Spectator Life

I make no apologies for the fact that over the next month I will spend a lot of time looking forward to what I regard as Britain’s finest annual sporting event: the Cheltenham Festival. Yes, there will be groans from racegoers that Guinness is a rip-off at £7.50 a pint; yes, it can get overcrowded even if you pay more than £100 for a club enclosure ticket; yes, the Willie Mullins and Gordon Elliott-trained horses will win more than their ‘fair share’ of the big races. But the sheer quality of the racing, the exhilarating atmosphere and the beautiful setting of the course nestled beneath Cleeve Hill are all a joy to behold. Yet, as a punter, the enjoyment of the racing is always greatly enhanced by… a big-priced winner or two.

On a cold Tuesday night, as the wind whipped in from the North Sea, I joined 220 hardy souls to watch a game of football. Less than a mile away from the Sizewell nuclear plant on the Suffolk coast but light years away from the lurid lights of the Premiership, Leiston FC were playing Ilkeston Town in the Pitching In Southern League – Premier Division Central. As the old joke goes, the attendance was so small it would have been easier to name the crowd changes than the team changes. Welcome to non-league football – in this case the seventh tier of the game’s pyramid system of promotion and relegation.

One of the nicest parts about writing this weekly column for Spectator Life is the informed comments that greet it each week from readers. I am thinking specifically about people such as ‘Simian Leer’, ‘Oswald Grimes’ and ‘Simon’. This week my thanks go to ‘Simian’, who in late December highlighted the chances of NASSALAM in the Paddy Power New Year’s Day Handicap Chase. Nassalam finished a staying-on third that day and ‘Simian’ later posted a second comment asking whether the Ultima Handicap Chase might be a good Festival target for Gary Moore’s six-year-old gelding. The astute reader seemed convinced a step up in trip to more than three miles would suit the horse.

If you think the Calcutta Cup is just any old rugby match between England and Scotland, then the latest in BT Sport’s fine series of documentaries should put you straight. It’s called The Grudge and is about the 1990 Calcutta Cup, the climax to the Five Nations with everything at stake for the first and only time: the Grand Slam, the Triple Crown, the Championship and the Cup itself. The film is narrated by the actor Robert Carlyle, so not entirely unsympathetic to the men of Scotland. Craig Chalmers, looking slightly less boyish these days, chews the fat with Peter Winterbottom, who still looks like someone you wouldn’t relish packing down against. Flanker John Jeffrey sits on his Land Rover on his Borders farmland reminiscing while an amiable cow wanders by.

Many of my best bets over the years have been placed after watching replays of past races, looking out for horses that fared well despite bad luck in running. I have rewatched last year’s Fulke Walwyn Kim Muir Challenge Cup Handicap Chase several times and there is no doubt that MISTER COFFEY was a desperately unlucky loser at the Cheltenham Festival. The gelding lost several lengths when he was badly hampered by a faller as early as the second fence. He lost all momentum and position so, all in all, he did superbly under a lovely ride from Sam Waley-Cohen, to be second to Chambard, beaten just two and a half lengths.

Irish trainer John 'Shark' Hanlon recently asked whether he was mad to think his horse Hewick could win the Boodles Cheltenham Gold Cup. Since the colourful Irishman has never had a runner in the Gold Cup and since the horse in question cost around £800, there was almost certainly a resounding reply from both sides of the Irish Sea: ‘Yes, you are totally bonkers.' I would be very surprised if the likes of Willie Mullins, Gordon Elliott, Henry de Bromhead and Paul Nicholls are quaking in their boots at the prospect of taking on Hanlon’s improving handicapper on St Patrick’s Day (17 March). But I am not so sure that the affable Irish handler is at all crazy to think that Hewick does have a real chance of lifting this season’s premier title at the Festival.

Something is happening here, and you do know what it is, don’t you Mr Jones? Stargazers – and even some more grounded folk – reckon it’s written in the heavens: that the team Eddie Jones was supposed to have been coaching will meet the team he will be coaching in the rugby world cup final on Saturday 28 October in the Stade de France in Paris. Jones, jilted last month after a seven-year relationship with England, the team he was preparing for the tournament that starts in France on 8 September, has this week been welcomed back into the arms of his former flame, Australia (also the nation of his birth), with whom he enjoyed a four-year partnership from 2001-5.

Ground conditions at both Warwick and Kempton Park are likely to decide the winners of the two big weekend handicaps tomorrow. A month ago, clerks of the course and groundsmen up and down the country feared it might never rain again. Now it seems to pour almost every day and, as a result, it is essential to back horses that revel in the mud. The big race at Warwick tomorrow is the Wigley Group Classic Handicap Chase (3 p.m.) over a marathon trip of 3 miles 5 furlongs. With the going already ‘heavy, soft in places’ and with more rain forecast, only gritty battlers who can handle the ground are going to play a hand in the finish.

Whoever invented veterans’ chase handicaps – for horses aged ten and above – please take a bow. I love them and I have yet to come across anyone in the sport who doesn’t relish the prospect of these old warriors running against each other in their twilight racing years. Inevitably, horses of this age will be past their prime so it makes sense to have them competing on a level playing field, insofar as they race against rivals broadly their own age. Usually I am happy just to watch such contests without having a bet – but I will make an exception tomorrow for the Unibet Veterans' Handicap Chase at Sandown (3 p.m.). This series final is the richest prize of the season in any veterans’ race, with more than £51,000 to the winner.

Norwich City are a likeable club, and currently run by a pleasant-seeming bloke called Allan Russell. He used to be the club’s ‘setpiece coach’, whose claim to fame was that he was working with the England squad in 2018 when they scored against the mighty Panama. Good for him, of course, but has football become too dependent on the ever-expanding phalanx of managerial officials now filling up the bench at every game under the sun? Is the beautiful game losing sight of what really matters? After all, this might be a world where a championship side can have a setpiece coach, but it is also a world where Pele had to flog his medals to get by. People tended to scoff at the fair play award won by England in Qatar. But why?

The Paddy Power New Year’s Day Handicap Chase at Cheltenham over more than two and a half miles on Sunday is a hugely competitive affair. There are no less than six horses in this race from my 'horse tracker' – horses that have caught my eye for one reason or another recently and that I expect to back in future. The key to the outcome of the race is the going and, if the weather forecast is correct, the course could have up to 20 millimetres of rain tomorrow. That could easily turn the ground from 'good' to 'soft', which would be welcome news for some runners and bad news for others.

The Randox Grand National at Aintree is more than three months away but I can’t resist a couple of bets on the race now. At this stage, it is important to bet on a horse that is being targeted at the race but that will not go up in the ratings/weights significantly between now and the spring, thereby hampering its chances of winning. You also need a strong stayer and a sound jumper, ideally one that has run well over the Aintree fences before. Like all antepost bets, it’s best to have a horse too that is not ground dependent so it can handle whatever the going is on the day. Lucinda Russell knows what it takes to train a Grand National winner having done just that with One For Arthur in 2017.

The likeable Joe Tizzard was a talented jockey and he is proving equally adept as a trainer. His father, Colin Tizzard, retired at the end of last season after a hugely successful training career so this is Tizzard Jnr’s first season with only his name on the licence. Tizzard has already trained 32 winners this season, with an admirable 17 per cent first-past-the-post strike rate. However, he would love a big-race winner over the Christmas period to boost his CV and he has a couple of good chances of doing just that. ELDORADO ALLEN is a relatively lightly-raced eight-year-old gelding who has run some big races over the past two seasons, including winning the Grade 2 Betfair Denman Chase at Newbury in February.

Few sights in the history of cricket have been more thrilling – or more terrifying for batsmen – than the great West Indian fast bowler Wes Hall coming in off his 30-yard run. He is now Sir Wesley, and frail at 85, but still as forthright and impressive as ever. I was privileged to be able to speak to Sir Wesley the other day (for the Oborne & Heller on Cricket podcast) and it was as thrilling as watching him play in the 1960s when I was growing up. He is a glorious figure, a man of adamantine integrity, total sportsmanship and unbreakable moral values, and a reminder, like Frank Worrell and Clyde Walcott, of a golden age of the great traditions of cricket culture.

The Coral Welsh Grand National is my favourite jumps race of the whole season, largely because I have enjoyed a good record in the race over the years. You need a strong stayer, a good jumper and a well-handicapped horse to win the race. Usually, you want a mud-lover too but that’s not guaranteed this time around because of the lack of rain this autumn and early winter. Chepstow, with its undulations and fairly tight turns, is a specialist track as well, so I usually only fancy horses with strong form at the course.

Welcome one and all to this new weekly column on horse racing. The industry is facing some challenging times – low prize money, small fields, rising costs for trainers/owners, a lack of cohesive leadership and more.  But it is not all doom and gloom and Penworthy – the name derives from a character in P.G. Wodhouse’s short story The Purity of the Turf – will try to lift the spirits of those passionate about the so-called Sport of Kings.   This will hopefully be achieved not by solving, or even addressing, any of the above important topics but instead providing some winning bets. For this is a tipping column – it will try to ensure that those who enjoy a bet actually make money from their hobby too.

Michael Sheen has had a problem with the royal family for some time – and it’s only got worse since William was appointed Prince of Wales. The actor, best known for playing Tony Blair but somewhat to the left of him politically, has criticised the notion of an Englishman being nominal head of the principality. Sheen has lately carved out a niche as a pound-shop Richard Burton addressing motivational monologues to the Welsh football team, to little effect thus far. And he predictably stepped up his campaign ahead of the World Cup: how could William, he asked, reconcile his role as President of the English Football Association with his position as Prince of Wales – particularly when the two nations have been drawn to play each other tonight?

When England play the USA this evening in Al Khor, Qatar, it will be the twelfth time the two sides have met. England have had the upper hand in most of the previous 11, winning eight and recording scores as comfortable as 10-0, 8-1, 6-3 and 5-0. We easily beat them 3-0 at Wembley just three years ago.  And after their respective opening games in this tournament – England thumping Iran 6-2 in their best-ever start to a World Cup, the USA nervy and stuttering by the end of a 1-1 draw with Wales – most neutrals would expect nothing other than a routine win for England. The bookies make England comfortably odds-on too. But all of this is overlooking one factor: the Americans are English football’s bogey team.

When England line up against Iran in Doha today, the VIP seats should be studded with former players from both sides. But one who almost certainly won’t be present is a player with a solid claim to having been the greatest Iranian footballer in history. Because Ali Karimi is a wanted man. The 44-year-old is hugely influential in Iran – he has 13 million social media followers there. But he has positioned himself as such an overt critic of the country’s regime that he’s now living in exile, threatened with arrest – and worse – should he return to or be forcibly taken back to Iran.

We all tend to put a value on what we haven’t got. Talking to a West Indian friend, Mrs Oakley, a foodie to her core, envied her the fresh pineapple, mangoes and bananas of her Caribbean childhood compared with our post-war canned fruit. ‘Oh no,’ said her friend, ‘it was the rare canned fruit treats we yearned for.’ Through the final weeks of the fading Flat season, I yearn too for the mud-spattered glories of the full jumping season, contests as much about courage as class.

As ocean-going metaphors go, the news that a £1 billion cruise liner (usually charging £2,434.80 – love that 80! – for a nine-night jaunt, complete with a shopping mall, 14 jacuzzis, six swimming pools and the longest ‘dry-slide’ at sea) will host England’s Wags during the World Cup in Qatar could not have been more splashy.  This is a particularly bad time for football. The England players are off to Qatar, along with LGBT-friendly football personalities – led by ‘gay icon’ David Beckham – to shill for a country where migrant workers are treated like chattels, women are treated like children and homosexuals are treated like criminals.

When the burly honchos of the Rugby League World Cup gushed about taking the game to new heights, no one was actually thinking about the Golan Heights – but that’s where we are. What sounds like a fascinating quarter--final takes place on Friday (as I write) when the dominant team in global rugby league, Australia, take on Lebanon in Huddersfield – the birthplace of the game. Amid the blizzard of sporting world cups currently taking place across the globe, this match has it all. The Lebanese team, known as the Cedars, are coached by Australian Michael Cheika, one of the world’s most eminent coaches and a former boss of the Wallabies’ rugby union side. That’s an awful lot of rugby in the mix already.

In his first interview since being reappointed, Foreign Secretary James Cleverly laid down some clear diplomatic water between his party and Labour – confirming that, unlike Keir Starmer, he would attend this winter’s Qatar World Cup. The Foreign Secretary won’t be alone. The Football Association expects that some 10,000 England fans will make the journey to a World Cup widely regarded as the most controversial in history (though Prince William, the FA’s president, will reportedly not be among them). So what awaits them when they get there? If the headlines so far are anything to go by, they could be in for a rude awakening.

Make no mistake: the game of rugby, which many of us love so much, is in serious trouble: it will have to change or die. The game’s scarily existential issue on the field – especially the brain health of those who play it – is one thing. But what is going on inside the heads of those who run the sport? The financial clouds hovering over English rugby are as menacing as Billy Vunipola coming on to the ball at full speed from the back of the scrum. Worcester Warriors are just the start: Wasps are in trouble, and Bristol could be next. There will be more. Only Leicester, Northampton and Harlequins seem out of the woods. Too much money is going out from the clubs and not enough coming back in. It’s as simple as that.

Don’t bother watching those gazillion-dollar TV prequels to The Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones. Who needs gratuitous nudity, multiple dragons and surprise beheadings when the real Nordic legend is bang in front of us, his mighty frame squeezed into the light blue of Manchester City and devouring the grass of the Etihad? (Though not literally, yet.) He is an outlandish--looking creature from the far north, clearly designed by some dotty scientist, faster, bigger, stronger and more ruthless than anyone else in football and effortlessly leaping higher too. Quick to smile, often at awkward moments, he moves effortlessly with that curious stiff-armed gait as he outruns everyone else on the pitch.

It was the news we were supposed to be ‘dreading’: the confirmation that Roger Federer was finally hanging up his racket. But when I heard the announcement on Thursday, my feelings were more akin to pained relief. For a long time now, being a Federer fan has felt a bit like being in a relationship which remains officially ‘on’, but which in most meaningful senses has expired. Where once it was replenished by a steady stream of matches (virtually every week, a brand-new tournament, a new opportunity to revel in the powers of the man), it had long since become an expertise in retrospection, a matter of replaying (yet again) those YouTube videos of past glories: that triumph over Nadal in Australia in 2017; that wonder win over Djokovic at Roland Garros in 2011.