Michael Henderson suggests

Email registration

Free weekly email update

Great products and special offers for Spectator readers

Click here for great value events

Click here for exclusive articles, offers, tasting notes and discussion

Sport

Cups runneth over

Frank Keating

Saturday, 22nd April 2006

Last two standing. For the muddied oafs of winter, this is the cruellest week. So near, yet.... Defeat in a semifinal, they say, is the hardest to bear. There are a lot of them about. Today soccer stages its two FA Cup semis. In the European Champions’ League, Arsenal played the first-leg semifinal this week, the second next; ditto Middlesbrough in the Uefa Cup. And at rugby union, the European club game’s defining Heineken Cup also stages two momentous semis this weekend. Death or glory, relief or jubilation — and cruelty. For neutral students of (in equal measure) both round ball and oval — they do exist, I can testify — I suppose the two most resonantly clamorous confrontations are today, in each instance between the red and the blue: at soccer, the sensitive should look away now as Premiership champions and champions-elect Chelsea meet champions of Europe Liverpool; and across the water at rugby, the inter-Prov turf war between Munster and Leinster will rattle the rafters and curdle the blood in Dublin.

1 | 2 Next page