Myth-busting or truth? All part of the fun

Mythology fascinates all of us who follow sport, whether we know it or not. The relationship of myth to truth is one of sport’s great mysteries and frequently it seems that the myth matters more than any objective fact. It is the testing of a myth that leads me, rather unkindly I suppose, to hope that Newcastle United continue their calamitous season by losing to Liverpool tomorrow and slithering onwards to relegation.

The myth about Newcastle is nothing to do with the team or the players. It is always about the supporters. They really are the best supporters in the world — the most long-suffering, the most loyal, the most raucous, the most generally and utterly splendid.

It is a myth that comes from Newcastle itself, but it is cherished as an essential part of football everywhere else in the country. Geordie supporters! If only all supporters were like that! Now, if this were actually true, the crowds would not drop off in the very slightest if Newcastle were relegated. So let’s see Newcastle plummet and let’s see those ultra-loyal, religiously inspired supporters crowd into their thousands to cheer them on against Ipswich Town next season. Let’s make that mythology live.

Murrayfield hoping to serve up magic

It’s a Magic Weekend. Isn’t that nice? But then, isn’t it always? That’s the thing about sport — you can always rely on it for providing some kind of magic. Rugby league has set itself up to provide the stuff this weekend, so let’s see what it can manage.

The Magic Weekend takes place at Murrayfield, in Edinburgh, not exactly rugby league heartland, which I suppose is the point. Today and tomorrow, all seven of the Super League’s weekend fixtures will be played at the same ground. This is the second year they’ve done it and nobody is quite sure whether this is (a) a very good idea or (b) a very bad idea. It falls somewhere between festival and gimmick. Rugby league has been bolder than any other sport in its approach to change — remember when it was a winter sport? — and it has embraced television with a fearful ardour. This weekend it is working on what Matthew Engel, former Editor of Wisden and so forth, calls the Reverse Homeopathy Theory.

Under this theory, small amounts of rugby league are comparatively dull, but huge, fantastic, wall-to-wall rugby league overdoses make for un-look-away-able television. I hope it’s a great success for all, especially Wigan.

The king is dead – long live the princes

If ever an event operated on the Reverse Homeopathy Principle, it is the snooker World Championship, an event in which the interest you take in it is directly related to the amount of it you have already watched. And that holds doubly true for the final: best of 35 frames, to be contested tomorrow and Bank Holiday Monday.

It’s one of those chunks of sports in which, if you watch any of it, you are likely to watch a lot of it. You get sucked in, staring glassy-eyed at the clicking balls and the overwrought expressions.

The tournament seems certain to suffer, in coarse ratings terms, because Ronnie O’Sullivan was knocked out early. That takes beauty and danger out of the equation, but let’s not talk of Hamlet without the prince. There is an eerie fascination with every one of these whey-faced young men, masters at the strangest of arts, this Newtonian ballet of anguish. Let us all remember to toast Hamlet’s deputies while there’s yet some liquor left.