Latest news with #DevonLoch
Daily Mirror
26-05-2025
- Sport
- Daily Mirror
AFC Wimbledon promoted to League One as Guitar Hero joins Crazy Gang folklore
Myles Hippolyte fired the goal that restores the modern-day Crazy Gang to League One in their play-off final against Walsall and Saddlers fans are wondering how they blew a 12-point lead at the top in January Spice Boy Myles Hippolyte sparked another Wombles party at Wembley as AFC Wimbledon left their unloved step-brothers from Milton Keynes behind. As the Grenada international's winner in first-half stoppage time sent the original Dons - accept no imitations on retail parks - back into League One, manager Johnnie Jackson led the celebrations of 30,000 fans following their 1-0 win against Walsall in the fourth tier play-off final. On international duty, 30-year-old Hippolyte represents the Caribbean island where the most famous export is nutmeg. In more than 400 games from the Spartan South Midlands League upwards, he has never played at a higher level than League Two - but now he belongs in the Crazy Gang pantheon of Wembley heroes with Lawrie Sanchez and penalty-save legend Dave Beasant. Hippolyte said: 'We're just a great team. We're hard to beat, we run, we fight, we do everything for each other. I had a feeling I was going to score today. I don't know why, but I got a few texts saying this was going to be my day.' In a throwback to Wimbledon's finest hour, there were echoes of the 1988 FA Cup final - all-blue against all-red, same score. With Crazy Gang godfather Dave Bassett and Beasant in the posh seats, they had to weather heavy pressure and an even heavier downpour to take the chequered flag. Guitar hero Jackson raised £10,000 for a children's cancer charity by performing open-air gigs in his back garden and posting them online during lockdown. Now he's turned his promotion heroes into AFC Wimbledon's boys of strummer. Jackson said: 'As a player, not playing at Wembley was one of my big regrets, so to lead a team out here and win makes this probably the best day of my life. But it was all torture. We couldn't rest for a minute and this is surreal, it feels like a dream. 'This club was reborn in a pub and I should think we'll be visiting quite a few in the next 24 hours to celebrate! I was pleased to see Charlton go up because I've got a long history with the club, and I got a few messages off people there overnight saying, 'Now it's your turn.' But I wouldn't have thought I'll be getting the guitar out yet - I don't want it doused in champagne.' Walsall must have feared it wouldn't be their day when clots selling half-and-half scarves on Wembley Way couldn't even spell the club's name right. But the Saddlers were 12 points clear at the top in January and somehow they blew it. Their collapse will go down as one of football's most harrowing Devon Loch tributes. In the battle of League Two's best defence and highest scorers, it was more cagey than the lions' enclosure at Whipsnade Zoo and the first goal was always likely to prove decisive. Chances were rarer than hen's teeth until Marcus Browne's shot was blocked but Hippolyte's crisp half-volley from the edge of the box was too much for Walsall keeper Tommy Simkin, only his third goal of the season and easily the most precious. The Saddlers rallied after the break, Riley Harbottle clearing off the line from Jamille Matt's flick, and Walsall boss Mat Sadler seemed convinced Joe Lewis should have been penalised for grabbing a handful of Levi Amantchi's shirt in the box. Sadler groaned: 'When you are stood there watching the celebrations and it's not your players who are celebrating it's torture. But we are fighters so there will be no feeling sorry for ourselves.' WIMBLEDON (3-5-2): Goodman 6; Harbottle 7 (Ogundere, 69, 6), Lewis 7, Johnson 8; Tilley 6, Smith 6, Reeves 7, Hippolyte 7 (Maycock, 90), Neufville 6; Browne 7 (Pigott, 90), Stevens 5 (Kelly, 77). WALSALL (3-4-2-1): Simkin 7; Okagbue 6, Williams 5 (McEntee, 34, 6), Allen 6; Asiimwe 5 (Barrett, 74), Chang 5 (Lakin, 74), Stirk 6, Gordon 6; Jellis 5 (Adomah, 63, 7), Hall 6; Matt 5 (Amantchi, 63, 6). ATTENDANCE: 50,947 MAN OF THE MATCH: Ryan Johnson
Telegraph
04-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
I won the Grand National, but would not get a ride in it now
Will the Grand National be won by one of the big guns who has stacked the field with multiple runners? Or will it be one for the romantics? It so often used to be a triumph for a small outfit barely known outside jump racing, when the story around a horse had an uncanny knack of being more important than its form. Part of me still believes that the National is more magical than any other race, that it has a mystical power. It always seemed there was a strong helping hand from fate, and the National would bestow winning on certain people for unexplainable reasons in a way the Cheltenham Gold Cup could not. The National was open to all, a part-time amateur like myself had the same chance as, if not better than, the champion jockey. These days I would not get a ride in the race. A modern National is very different from the ones I used to ride in the latter part of the 20th Century. It is easy to forget that in my era it was very different from the 1950s and 1960s, an age when the fences were like brick walls and the drama was such that incidents in two Nationals, 1956 and 1967, both made it into modern language; to 'do a Devon Loch' or, the opposite, 'a Foinavon'. When I won the National aboard Mr Frisk, it smashed Red Rum's course record by 14.1 seconds, purely because it was firm ground and Uncle Merlin set an impossibly strong gallop until unseating at Becher's Brook. Red Rum's trainer Ginger McCain told me it was because the fences were so small (the ditch on the landing side of Becher's had been filled in that year). You could not let Ginger get away with that sort of stuff, so to annoy him more I replied by way of backchat that by the time Red Rum was coming to the Elbow I was already weighed in. With my journalist's hat on rather than as an ex-jockey, the truth is it had to evolve to something near what it is today. Had I been in charge, I would have held my nerve and left it at 40 runners rather than reducing it to 34. I would also cut the prize-money because the race's problems really began when they became hell-bent on making it the first £1 million race. It had the prestige, it did not need to make the prize so valuable in monetary terms that people started running unsuitable horses in the race. But the large number of horses fielded by certain trainers this year is more a reflection of the way jump racing as a whole is going rather than the way the race has gone. Whether or not you consider it a better race depends on what you want out of the National. If as a once-a-year punter you want 15 horses in with a shout at the second-last and there is a blank in the casualty list, then it unquestionably is better. If you want lots of colour, thrills and spills, a once-a-year high-risk challenge and maybe just four horses in with a chance from the last time they cross the Melling Road, then it fails the better count. Where old Nationals with solid fences and steep drops tested a horse and jockey's courage and bravery, the current one merely tests stamina and a different type of equine intelligence. I was taken to my first National aged eight in 1973. My father had two runners in the race and I stood behind Fred Winter, trainer of Crisp, on the grandstand because he was short and the only person I had a chance to see over. Red Rum gradually closing down Crisp inspired this small boy to one day be part of what had just unfolded in front of him – just to ride in it, let alone win it. I did not sleep for the two nights before my first ride on a 200-1 outsider in 1987. Because of Foinavon I still had a chance and I was so excited. Every sinew of a horse's being was stretched over Becher's and I have a photograph of Brown Veil's nose just an inch off the ground as she landed safely. Now horses barely nod. One of the great things about the National was its accessibility to all. If you had the wherewithal and the determination you could probably work at a desk on a Friday and ride in the National on a Saturday. But in becoming sanitised it has become almost too professional for its own good and it does appear that a modern National is devoid of colour. That said, maybe we are collectively suffering from short memories. It probably irked people in the 1950s when Vincent O'Brien won it three years on the trot with three different horses. One imagines not too many ardent National fans were upset to see him switch his attention to the Derby. I am not saying we must go and dig up the likes of Tim Durant, the American amateur from Hollywood who completed the course at the age of 68 after remounting, or the various other Eddie the Eagles who took part. They, however, gave the race something extra and I, for one, mourn their passing. For this reason this year I will be rooting for Idas Boy – trained by Richard Phillips, an old housemate who lit candles at mass for me in 1990. Phillips is employing jockey Harry Bannister as much as anything because he, like me as a boy, kept scrapbooks on the race. He gets the National and is a jockey with one ambition. Some of his weighing-room colleagues may think it is 'just another race'. For him and Phillips, the National is sacrosanct and I hope the racing Gods pick them.
