Notes from a sporting week – 25/02/08

More tears for Gazza:

Paul Gascoigne became world famous for the tears he shed when England failed to reach the 1990 World Cup final, a match that he would have missed thanks to a swinging leg and an over-acting Thomas Berthold, but this week the crying for Gazza should be less hollow than those spilled over a mere football match.

For anyone who has followed Gascoigne’s career and post-career, the sad truth is that his sectioning this week under the mental health act was inevitable. Like George Best before him he has failed to control the demons within him and locking him in an institution appears to be the only way of stopping him from harming others, as well as himself.

Even when it was at its worse, Best could never control the alcoholism that had taken grip as a nervous youngster fresh off the ship from Belfast in Manchester. Likewise Gascoigne has been unable to take hold of his addictive traits that have stained his life and those of others, notably his ex-wife, whom he beat during one of his drunken tirades.

A lot of ex-managers, teammates and sports commentators have come out and asked how did it ever reach this point? The fact that he had not controlled matters during his playing days meant that when the simple of joy of playing, of training on a day by day basis had come to and end with nothing to replace it, he became a man with too much time on his hands and for a while too much money.

There was an interesting article in a football magazine a year or so ago in which fans write in questions for someone in the game to answer. When it was Gascoigne’s turn one question asked, ‘do you fell you wasted your career?’ Rather than point at the medals he had acquired, or the awards received, he talked about money and particular how much various teams and managers had squandered on him down the years, hoping to reignite the magic that he showed at Italia 90 and again in Euro 96. That was his justification for his career, how much someone else had valued his ability at the time, rather than anything more tangible.

Sure he has the odd medal on his mantelpiece; a fourth place World Cup medal from 1990, an FA Cup winner’s medal from 1991 and a few Scottish medals of various varieties. Sadly each one comes with a caveat of its own. The World Cup one we have touched upon, the FA Cup medal was given to him in his hospital bed after he had ruptured his ligaments crunching Gary Parker and Gary Charles in the opening minutes of the match. The Scottish ones came after he left Lazio for Rangers in 1995 and whilst he should have been at the peak of his powers, he chose the easy life north of the border, rather than test himself in England or somewhere else on the continent. Or perhaps too many managers had heard stories of his drinking; of the company he kept or just that such a big personality wasn’t worth the risk.

Of course everyone has a favourite Gazza story, which was half the problem. So many of those who have come out in sympathy this week said that his personality, the ability to you feel the most special person in the world, meant that you went along with him regardless, that you forgave him things you knew you shouldn’t.

There has been the constant debate with him of how he would have turned out had he chosen Manchester United in 1989 rather than Tottenham Hotspur. In Manchester he would have come under the tutelage of the far stricter, Alec Ferguson, rather than the laissez-faire style of Terry Venables. It is an interesting thought that the Scot would have curbed his overly exuberant personality in the way he has done of late with Wayne Rooney, but it is one of life’s little debates and instead he went south and enjoyed the bright lights of London. From there in 1991 to Lazio in Rome, where he picked up the useful habit of smoking, off to Rangers in 1995, Middlesbrough in 1998 and then Everton, where his light barely flickered at all.

Since leaving the Toffeemen in 2002 he moved to Burnley and then made the bizarre decision to join Gansu Tianma in the Chinese second division. After that came an aborted spell at fourth tier Boston United as player-coach and an attempt to crack the USA with DC United, who quickly refused to sign him after he had stayed up till 3am at a post-match function getting thoroughly drunk. His last incarnation was as coach of non-league Kettering Town, who fired him after 39 days for ‘being under the influence of alcohol’ before and after matches and training. His attempts to crack the media have failed and he has been conspicuous by his absence since 2002 when, for ITV, he appeared on set clearly the worse for alcohol.

At no stage have any of these events come as any surprise, not least in 1998 when Glenn Hoddle omitted him from the World Cup squad and he reacted by smashing up his hotel room. A lot has been made of trying to help him as and when he leaves his detention, but there have been people trying to help him all the way throughout his career. Sadly the one person who could help him, himself, has been unable to. Until he does, then the worry won’t just be whether he can make anything of himself in football, a horse that has surely bolted, but whether he can survive to an age where he can draw his pension.

Breaks on for sledging:

It was a pity to hear this week that the International Cricket Council took a sledgehammer to crack a nut with their call for umpires to take a zero-tolerance approach to sledging on the field of play. This comes in the light of the Harbhajan Singh/Andrew Symonds incident in which the Indian spinner was accused of racially abusing the Australian all-rounder. That it led to protests from the subcontinent, came down to the word of Ricky Ponting over that of Sachin Tendulkar and was then thrown out further muddied the waters.

The sad thing is that sledging in its purest form is witty, comical and well timed. What did or did not occur between Singh and Symonds was abuse, pure and simple. It goes without saying that this has no place on the field of play, should be eradicated and when it does occur, should be punished. Furthermore that some teams consciously target players before taking the field is not on either, though trying to stop abuse in its organised form will be much harder, not least because some players are always susceptible to verbal intimidation.

Cricket isn’t the only sport to suffer from any such incidents; one only has to look at boxing where this week Bernard Hopkins charmingly declared that Joe Calzaghe should be prepared to die, ahead of their 19th April fight. However, to ban any verbal exchanges will be rather like King Canute’s attempts to stop the tide. When it is done well, sledging adds a little spice to the main event and on the whole is respected by both teams. For sure if the chatter becomes abuse then the umpires should act, which until now they have seemed reluctant to do so, and the culprits punished. But that does not mean that there should be one catchall rule that makes the sport a far more sanitised spectale.
JI 25/02/08