Wellock's World
March 21st, 2008
WHEN Sunderland's
£20m aquatic centre
officially opens on
April 18 it will be swimming
against the tide of pool
closures. It will be the only 50-
metre pool between Sheffield
and Edinburgh, while work
has just begun at Uxbridge on
the first competition-sized pool
to be built in London for 40
years.
There will, of course, be no
expense spared in building the
pool for the 2012 Olympics, but
meanwhile there are huge
areas of the country where
aspiring medal prospects have
nowhere suitable to train and
obese children have little
opportunity to take a muchneeded
plunge.
Amateur Swimming
Association statistics say
there are 750 pools around the
country compared with 3,000
in the 1980s, while Sport
England claim that, between
2004 and 2007, 352 pools opened
and 164 closed.
Confidence in government
statistics has not been helped
by the claim that there are 171
pools with diving facilities as
it later transpired that only 64
of those were available to the
public.
Whatever the truth of the
matter, the group of nine and
ten-year-olds who were the
first to test the water at
Sunderland this week can feel
both honoured and grateful.
ANY fly half wearing what
used to be known as a scrum
cap strikes me as a bit of a
Nancy boy. After all, he's
hardly likely to develop
cauliflower ears from the
occasional bit of mauling.
Perhaps, as befits a regular
on the London nightclub
scene, Danny Cipriani wishes
to protect his hairstyle. But as
we've seen with Gavin Henson
being a fashion-conscious
poser doesn't mean you can't
play. I take nothing back
about what I've said about
Henson as a person, but if a
Lions team were to be
selected now there'd be no
easier choice than at inside
centre.
Fly half is a different
matter. Even Wales don't
know whether Stephen Jones
or James Hook is the better
player, and whatever the
Grand Slam winners might
say there would also be three
English contenders, while
Ronan O'Gara couldn't be
discounted.
Whether Cipriani would
have fared quite so well in
O'Gara's shoes behind a
beaten pack last Saturday is
doubtful, but he certainly lit a
beacon for the future of
English rugby.
EBBSFLEET has become the
second place not on the map to
make footballing headlines
this season. Following
Staffordshire club
Chasetown's efforts in the FA
Cup, the Kent club known
until last May as Gravesend
and Northfleet has reached
the FA Trophy final.
The nickname hasn't
changed and the Fleet will be
sailing to Wembley on May 10
to face Torquay United, who
have known better times and
might now feel a little
marginalised, not unlike the
Northern League clubs who
used to tread this path.
It's all happening in the
South East these days, which
is why Ebbsfleet decided to
cash in on the huge
development taking place
around the Eurostar terminal
of that name. The town has
yet to be built, but the football
club is firmly on the map.
IS THE Schumacher
syndrome kicking in with
Tiger, in that his dominance
is becoming boring? Or
should we be fascinated by
how long he can keep his
winning run going?
I believe more things can go
wrong with a golf swing than
with the best car on the grid,
so for the moment I'm
intrigued by Tiger's sudden
ability to roar through the
field rather than lead from
the front. He was seven
strokes adrift of Vijay Singh
at the halfway stage of the
Arnold Palmer Invitational,
yet pulled off his seventh
successive win, four behind
the record held by Byron
Nelson since 1945.
Some youthful prodigies are
derailed by marriage and
parenthood, but not Tiger. He
has one more event before the
Masters, and while any record
bid generates interest, if his
run continues golf's
unpredictability will no
longer seem quite so glorious.
SOMETIMES people surprise
you. When I used to hear
Hartlepool lad Jeff Stelling on
Radio Tees 20 years ago I
thought he sounded a right
twerp. But the Sky man, his
presentation vastly improved
and his knowledge
unsurpassed, won his third
consecutive award for sports
broadcaster of the year this
week, and rather than thank
the usual suspects he reeled
off the names of Hartlepool
United hat-trick scorers.
Then there's Adrian Chiles,
who has a similar fixation
with West Brom. He once
asked Zimbabwean bowler
Eddo Brandes in a live radio
interview down a telephone
line what it had been like to be
the only black man in the
team. Brandes pointed out
that he was white and Chiles
somehow muddled his way
through the embarrassment
well enough for his career
prospects to be unaffected. He
now presents TV's The One
Show and still found time to
cycle over 300 miles in two
days with Alan Shearer for
Sport Relief.
It shows you don't have to be
a silver-tongued public school
product to get on in the
broadcasting world these days,
although the bar has slipped a
little too low in the case of
those whose inane prattle is an
insult to the Queen's English.
9:06am Friday 21st March 2008
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