Finally, the exposé some of us have been waiting for. The news that the World Conker Championship has been rocked by cheating allegations this week might have come as a surprise to the more naive members of the sporting public. But some of us knew the score from a long time back. Wake up, people. This. Has. Been. Coming.
Much of the focus now surrounds 82-year-old David Jakins, who on Sunday finally won the world title after almost half a century of trying. Jakins, who goes by the nickname King Conker, first entered the competition in 1977, making his victory last weekend the feelgood story of the conker year. Only for it to be ruined by the conkerer he conquered in the final, one Alastair Johnson-Ferguson.
“My conker disintegrated in one hit,” Johnson-Ferguson (23) told the Daily Telegraph. “And that just doesn’t happen ... I’m suspicious of foul play and have expressed my surprise to organisers.”
Expressed your surprise? Oh, Alastair. Come, come, dear boy. Where have you been? Conkers has always been dirty. One lad came into my primary school in the 1980s with a brown pool ball on a string and proceeded to demolish the knuckles of half the yard. That’s the guts of 40 years ago. David Jakins could only have been starting out on his conkers career at that stage.
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You can just picture him, can’t you? Young and restless, his head full of conker dreams. Waiting hopefully each September and October for the leaves to turn. Cocking his head up at the baleful oaks, willing their stocks of green spiky horse chestnut shells to wither and brown and fall gently at his feet. Ready with his conker strings, all of them cut and knotted just so from way back, maybe even as early as May or June.
But the conker world is no place for a dreamer. Jakins would have found out quick enough that there’s always a thumb on the scale. Some guys soak their conkers in vinegar. Some apply nail varnish to the outside or glue to the inside. Some stick it in the oven but they have to be careful – too high a heat and the skin cracks. Some even prefer the analogue method of taking your conker and sticking it in a drawer for a year so that it hardens naturally.
King Conker would have come up against all of these and more down through the decades. The scales would have fallen from his eyes a long time ago. That’s just the reality of elite level sport. Eventually, you have a choice to make.
Can you bear to win ugly? What’s the worth of that trophy if you can’t look in the mirror? What do they know of conkers who only conkers know?
Conkers doesn’t always stand idly by, in fairness. They have their systems in place for smoking out the cheats. In this case, it was the organisers getting their beloved octogenarian King Conker to turn out his pockets before he could leave the Northampton venue after the complaint was made.
Imagine the gasps from all around when Jakins produced a steel conker from his coat. You could have cut the atmosphere with a twenty-sevener.
King Conker denies all wrongdoing, of course. Says the steel conker in his pocket was just a gag. And the fact that he was involved in preparing the competition conkers for the contestants ahead of time? Just a coincidence.
“I was found with the steel conker in my pocket,” he said. “But I only carry [it] around with me for humour value and I did not use it during the event. Yes, I did help prepare the conkers before the tournament. But this isn’t cheating or a fix, and I didn’t mark the strings.”
Ultimately, only David Jakins knows what went down. It took him 47 years to finally reach the top of the conker mountain and there’s talk now that maybe video evidence will show it all to have been above board. If that’s how it all shakes out, good for him.
But one way or the other, conkers will have to change after this. It has lived its lie for long enough. Time for root and branch reform.
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