Live sport is back in business and busier than ever
If your mind’s in a whirl, join the club. After a barren Spring and Summer, events come as thick and fast as autumn leaves flying in a howling gale.
We have against odds and expectations squeezed in a splendid if truncated cricket season. Elsewhere it’s catch-up time. In golf the US Open is being played, three months late at Winged Foot. The Masters, normally staged at Augusta in magnolia-blossom time, will now be played in mid-November. Well, this is at least in the right calendar year; so there won’t be a never-to-be-worn 2020 Green Jacket. Meanwhile the Italian tennis championship is being played in Rome’s Foro Italico, almost six months late, and we can be pretty sure that Novak Djokovic won’t be slamming balls in irritation anywhere near line-judges. Then on the 27th, tennis will return to Roland Garros in what one hopes may be autumn weather to match the fabled Paris Spring. We already have the Tour de France going on against most expectations, and next month the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe will be run at Longchamp, remarkably on time.
It is all a bit hectic – thank the Lord , you may say – the return to sport is very welcome. It is evidence too of the determination and ingenuity of administrators. Here football and rugby are in something like full, if confusing, swing – confusing because fans may be forgiven for not being sure which season we are in. I think English and Scottish football have completed season 19/20 and now moved into season 20/21, but some international matches still seem to belong to the season that should have officially ended a while ago – if, that is, there is still such a thing as a close season in football.
In rugby union we are still playing catch-up in both leagues and cups. In England this has made for some surprising results as the demand of playing matches in quick successions, two a week even, has inevitably seen clubs having to practise such rapid rotation that in some matches they may have fielded what was little more than a second XV.
No fear of that, however, this weekend, when we have the mouth-watering quarter-finals of the Heineken European Champions Cup, only four months late. Any absentees among star players will be only on account of injury or, in the case of England’s captain Owen Farrell, suspension.
Saracens go to Dublin to meet a Leinster team that has now won its last 23 matches in the Guinness Pro 14 and Europe. For Saracens, arguably the best club team in Europe for the last three or four years, this may be their last truly significant match for a year, since, relegated from the Premiership because of breaching the salary cap, they will play their domestic rugby in the second-tier Championship. It says much for the character of the club that so many of their international stars have chosen to remain at Allianz Park, notably Farrell himself, the Vunipola brothers, Maro Itoje and Sean Maitland while they have also recruited the Welsh international scrum-half Aled Davies. The club spirit is such that Farrell’s enforced absence may serve as a spur.
A spur is certainly needed. Even though Saracens will not have to contend with a packed Aviva Stadium, playing Leinster in Dublin is a very tough assignment. Guided by former England coach Stuart Lancaster they are as well organized as any club side I can think of. There is individual talent galore, and there seems to be a flowing stream of outstanding youngsters from Dublin schools rugby and the club’s own Academy.
On Saturday too there is a fascinating all-French quarter-final between Clermont Auvergne and Racing92. Again the absence of all but a handful of spectators means that the Stade Marcel Michelin is not likely to be quite as intimidating as usual. Clermont have been the nearly-team of both French and European rugby so often and for so long that one feels their time must come some year. But, Racing at their best – which is when Scotland’s Finn Russell is at his best at fly-half – play sublime rugby. Clermont however have this year’s most exciting recruit to the European scene in the brilliant Japanese wing or full back Kotara Matsushima, an absolute joy to watch. All the same I’ll be surprised if Racing don’t win this one.
These are Saturday’s games. Sunday’s should be more predictable. In the all-England clash you have to scratch your head hard to find any reason why Northampton Saints, who have been in wretched form, should beat Exeter away from home. Exeter are by some way the most efficient side in England and one not lacking in flair, especially if Stuart Hogg is fit and on form. Moreover, in the last couple of seasons Exeter have been learning how to win in Europe, not that winning on their own ground against the Saints should be anything more than a routine achievement. It is the semi-final that will be more revealing.
Nor can one see Ulster for all their solid qualities winning away to Toulouse, who were leading the Top 14 by eight points when, unlike the English Premiership, it was abandoned because of the epidemic. Ulster lost quite heavily to Leinster in the final of the Guinness Pro14 last weekend, and Toulouse, with their international half-backs Romain Ntamack and Antoine Dupont and the brilliant South African winger Cheslin Kolbe, have surely too much flair for Ulster.
There is also the second-tier Challenge Cup quarter-finals this weekend: Bristol v Dragons on Friday, Bordeaux-Begles v Edinburgh and Toulon v Scarlets on Saturday and Leicester Tigers v Castres on Sunday. Four home wins are likely, though Edinburgh, having lost their Pro14 semi-final to Ulster, will be determinedly seeking redemption, having surrendered a 19-7 lead with twenty minutes to go that evening. I fear, however, redemption will have to wait.
Then by the time this appears on your screen we shall be at the half-way stage of the US Open at Winged Foot. Only once has the winning score in an Open there been under par, which is as it should be. I do like to see the multi-millionaire pros being set a really demanding test rather than playing on these inviting PGA tour courses where birdies are more common than bogeys. Tiger Woods says that Winged Foot is one the three most difficult and demanding courses on which Majors are played, the other two in his opinion being Oakland and Carnoustie. This is just as it should be, or at least as I like it to be, a thinking player’s course. It would be nice to have a European winner, but I doubt if we’ll get one.
Never mind. Live sport is in full swing again. All we need now is the return of spectators, but since far more people watch sport on TV or hand-held devices than actually attend events, the absence of crowds matters less than would have been the case even twenty years ago- as indeed the success of the cricket played over recent weeks demonstrates.