Look Back At 2007 - Sport

If you are a supporter of one of the three most televised sports in England then 2007 is as much a year to forget as to remember.

The year began, in sporting terms, on 5th January when England lost the fifth and final Ashes test at the SCG by 10 wickets. In truth the Ashes series had been lost two years earlier with over the top celebrations in London, the awarding of OBE's to the squad and the sight of Andrew Flintoff pissed out of his mind on top of a London bus. Just as John Terry and most of the Manchester United squad would confirm at the end of the year money can buy you everything except class and respect. The Ashes series saw the retirement of two true greats of sport. In an era where the phrase World Class can be applied to Steven Gerrard scoring a goal against Andorra, the 2006-7 Ashes left those of us who put class, ability and endeavour before Nationalistic flag waving and fist waving 'passion' sad to see the retirements of Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath, the greatest spin bowler of my lifetime and one of the top three fastest bowlers I have ever seen in the flesh. Add to this the retirements of Damien Martyn and Justin Langer and suddenly the Australians lost a third of their team and the beginning of the inevitable shouts of 'we can regain the Ashes next time'.

Australia overcame the retirements by winning the World Cup in the West Indies, the final, like most of the tournament to be honest, finished in the dark (literally). England were hopeless in the tournament just as they would be in the Autumn when they took part (allegedly) in the inaugural 20/20 World Cup in South Africa. Twenty-Twenty cricket bears as much resemblance to 'proper' cricket as a Breville Sandwich Toaster does to proper coooking and traditionalists hope that it has the same longevity and popularity, but for those of us wanting to wind down after a days work and spend a couple of hours watching grown men in coloured p.j's making complete arses of themselves it was fun.

Monty Panasonic, as Nathalie calls him, ended the year looking like a man in need of a good rest and a coaching refreshing course. The exuberance we had seen, even in defeat, in Australia at the start of the year, evaporated in the humidity of Sri Lanka. He looked tired, like most of the squad to be honest and you can only hope that the freshness he brought to England when he first appeared on the scene will return.

Sometimes you just happen to be in the right place at the right time and I just happened to be sat in front of the television when Muttiah Muralitharan created history in his hometown of Kandy as Sri Lanka seized the initiative on day three of the first Test against England. He took the one wicket he needed to pass Shane Warne's Test record of 708, and raised the bar to 710 with excellent figures of 6-55. As much as it was a fantastic achievement I couldn't help thinking that with the Ashes defeat at the start of the year and this test towards the end, it seemed a shame that England were involved as losing spectators in such moments of sporting history rather than as victors.

Sri Lanka also served as a perfect example of what happens when you combine talented individuals, with expert coaching methods and a few quid of investment, a country that only played its first test less than twenty five years ago were second only to Australia in the test league table come the end of the year.

For England's football supporters 2007 was the year of the big reality check. It was the year when we discovered that despite all the hubris and hyperbole the Premiership really is only as good as it's players and unfortunately the majority of those players don't qualify for the English national team. A draw in Israel combined with defeats in Croatia (a country that didn't exist fifteen years ago) and Russia during the qualification games brought everyone back down to earth. All of those people who had been saying they would give Steve McLaren the backing he deserved promptly stabbed him in the back, bought him a new umbrella and replaced him with an Italian. The funny thing is that Fabio Capello's CV looks remarkably like Sven's, but that seemed to be overlooked in all the excitement of replacing Brian Barwick's fall guy.

Manchester United won the Premiership title again, Chelsea won both domestic cup competitions, firstly by sucking the oxygen out of the first FA Cup back at Wembley for six years and then by sheer power defeating Arsenal in Cardiff to take the LittlewoodsCocaColaMilk CarlingLeague or whatever its called these days. Statistics can mean whatever you want them to mean but the one that appeared in the Times at the end of the year 'proving' that Chelsea win more games without John Terry than with him was one of those 'stroky beard' moments of the year.

For West Ham, Wigan, Sheffield United and Brighton there were only two words that meant anything this year: Carlos Tevez. Up until Alan Pardew's sacking Tevez was only slightly more useful than a one legged man at an arse kicking contest, but once Pardew had gone the little Argentinian came into the team and into his own and proved that the old statistic about a side being in the bottom three at Christmas being doomed to relegation was mere humbug. Survival was clinched at Old Trafford where we completed a notable double for the season, the Irons also became the first side to win at the Emirates which added a nice symmetry to proceedings as we had been the last side to win at Highbury a year earlier.

In Europe Milan won back the Champions League getting some sort of revenge for Istanbul and I couldn't help smiling when Pipo Inzaghi, the centre forward who was born offside, got the winning goal - I'm sure I could hear the sound of nurses being called to resuscitate Alan Green on 5Live.

For those of us who follow club football across Europe it was a year of if, buts and maybe's. Inter Milan won the Scudetto, although it has to be said that having your main rival (Juventus) playing a league below due to the previous years bribery scandal did help. Sevilla were the nearly men of Spanish football, whilst Real Madrid claimed the La Liga title on head-to-head results over Barcelona despite the Catalan side having a better goal difference and better players! Oh and history of sorts was made on 22nd December 2007 when the El Classico derby didn't feature the current World Player of the Year for the first time since 1999.

Croke Park in Dublin was the venue for possibly the most emotional sporting event of the year. When at just after five thirty in the afternoon of 24 February the Irish supporters began singing Soldier's Song and Ireland Call you could feel a sense of occasion. When Jonny Wilkinson kicked off as the sound of 'The Fields of Athenry' drifted away on the Dublin air the hairs on the back of my neck were standing-up, Brian Moore one of the BBC commentary team said he was close to tears - and all of this after the crowd had been brilliant during the playing of God Save The Queen. The game itself was one of the most one sided I have seen in a long time featuring England, although even this lack of performance would be surpassed (if that's not a contradiction) when we met South Africa in Paris later in the year.

Ireland simply overwhelmed England from start to finish, being twenty points ahead by half-time. At the start of the second half England tried to make a game of it when David Strettle scored a try but after that it was all Ireland (no pun intended) and the home side's four tries meant that they won by a record 43-13 score. Ireland finished second to France in the Six Nations, within Scotland and Wales both finishing below Italy.

14 September 2007 will turn out to be either the beginning of a new era or the end of the old one for England's Rugby Union team. England came up against a South African side that didn't look that special, it was just that England looked really awful and played worse than they looked. The 36-0 defeat was so comprehensive that the words of the great Tottenham captain Danny Blanchflower came to mind when he once reflected on another defeat of his Northern Ireland side by concluding that 'we were lucky to get nil'. What made the defeat so hard to take, and you have to bear in mind that it came just six days after an abject performance, albeit a winning performance, against USA, was that elsewhere in the competition we had been watching other teams perform minor heroics. The opening game in the Stade de France saw a fearless Argentina shock the hosts (not for the only time in this World Cup) 17-12, we saw Namibia frighten the lives out of Ireland in Bordeaux, the night after England's capitulation against the Boks we watched Georgia come even closer to beating Ireland than Namibia had done.

In those Group matches we saw the southern hemisphere sides playing expansive rugby that the northern sides seemed reluctant or incapable of emulating. But in sport, as in life, it's not where you start but where you finish that counts and whilst Australia and New Zealand, particularly New Zealand, began to dream of lifting the Webb Ellis Trophy, other countries went quietly and brilliantly about their business. Argentina were my team of the tournament, they emerged from a group containing France and Ireland and in the Quarter Finals beat Scotland at the Stade De France to set-up a meeting with South Africa, who had only just managed to be Fiji, in the semi-final. In the other half of the draw England beat Australia in the windswept Stade Velodrome whilst France beat New Zealand at Cardiff thanks largely to a forward pass missed by nobody except the match officials. England overcame all the odds to beat the hosts in Paris and set-up a final meeting with the Boks - most England fans feared the worst.

As it was England didn't disgrace themselves in what was, considering all the events of the previous meeting, a low scoring final. You always felt however that South Africa had that extra gear if they needed it whilst Les Rosbifs were playing flat-out and running on empty for most of the last twenty minutes.

Joe Calzaghe finally became the BBC Sports Personality of the year in 2007. I use the word finally because I'm convinced that had Joe been born twenty years earlier, in 1952 rather than 1972, he would have been the viewers choice on more than one occasion. Being a professional boxer in the Sky/HBO era may guarantee bigger paydays but back in the Sportsnight with Coleman era, the era of Harry Carpenter, Reg Gutteridge and Des Lynham commentaries Calzaghe would have been a household name and face, up there with the likes of Henry Cooper, John Conteh, Frank Bruno and Chris Eubank. Amir Khan may be a name familiar to many people but that is down to the BBC coverage of the 2004 Olympics more than anything and Ricky Hatton had to fight in the States to make front page news.

Another reason for Calzaghe's lack of public profile, beyond the sporting pages, is the fact that boxing now has five different recognised sanctioning bodies. If the past truly is a foreign country then the days when you were the undisputed World Champion is somewhere in the southern Pacific ocean. Having the WBA, WBC, IBF, WBO and The Ring (no it's not for boxers who dress-up as Tolkien characters) as the organisers of big fight nights has somewhat diluted the impact of the sport. What it has done however is allow a record number of British fighters to become World Champion, as at today's date (Boxing Day +1) there are 14 World Champions from these islands, although to be honest I think I could fall over Clinton Woods (IBF Light Heavyweight), Gavin Rees (WBA super lightweight) and Junior Witter (WBC super lightweight) and not know who it was I was upsetting.

The Formula One caravan went to the final race in Brazil with the Drivers Title still to be decided. The Constructors Championship had been decided at an FIA hearing in Paris way before the final race of the season when Max Mosley decided to let personal antipathy towards Ron Dennis cloud his judgement. Stripping the team of their points, fining them all their prize winnings but not making any adjustment to the points of Lewis Hamilton and his team mate (using the words in their loosest sense) Fernando Alonso seemed bizarre beyond most commentators comprehension. Add to this Mosley's comments later in the year that perhaps he wasn't harsh enough on Maclaren and his reference to one of the greatest F1 drivers ever as a certified idiot, you have to wonder whether he should be allowed governance of a multi-million dollar sport.

For Lewis Hamilton it was undoubtedly a year of highs, more highs and then a crashing low as the season reached its climax in Brazil. What we musn't forget however is that we witnessed one of the most spectacular starts to a drivers career and that it can never be described as a failure, he exceeded everybody's expectations and revived a sport that had become predictable during the Schumacher dominated years.

Martina Hingis opts for the oral test

Martin Samuel wrote a brilliant article in the Sunday Times during the summer highlighting the wrongs that occur in tennis but which somehow go unnoticed, either through a reluctance on the part of the tennis governing bodies to make such things public or the reluctance on the part of the public to ask for further investigation. Comebacks in matches, the like of which had previously been the exclusive preserve of professional snooker, occur without so much as the raising of a carefully plucked eyebrow, drug testing is on the increase but so are the number of people failing drug tests and the pressure on younger players growing year by year.

Tim Henman stated during Wimbledon week this year that tennis doesn't have a drug problem. I wonder what Tim's reaction would be to somebody casually dropping the names of Mariano Puerta and Guillermo Canas into conversation. Both these Argentinian players tested positive for perfromance enhancing drugs after the French Open, a tournament in which Puerta lost in the final and Canas lost in the semi-final. Now far be it from me to cast doubt on a whole nations professional tennis players but both Puerta and Canas has been tested positive before this year, both have served bans for drug taking and both are members of the Davis Cup squad that has improved so dramatically in recent times, an improvement that has coincided with 10 Argentinian born players making the Top 100.

You can draw your own conclusions from the fact that the ITF have taken over the ATP drug testing programme and have already banned Marcelo Melo, a Wimbledon doubles semi-finalist this year, for two months.

I suppose the saddest news of the tennis year was the revelation that Martina Hingis had tested positive for drugs, wasn't going to contest the decision and immediately announced her retirement to avoid further revelations. This of course caused the newspapers to go into 'nudge, nudge, wink, wink' overdrive and for once the innuendo wasn't about lesbianism in tennis - that subject had been exhausted in the case of Claire Lyte.

Claire Lyte was the tennis coach who was accused and then found guilty of 'having an affair with a 13 year old'. What was interesting about the reporting of this case was that at the start of the hearing Ms Lyte was a 'Top Tennis Coach' and by the time the Judge told her she would be going to prison she was a 'Top Lesbian Tennis Coach.' Hmmm.