LOVE IT OR LOATHE IT..

Whether you love sport or hate it, you'll need to have been very ingenious to escape it over the last few days. The England football team crash out of the world cup in another 'man sent off/injury/penalty shoot out/we woz robbed debacle', Wimbledon tennis rolls on with a male Brit into the second week, but for me the saddest sports stories were from cricket. Legendary England fast bowler and radio commentator Fred Trueman died of cancer, and the Sri Lankan team inflicted a 5-0 whitewash over England in the one day series. So outclassed were England that they were lucky to come second, lucky to get 'nil' etc etc.
To compound matters, the manager of Wolverhampton Wanderers, the football team I support, has resigned. Apparently, Glen Hoddle felt the board couldn't give him the financial backing he needed to transform the team from being the Championship's draw specialists and make a push for the Premiership.
I often wonder why God created sport- the sociologist Peter Berger said that the ability to play games and have fun was an indication that we are here by design and not by accident. Sport surely gives us relief from the world's problems, but lands us with a whole new level of passion, pride, hope, expectation, despair and even worship. Watching the Glamorgan cricket team beat Somerset in a pulsating Twenty20 game on Friday night alongside Gary, Vinod and Val, I was living every ball of the game and getting especially nervous near the end. It reminded me too much of some of the real match situations I'd been in when playing cricket, the elation of winning and the bitter taste of defeat.
It's not that I'm disinterested in the world's problems, of course not... but when I woke up this morning and began to read the Sunday papers over breakfast, it was the sports pages I turned to first.
It was ever thus and always shall be!