Roger Alton

Watching England play Wales in the Six Nations the other day, a lacklustre match between two middling sides and distinguished only by lashings of Welsh hwyl as the visitors outperformed their role as underdogs, I remarked to the Irish friend who was with me: ‘The Welsh don’t like the English, do they?’ ‘Get in line,’ my friend replied. Fair point, and the Scots, proud members in the queue and a better team than Wales, will sorely test the idea on Saturday that Steve Borthwick’s newish-look side are any better than their predecessors. Scotland are scarily good, prevented from beating France onlyby a blade of grass For some time it felt as if England didn’t have to do much more than turn up to the Calcutta Cup to get the win.

You couldn’t miss the heartbreaking irony of one of the greatest rugby players who ever pulled on his boots passing away just as the latest tournament was getting under way featuring 18-stone behemoths smashing into each other. Barry John, who retired at 27 and died last Sunday at 79, could have walked through brick walls and emerged unscathed. Was he the finest fly-half ever? He was certainly the most beautiful to watch. He played just 25 games for Wales and a handful for the British and Irish Lions, including the 1971 tour of New Zealand when he helped them to their only series victory against the All Blacks. It was then that the Kiwi press, not known for its admiration of players not wearing black, christened him ‘King John’.

Did football officials watch Mr Bates vs The Post Office? They should have – and learned from it. Otherwise they could be next in the crosshairs of a TV dramatist. Just as the Post Office failed to act as they should have done to protect sub-postmasters, football – and rugby for that matter – is showing no noticeable signs of urgency to look after its players despite growing evidence that both sports are contributing to long-term brain damage. Day after day we see young men heading the ball with an indifference that gives you a headache just to watch A debate in parliament on the issue last September which referred to one report that the dementia risk to footballers was ‘phenomenal’ seems to have caused as much of a stir as a WI knitting competition.

It is surely the ultimate challenge in international cricket: winning a Test series in India. It’s the pinnacle for a Test team, much harder than in Australia. India have lost only one home series in 19 years, in 2012, when Graeme Swann and Monty Panesar spun Alastair Cook’s England to an epic victory. The latest instalment of this marquee series is almost upon us, and will be a chance to see whether Ben Stokes, Brendon McCullum and their Bazballers can deliver when the odds look stacked against them. Or is it going to be one of the last rituals before Test cricket becomes a quirky occasional outing for a handful of countries?

Could this be the year when England’s men win their first international football trophy for 58 years? After all, they have the best striker in Europe in Harry Kane and the best attacking midfielder in Jude Bellingham, both of whom are being treated like Wellington and Nelson at their respective clubs BayernMunich and Real Madrid. This should be about time too that pundits admit that the way Bellingham lit up the European Championships in Germany makes him, at the very least, Bobby Charlton’s equal. If he is not Sports Personality of the Year in 2024, something very odd must have happened in the space-time continuum.

Anyone who thought Gavin Henson, perma-tanned Welsh rugby three-quarter and one-time escort of Charlotte Church, was just an overhyped glamour boy should think again. He has revealed himself as one of more than 200 former players, including several Test players, involved in legal action against World Rugby and the English and Welsh unions, claiming levels of brain damage caused by the game, and seeking damages. There is a common conception that head injuries – and their accompanying mental problems – are the preserve of forwards the size of Chelsea tractors who see the game as a form of stock-car racing.

Anyone know the Hindi for schadenfreude? Who could have seen that coming: certainly not your correspondent, who had invested some time ago in India to win the Cricket World Cup. Not to be, sadly, and the red-hot favourites were given an absolute pasting in their own backyard by a team of unfancied Aussies who had lost both their opening games of the tournament. It certainly disproves the Samson theory of sporting excellence: in days of yore a sportsman’s luxurious mullet (look at rugby’s Mickey Skinner, or football’s Frank Worthington and Stan Bowles) often meant a similar lush on-field display.

It’s a tricky old time for cricket. The collapse of England’s World Cup white-ballers – and how they have managed to run up the white flag with quite such aplomb – is one of the great sporting mysteries of our time. One day they are the best in the world and hot favourites; the next they have soured overnight, like a pint of milk left out for too long. Answers on a postcard please, as Ben Stokes admitted. English cricket has never travelled particularly well, which may have something to do with the conditions here being very different from those in nearly all the other top cricketing nations.

In the days when Spitting Image was funny it featured a song called ‘I’ve Never Met A Nice South African’. In fairness it was in 1986, long before the end of apartheid, though the sentiments would have chimed with the feelings of most English sports fans at the weekend. In the end South Africa was the story: pitted against England on the same day, in two different sports, in two World Cups, resulting in two defeats for England – but two very different post-match emotions. The rugby semi-final felt almost triumphant: okay, so England lost, but what a stirring, intense, physical battle. It was not a game, however, to illustrate the spectacular pleasures of fast-flowing rugby.

Has there ever been an athlete, male or female, quite like Simone Biles, the greatest gymnast of all time? She is like something from another planet, so out of this world are the body-bending tricks she can accomplish on the floor, vault and bars. These are incomprehensible feats of agility, strength and grace, which were once the territory of the communist countries who could bully their young athletes into doing all sorts of outrageous manoeuvres on lethal-looking pieces of equipment. But not these days: it’s a sport for the world and Biles is its queen.

At last the Ryder Cup is here – well, in Rome – and with it Europe’s biennial chance to stick it to the Americans in a sport that matters in a format that we can all relate to. Even if you regard golfers as extremely well-off people largely determined to make themselves better off, the frenzied emotions and belting patriotism of the Ryder Cup should be enough to challenge even the most surly of gloomsters. And while Americans have to seek solace and comfort in the company of other Americans, it takes something special and inspiring when an Irishman can join forces with a Swede and be cheered on by an Austrian and a Dane.

‘What are you still doing here?’ joked Daniil Medvedev to Novak Djokovic after their US Open tennis final – a lung-busting baseline slugfest featuring jaw-dropping athleticism and brilliant shot-making – had ended in a straight sets win for the Serb. It was his 24th Grand Slam victory. There’s no sign that Djokovic wants to slow down. After all, he’s only 36 The Russian’s good-humoured question is one that many elite tennis players will be asking. But there’s no sign that Djoko wants to slow down. After all, he’s only 36. His coach Goran Ivanisevic said that Sunday’s win was one of the greatest feats in all sport – adding: ‘If he wins 25, he’s going to think, “Why not 26?” He’s taking care of his body, he’s taking care of everything.

So the end is near... or it certainly will be soon if England’s rugby players carry on trying to do it their way. One thing we can be certain about: England are not going to win the World Cup. There is a chance they might not get out of their group; Argentina are properly good and Samoa will be hard to beat. Even Japan could give England the run-around, though they are not the team they were. At this rate, England might finish up even lower than eighth – their current position in the rankings – come the end of the tournament. Time for rugby’s answer to ‘Bazball’. Not to go and smash everything and everyone they see, but to play with freedom and joy. Pass the ball, look for space, play tricks, play fast, play without a care in the world.

England’s preparation for the upcoming rugby World Cup is beginning to look like a slow-motion car crash, after two pathetic performances against Wales. Those of a betting disposition might want to bung a bit on Argentina muscling England aside when they meet in their first pool encounter on 9 September. The Pumas aren’t world beaters, though they have had a fantastic recent run under new coach Michael Cheika, beating New Zealand, England and Australia. But England are on a seemingly irreversible downward trajectory and are becoming the most unloveable rugby side in the world, lacking any spark, method or much creativity, just a wearying kick-and-chase predictability.

And they said Test cricket was in its death throes! This epic, attention-grabbing, emotion-wringing Ashes series ended in the last minutes of the last hour of the last session of the last day of the last match: who could ask for more? England have had a number of very good captains since Mike Brearley took voluntary redundancy from the job (for the second time) in 1981, but Ben Stokes has really measured up to his illustrious predecessor over the past six weeks of mesmerising sport. They are cut from very different cloth: Stokes is more intuitive than Brearley, who was perhaps more cerebrally attuned to the needs of leadership.

Great sport needs great rivalries, and that is why anyone with a pulse must celebrate being in the throes of an unrivalled confluence of extraordinary sporting occasions right now. As commentators grind on about what a bad place the world is in – ignoring the far worse places the world has been in over the years – a few hours spent watching the magnificent Wimbledon final between Carlos Alcaraz and Novak Djokovic is just the sort of high-octane thriller we all need, as well as a ringing endorsement of the qualities of man.

Shouldn’t we all just calm down a bit after Lord’s? Once prime ministers decide to intervene, you know things have gone too far. Rishi Sunak has made it clear he wouldn’t want to win a match that way apparently, which feels very much like Tony Blair’s decision to wade into the case of Corrie’s jailed heroine Deirdre Barlow. Mark you, that really was important. So… was Jonny Bairstow out after being stumped by sharp-eyed Australian keeper Alex Carey? Undoubtedly. Should the Australians have withdrawn their appeal? Possibly, because Bairstow had good reason to think the over was finished when he moved out of his ground.

It’s a long way from Edgbaston to Karachi, but that’s where my thoughts were turning after Australia’s last-gasp victory in an unbearably tense, always thrilling, wonderful Ashes Test on Tuesday. Ominously for England, Australia’s three best batsmen, and the three best in the world, misfired simultaneously over five days. But they still managed to win. Oh well… Anyway, we were at the Sind Club ground on a cricket tour to Pakistan. It hadn’t been that long since the Sri Lankans had been shot up in Lahore so there was still a bristling police presence at our game, reassuringly unsmiling blokes wielding very large submachine guns.

If you couldn’t watch the Europa League final between Sevilla and Roma, then you should count yourself fortunate. It was a nasty, bitter and forgettable excursion, blighted by fouls and time-wasting, that should make anyone connected with it ashamed, apart from the doughty English referee Anthony Taylor, who had a fairly good game. But for the players, 13 of whom were booked; the managers, especially José Mourinho, who had a shocker, shouting and cursing at all the officials; and Uefa itself, which did nothing to protect Taylor from being abused by a foul-mouthed mob who hurled a chair at him as he prepared to leave with his family from Budapest airport.

It’s not clear how many readers of this journal will be affected, but anyone planning a stag weekend in Prague ought to steer clear of the first week of June. That’s when the city hosts the Uefa Conference League final at the 20,000-capacity Eden Arena, home to Slavia Prague. The finalists are West Ham – average home gate a 60,000 sellout – and Fiorentina, average gate 25-30,000. Which raises the question: is Uefa just utterly useless or is it worse than that? This game could have filled Wembley twice over; now it’s like holding the coronation in a parish church Both finalists have been allocated 5,000-odd tickets, with the remainder going to assorted sponsors and what is laughably known as the ‘Uefa family’. This is insane.