Sport, coaching and entertainment

Wow, what a weekend of sport. I was not surprised when the batteries on the TV remote control ran out on Sunday afternoon.

It all started for me on Friday with a trip to the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games. In true sporting festival style, I chose 2 sports I’d never been to before – badminton at the NEC and rugby sevens at the Coventry Stadium.

Thanks to the fact that there were three matches on simultaneously, within five minutes I’d become a complete expert at badminton, applauding excellence, advising the players on when they could do better and questioning some close line calls 😊 All very entertaining.

Then off to the rugby. Personally, I find the 15-person game hard to enjoy with its stop-start nature and complex rules, but the sevens is a riot of side stepping, outrageous bursts of speed and last-ditch tackles. It was great fun.

One episode in particular made me laugh. To start the match, New Zealand kicked off against Sri Lanka, a NZ player caught the ball and ran straight through for a try. It took about four seconds and only two players had touched the ball. Most hadn’t even moved. Nevertheless, as they do after every try, the substitutes all ran out with water and energy drinks for the players. That’s what you call teamwork.

Congratulations to everyone involved for a brilliantly entertaining weekend – not just the teams at the very top of their sport, but those who did their very best despite not being supported by elite levels of funding and relying more on enthusiastic coaching, some natural talent and sheer willpower.