Chrimbo Fever, and Trent

As you may find out yourself if and when I post more of these, stuff I write about sport is rarely about the games. So much of sport is contained in the stands and in culture and context that you will never be able to do justice to the significance of a sporting moment with a play-by-play elucidation of the event.

And so much of why I've always looked forward to Christmas is because of sport.

From a young age, I've long associated this time of the year with sport. For football, fixtures in the Premier League come thick and fast in mid-late December, leading up to the New Year. The action mostly culminates in the Boxing Day fixtures (which I absolutely love) and the New Year's Day games. It means that - thanks to the difference in time zones - my Boxing Day often lasts 8 hours longer. Following basketball slightly later on, the Christmas Day tip-offs became an actual thing in my family, living miles away from home then but finding warmth in huddling together before a television screen; the 2008 classic between the Los Angeles Lakers and Boston Celtics was everything we needed (besides the turkey we eventually burnt).

The excitement is so feverish, the need to watch men kick and throw balls around so pressing it's as if all the sporting action could emancipate psyches and souls hardened by a year of tedious afternoons and numbing nights. On The Anfield Wrap, this award-winning podcast/blog managed by Liverpool supporters from the city itself, there's talk of Christmas in most pieces. This one - which I'd recommend to even those who don't watch football, since it's hardly about the match and all about the people - had me hooked. It ends movingly and rather poetically:

"Stand Reds. Stand tall. The bells are ringing out for us. Happy Christmas, Mike. Happy Christmas all."

There's this idea of sport as a mass of ruffians, men high on testosterone with their chests out and voices loud. That piece shows that, but it also shows men at their most sensitive, softest versions of themselves. It's from watching sport that I've seen men reduced to tears on hearing a song belted out, and it's from playing sport that I've seen teenage boys acting tough and all suddenly breaking down and banking on every little ounce of courage left in them. The piece handles it beautifully; one reader even compared it to Yeats.

"I like to think that in my darkest, most cowardly hour that night at Highbury that the boy/man to my left side, the first lad to link me, my Gabriel, was Michael. That we stumbled and rose together in that Red front. And that maybe in some way he kept me safe."

My friend Caleb and I have this inside joke that he's "Ben" (Benjamin Woodburn) and I'm "Trent" (Trent Alexander-Arnold). We are both Reds, and both the real life Ben and Trent have been at Liverpool since they were 6, and now, as 18 and 19 year-olds, they've enjoyed a great year with the first team thanks to opportunities that the manager has showered on youth. They also happen to be really good mates, and there's this instance in November 2016 after Woodburn scores his first ever senior goal for Liverpool when Alexander-Arnold comes up to him after the final whistle, puts his arm around him and altogether seems more excited than his friend about that immense personal breakthrough moment.

I'm writing this now also because Alexander-Arnold just scored his first Premier League goal for the club he's grown up playing for on Boxing Day a few days ago. It felt special when that ball was smashed in, not so much because I might have internalised being "Trent" a bit, but more so because there's always this indescribable feeling every time a local boy who's actually born and bred in Liverpool scores in front of The Kop (which is the section of the crowd at Anfield, Liverpool's home ground, where the most fanatical fans sit - or, for the most part, stand).

I'm relieved that we've known each other for four-five years but started this joke only six months ago or else I'd really have completely internalised being "Trent" by now...

After Woodburn's goal last year someone pieced together the graphic below, showing how the local boys always seem to celebrate the same, distinct way - regardless of what year they're playing in; maybe it's a tap on the crest over the heart, or maybe with a fist bump at the end, but always, always, running to the corner flag completely hysterical with arms outstretched and looking to the stands as if it means that something more to them, more than to any other player on the pitch. Because it does, I think, if you score for your city and your people.

From left to right: Ian Rush, Robbie Fowler, Steven Gerrard, and Benjamin Woodburn.

I did look out for Alexander-Arnold's celebration on Boxing Day. Uncanny, huh?

In an age when sport deals in ridiculous wads of cash and borders are blurred, few clubs in the Premier League have this - this thing that we're fortunate to see and hold, witnessing a young lad come through the ranks at the Academy and finally play on the big stage for us. I know Liverpool fans might sound a bit self-righteous when we talk about this but it's this club that's all about roots and history.

And we like it that way.

Roger Federer: The ageing dancer

- this backdated post has been shifted here from Facebook as an idea of what's to be expected on the "sport" page! -

Wimbledon 2017 - Final
Roger Federer v Marin Cilic
(6-3, 6-1, 6-4)

Tonight his ageing feet remembered a dance step - and dance he did.

In recent years Federer has borne the image of a tired hero riding off into the sunset. Except this year, at 35, he fought his way into the Wimbledon final for the 11th time, having earlier stunned fans by winning the Australian Open back in January. He has challenged the assumed narrative; he has found the dawn in the dusk; he ensures this piece is not so much one on sport as much as it is about a man defying Time.

Poets have long made the trope of Time one of their greatest fascinations. At the onset of his decline Federer was himself dubbed the 'misspelling poet'. For periods, he has looked like the perennial frustrated artist. Yet in 2017 he has done all but passively accept mortality like Dickinson - no, in every one-handed backhand gift of a spectacle he's like Thomas raging against the dying of the light.

I watch and play football, basketball, and (sometimes) table tennis, but tennis is that sport I watch but have never played. That means my awe may be overstated - like that of a tourist marveling at the sight of the Merlion, which isn't actually that majestic. Conversely, it could be understated, since I have absolutely no idea just how difficult it is for Federer to execute those deft flicks (that's if it's possible to comprehend at all).

What I do know, is that some of the best writing I've ever read have appeared in columns on Federer's exploits - written for print or online by the likes of Phillips, Wallace, Shekhar, and locally, Brijnath. These writers are legends themselves, but sometimes I wonder if the beauty of their writing is merely a corollary of the man's craft, which alone ensures that any piece written on him automatically summons the best words and transposes them into the best order. When I watch him, this seems highly probable. Writing about Federer isn't hard. Not when he plays with such embroidery and such invention. Not when he graces us all with an eternal elegance that privileges our very existence. Not when he inflicts to afflict. Not when he affects to effect.

Teachers or editors that I've worked with often said that sometimes my writing meanders its way about, and that it's a lot of passion but no point. I've very consciously tried to work on that ever since, but for this one time, I've not edited anything above, I've not set out to be concise - these words are all raw, and so is the emotion with which Federer plays.

The paradox of Wimbledon (and of Federer at Wimbledon), is that the craft, his craft - for those moments between services - commands a silence that honours the genius at play, and yet it is the same craft that sets the stands alight in raging applause when the point has been won. Wimbledon, where he has arguably been at his most successful in a 19-year career, is where an all-white dress code already lands players in a certain position of poise. Federer goes one further, and with an artistry of nerve and sinew, lands himself in the imagination of all who watch. Such is the capacity of his style to inspire and move that I'm very sure he must have made Theresa May - sat there in the stands today - feel, for the first time ever, what it's like to be human.

There comes a point when we will run out of tomorrows - that much we must accept - but then Federer has shown us that he still lives, aging feet and all, even if just today.

(Photo by AFP)