Sporting Polemics

Gold for Somalia

Saturday, 31 July 2010 12:56 |

When Mo Farah won gold at the European Championships yesterday it was far more than just another excellent athletics performance from the British athletics squad. To understand the importance of Farah’s victory, one has to consider the place that the Somalian community currently occupy in the British socio-economic system – rock bottom. Even the much maligned Bangladeshi community, through sheer length of tenure, has a higher social standing in our so called multi-cultural, tolerant Britain.

World Cup Journalism No8

Saturday, 24 July 2010 09:46 |

With the momentary pause in FIFA’s never-ending football road-show, come the journalistic legacy predictions. And they can only ever be predictions at this stage because we are dealing with such intangibles like the ‘national feel-good’ factor or the ‘nation building bonus’. Will the extravagant new infrastructure ever be fully used again? Probably not. Will the corporate world’s new found love of all things African translate into renewed investment in Africa and a fairer World trade system? Only time will tell, but don’t hold your breath. South Africa has extreme pockets of old colonial wealth and a seemingly intractable morass of colonial legacy problems that no one-off FIFA event can ever hope to touch and it would be totally naive to imagine otherwise.

Africa’s Year of Sport

Monday, 18 January 2010 18:20 |

Whether or not it is absolutely true, I used to delight in telling my history students that there was only one race - the Human race, and that we humans all descended from Africa. It seemed the best way to cut through their inherited tribal allegiances whether those allegiances be based on skin colour, geographic place of origin or the most facile of all tribalisms - that of religion.

The Curious Case of Matthew Syed

Thursday, 07 January 2010 14:44 |

Matt Syed is most definitely becoming a positive force in sports journalism. From right in the belly of the beast, Syed is regularly producing thought provoking editorials which, along with the long established excellence of Simon Barnes, now makes The Times the most thoughtful sports pages on offer.

Tiger Woods and the Morality Brigades.

Saturday, 26 December 2009 10:52 |

There is little doubt that Mr Woods had set himself up for an almighty fall. By playing the all American, clean living family man, his philandering ways were certain to trip him up big-time sooner or later. That day has now come. His squeaky-clean image is in tatters.

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