Roger Alton

So those really were the days of miracle and wonder, the time of times, or any other lyric you might care to think of. 2012 — never has a year of sport provided so many thrills and tears, so many shivers of disbelief, so much joy.

Here’s a thing: some years ago Rhodri Davies left Cardiff and emigrated to New Zealand with his young half-Scottish, half-Irish wife Megan. Not long after settling in Auckland Megan gave birth to a son, Jock. Jock was a bright boy, and mad keen on rugby. After university and through the local rugby club he met a Samoan girl, Angela. Not long after they were married Jock’s company posted him to Toulouse. A year later Angela gave birth to Manu, who grew into a strapping rugby genius. Despite all his rugby success Jock and Angela were keen to give Manu the best education possible and at 13 he was sent to school in England. In his five years at a rugby-playing public school Manu scored more than 200 tries and converted the lot.

Football, bloody hell, as that old bruiser Sir Alex Ferguson twinkled bibulously at the turn of the century. But it’s not looking so good now, Sir Alex. Bloody hell, it’s in a pretty dark place: the game’s a beauty of course, but otherwise nothing but racial abuse, wholesale cheating, assault, shocking levels of officiating and terrace savagery. And that’s on a good day. Even the great gum-chewer himself is reduced to ranting about how there was no need for Chelsea’s Fernando Torres to go down, and get wrongly sent off, just because Jonny Evans whacked his leg. ‘I would never have missed that chance [to go on and score]’, said Sir Alex. ‘I wouldn’t have gone down.’ Of course not. Let’s hope things can only get better.

Ah, what joys, the first weekend of the mighty Heineken Cup. How many sporting events are so closely identified with their sponsor that you can’t imagine them being called anything else? Heineken has backed this since the first European competition in 1995, which is when rugby went professional. You can’t imagine rugby without beer, though you have to in France, where they ban alcohol advertising at sporting events, so it’s called the H Cup over the Channel. Mark you, you can’t drink proper beer at the Stade de France anyway, just 0% rubbish. Or so it tastes. Heineken is a Dutch lager, not a beer from a country noted for its rugby, like Kronenbourg, Guinness or London Pride. This must be the only connection the Dutch have with the sport.

That seems to be that then, the final episode of the best sporting year since, well, 1977 at least. That was another jubilee year, but Ginny taking tea with the Queen, Red Rum at the National, Liverpool winning the European Cup and England the Ashes is still no match for 2012. This is a year to get all Max Boyce about: I was there, that sort of thing. You don’t have to be literal about it, you simply had to be alive and own a television. The edge of your seat was the only place to be. And now we can bask in a warm European glow in the wake of the 2012 Ryder Cup. Apart from the storage room at the EU headquarters in Brussels, it would be hard to imagine more Europe flags in the same place as on the final green at Medinah on Sunday.

Right now it feels like being eight years old again, having just had the best Christmas Day ever, with the best presents ever, then wandering down on Boxing Day to find what could be an even better present lying still wrapped under the tree. We’ve had the Olympics, and the Paralympics; a Briton won the Tour de France; a Belfast boy won the PGA; and now a Scotsman has won Olympic gold at Wimbledon and then the US Open at Flushing Meadow. And meanwhile the Test cricket side was battling it out with the best team in the world for the No. 1 position. All extraordinary; taken together pretty mind-blowing. And next week, almost creeping under the radar, is the Ryder Cup at Medinah, outside Chicago.

Having reached the summit of the Test cricket rankings by thoroughly outplaying England in three matches that flew largely under the radar due to events in east London, South Africa continue their tour as summer winds down with some one-day cricket. They are pretty handy at this form of the sport, too, and can be expected to end England’s unbeaten run, which stands at ten games, over the course of the five-match series. Both teams will change personnel for the series but perhaps the most significant difference in the South African dressing room will be that Graeme Smith won’t be the captain. Smith stepped aside after the World Cup last year but remains in the 50-over side as a ‘senior player’, something he admits he found ‘incredibly difficult’.

The other day, I was listening to Radio 5 from Crystal Palace, where there had been a Diamond League athletics meeting. By this time the stadium was all but closed, the event had finished, the lights were out and the rain was falling. But what the commentators were seeing was this: in the deserted stadium Mo Farah and his training partner Galen Rupp were being put through a series of 200m interval sprints by their trainer, the legendary Cuban Alberto Salazar. As they churned out endless 25-second runs in the rain, the final touches were being put to a training regime that was to climax in last weekend’s epic 10,000m victory for Farah — not to mention Rupp’s own silver medal.

You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone, as Joni Mitchell used to whiffle way back when. And on cricket, as on so much else, the flaxen-haired loopster of Laurel Canyon was right. My friend Fiona took her three boys to the cricket at the Oval last Thursday and a fine time was had by all. Plus they saw an English batsman score a century, which is always a treat, though it was in this case a very false dawn. In decades to come, though, Fiona’s lads will be able to go all rheumy-eyed and describe how they saw England’s finest batsman score a ton against the Springboks, just as my dad did when he talked about Walter Hammond or Len Hutton. It is my belief that that is how we will look back on the career of Alastair Cook.

Amid the weeping in SW19 last weekend, Andy Murray essayed what was a clunky if well-meaning compliment to his opponent’s longevity. ‘Not bad for a 30-year-old,’ he said. Shortly after, Roger Federer opined that he thought Murray might indeed win a Grand Slam one day. Probably deserved it, too. Unspoken seemed to be the thought, ‘Listen sonny, I might be 30 but I’ve got 17 of these buggers. Don’t talk to me about how old I am.’ Moral: never ever make jokes about people’s age, no matter how friendly you’re trying to be. No one can understand the joy of being Roger Federer better than Federer himself. The great are given the gift of time, and with that they can display elegance.

If ever I feel my zest for racing flagging, a day at Windsor soon sorts things out. The Thameside track, even more fun if you go there by boat, is one of the friendliest I know. Families picnic on the grass between the parade ring and the winner’s enclosure, the jazz bands stroll between the champagne and Pimm’s bars and, rarity of rarities on most racecourses, you can even find somewhere to sit down, a true mercy for those of us with occasionally dodgy backs. If you back Richard Hannon’s horses through the card, too, you can usually guarantee a winner.

One of my main preoccupations during Sunday night’s football was the size of Roy Hodgson’s watch. An immense timepiece, it sat on the managerial wrist with the quiet assurance of Big Ben. So weighty was it that you wondered whether Hodgson would have the strength to raise his arm to signal a substitution (in the end he did, though presumably was so exhausted he forgot to replace the hapless Rooney). The watch turns out was a Hublot special edition for Euro 2012, worth umpteen grand. Good for Roy. This is England’s level, and we have been there for some time: moderately skilled, very hard to beat. England are the equivalent of Stoke City — awkward, not that cultured, and with passionate support.

One Test series down, one to go. It’s been fun to have the West Indies here this soggy summer. They are not yet fit to lace the rum punch of their predecessors but they’ve been better than some recent vintages of Caribbean cricketer. Now we wait for the main — if truncated — event of the summer game: the three Tests against South Africa. The best team in the world against their nearest rivals, and 19 July can’t come soon enough, but until then cricket goes short-form and England will have to live without ‘KP’. To many, Kevin Pietersen’s decision to retire from international limited-overs cricket makes it a little easier to be cross with him.

Heavens, we do like a moan. Sure the traffic will be hell; the commercialism mind-numbing; the Zil lanes a pain; and the presence of the egregious will.i.am, a man so irritating he makes Stephen Fry seem likable, lugging the Olympic torch is preposterous. Usain Bolt will probably miss the final because he’s been stopped and searched driving through Brixton in a rented Beamer, and the starter pistols will doubtless set off a health and safety alert. The miserabilists will have a field day or 15 but for the rest of us the Olympics will knock our blocks off. You don’t have to buy into all the waffle surrounding the Games to love the sport.

Like modules at the Leveson inquiry, gut-wrenchingly exciting weekends of sport are coming along thick and fast now. But forget last weekend’s theatrics if you can, take a deep breath and get set for what truly will be one of the best days of sport in the year. Just before we do though, a brief homage to one of the great men of British football. Anybody who watched the City skipper Vincent Kompany make his short graceful speech dedicating the victory to the supporters could see that here was a man who stands out in the world of football like the Archbishop of Canterbury in Las Vegas.

Well, that went well. The selection of the England football manager has been carried out with enough pomp, secrecy and puffs of smoke to make the election of a pope look as simple as buying a packet of fags. The workings of the almighty may be mysterious, but it’s kids’ stuff compared to what goes on between the ears of FA chairman David Bernstein. Quite why the straightforward and correct appointment of Roy Hodgson became so byzantine is hard to see. But we are where we are and a jolly good thing too. Myself, I was never convinced Harry Redknapp was the bolt-on for the job assumed by the London-based sports press, in the chunterings of the radio phone-ins, and among England twitterati like Jack Wilshere, Wayne Rooney and Rio Ferdinand.

You don’t want to sound too swivel-eyed about this, but didn’t poor doomed Synchronised look cursed from the get-go in that enthralling Grand National? How often do you see the best jump jockey on the planet being chucked to the ground like a piece of straw? And that was on the way to the start. The Cheltenham Gold Cup winner looked out of sorts when he was eventually recaptured and Tony McCoy showed him the first fence.  ‘You’ve got to be kidding,’ he should have snarled at McCoy. ‘Haven’t I done enough this year?’ Could McCoy have pulled his horse, one of the favourites, in a race watched by millions? It would never happen. But did the horse want to run? I don’t think so.

Funny business, footballers and morality. One moment they’re all taking part in mawkish self-congratulatory breast-beating, first over Gary Speed, now over poor Fabrice Muamba. The next, it’s back to childishness and sharp practice. Here’s Balotelli and Kolarov bickering over a free kick; there are Liverpool’s Carroll diving and swearing at his bench and Reina shaping up to headbutt, and then Newcastle’s untouched defender going down as if hit by a sniper. How do professionals do this to each other week in, week out? It’s baffling and insulting. Kenny Dalglish’s reaction to the sort of behaviour that would make a reception class at an inner city primary feel ashamed was to say that it showed that his players don’t ‘enjoy losing’.

Rory McIlroy used to be the world’s best golfer. He bagged the No. 1 ranking by winning the Honda Classic in Florida at the start of the month. It was a dream realised. Already a major championship winner, he held off a magnificent final-day charge by Tiger Woods to claim the top spot in the world. But that was then… no longer can McIlroy say that he is the planet’s best golfer. Luke Donald has reclaimed the ­position. Donald’s victory in Florida’s thrillingly named Transitions Championship last weekend means he is the big dog on tour because the rankings, according to those who ­compile them, don’t lie. Of course they don’t. So Britain has the two best players in the world. We also have the player ranked No.