Another year in sport.

 Another year in sport.

At the end of every year sport normally takes a hearty pat on the back, congratulated and acclaimed as a force for good, athleticism at its most pulsating and speed of thought often the operative phrase. We liberally sprinkle over sport those positive, upbeat adjectives, similes and metaphors normally associated with sport. Not a day seems to go past when we either despair of drug cheats or sigh with exasperation at the outrageous antics of the playboys, rebels and exhibitionists who just bring sport into disrepute.

But then we look to sport's greatest exponents, the ones who score memorable goals in FA Cup Finals, World Cups and then conquer Europe with a Euros trophy. We swoon with delight when our cricket side humiliate Australia in the Ashes but even that pales into insignificance when the Aussies, as they did during this summer, hand out a dose of their own medicine. But sport does like to capture the headlines, dominating the news agenda on either back page tabloids or saturation TV coverage and long may it do so.

It is after all one of the most exhilarating of sights, the long distance runners at Olympic Games, the magnificent and magisterial 100 and 200 metre sprinters, shot putters, hammer and javelin throwers, the gruelling physicality of rugby union and league, football's enduring passion play, the flowing beauty of Wimbledon and tennis, and the gently lyrical rhythms of cricket with its grace and gentility. Sometimes it plays capricious mind games with us, deluding us into thinking that our team is definitely superior to yours and never the twain shall meet.

Sadly, the sporting year of 2023 was sadly lacking in any kind of outstanding brilliance, moments of dazzling ingenuity to recall for a long time, nothing that could in any way be described as special or unique, a moment to treasure, totally spontaneous and just miraculous. We always expect our sportsmen and sportswoman to maintain the highest standards of excellence and then wonder why we never seem to do well on the big occasion. 

Besides aren't sports people supposed to be over paid, cossetted, their every whim pandered to from dieticians, nutritionists to sports scientists who spend countless hours analysing their every heart beat and their consistent levels of fitness? But then they get injured at the wrong time and place and suddenly we think they're only in it for the money. Those footballers are just mercenary creatures whose only interest seems to lie exclusively in their next sports car, their latest fashion accessory and nothing but their puffed up ego.

Last night BBC's annual sports awards ceremony the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Award demonstrated the poverty of world class or British sportsmen or women who would normally grace our TV screens on a winter's evening just before Christmas. Years ago of course some of us would gather around our TV sets to watch the usual gathering of the great and good in London's White City where all the men wore the most elegant of black dinner suits, crisp white shirts and bow ties. The women of course were always radiant and blooming in their best party dresses and smartness personified.

In the last couple of years Sports Personality of the Year Award has moved from Manchester to Glasgow and then Birmingham. These were glitzy and glamorous locations with high tech settings and to those of a critical nature, might have made London look like a dowdy Victorian parlour room. But once again this annual sports extravaganza and homage to the best in the land, certainly did itself justice. The audience were in place, the applause was suitably rapturous and the candidates were ready and waiting. The Media City in Salford, Manchester was the choice of venue this year.

The field of course was an attractive one but for those of a nostalgic outlook it just wasn't the same. We used to rhapsodise over the esteemed likes of Henry Cooper, Britain's most charming of all heavyweight boxers, Muhammad Ali, a boxer of world class renown and the most warmly extrovert of them all. We reserved thunderous cheers for Mary Peters, the Irish shot putter who claimed Olympic gold in Munich 1972 and then bowed with reverence at the exploits of Princess Anne, Britain's finest horse rider in both dressage and cross country.

We remember the astonishing feats of Bobby Moore who brought home the World Cup Jules Rimet Trophy to England and just assumed he'd win Sports Personality of the Year. We celebrated Moore's wondrous achievements on that now far distant day of July 1966 with a glass of something sweet. Moore naturally won Sports Personality of the Year in 1966 because he was in the right place and the right time. But then unwisely and now foolishly we thought all of our footballers would win Sports Personality of the Year so when they didn't step up to the plate, we brooded thoughtfully and glowered into our fish and chip suppers moodily. It should have been our divine right to rave about British winners but we never did although they were still our heroes and nobody could deny that.

So we had golf's Rory Mcilroy, who captained Europe in another dramatic and intoxicating Ryder Cup team to victory. You'd have thought they'd have the decency to find a place in their hearts for this TV sporting spectacular. Mcilroy has always played the game of golf as if his life depended on it, a passionate, heartfelt, fiercely driven and committed golfer who drives and putts a golf ball with such delicate and then powerful gusto that you know exactly where the ball may be intended.

There was Katerina Thompson Johnson, a tall, imposing presence full of character and vitality, an athlete of supreme accomplishment and dominant in her field. She is one of our finest athletes of the modern period but did any one performance stand out from the rest? Johnson runs like the wind and does so stylishly and skilfully but in a non Olympic year there seemed little point in rewarding her with the BBC's most coveted trophy. Still, her year may come sooner rather than later.

Stuart Broad, one of cricket's most dangerous and destructive of fast bowlers bowed out of the game on the highest of highs. He promised that he would leave cricket in much the way he first started out in the game. His last ball against Australia in the final Ashes Test match endeared him to the great British public in the way they'd  given such unqualified affection for Ian Botham 42 years ago. He took his wicket, took off his bandana, wiped the floods of sweat from his brows, threw his hands up into the air with unashamed delight and just smiled at his girlfriend and young daughter. This was sport doing what sport does best, smiling and laughing at its own reflection in the mirror. 

The likes of Broad and the legendary Frankie Dettori of course invested sport with a value and credibility that it may have never got in any other year. We will of course raise a toast for winner of this year's Sports Personality of the Year and her name is Mary Earps, the best and most popular of women's football goalkeeper and patriotically English, an England goalkeeper par excellence. It hasn't been a bad year but perhaps next year will shine an even brighter light on sport. It is, after all, Olympic year in Paris next year and who knows Harry Kane may well provide England with their most lustrous silverware in football's Euros conflict. We must hope.