Arise Sir Nobby, Dame Judy and Sir Lewis. Forget Boycott... here is what real honours list should look like
IT is not my intention to resign quite yet, which will doubtless be a disappointment to some, but if it were I’d make a better fist of compiling an honours list for sport than Theresa May. Her headline act was a knighthood for Geoffrey Boycott, who has a conviction for domestic abuse and once said he would have to ‘black me face’ to stand a chance of being made a Sir.
Our former prime minister should have looked elsewhere. The starting point is obvious and it has been obvious for 53 years. For reasons that are a cause of ongoing bafflement, a knighthood has been withheld from five of the surviving members of the England team that won the football World Cup in 1966, commonly regarded as our greatest sporting triumph.
It is a national scandal that Bobby Moore, the team’s captain, Alan Ball, the best player in the final, goalkeeper Gordon Banks and Ray Wilson died without being knighted. It is even worse that the establishment continues to ignore Martin Peters, George Cohen, Nobby Stiles, Jack Charlton and Roger Hunt. I would rid us of that shame immediately.
The next port of call is easy, too. Lewis Hamilton has won five F1 world drivers’ titles and is well on his way to winning a sixth. That is more championships than Sir Stirling Moss and Sir Jackie Stewart put together. In fact, it is double. That i s more c hampionships t han a nyone e xcept Michael Schumacher. And yet Hamilton, too, continues to be ignored.
He continues to be ignored even after Andy Murray, quite rightly, was knighted. So it is nothing to do with not bestowing the honour on an active sportsman. Add to his record the fact that he is the only black driver ever to have raced in F1. Hamilton blazed a trail. He is a pioneer. Now he has a claim to be Britain’s greatest ever sportsman. It’s about time this country’s arbiters of grace recognised that.
Maybe t here’s a connection between his treatment and the fact that neither Lennox Lewis, a
three- time world heavyweight champion and arguably Britain’s greatest ever boxer, nor Frank Bruno, probably the country’s most popular fighter and also a world heavyweight champion, have been knighted. Perhaps the soon-to-be Sir Geoffrey could offer some thoughts.
I’d make Kelly Smith a Dame, too. She’s the greatest women’s footballer this country has ever produced. She, too, is a trailblazer, someone who overcame the lack of opportunities for girls to play football in England and rose to become one of the best players in the world; someone who was an example to the generation of England players that has made it to the semi-finals of the last two World Cups. I’d make Jill Neville a Dame. Not because she raised three children who went on to have a huge impact on sport in England but because she devoted 31 years of her life to working for a lower division football club, Bury, and helping it survive against the odds and striving and striving for it even when it was being destroyed from above. Why do people like her never get recognition?
The same goes for Jack Wolfenden, who worked tirelessly and without financial reward for Ramsbottom United football club for more than 30 years, marking out the pitch, treading back divots after games, washing the kit, selling the programme. He became known for a while as England’s oldest ballboy. People like him are the lifeblood of our national game. It couldn’t function without them. He retired a couple of weeks ago. He’s in his 80s. I’d make him Sir Jack.
I’d make the England team who won a gold medal in netball at the Commonwealth Games last year Dames. All of them. It’s the pinnacle in netball, one of our most popular participation sports that never gets the publicity it deserves. I’d do the same for the women who won the Cricket World Cup in 2017.
I’d knight Neil Warnock because he has won more promotions in English football than any other manager, because he’s taken charge of more than a thousand games and because he exemplifies love and passion for the game.
I’d make Judy Murray a Dame for everything she has done for British tennis, encouraging participation in a way that seems to be beyond the LTA.
I’d give the same award to Stephanie Millward, who is one of the most inspiring people I have ever met in sport. The first time I saw her compete, before the London Games, she was shaking so badly as a result of her multiple sclerosis that when she got out of the pool at the Aquatic Centre that she had to be helped to a wheelchair. Her courage and her dedication take my breath away. Si nce t hen, she has won 10 medals at the Paralympic Games. She represents everything good about sport.
Last, for this particular resignation honours list, I’d knight the England players who won the men’s Cricket World Cup in July. That, al ong with Andrew St r auss’s knighthood, should have been May’s nod to men’s cricket. It was the first time in our history we had won the game’s biggest prize and it was achieved in the most dramatic, inspirational way possible in a final that was the best cricket match many of us had ever seen.
Don’t limit it to Sir Ben Stokes and Sir Jofra Archer. Don’t make the same mistakes we made with the Boys of ’66. Don’t make some of them wait 53 years to get what they deserve. That’s a lot of prime ministers. And, the way things are going, a lot of resignations.