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Yahoo
18-05-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
A week of grief is a reminder to reflect on the magnificent triviality of sport
The great Scottish newspaper writer Hugh McIlvanney often spoke of 'the magnificent triviality of sport.' He wrote beautifully on so many things, but especially boxing and horseracing, sports where death is always at your elbow. He saw boxers die in the ring and jockeys die at the track, and he wrote about them with the right mix of detachment, precision and compassion. Those columns were thankfully rare. Underpinning everything else he wrote was the belief – that agreement between writer and reader – that the great joy of sport lies in its insignificance. We obsess over it, analyse it, and argue about it, but ultimately, it really doesn't matter. Advertisement The Australian football industry was an angry one last week. Footy seemed to lurch from one 'crisis' to another. The umpiring, the mixed media messaging and the competence of the AFL chair, the CEO and the head of football were all called into question. The tone was urgent, the leaks were constant, and the list of grievances was long. Related: Carlton, Fitzroy and Brisbane great Robert Walls did it his way – in life and in death | Jonathan Horn That eased somewhat when we learned that Robert Walls had died aged 74. It was a reminder that there is more to football than the day-to-day folderal, and that this sport has a rich history. Listening to Walls' friends speak and reading what they wrote about him, several things shone through. One was the full sporting life he'd lived – between amateur and professional, between wealthy and poor, between respect and fear, between success and high farce. The other was the way he faced death. 'No 'woe is me' at all,' he told Mark Robinson last year. 'My sister's had cancer, her husband had cancer, their little boy when he was four had cancer and lost his arm. My wife passed away at 55. Shit, I'm in my 70s, I've got nothing to complain about, nothing at all.' Advertisement There are stories like that all around us. They are not sporting stories. It took two decades and 50 failed attempts before voluntary assisted dying was introduced in Australia. It goes right to the heart of who we are as autonomous individuals and as a society. Walls was a footballer, a coach and a commentator, and therefore his death was news. His career, his premierships, his sprays, his sackings – they were McIlvanney's magnificent trivialities. This was different. This mattered. 'In the movies you think of someone on death row dragging their feet,' Walls' son David said. 'But he skipped down the hallway like he was running through the banner.' When we lose loved ones, we blink and blunder into the outside world and register our astonishment that it still carries on as before – that people are still commuting, exercising, shopping and socialising. As news of Adam Selwood's death aged 41 came through on Saturday, the Collingwood and Adelaide players were milling about in the middle of the MCG, warming up in the rain. Magpies captain Scott Pendlebury was meditating in a room underneath, doing what he calls 'a full body scan'. An hour later, the ball was bounced. Winter football had arrived. Advertisement Pies coach Craig McRae said afterwards that he didn't know what to do, or what to say. I don't think anyone did. This isn't some trite 'well it certainly puts everything in perspective,' column. It isn't a call for a 'men's mental health round', as though footy can solve every societal problem. It's pointless and irresponsible to write about Adam Selwood's life the way we wrote about Robert Walls. All we can do is afford the Selwood family the full measure of their unspeakable grief. And we can reflect on those very human moments of grace, those moments where sport is more than a triviality. We all remember different things, and we all take different meanings. I'll remember the son of the Richmond recruiting boss Chris Tolce, whose dad was a year older than the Selwood twins when he died, given the honour of officially logging the club's number one pick. Related: Former West Coast player Adam Selwood dies months after twin brother's death I'll remember Adam's younger brother, Joel – a sportsman I admired and enjoyed watching more than nearly any other I've seen – running out for a grand final carrying a former teammate's son with a rare degenerative condition. He was the most unyielding of footballers, at a peak moment of adrenalin, nerves and expectation, but I'll never forget the tenderness in which he held that little boy. Advertisement In wrapping up round 10, I could write about Bailey Dale's 49 touches, or Patrick Dangerfield's delicate tendons, or Pendlebury's calculus. I could write about Marbior Chol assessing every degree of difficulty this game can throw up – tired legs, a close finish, a tight angle, a wet ball, a choppy ground, and a 200cm frame – ambling in, gathering the ball one handed, baulking and threading a goal. But none of that matters. All that matters is that two parents have lost their twin boys in the space of a few months. All that matters is that two little boys have lost their dad, two men have lost their brother and a woman has lost her husband. There is nothing more to say. In a sport column such as this, there's probably nothing more that should be said.
The Guardian
18-05-2025
- Sport
- The Guardian
A week of grief is a reminder to reflect on the magnificent triviality of sport
The great Scottish newspaper writer Hugh McIlvanney often spoke of 'the magnificent triviality of sport.' He wrote beautifully on so many things, but especially boxing and horseracing, sports where death is always at your elbow. He saw boxers die in the ring and jockeys die at the track, and he wrote about them with the right mix of detachment, precision and compassion. Those columns were thankfully rare. Underpinning everything else he wrote was the belief – that agreement between writer and reader – that the great joy of sport lies in its insignificance. We obsess over it, analyse it, and argue about it, but ultimately, it really doesn't matter. The Australian football industry was an angry one last week. Footy seemed to lurch from one 'crisis' to another. The umpiring, the mixed media messaging and the competence of the AFL chair, the CEO and the head of football were all called into question. The tone was urgent, the leaks were constant, and the list of grievances was long. That eased somewhat when we learned that Robert Walls had died aged 74. It was a reminder that there is more to football than the day-to-day folderal, and that this sport has a rich history. Listening to Walls' friends speak and reading what they wrote about him, several things shone through. One was the full sporting life he'd lived – between amateur and professional, between wealthy and poor, between respect and fear, between success and high farce. The other was the way he faced death. 'No 'woe is me' at all,' he told Mark Robinson last year. 'My sister's had cancer, her husband had cancer, their little boy when he was four had cancer and lost his arm. My wife passed away at 55. Shit, I'm in my 70s, I've got nothing to complain about, nothing at all.' There are stories like that all around us. They are not sporting stories. It took two decades and 50 failed attempts before voluntary assisted dying was introduced in Australia. It goes right to the heart of who we are as autonomous individuals and as a society. Walls was a footballer, a coach and a commentator, and therefore his death was news. His career, his premierships, his sprays, his sackings – they were McIlvanney's magnificent trivialities. This was different. This mattered. 'In the movies you think of someone on death row dragging their feet,' Walls' son David said. 'But he skipped down the hallway like he was running through the banner.' When we lose loved ones, we blink and blunder into the outside world and register our astonishment that it still carries on as before – that people are still commuting, exercising, shopping and socialising. As news of Adam Selwood's death aged 41 came through on Saturday, the Collingwood and Adelaide players were milling about in the middle of the MCG, warming up in the rain. Magpies captain Scott Pendlebury was meditating in a room underneath, doing what he calls 'a full body scan'. An hour later, the ball was bounced. Winter football had arrived. Pies coach Craig McRae said afterwards that he didn't know what to do, or what to say. I don't think anyone did. This isn't some trite 'well it certainly puts everything in perspective,' column. It isn't a call for a 'men's mental health round', as though footy can solve every societal problem. It's pointless and irresponsible to write about Adam Selwood's life the way we wrote about Robert Walls. All we can do is afford the Selwood family the full measure of their unspeakable grief. Sign up to From the Pocket: AFL Weekly Jonathan Horn brings expert analysis on the week's biggest AFL stories after newsletter promotion And we can reflect on those very human moments of grace, those moments where sport is more than a triviality. We all remember different things, and we all take different meanings. I'll remember the son of the Richmond recruiting boss Chris Tolce, whose dad was a year older than the Selwood twins when he died, given the honour of officially logging the club's number one pick. I'll remember Adam's younger brother, Joel – a sportsman I admired and enjoyed watching more than nearly any other I've seen – running out for a grand final carrying a former teammate's son with a rare degenerative condition. He was the most unyielding of footballers, at a peak moment of adrenalin, nerves and expectation, but I'll never forget the tenderness in which he held that little boy. In wrapping up round 10, I could write about Bailey Dale's 49 touches, or Patrick Dangerfield's delicate tendons, or Pendlebury's calculus. I could write about Marbior Chol assessing every degree of difficulty this game can throw up – tired legs, a close finish, a tight angle, a wet ball, a choppy ground, and a 200cm frame – ambling in, gathering the ball one handed, baulking and threading a goal. But none of that matters. All that matters is that two parents have lost their twin boys in the space of a few months. All that matters is that two little boys have lost their dad, two men have lost their brother and a woman has lost her husband. There is nothing more to say. In a sport column such as this, there's probably nothing more that should be said.
The Guardian
17-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Brian Glanville was fearless, witty and hovered in the press box like Banquo's ghost
Brian Glanville, who has died aged 93, was what Groucho Marx might have been had the old master of the one-liner shown any interest in football. I doubt if the greatest soccer scribbler of them all – the London-born son of a Dublin dentist and an Old Carthusian expensively educated in literature and song – met Groucho (Brian knew a host of famous people), but their exchanges would surely have blistered the paint off the walls. Nobody swore so elegantly as Glanville, who hovered in the press box like Banquo's ghost, the gathering's invisible conscience, ready to deliver a scathing observation, relayed, sotto voce, to a nearby colleague like a chorus baritone in one of his favourite operas. Sitting behind me in the Tottenham press box during one match, he leaned forward to remark – apropos bugger all – on the future of the then struggling young Sunday Correspondent: 'It has the smell of death about it.' Garth Crooks, who was sitting next to him, was as bemused as he was amused. The joy of Glanville was, perversely, best experienced when he was at his most vitriolic. He loved football as few others could ever do, but he detested many things about the modern game, most vehemently commercialism and corruption, and let the world know it at every available opportunity. For most of his working life, those opportunities came around every Saturday afternoon for the Sunday Times in a golden age of football commentary as he went joke for pithy joke with the Observer's Hugh McIlvanney, Jim Lawton of the Express, and any other of the frontline heavyweights. Glanville, like many of his contemporaries, did not often bother with quotes from the principals, but he littered his work with references that showed the depth of his cultural interests. When he derided the efforts of a lazy full-back caught napping on the goalline as, 'alone and palely loitering' he was briefly impressed that I recognised it as a line from Keats's La Belle Dame sans Merci – followed by the inevitable put-down: 'Did poetry in your school, did they?' No pity there, then. It was part of what made up the Glanville we knew and loved. He was fearless – and feared. If that implies arrogance, so be it. But it was a price worth paying to hear and read the string of witticisms that lit up his work. He would pursue a story or an opinion to the end of its useful life, such as in the Lobo-Solti match-fixing scandal of 1972-73, when he wrote a series of stories under the banner of The Year Of The Golden Fix. When colleague and longtime friend Michael Collett said to him: 'Brian, I reckon you've made more from the scandal than they did from the fix itself,' he replied: 'You're too facking right I have.' He did not let many earning opportunities pass him by and hoovered up all sorts of stories for Gazzetta dello Sport (he lived in Italy for many years) while simultaneously reporting on a match, major or minor. I recall one international at Wembley when he interrupted the chatter to inquire: 'Anyone hear the results of the rowing from Nottingham?' There was an Italian competing. He wrote and spoke across several mediums – books, plays, occasional commentary, film and radio scripts – upsetting listeners in a 1950s BBC play about Hendon's Jewish community in north London, where he had grown up. It did not seem to bother him. Brian was at his happiest when looking in from the outside. As a scriptwriter, Glanville left us with many pearls in the incomparable film of the 1966 World Cup, Goal! When his beloved Italy went out to North Korea – a shock on a par with Vesuvius, in his opinion – he put in the narrator's mouth the memorable aside: 'So Italy go home to their tomatoes.' He also wrote, acidly, of the North Koreans: 'So little known, they might be flying in from outer space.' The film, matchless for its sense of drama and sun-drenched nostalgia, gripped an audience that would celebrate England's lone success at the highest level in the final. The campaign reached an ugly crescendo, however, in the foul-filled quarter-final win over Argentina. Glanville's contribution was that 'it is famous not just for Geoff Hurst's controversial offside goal but the Argentines' dirty tactics, which included spitting and kicking'. That unvarnished assessment came from Glanville's rock-solid confidence in his own judgment. He would listen to an argument, but not often back down. His then sports editor, the late Chris Nawrat, once insisted he finally go and talk to the England manager Bobby Robson (after years of roasting him in print without a single quote). Brian reluctantly trudged off with the paper's peerless photographer, Chris Smith, who would also operate the reel-to-reel tape recorder for the historic showdown. When they returned to the office, Glanville – technically illiterate – said it had gone so well they nearly ran out of tape, adding: 'What the bloody hell am I supposed to do with it now?' 'Transcribe it, Brian,' Nawrat said, surreptitiously tying some twine from the nearby art desk around Glanville's ankle until he pressed all the right knobs and the job was done several hours later. If Glanville listened to anyone, it was his enduring muse. Groucho Marx's wit was never far from his lips or his pen and Brian delighted in borrowing from the great man's litany of smartarsedness in conversation. One of my favourites, and his, was Groucho's quip after suffering some fools not-so-gladly: 'I've had a particularly wonderful evening, but this wasn't it.' But any evening with Brian was unfailingly entertaining, a gift even. Another one gone, then, 'home to his tomatoes'. Kevin Mitchell was the Guardian's award-winning former tennis and boxing correspondent
