Sport

Remember those lazy, hazy, crazy days of last year’s rugby World Cup, when as perfect a performance by England as we are ever likely to see dethroned the All Blacks? England went through to the final 19-7 with a brilliant, nimble, free-running performance, backs and forwards in perfect harmony, and a dazzling display of skilful tactical kicking. Seems a long time ago, doesn’t it? Friends told me after the final, where England were made to look very ordinary, that the style of South Africa’s victory (despite Cheslin Kolbe’s exquisite winning try) could be the death of rugby: attritional forward play and relentless box kicking, gaining ground and forcing penalties. All

So the Good Lord really wants to fill out his team: how else to interpret the passing in recent months of three of the finest footballers of the past century — Jack Charlton, Nobby Stiles and Ray Clemence. All received thoroughly deserved eulogies. All had reached the highest realms of their sport and, though none made it to a very great age, they did at least achieve the biblical milestone of three score years and ten. All deaths have a depth to their sadness, felt most deeply by immediate family, but not all have an added melancholy that engages us in a quite different way. Graham Cowdrey’s passing in seemingly

A second lockdown won’t cause me much suffering. I don’t have a shop selling ‘non-essential’ goods (e.g. books) that will go out of business. As a freelance journalist, I’m not at risk of losing my job. I don’t have a life-threatening disease so I’m not going to die because my local hospital won’t admit me. I have only one elderly relative and she’s in our family’s ‘support bubble’. My biggest worry is that schools will close again, not least because one of my children is doing her A-levels next year and another his GCSEs. Boris has absolutely, categorically ruled that out so I give it about another week before he

You might hate the Premier League for its determination to suck all the money out of football, but at least it has now become so weird it’s almost like fake news. Who would not have been gobsmacked by West Ham’s comeback with just 15 minutes left from 3-0 down to draw 3-3 against Tottenham? And it wasn’t really a day to tell the grandchildren about for the lavishly remunerated golfer Gareth Bale, who came on with 20-odd minutes to go, was hardly mentioned, and missed a sitter. Still he only costs £600,000 a week. Maybe in these days of bailouts, Mourinho should have followed suit and left Bale out. Can

The Liverpool defence might have decided in a rare show of togetherness to demonstrate what the word ‘appalling’ means, and Spurs only had a pathetic Manchester United to beat, but something strange is happening to football. After all, Manchester United have conceded six goals before (well, one other time since the 1930s) and Liverpool have conceded seven before (just a couple of other times since the 1930s) — but both on the same day! So what’s going on? Like actors performing out of their skulls at dress rehearsals because the pressure of a first night is off, are footballers flying through games with freedom, flair and zest, ready to try

You suspect that a bar of duty-free Toblerone, no matter how supersized, wouldn’t really do the trick when hapless England footballing star Phil Foden flew home from Iceland to his long-term girlfriend Rebecca, mother of their 18-month-old son. You can only wish him all the best. Foden, 20, and Mason Greenwood, 18, who are huge pals, despite playing for opposite sides of Manchester, found themselves in something of a scrape involving hotel rooms, beautiful girls and leaks to the press. Same old, same old… Now I don’t know what you were like at 18, or how detailed your knowledge of the Icelandic dating scene, but hats off to these kids

You are, shall we say, a famous commentator, one of a tiny elite in the British media. You are paid hundreds of thousands of pounds, and are hugely admired. Then at a time of some crisis for others, one of your employers suggests you do 50 columns rather than 52. For exactly the same money, status and prominence. How do you react? Do you start shaking with grief? Do your legs turn to jelly and do you consider immediate retirement? No? Well you’re clearly not following the Stuart Broad guide to working practice. After being ‘rested’ for the first Test against the West Indies, he gave an extraordinary interview to

So all that sound and fury about Manchester City’s sins signified precisely nothing. Well, a €10 million fine isn’t nothing, but City would need just a couple of minutes looking down the back of the sofa to lay their hands on that. What was heralded by Uefa all those months ago as unspeakable financial jiggery-pokery that warranted a two-year ban from European football turns out on appeal to be a minor misdemeanour, a parking ticket at best. Nothing to see here. Move along please. Fair enough. I love Pep’s City and what his team has brought to the Premier League, but I could never understand, if they were going to

Where were we? Oh yes, Liverpool were running away with the Premier League and a mere three months later have sealed the deal. For Liverpool fans it must have seemed like the longest drum roll in history. A week ago the drum roll ended in an explosion of joy — too literal an explosion for some tastes — for those who worship at the temple of Anfield. Liverpool were champions of England for the first time in 30 years — and the wait for the first English manager to win the Premier League was extended for another year. That last fact must be one of the sorriest statistics in English

Horse racing, it turns out, wasn’t the first sport back in post-lockdown action: that distinction went to pigeon racing when some 4,400 birds took to the air and raced from Kettering to Barnsley. Nor did the first Classic, the 2,000 Guineas at Newmarket, provide the hoped-for tonic headlines about a new super-horse to succeed the great Frankel. Pinatubo, a scintillating winner of all his six races as a juvenile and the highest-rated two-year-old since 1994, ran a perfectly respectable race to finish third, but the high hopes that the hot favourite was going to prove to be something truly special were dashed. It seems that the bigger, rangier types caught

In Mr Alton’s absence, I thought readers might want a column about sport. The problem is that I’m largely indifferent to most sports. But I will berate the All England Club for cancelling the Wimbledon Championship. Fair enough, I can see that tennis might be a problem what with all the loud, virus-spreading grunting, but I think it’s time we reminded them they are the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club. Shockingly, last time I went there on a corporate jag, I could see no evidence of the superior game being played. Yet croquet is a game where social distancing poses no problems. If you sold the rights to