Roger Alton

This column may have been somewhat negative about the future of rugby recently – so how cheering to report a spate of magnificent matches, across both codes and both genders, that provided not only brilliant entertainment but also, as young people like to say these days, ‘learnings’. The best game of all was the women’s World Cup final at Eden Park, Auckland, when after 80 minutes of spine-tingling rugby union England lost by just three points. Forget any snooty talk you might have heard about women’s rugby. This match had everything: athleticism, a real sense of adventure and far fewer of those interminable caterpillar rucks and reset scrums which clog up the men’s sport.

Dear oh dear, as exasperated kings are known to murmur – just look at the state of rugby union. But if our monarch had to pass judgment on the catastrophe enveloping the game in England, you imagine his language would be stronger than that. Mind you, a decent king is just what rugby needs: heads have to be seriously knocked together – off the field – if the game is to survive in anything like its current form. This column feels no shame in returning to this theme; after all, it’s not often that a major sport finds itself looking down the barrel.

What separates this year’s ‘empty seats on centre court’ scandal from every other year’s ‘empty seats on centre court’ scandal? Wimbledon has always been a garden party with some tennis thrown in, attended by the least sports-driven crowd in existence – the matrons of Guildford and Godalming who manage to love Rafa and Andy for a fortnight, but not much longer, and whose need for a punnet of strawberries and cup of tea at around 4 p.m. is eternal. And for whom it’s funny if the ball hits the umpire’s chair. Wimbledon is half a tennis tournament and half the last redoubt of a disappearing England.

That great Frenchman the Marquis de Sade would have been justly proud of the Tour de France had he lived to see the day. Should we deduce that sado-masochism is a French trait? No question. Has there ever been a more brutal event in world sport? This year’s race kicks off in Denmark (yes, really) at the weekend on its way to more than 3,500km of lung-busting effort. The question is: can anyone stop Tadej Pogacar, the 23-year-old Slovenian prodigy and winner of the last two Tours? He is in staggering form this year, having minced his home Tour and a series of other races. A brilliant climber and time trialist, he is also a fearsome attacker: in other words, the complete Grand Tour cyclist. Has there ever been a more brutal event in world sport than the Tour de France?

Test cricket, bloody hell! For years, it’s been getting the last rites – now it’s the most exciting way anyone can spend five days. The scale of England’s synapse-stunning victory over New Zealand at Trent Bridge is boggling enough: England’s fifth-highest run chase (299) and fastest ever; the highest number of boundaries scored in a Test; a 77-ball hundred from Jonny Bairstow; Bairstow and Ben Stokes rumbling along after tea at 16 an over – unheard of in Test cricket. But it was about much more than mere stats: the feel-good factor poured out of Nottingham. This was an exuberant, exciting, free-flowing game, with players willing to challenge the traditions of how Test cricket is played.

What a privilege the other night to see Rob Burrow, the Rugby League legend, win Autobiography of the Year at the Sports Book Awards at the Oval. Burrow is one of the most successful players in the history of League, although only 5ft 5in and less than 11 stone in a sport populated by big men battering each other. Now he is confined to a wheelchair, ravaged by motor neurone disease, yet radiating huge warmth with a permanent wide smile. He was greeted with a long standing ovation, and made a moving speech using an eye-activated computer device with his own voice. Sportspeople do not have to be the best of us, but it can be overwhelming when they are. And to see a man, once the embodiment of health and fitness, so reduced but still so warm and human was deeply humbling.

The timing of Brendon McCullum’s appointment as England’s Test match coach couldn’t be better for him, or for the matey but very canny Rob Key, cricket’s managing director. Had they taken over their jobs when England were at or near the top of the world rankings, things would have been a lot tougher. Getting to the top might be hard, but staying there is a nightmare. Now, with England well and truly in the basement, McCullum’s only way is up. And he kicks off with a Test against his homeland, New Zealand, at Lord’s next month. You hope that sooner or later he finds room for the wonderfully talented if momentarily confused (about Test cricket anyway) Jos Buttler.

You might have missed this but something very big is happening in women’s sport. The sheer numbers watching are sensational: the crowds might have been papered, but who cares? At Madison Square Garden, 19,000 watched Katie Taylor of Ireland just have the edge on Amanda Serrano in a brutal ten-round title fight. At the same time Newcastle United women’s football team attracted more than 22,000 to see their first appearance at St James’ Park – for a fourth-tier match against Alnwick. In France, more than 42,000 saw Lyon put PSG out of the Champions League, where they will now meet Barcelona in the final in Turin. A world women’s football record of 91,000-plus at the Camp Nou had already seen the Spanish side hammer Wolfsburg in their semi-final.

You couldn’t ask for a more amiable man than Rob Key to run English cricket: affable, shrewd and universally liked, he has the look of a recalcitrant monk, nipping out the back for a quick drink and a fag. Whether he’s any good is another matter, but let’s hope so for all our sakes. The sequence of events seems a bit upside down though – appointing a managing director first, then a chair and CEO. Without coming over all corporate, surely the MD is the next CEO’s biggest appointment. And wouldn’t the new MD, Key, want to know who he’s working with? One man I hope he will soon be working with is Jos Buttler, currently tearing up the Indian Premier League.

It’s a game for the ages all right, City against Liverpool on Sunday as the Premier League moves to its most exciting climax in years: two magnificent managers, two awe-inspiring collections of players. Both teams are so far in front that the rest are nowhere. There’s more to come as they face each other the following weekend at Wembley in the FA Cup. And both are involved in Champions League quarter-finals. The money must be a help, but still we are blessed to have Pep Guardiola and Jürgen Klopp here, both at the height of their powers. But for how much longer? Anyone who loves football will be dreading the day either of them decides to move on.

Rugby Union, bloody hell. We’ve got to talk about Eddie, but before that, what about something much cheerier? Just when it seemed the game was for the big bruisers of northern Europe and the southern hemisphere, Italy show us that it ain’t necessarily so. It seemed impossible that anyone could upstage France’s victory parade on the last day, but that is just what Italy’s heroic XV did, by upsetting the only team that had come close to bringing down Antoine Dupont and his crew of Gallic legends. Already the best try of the tournament – and the sporting highlight of the year so far – has been set to ‘Nessun dorma’.

If you were one of the sharp-suited head honchos at CVC Capital Partners, the private equity megalith that has ploughed £365 million into the Six Nations, you might be wondering whether you had got your money’s worth. Sure, all the games are sellouts, from the Twickenham all-day piss-up to the gathering of the clans at Murrayfield to the joys of the Stadio Olimpico because, frankly, who doesn’t want a weekend in Rome? But the rugby’s another matter. It wasn’t the interminable scrum resets at Twickenham that did it for me, nor the endless water breaks, nor the turgid first half, but the shambles the next day in Italy’s forlorn battle with Ireland. Rugby has always had a capacity to point both barrels at its feet, take aim and pull the trigger.

Forty-odd years ago a friend, a Liverpool supporter, somewhat unwisely took his girlfriend to Elland Road for a Leeds match against Liverpool. Amid some uproar over the referee, she was hit just above the eye by a sharpened coin chucked by a Leeds fan. The relationship didn’t last, unsurprisingly, but she still has the scar above her right eye. That was in 1982. Four decades on, Leeds fans are still at it — bunging missiles at the opposition. This time at Man U players, who won 4-2 at the weekend. If Leeds fans had lobbed the odd headless cockerel onto the pitch, as I believe sometimes happens in hotter--tempered countries, as a proper culturally rooted expression of contempt for Manchester Utd and all they stand for, you couldn’t really object.