Sport is in my blood and I cannot wait for its next chapter

Had it not been for the 1970 World Cup, I would not have been born. Debts to sport scarcely run much deeper than that. My father was part of a crack BBC production unit marshalling the coverage from Mexico, while my mother was working for David Coleman as he chronicled England’s fall from the glories of ’66. Eventually, courtesy of some celestial alignment, telephone numbers, or at least correct switchboard extensions, were exchanged.

So when, 12 years and three World Cups later, I arrived, sport was not just in the ether, but staring me in the face. Most babies open their eyes to a glimpse of soothing mobiles, but the first sight I can recall upon waking is that of Super Bowl pennants. Dad had spent a sabbatical in the early Seventies at The Los Angeles Times, where his sports editor was Chuck Garrity, later the National Football League’s head of public relations. Before I could walk, Chuck would send over his gridiron mementoes from the US, in the hope of nourishing a passion for sport from the cradle.

The ruse worked. A fascination with sport never had to be forced, as it sprang from within. I was seldom happier than when devouring discus heats at the Seoul Olympics, or cajoling Mum to visit five newsagents in the hope of finding a Panini sticker for Egypt’s reserve rightback at Italia ’90. Memories of a Cypriot holiday that summer are framed largely by Gary Lineker’s two goals against Cameroon. To see the reactions inside one tiny taverna in Nicosia was to form an impression, however nebulous, of how sport could make you feel.

Equally, there was a sense of wonder that people could document all this for a living. Thanks to my father’s shifts on Grandstand –I could see his head in the back of shot on Saturday afternoons as the vidi-printer scrolled – I would write to Des Lynam asking for his inside knowledge. He was always gracious enough to respond. Car journeys to school would often be peppered with paternal nostalgia about the chief sports writers of yore at The Daily Mirror, where Dad worked for 20 years. I would learn about Peter “The Man They Can’t Gag” Wilson and Frank Mcghee, rebuked on his column day at the Los Angeles Olympics for failing to realise that he was eight hours behind.

To hold the same role at this newspaper, where I started 16 years ago, is a profound honour. All of us have been starved of sport this year, but its absence, I believe, will make the heart grow fonder. The next stage is its triumphant restoration, where stadiums can, by degrees, be transformed from ghostly echo-chambers into broiling cauldrons once again. It is a chapter I cannot wait to bring you.