Summer sports. Aren’t they crap eh? Well there’s three in particular that I really really hate. In no particular order there’s golf, tennis and motor racing.
Golf, it was once said is a good walk spoiled. There’s not much more to be said.
As for tennis, well bloody Wimbledon always used to spoil a good Test Match when the BBC carried both. It was so bloody annoying when at some point in the afternoon you’d hear Richie Benaud say those immortal words, ‘and now it’s time to leave Trent Bridge and head on over to SW19’. Of course I never heard the last few syllables, having turned the TV off in disgust and gone out to do something (far) less boring instead. It was the turgid, relentless need to win by two points which always got me – you know, you’d be watching, hoping for the cricket to start again when the penny would drop and Dan Maskell would remind me that it was so far from over.
Also, my brother was a bit of a turncoat on the old tennis front as he actually liked it. The whole charade just epitomises many of the problems with Britain. It’s so class ridden – the best British player currently is a Scot who actually had to go abroad to find a decent trainer who would instill in him the right mental attitude to give him any chance of being any good.
Compare him with the last British number 1, Tim Henman. Nice bloke Tim, no doubt (I resisted the chance for a ‘nice but dim’ jibe there you’ll notice), but as far as being a sporting winner? Not a snowball’s in hell mate. Then before that we had Greg Rusedski – he was the next best thing to a Brit being Canadian, and boy did the gutter press let him know about it, but ultimately he wasn’t quite good enough. If he’d been American, it would have been a different story. Tennis? No thanks.
And then we move onto motor racing, in particular F1. The most pointless exercise in the world ever. It’s currently on in the living room, my son is watching it, and to hear the noise coming out of the room, you’d think there was a football match going on in there. Instead it’s grown men rushing around in large metal tins on wheels trying to overtake each other. Good grief, you cold stand on a bridge over a motorway at any time of the day or night to witness the same. Thank God it’s a World Cup Year so a normal sport will be available for the likes of me right up until 11 July – it’ll only be a month to wait afterwards until the footy season starts again.
