Fun and games

Sport, say those who write about it, is only the toy department of daily journalism. They don’t really mean it. Some of the finest wordsmiths in what may still be called Fleet Street earn a crust by writing about games, and the people who play them. In some cases — the late Ian Wooldridge comes to mind — they transcend their specialism. People bought the Daily Mail to read Wooldridge, just as they buy it now to read Quentin Letts.

In recent years sports journalism has been invaded by outsiders who, to borrow a phrase from Paul Hayward, one of its finest practitioners, display nothing more than ‘strident ignorance’. They don’t attend events, or know very much about the performers, yet hand out opinions like parking tickets. Rod Liddle, a colourful writer, can get away with it. Others, who seem terribly pleased with themselves, struggle to hold a tune. Perhaps the worst current example is the former rugby international, Brian Moore, whose long-winded attempts to write a general sports column in the Telegraph read like the jottings of a provincial Edwardian solicitor.