27 March 2006

Show it again

Gary Imlach in The Independent has the splendid idea of TV resurrections of historic sports events (here):
"... if there's room in the ever-expanding schedules for regular reruns of Steptoe and Son, Porridge and - God help us - Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em, then why not great sporting events?
OK, the endings been given away in advance, but that leaves us free to concentrate on the beauty and the brilliance, the strength and the courage. By the time he died, George Best's career had been reduced to a short, repeating loop of the same half-dozen moments. Muhammad Ali will go out in a quick-cut sequence of shuffles and rhyming boasts.
But I want to see the way great players turned whole games; the full 12-round onslaught, not the final flurry of punches and a raised arm."

We can all think of sports events we'd like to see again: the 1990 Scotland-England grand slam match, any Wimbledon final with Evonne Goolagong, the 1974 (I think) Brazil-Scotland world cup match, the Llanelli-All Blacks match in the early 1970s, Dick MacTaggart's gold medal fight, all of which are gathering dust in the BBC's vaults.

I just do not want to see the 1966 World Cup final again.

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