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Camden Sports - MATCH POINT by PAUL COWLING
Published: 18 June 2009

Fishing around for a sport we are good at...

BRITAIN. Inventor of all the world’s most popular sports, and that’s about it!
What is it about the penalty shoot-out, the gold medal play-off or a Wimbledon quarter-final that leaves us deflated after so much expectation?
Granted Andy Murray has just won at Queen’s, but is he really going to win Wimbledon this year? He will go close, like almost every gallant sporting Briton that has buckled under the weight of expectation.
Murray is already miles better than Tim Henman, and one day he will win it – but not yet!
Elsewhere this summer, England will fail in their bid to regain the Ashes, and judging by what we have seen so far, the under-21s football team won’t win the European Championships either.
As for the 2010 World Cup, it’s going to be so exciting having England there. That is until blow-up doll lookalike Michael Carrick blasts his penalty over the bar in another miserable quarter-final shoot-out.
And don’t expect a home goldrush at the 2012 Olympics either. Funding cuts and too much expectation will see us fail on the athletics track, and pretty much everywhere else. Even our wonderful cyclists will struggle to hold on to gold.
British sport just hasn’t got that ruthless edge. We can’t keep possession of a football and we can’t deal with the pressure of being in a winning position.
That said, it’s not all doom and gloom. I’ve heard we are quite good at coarse fishing, and we are still the best at snooker and darts.

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