by Some time ago there was an ad for Nescafe Gold Blend where a man is standing in an amphitheater in front of everyone he has ever met in his entire life. Eighty thousand people are divided into categories: family, ex-girlfriends, co-workers etc. They all start to their feet and are told to sit down if he hasn’t spoken to them in years, or if they don’t remember his name. , until we are left with those who are truly special to him. That inner circle gets to share Nescafe. With due regard for the popular instant coffee – after all that effort you’d at least expect a cafeteria.
“Dudes can sit around and name old sports players and have the best time.” That was a tweet sent by someone named EM Hudson from somewhere in the United States on July 15, 2021. It was retweeted 49,000 times and liked almost 300,000 miles.
I’m often tagged as someone who spends a lot of time on air doing that. But I think about it a lot – it’s not the players who define your love, but the ones who have played a role in your experience – the supporting actors, the extras, the ones who would have to sit down right at the beginning of your part. Nescafe’s own personal advertisement.
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Maybe they’re just a football sticker or a funny picture of PGA Tour Golf on the Amiga telling you how to approach the 17th at Sawgrass. They were on your TV or live in front of you for one game, one run, one jump. You may never have seen them play but somehow they just sit there in your brain.
Those individuals who have dedicated their lives to it, they might mean everything to someone else, they might be the elite elite – but to you because of their era or their sport or their pure chance, sometimes they are just a name.
It’s tempting to prove this point by continuing to write a list of people who attract a small shot of nostalgia – to tell you the truth I tried to point that out directly until I was informed that there is no random selection of sports stars there. you meet the quality threshold the Guardian aims for: “Here you are, you’ve just scrolled through the list of tennis players of the 90s, now give us a monthly direct debit.”
But in a tiny act of rebellion … Steve Backley, Mick Hill, Hughie Teape, Yvonne Murray. It’s so liberating. The list you write today may be completely different from the list you write tomorrow. Michel Vonk, John Stockton, Imran Sherwani.
The joy of someone’s name takes you back to a simpler time. Tab Ramos, Olga Korbut, Tim Witherspoon … I never saw the man’s box, I couldn’t pick him out of a crowd – but I vividly remember the announcement of his fight with Frank Bruno back in 1986. The t -Witherspoon’s name just flashed on my parent’s old television – Witherspoon Witherspoon Witherspoon – sitting on his little legs, dwindling to a dot when you turned it off.
Mats Wilander, Craig Hooper, Conchita Martínez, Brian Whittle. Brian Whittle – to this day, and for all those years, I was sure he was part of that 1991 4x400m relay in Tokyo. But it wasn’t. Roger Black, Derek Redmond, John Regis, Kriss Akabusi. What to run at Akabusi. Beating world champion Antonio Pettigrew. What a commentary from David Coleman. But where was Whittle? Three decades wasted imagining him standing proudly with the Union Jack draped around his lanky frame.
Katarina Witt, Barry Horowitz, Judy Simpson, Vasyl Rats – even more forgetfulness. Rats – one of the heroes of the World’s Greatest Goals on VHS tapes (“The Barnes perplexing”) for his wonder in that glorious game against Belgium in 1986. But it wasn’t. It was against France. Igor Belanov scored the ping against Belgium. “What a goal!” Gerry Harrison crying. I wonder how many of my early sports memories are completely invented or at least have huge factual errors.
Jahangir Khan, Gareth Chilcott, Bill Werbeniuk. Tony Allcock. Sitting in my grandparents’ house, dying of boredom, trying to steal as many Cheddars as possible from the packet without being noticed, sneaking back into the living room to watch anything on TV, and it’s in its western bowls or it. The referee holding up two small red signs, a cheering crowd, seconds ticking away on the clock.
Jonty Rhodes, Fuzzy Zoeller, Adrian Moorhouse. Bernie Kosar. In the early 90’s, I watched American Football every Sunday night at a mate’s house down the road. It was running too late, so we videoed it and watched it a week late. There was no way to find out the scores – it feels silly today to even write that down. Every week I had hot chocolate that burned my mouth as I watched Gary Imlach and Mick Luckhurst talk through the games. It got better the following Sunday – I’m not sure I tasted anything from 1991-1993. Some family friends gave me a Cleveland Browns hat once, and that was my team. Kosar was our fourth goal – in my mind he threw a side and could only hit it about 20 yards.
Ato Boldon, Dennis Mitchell, Carl Lewis – always just standing there next to Linford Christie. Alberto Tomba – the only name I can recall from David Vine, cowbells and Ski Sunday. Eddie Hemmings, John Emburey, Phil Edmonds – artistic spinners who looked like very old men strolling slowly on a cricket pitch before I was even close to understanding what spin bowling was. The Searle brothers – “the Abbagnales are tired” – Petr Korda, Tessa Sanderson, Javier Sotomayor.
And all those Panini stickers. John Chiedozie, Bob Bolder, Glenn Pennyfather, Ian Culverhouse. None of the above represent sports heroes to me, but without them my heroes have no one to play with, no context for them to even exist. And for that, they are all welcome for a very skinny Nescafe anytime they want.
