Saga rocks Henry’s Sox
could not be at the Rugby Union Writers’ Club annual dinner in London this week to receive his special award. He was undergoing gruelling radiotherapy treatment at home in France.
The British Lions prop, who was a pivotal figure in the 1997 series win in South Africa, is involved in the fight of his life, for his life. The stage-four colorectal cancer he was diagnosed with has spread to his liver and brain.
At the same time Smith’s old Scotland team-mate Doddie Weir, the winner of the Helen Rollason Award at last month’s BBC Sports Personality of the Year show, continues his battle neurone disease.
It is the same wretched condition which Rob Burrow, the Leeds Rhinos scrum-half, has been diagnosed with.
It feels wrong that this can be happening to them. Not just on a human scale – like Weir and Smith, Burrow is a father of three – but because, as international sportsmen, they appeared so indestructible.
The blanket of warmth for Burrow as he ran on to play for five minutes against Bradford Bulls last Sunday was something to behold. He was gathered in the most emotional of embraces by 20,000 rugby league fans at Headingley.
Burrow’s is a timelimited battle. There is no cure. MND took the former Rangers player Fernando Ricksen at the age of 43 last September. Former Bradford City right-back Stephen Darby, and Bury and Swansea midfielder Lenny Johnrose have the same life sentence.
The reality is athletes are flesh and blood like the rest of us. When the mystique is stripped away, sportsmen are simply men who play sport, with no veto on despair and dark times.
Life was not designed to be fair and those who dance under the floodlights are no more protected with motor from pain, suffering and tragedy than anyone else. Sport, by its nature, can even make them more vulnerable.
At this moment Worcester lock Michael Fatialofa and Hull KR prop Mose Masoe are in intensive care units at opposite ends of the country with serious spinal injuries sustained on the rugby pitch this month.
Both have shown signs of improvement since their accidents but their futures are uncertain.
In Portugal, the family of motorcyclist Paulo Goncalves are mourning his death in the Dakar Rally last Sunday.
Sport has the ability to give so much but it also has the awful power to take away.
For Smith, his grim illness has nothing to do with the game he loved. It is simply fate – and fate’s finger can point at anybody.
Champions have no free pass or joker to play, no immunity and no exemption to call upon. Only an innate ability never to give up.
As Smith puts it: “It’s quite daunting because some of the treatment is very unpleasant. But I’ve faced some tough opponents, and the least you can do is fight. So let’s fight.”
LIVERPOOL owner John Henry has his hands full on the other side of the Atlantic after sacking Boston Red Sox manager Alex Cora, below, for sign stealing.
This is not some niche road-traffic offence but the prohibited use of video technology to pass on the signals from catcher to pitcher so batters know what is coming. Cora was axed for offences committed in 2017 when he was at Houston Astros, but the Red Sox are under investigation by Major League Baseball over similar allegations in their World Series-winning 2018 season, when Cora was manager. Henry has said Boston have standards they need to uphold.