Notes from a sporting week - 10/12/07

Mark Lewis-Francis hanging on by a thread:

In the wake of the Christine Ohuruogu affair a lot of attention has been paid to the athletes who were cited by UK Athletics as having missed two drugs tests and thus face a suspension should they make it three. With missed drugs tests staying on record for five years there are a number of fairly high-profile track and field athletes who will have to be firmly on their toes over the next half-decade.

Chief amongst those is sprinter Mark Lewis-Francis who burst onto the scene just before the Sydney Olympic Games in 2000. He made his presence felt in the ‘b’ race at the Crystal Palace Grand Prix with a time one tenth of a second behind that of the ‘a' race winner. He turned down the chance to go to Australia, instead winning the 100m gold at the world junior championships in Santiago, Cuba. A lot was expected of him, but at least individually he has not lived upto the potential he displayed at the start of the century.

The latest episode came because of two lazy lapses that have come to typify his career. Firstly he wasn’t home when the testers came calling between 7 and 8 in the morning. The second time he was upstairs as the folks with the glass jars and clipboards were outside ringing a broken doorbell. At least in future we know the testers may now try the knocker as well.

Lewis-Francis will be best remembered, so far, for holding off Maurice Greene on the final leg of a victorious 4x100m relay at the Athens Olympics, but that success just highlights his own inability to maintain any level of consistency. That year he failed to reach the 100m final and a year later at the Helsinki World Championships he was unable to hold the lead against France and slipped to bronze behind Trinidad and Tobago. He also experienced one of his most embarrassing moments in the lead up to the championships, when he was unable to fit into the kit he had been measured for in April come the championships in August.

Worse still was to come later in the year when he was stripped of his World Indoor Championship 60m silver medal after testing positive for cannabis, though escaped a ban after claiming he had inhaled it passively. With such a mark on his record, it is unlikely that UK Athletics will look at him so sympathetically should he miss a third test.

Should it happen it would be a massive shame as no one has come onto the scene with such expectations around him, though the clamour since for Harry Aikines-Aryeetey is on a similar level. On his day he is undoubtedly Britain’s best sprinter, though his ability to let his mind wander has let him down on too many occasions and his lack of focus to his career contrasts sharply to someone like Craig Pickering, the up and coming Scot. That said there have been times when he has shown some sense, such as his decision to leave his Birmingham home to move to London so that he could train with the respected sprint coach, Tony Lester.

When he burst onto the scene seven and a half years ago, the talk of him being the next Olympic champion was grossly exaggerated, not least because British sprinters have a tendency to mature later than their trans-Atlantic cousins. Linford Christie and Allan Wells, Britain’s last two Olympic 100m champions were both in their 30s and Darren Campbell was 27 when he won 200m silver in Sydney. It is certainly a crucial time for Lewis-Francis as it would be a total waste of talent if all he had to show at the end of his career were a few relay medals, even if one was the best going.

Third half becomes Serie A law:

It has hardly been a golden year for Italian football off the field, with the year book-ended by a policeman killed by fans in January and a fan killed by a policeman in November. However, this week the peninsula has been getting excited by a new ruling for Serie A and B that will come into effect when the leagues restart after their winter breaks.

Last week Inter defeated Fiorentina 2-0 at the Stadio Artemio Franchi in Florence to keep clear at the top of the table and stem la viola’s momentum that had pushed them into third place. With it being a cold, winter Sunday evening in the renaissance city, one would have expected the home side to depart to the dressing rooms as quickly as possible. Instead after an emotional match (it was Fiorentina coach Cesare Prandelli’s first match following the death of his wife to cancer) the whole team formed a guard of honour for the nerazzurri and applauded them off the field in a style that has long been one of the traditions of rugby union.

In the days that followed the papers were full of praise and talked of their hopes for the third half and a return of something approaching fair play in a league that is all too often dominated by furbu; the sly cunning that takes place in an attempt to win the match. There was talk that Fiorentina might be punished by the league, having been denied permission to go ahead with the initiative, only to do it regardless. Of course in the face of such overwhelming praise the Lega Calcio quickly passed the law that will introduce it to the top two leagues’ round of matches from 27th January onwards.

Two questions immediately rise out of such an initiative. Firstly, will it have the desired effect of calming both players and spectators? And secondly should the rest of the world adopt it in their leagues? The answers to which should be, let’s hope so and as soon as possible.

There is little doubt that the mood on the pitch helps shape the mood off it. Fans who are intent on causing trouble will only be more fired up by two teams that kick the life out of each other and then continue their disputes once the final whistle goes (Arsenal v Manchester United matches come readily to mind at this point). Letting go of things after the final whistle, especially in big matches, is something a lot of footballers are not very good at, but hopefully a guard of honour or tunnel of applause, or whatever you want to call it, should take enough of the sting out of emotions to keep the pizza slices on the plate, rather than flying through the air towards knights of the realm. In short the tunnel means players have to leave things on the pitch, rather than behave like the spoilt brats that they have become and anything that means that might happen should be welcomed with open arms.

You see the crucial difference between doing it after the match, as opposed to before it, as per the Champions and Premier Leagues, is that players are being civil to each other after 90 minutes or more of using all manners of schemes (some fair, some less so) to beat their opponent. The theory will be that if the players can show that they have left things on the pitch, then it should set an example to the fans off it. Sad as it seems fans tend to ape the behaviour of the idols and the hope has to be that if their idols behave like civilised, decent human beings and chat calmly and rationally to someone who minutes ago was shouldering them into the advertising hording, then so can the fans. Sure there will be a small minority who will be bent on trouble, but the more their behaviour becomes a contrast to the way the players behave, the quicker a level of civility will return to a sport spoiled by greed and excess.

Of course a lot of this is mere speculation, but at the very least Italy is giving it a go, rather than pooh-poohing it before trying it out, as though taking something good from another sport is a sign of weakness. As said the match between Inter and Fiorentina was far from typical, with Prandelli’s situation focusing minds on the bigger picture. The true test of its effectiveness will come at the end of a match when a contentious last-minute penalty changes the outcome of a top or bottom of the table clash. But if there is even the most remote chance that the likes of Arsene Wenger and Sir Alex Ferguson can look each other in the eye and shake hands, then there will be little doubt that a massive amount of progress has been made.
JI 10/12/07