‘There is no more renowned beard in all of humanity,” purred critic Clifford Bax, as he celebrated the extravagant beehive worn by WG Grace, the superstar cricketer of the Victorian era whose death, 100 years ago, was commemorated across England during the autumn. (He was the subject of both novella and biography this year alone).
Bax would have had his work cut out to convince the bearded gods of contemporary sport – James Harden of NBA and Kardashian fame, UFC’s Conor McGregor or Brett Keisel, the Pittsburgh tight end who retired this year having won two Superbowls and a legion of devotees for his Viking fleece – of that.
But who among today’s cast of universal heroes will stride through the centuries as William Gilbert has done? Grace’s longevity and his forbidding statistics on the cricket ground were such that his persona – and image – still loom over the game, despite the existence of just a few flickering seconds of film capturing him at bat. And the fact that he died in another era – reportedly, if not actually, suffering a stroke while shaking a fist at the German Zeppelins drifting across the metropolitan skyline – hasn’t dimmed his influence at all.
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Grace probably would have been remembered anyhow, but the beard made it easier for successive generations to keep him in the mind’s eye. Still, there has been something faintly miraculous about his post-life journey; in the way his life and deeds continue to be pored over, his graces and faults examined and his status in the game exalted. Few achieve that.
And the landscape of sports now is so noisy and busy that Grace is a perfect example of the problem facing practitioners and consumers of sports alike. How are you supposed to distinguish what truly matters and who is going to endure?
Recall the Fight of the Century? Maybe your mind, whether you were born then or not, is drifting towards the Ali-Frazier encounters of the mid-1970s or to the historic match-up of Louis and Schmelling in 1938. But no: the banner was appropriated for the meeting of Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao in Las Vegas for the unified world welterweight boxing titles in May. Negotiations had dragged on for six years by the time the boxers finally clashed, and the contest was quickly classified as a monumental drag, with Pacquiao compromised by a dislocated shoulder injury while Mayweather stuck to a dismayingly cautious defensive strategy, with which he won. The fight took place against the backdrop of Mayweather’s appalling record of domestic violence, but that didn’t keep the fans from tuning in.
It was the fight of the century in terms of the bottom line: the pay-per-view takings brought in $410 million, earning both men well over $100 million each. That the contest was a disappointment didn’t matter. The world shrugged. Talk of a rematch quickly faded and boxing retreated to its place on the periphery until November, when Tyson Fury shocked the world by bamboozling champ-in-residence Wladimir Klitschko with his ungainly but perplexing style, dropping his gloves and throwing feints and weaves with that unfathomably large frame: half Ali, half Andre the Giant.
Fury no sooner had his hands on Klitschko’s belts than he cheerfully set about sabotaging the financial killing he could make by denigrating . . . well, people: women and homosexuals were both central to Fury’s tired and offensive worldview. It is debatable whether boxing ever covered itself in glory, but after the prestige fights of 2015, the sport seems be returning to its vaudeville roots and it is hard to think that anything it offered this year will be remembered, let alone celebrated, a century from now.
Some undoubtedly will. Football continues to be lit by the age of Messi, who has achieved everything in the game – besides lifting the World Cup – by performing with a sustained skill and imagination that is instantly pleasing to both children and football pedants alike. Messi has reignited the conversation that was popular before Diego Maradona flamed out: who is the best ever?
During a year when the FBI, somewhat surreally, became entangled in the five-star, tinted-windowed world of Fifa to crack down on its legacy of bribery and corruption, public appetite for the beautiful game has never been greater.
The Premier League has become the richest in football, with Wayne Rooney still heading the cast of players earning north of a quarter a million per week in wages, with no sign of the pay hikes slowing down. This season, Leicester City’s impudent refusal to ply their mid-table trade has been the chief surprise of the first half of the winter, while José Mourinho’s entertaining show of disenchantment with the world has been the main diversion. All the time, football becomes more and more of a winter drama: a global television show, as Gary Neville’s seamless and much-hyped switch from the Sky Sports studio to the Valencia manager’s office illustrated.
Hollywood stars
Managers have to do and be much more than mere football men in the current environment. They must be “stars” in the old Hollywood sense. They must be persuasive or cantankerous or eccentric and they must have their very own identity: if Ferguson was pure Govan intimidation and Wenger equipped with French hauteur, then Mourinho has insolence as his calling card and, now, Jürgen Klopp brings the novelty value of German exuberance to Merseyside . The pressure the managers endure Saturday after Saturday is excruciating, but it comes in different forms.
The big feat in the Premier League is not winning it: since the transformation of Chelsea and Manchester City as serial winners within the last decade, only Blackburn Rovers have broken the monopoly of Arsenal and Manchester United since the inaugural Premier League in 1992/1993. Only Aston Villa, Liverpool and Blackburn have finished runners-up besides that dominant four. Staying in the elite league is where the real throat-cutting takes place.
The consolidation of a top four-to-six teams made the timing of the release of I Believe in Miracles, the film about Nottingham Forest and Brian Clough, all the more important as evidence of what has left the English game. Forest's achievement – promotion from the old second division in 1977, league champions in 1978 and European Cup champions in 1978/ 1979 – was unprecedented then and would be impossible for any traditional, mid-sized club to emulate now.
It wasn’t entirely about craft and romance: Trevor Francis, who scored the winning goal in the 1978 Cup final against Malmo (Malmo!) was England’s first million-pound transfer fee. But Clough presaged the current generation of super-managers with his peculiarities: burning intelligence, sardonic wit and a style of speaking that was anachronistic even then. Forest caused a commotion that remains as much a part of late 1970s England as ska or Margaret Thatcher.
And the Forest players, from a virtually afroed Martin O’Neill to Peter Shilton, the perpetual cover star of the football annuals, became instantly recognisable. It wasn’t just their achievements: it was the ripple affect they had on society at that time that made that team so memorable. They created a vivid impression when sport on television tended towards famine more than feast.
Now, with the opposite the case, there is such a deluge of splendour and outrage and coverage and analysis that it becomes more and more difficult for occasions or individuals to stand out. But it’s a good bet that the attitude and verve that the Japanese rugby team, the Cherry Blossoms, brought into their pool game against South Africa will become even more sharply illuminated over time. Some 29,290 fans were at the game in Brighton. But nobody really believed Japan could win it right until the moment that Karne Hesketh had dived across the line for the winner. Many media organisations elected not to assign anyone to cover it and so even though Japan’s win flashed around the web as a marvel, the significance of the victory wasn’t generally appreciated as much as it should have been. What Japan did was magnificent but, more than that, it was insane. Hollywood will revisit it some years down the line. Even now, the bare score line – Japan 34 South Africa 32 – seems like a misprint.
And there were plenty of other gems. The flawless and disconcertingly serene display by Jordan Spieth at the Masters confirmed that golf is moving onto a new plateau. Similarly, Steph Curry operated at the pinnacle of world basketball by guiding the Golden State Warriors to the NBA title with a brand of basketball that was carefree, expressive and joyful: nobody had seen anyone like him before.
Serena Williams and the last echoes of the Djokovic-Federer rivalry elevated the tennis season. The great AP McCoy took his bow, walking away after a 20th consecutive season as champion jockey.
Systematic doping
British cycling is on a high, with Chris Froome winning the Tour de France for the second time, but the debate about whether the soul of cycling is even worth saving goes on. Athletics, too, has re-entered that conversation with what is the bleakest and most significant story of the year: the Wada report into the systematic doping programme put in place by the Russian Athletics Federation. As the calendar turns to the next Olympics year in Rio, everybody expects Russia to have athletes on the starting blocks and on the medal podium. So what to believe? And what will be remembered?
Of all the Irish participants in Rio, none are likely to come under as much scrutiny as Billy Walsh, the day star of Irish boxing who will operate as the USA women’s team coach at next August. The Wexford man’s troubled relationship with his employers in the IABA and his despair of ever attaining the kind of autonomy he felt he needed hastened its move.
Walsh’s sudden exit and the public war of words that followed advertised yet again Ireland’s unerring capacity for making a shambles of things. Under Walsh, Irish boxing meant medals. Failure in Rio to maintain that standard will lead to a resurrection of a row that was never satisfactorily settled.
The names may not run as deep as the Republic of Ireland class of 1988, but the stubborn path to qualification for next summer’s European championships has guaranteed the current team a place in Irish sporting lore. They may not contribute much to the football aesthetics in France next June, but they show up ready to play their hearts out, game after game. They are impossible not to like and it seems that at least some of Clough’s chutzpah has rubbed off on his protege and current Ireland manager Martin O’Neill, recently named co-manager of the year along with his namesake, Northern Ireland manager Michael O’Neill.
You wouldn’t know what either Ireland could do now. You just wouldn’t know.
Colder winds afflicted Irish rugby in 2015. Despite a tsunami of goodwill and soaring expectations, the national team was once again snuffed out at the quarter-stage of the World Cup. Paul O’Connell, injured during the first half of the win over France and quickly ruled out, symbolised the frustrations of the tournament; O’Connell and Ireland were denied the kind of climax that magnificent international career deserved.
Ireland were not alone in their disappointment: the World Cup was, by the semi-finals stage, reduced to a Rugby Championship tournament. New Zealand, as expected, won it, and then mourned Jonah Lomu, their most effervescent All Black. He was aged just 40. Rugby continues to ride a wave of popularity in Ireland despite a sobering autumn for the Irish provinces and the worrying undertones of the recent message issued by Munster coach Anthony Foley about the need to keep the provinces “strong”.
The All-Ireland summer was wet and about consolidation of the dominant counties in football and hurling. The All-Ireland final confirmed that Dublin and Kerry have a rivalry to match their storied predecessors of the 1970s, but the underlying question concerns the ability of any county, even Kerry, to keep pace with Dublin’s progress in the years ahead.
Kilkenny and Brian Cody, meanwhile, are doing as John Lennon did: watchin’ the wheels goin’ round and round. We have to believe Cody now when he says that there is no great secret or mystery to what they do. Of course, that only makes the sum total of what they are doing all the more frightening to consider.
In retrospect, Kilkenny will go down as the most remarkable force in the history of Irish sport. See them while you can. Your eyes don’t deceive.
That is why Victorian society turned out in its droves to see WG Grace play live and in the flesh long after he had peaked. That compulsion has not lessened in the century since his death. Despite the 24/7 availability of sport; in higher definition, in the living-room, from everywhere and all the time, nothing betters seeing the best do what they do live and close enough (if you pay for the best seats) to see their breath on cold days.
The choices and moments of splendour come thick and fast. But excellence endures and our willingness to be amazed remains as true as ever.
