s scrum-cap. Simply sensational, and shame on those carping spirits who can’t see it.
A Test series between India and Australia is always mouth-watering — not just in their clash of cricketing styles, but in their increasing bad temper. For once you can bet that the most spiky player on the pitch will not be someone wearing the baggy green. So by the time this journal arrives on the mat today, you should have been able to tuck into the breakfast soldiers while watching the first day of the first Test on a dustbowl in Bangalore. With a bit of luck India will be 270-odd for none, and Stuart Clarke will be trudging back to his mark for his 30th over, with, perhaps, a bit of a limp. Oh joy. The Indian selectors came in for some aggro by sticking with their mighty, if ageing, batting order of Sehwag, Dravid, Laxman, and Tendulkar. But the sight of a line-up like that makes me want to reach for an air ticket. The telly will just have to do.
I know it’s probably just a dream but with luck either Newcastle or Tottenham will be relegated from the Premier League. And then some of the least likeable fans in football with, respectively, their lachrymose delusions or witless abuse will have to start mixing it at some decidedly unglamorous locations. In an exquisite twist, the amiable Dutchman Martin Jol, so abysmally treated by Spurs’ invisible and incompetent chairman Daniel Levy a year ago, is now top of the Bundesliga with Hamburg. You would have to have a heart of stone not to smile. And praise be to the small but perfectly formed Hull City for sticking it to both of the north London swaggerers this season.
And finally sand wedges aloft in respect please for the sturdily built European Ryder Cup player who rounded off a pro-am last weekend with a double cheeseburger to start, followed by 11 pints of Guinness. Good to know not everyone is following the Tiger Woods health and fitness regime.
Roger Alton is editor of the Independent.
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