BREAKING OFF THE SHACKLES
It has been a long wait but live sport finally returned to our TV screens yesterday with horse racing and snooker back in action at Newcastle and Milton Keynes respectively. While it will take time for participants and supporters to get used to the new regulations, NEIL SQUIRES was delighted to see the first tentative steps taken on the road out of lockdown...
“I’VE got three joyous words for you,” exclaimed ITV4 commentator Phil Yates after Kojak had finished yesterday afternoon.
What could they be? “Vaccine signed off?” “Wet markets banned?” No. Bigger than all these. “Snooker is back!”
And for snooker, read televised live sport in the UK.
Two hours after the first race at Newcastle had successfully delivered the return of outdoor sport, indoor action was back too from a deserted Marshall Arena in Milton Keynes.
Well not quite deserted. There were the players – Judd Trump and David Grace on one table and Jak Jones and Stuart Carrington on the other – and a referee and a few cameramen. Plus Yates and his sidekick Dominic Dale in the commentary box, and a grinning lad in shorts with a kitchen roll and some disinfectant wiping down the table between frames.
But other than that the auditorium was a sealed-off echo chamber.
Even the Championship League host Jill Douglas was operating from home, as were analysts Neal Foulds and Stephen Hendry, who looked like he had caught too much sun on a forehead the colour of the pack.
Trump has gained a couple of inches during lockdown with barbers out of bounds but nothing looked different on the table for the world champion after an 11-week hiatus as he whitewashed the world No 85.
What was more of a problem was remembering to pick up his own rest and not shaking hands at the end of the match. He awkwardly packed his cue away in silence instead. Welcome to the new normal.
Still, at least Trump did not have to play in a mask.
Over at Newcastle the jockeys were saddled up in full facewear for the return of British racing behind closed doors. A couple of them – Ben Robinson and Tony Hamilton – even kept them on for their post-race interviews on Sky Sports.
The jockeys had stood on painted spots two metres apart in the parade ring to await the entrance of mounts whose dubious quality might have been of more interest to the rag-and-bone man in normal circumstances. Yesterday, after such a long wait, they resembled a fleet of Frankels. To see the horses in full flow again at sun-scorched Gosforth Park was a warming and uplifting sight.
Elsewhere across the networks, Ray Parlour was nodding one in for Arsenal and Graham Dilley was sending an over down against Australia as the repeats rolled on. But here was up-to-the-minute unpredictable sport unfolding in front of our eyes again.
Unscripted means not always what you may have wanted. Along with the thrill of the jet hooves of Frankly Darling – a genuine member of the Frankel fleet – there was the sad death of December Second in the feature race. Escapism has its trail of tears too.
There have been other more important things going on in sport’s absence – there still are – but whatever the pecking order of priorities, it isn’t wrong to have missed live sport.
Snooker and the horses might not pack the Premier League’s punch but they vividly reflect sport’s contrasting landscape and it was great to see them back.
“Emotional” is how Yates described his mood yesterday. It was OK to feel like that.