Skrum and The Most Dramatic Moments in Sport
OJ BORG 00:00:06
Hello and welcome to the Good Time Sports Club I'm OJ Borg
RAYA HUBBELL 00:00:10
And I'm Raya Hubble.
OJ BORG 00:00:12
You are indeed. Are you ready to throw open the doors? Put out the chairs, the trestle table. Who's manning the tuckshop this week.
RAYA HUBBELL 00:00:16
Who’s manning the tuck shop this week? This is the second time you've asked me this. I'm missing this point here.
OJ BORG 00:00:20
You don't know what a tuck shop is?
RAYA HUBBELL 00:00:23
No.
OJ BORG 00:00:24
Oh my God. Something's been lost in Canadian/English, Anglo-Canadian translations. The Tuck shop is, you'd have them in schools and youth clubs and things like that. Imagine all the really tooth-rotty, sweets and drinks they're going to send you a mental, basically they're sold those about 10 or 15p and somebody who runs the tuck shop will normally embezzle the money somehow and use it to buy cigarettes. It's basically what it took.
RAYA HUBBELL 00:00:47
Wow. I love this. I've never experienced one of my life. So I have no idea. Who's manning mine? Who's manning yours?
OJ BORG 00:00:54
I’m manning the tuck shop for the Club. What would you like from it? What was your favourite Canadian sweet as a kid?
RAYA HUBBELL 00:01:00
So, cinnamon is my favourite, favourite sweet, which you don't get here as often in the UK. And people think I'm really weird, but I love like cinnamon sweets.
OJ BORG 00:01:10
Well, hang on. Just, just cinnamon? Not covered in chocolate, not with any E-numbers. Just cinnamon?
RAYA HUBBELL 00:01:15
Trust me to get the flavour of cinnamon you into a sweets. There is a lot of e-numbers involved, my friend. Don't you worry about that
OJ BORG 00:01:24
Oh right, I’m onboard then. What is on this week show? Well, captain of the boat, Mr. Payne, Mark our producer has got a special report on a rugby charity in South Africa that's battling back against HIV and AIDS
RAYA HUBBELL 00:01:35
And then we'll be having a big barney to decide which moment from sporting history had the most late drama.
OJ BORG 00:01:42
First, the news Toyota did enough to win the 2020, 24 hours of Le Mans ahead of Rebellion in the last race for the LMP1 class. Next year, the race we'll see the debut of the new hypercar format, which promises larger fields and closer racing. And I think a lot of lust over the cars that are entered in that we were going to enter your car into this race. What car do you have? What's your hypercar?
RAYA HUBBELL 00:02:06
Like a fast one? or my…
OJ BORG 00:02:09
No, no, no, no. What you actually own?
RAYA HUBBELL 00:02:12
Well, my mine is a little mini Cooper R
OJ BORG 00:02:15
You know what you see? That's good. That's good.
RAYA HUBBELL 00:02:20
It's not bad. And our family vehicle is a Volkswagen Turan soon to be replaced with a California. So I'm going van life, my friend.
OJ BORG 00:02:33
Woah! Okay. What we need to do is take out the engine and install a jet, which I'm surely did years ago with a Renault people mover. Now you see if I was going into my hypercar into it, it's a Skoda Yeti, which I could probably make faster by taking out all the crap that's loaded in the foot wells, which I looked in today and there was five apple cores in a box and that’s just disgusting. anyway
RAYA HUBBELL 00:02:52
Yeah, defending champions Al Hilal have been thrown out of the Asian champions league after naming a squad of 11 players for their final group game. Al Hillal we're left with nine players on the field and two goalkeepers on the bench, following positive COVID tests. Their appeal to the AFC was rejected.
OJ BORG 00:03:09
We live in a crazy world, a crazy world and talking of crazy stories, which I, I read this in the paper and I thought it, you know, when people put jokes stories in night to check the day on the calendar because Ryan Reynolds yes, the Ryan Reynolds, Mr. Hottie himself is paired up with always Sunny in Philadelphia star Rob mc…. I can never do his name. Raya do it for me. Do it for me… Rob..
RAYA HUBBELL 00:03:30
McElhenney
OJ BORG 00:03:32
Thank you, to invest in Wrexham football club. Wrexham football club. The fan owned club have confirmed talks are ongoing with the Hollywood duo who are expected to attend the clubs next AGM. I think the story blows my mind. I don't understand either whether one of them has Welsh roots. One of them has been to Sexy Wrexy. I don't know where this is coming from. I mean, Ryan Reynolds.
RAYA HUBBELL 00:03:53
Sexy Wrexy? Is that what they call it?
OJ BORG 00:03:55
Well, that's apparently what they call it. Ryan Reynolds is flushed. Cause he sold his very lovely gin brand. So he's got a fair few millions in the bank and Rob Mc..whatever you said. I mean, he must have money as well. But it’s just crazy why of all the football teams did they go for Wrexham? I love it. It should be a film. Maybe it's going to be a Netflix movie, whatever it is. I love that story.
RAYA HUBBELL 00:04:17
You know, maybe that's what they're setting it up for because honestly, until today, I'd never heard of Wrexham before. So these two guys
OJ BORG 00:04:23
Sexy Wrexy? you'd never heard of Sexy Wrexy?
RAYA HUBBELL 00:04:28
Exactly. I'm I'll be really interested to see how that takeover purchase goes.
OJ BORG 00:04:35
I do. It's got to happen right first up. Let's check in with Mark Mr. Payne. Who's been talking to the man behind Skrum that’s scrum with a K
MARK PAYNE 00:04:56
Last week. We spoke to former England rugby sevens captain Ollie Phillips about amongst other things; the charity work he's done since retiring. One, such project was a community rugby scheme in the Southern African nation of Eswatini. I caught up with the founder of Skrum…
MICHAEL COLLINSON 00:05:11
Ok name, Michael John Collinson and my title is CEEO but I just I'm head of skrum here in Swaziland. Sorry, Eswatini.
MARK PAYNE 00:05:20
As Michael's little slip revealed Eswatini is a nation going through an identity change. In 2018, to celebrate 50 years of independence, the nation of Swaziland formally renamed itself Eswatini the name the native Swazis has been calling their homeland for generations. The country on the border of Mozambique and South Africa is rugged, beautiful and mountainous, but beset with severe social problems.
MICHAEL COLLINSON 00:05:46
We've got the highest incidents of HIV AIDS in the world here in Eswatini
MARK PAYNE 00:05:51
On top of that. If you're a woman in Eswatini, there's a one in three chance that you've been a victim of domestic violence
MICHAEL COLLINSON 00:05:58
And there's nobody educating the youngsters between the ages of 12 and 19, the government are prioritizing the over 22 year olds. I don't know why, but there was nobody actually going and educating youngsters about HIV/AIDS, gender violence. So I put Skrum together, which stands for saving kid's rugby mission, where we would go into schools, use the game of rugby because if you go into schools and say to youngsters, I'm going to lecture you on HIV/AIDS. First thing they do is they say, can I go to the toilet? You say, yes, God, they run away, which is we all do. It that'd be 12 or 14 or 16 year old. We'd all do the same.
MARK PAYNE 00:06:40
Wisely Michael uses games…
MICHAEL COLLINSON 00:06:42
Tag rugby, bulldog
MARK PAYNE 00:06:43
And rugby related slogans.
MICHAEL COLLINSON 00:06:45
Pass the ball, not the virus and, you know, hit the gap, not the family, you know, protect the ball, protect yourself
MARK PAYNE 00:06:52
Before moving into a formal classroom setting where the kids are now fully engaged and less likely to run for the hills. Here a more formal teaching process takes place. Information leaflets are distributed about the consequences of unprotected sex and domestic violence. As Michael takes more of a backseat and his team takes the reigns and share their experiences with the children. How Michael became involved with the project is complicated, but really begins when he's life changed forever. Following a horrific accident that took place over the Christmas period nearly 20 years ago
MICHAEL COLLINSON 00:07:24
Boxing Day, 2002, we were driving home from a friend's party miles away in the bush, it was dark, raining. It was pouring down. Uh, we came around the corner and as happens in Swaziland there’s cows in the road, we hit the cow and we tripped it. We were in the low car and instead of knocking the cow away, we tripped it and it landed on the roof. On my side of the roof, the roof caved in, landed on me and severed my spinal cords on. I can't remember. I think it's T4 at the top of my neck and paralyzed from the chest downwards, from there
MARK PAYNE 00:08:05
In 1987, Michael brought the first HIV AIDS and STI test to Eswatini, but it was his accident 15 years later, and its impacts on Michael's mental health that led to a change in Michael's approach to the HIV crisis.
MICHAEL COLLINSON 00:08:18
And we used to go out and sort of go drive into the rural areas, into the Bush and meet people and stay out there overnight. On weekends, we met some amazing people. I had my accident in 2002 and we didn't go out for five or six years because you know, I didn't want to go out mentally. And then we did one weekend. We went out and we've we found Mark that people we knew had gone. And when we asked, where is so and so “where are the Dlaminis?” “where are the Matsebulas?”, I think there's a really polite way here “oh they moved on”. So we went, “Oh, that's nice. Where have they gone?” “No, they moved on”. Which means they died. So we looked into it, I looked into it and realized that this HIV issue was huge. I mean, this now there was 42% of us with HIV. We've got 200,000 OVCs, which is orphans and vulnerable children because of the HIV out of a population of 1.2 million. Goodness me, that's a lot of orphans. I know, realize that, you know, the youngsters needed educating because if we not educate them and try and stop this thing, there's HIV, there's going to be no Swazis left in 30 years
MARK PAYNE 00:09:30
Under Michael was leadership. Skrum set its sights on reaching as many schools as possible across the country.
MICHAEL COLLINSON 00:09:37
We kicked off in 2008. And so we've been going for 12 years and in that time there’s 870 something schools here in Swaziland, they’ve built some new ones, so that's why I don't know exactly, but we've reached 650 in that 12 years. And now, biggest issue now is we're a very mountainous country. You know, we are Swaziland where we were and they've changed the name - but they call us Switzerland, because we’re very mountainous. So we’re finding it difficult to get to the schools. And so we're a victim of our own success and the victim of the terrain that we live here in Eswatini
MARK PAYNE 00:10:16
But the charity has overcome the logistical challenges and are expanding that program further into areas of female health.
MICHAEL COLLINSON 00:10:23
A girl is ridiculed when she starts her period; you're at school and if you start bleeding, then is basically ridiculed and you feel, I don't know, victimized could be a great word and it's correct word. So girls don't go to school during that week. And as I looked into it, I realized how much school time in a 36 week period of a school year. That's how many weeks girls don’t go to school here. Girls are missing every fourth week. They're missing a week and, we've got to educate the girls and not only the girls, but the boys, because we have another team. The men, the male coaches educate the boys as well about menstrual cycle. Nobody wants to talk about it. And that's why everybody likes it because nobody wants to talk about it. And we're willing to talk about it. And we've got two great girls in Shayla and Imelda who go out there, they're 26 years old, so they can relate to young girls. And it's important that we do raise the awareness that you're not, there's nothing wrong with you just because you bleeding for a week. You know it. And we're trying to now raise awareness so we can get reusable sanitary pads out there because girls here, they're using grass. They're using newspaper. They're using socks with newspaper and using socks with grass in, you know, old fabric. I mean they say it's just really, really unhealthy. And we're trying to educate the girls on how you can get past that and get reusable sanitary pads, because Senate disposable, sanitary pads just cost too much. The girls haven't got the money, uh, to, to afford sanitary pads. And it's a basic thing. It's just so basic. So what we're trying to do now is raise awareness and get the government to agree. So we can try and raise funds to purchase reusable, sanitary pads and give three to each girl. We can. So bang, there you go. They at least they've got a sanitary pad that they can clean. And it's there’s.
MARK PAYNE 00:12:25
This work is far from over the number of HIV and AIDS cases in the country as risen steadily with more than 27% of the population fighting the disease. But despite these worrying numbers, scrums message is clearly getting through.
MICHAEL COLLINSON 00:12:38
Everybody knows who we are everywhere we go. They know our logo, they know us. I mean, we go and people say, “Hey, Skrum”. And you just know they know who you are and they know the message. Pass the ball. Not the virus hit the gap, not the family. When you go places and you meet people, I mean a great story. We went to fill up petrol in the middle of nowhere and we have petrol pump attendants here. He walked up to the car. I said, “How are you Mr. Collinson?” I'm like, “yeah, I'm fine. How you're doing?” And of course, straight away I kick into that. “Yeah. Are you doing fine?” or “Yeah, do you remember?” “Of course I remember you. Yeah. How you doing?” I coached him with Skrum seven years ago and he still remembers this and he still remembers Skrum. He remembers the song. And that's what you know, that when everybody knows who you are.
MARK PAYNE 00:13:27
And that awareness is a key part of the battle against HIV/AIDS, domestic violence and poor sex education that spread in part due to a lack of knowledge. Michael knows the journey ahead is a long and challenging one, but he has big plans for the future
MICHAEL COLLINSON 00:13:41
In the future. We'll be set up here in Eswatini we'll be here running like we are now. And then I'd like to go and focus on if funds become available. Botswana are the second highest incidence of HIV in the world, Botswana. And that is only eight hours away from us. Third highest in the world, Lesotho, which is six hours away from us. So if you look that one, two and three HIV in the world are right here. So what I'd love to do is funds, you know, get the funds together to go take scrub and drop it straight into Botswana and do the same day and go to Lesotho and do it there. I that's how I, and they've also got Botswana they've also got the issues with gender violence and female hygiene and so have Lesotho, with both female hygiene and gender violence. So if Skrum can be taken to Botswana and Lesotho too then that's what I'd like to do.
MARK PAYNE 00:14:36
And of course we wouldn't be talking about this if it wasn't for last week's guest Ollie Phillips. So just before we left, I asked Michael what his memories were of all his time with the team
MICHAEL COLLINSON 00:14:44
Ollie came here. And I have heard, I heard of only Phillips and he was a captain of the England sevens and all that. So you think, Oh my goodness, he came here, no fancy hotel or anything. He said, no, I'm coming for a few days. He stayed across the road. Great, he got stuck in, came here, came to the house. Came, helping cooking and everything. It was like, okay, this is not what you expect from England captain and his enthusiasm and his want to get involved was just unbelievable. And he says that my enthusiasm was infectious. His enthusiasm was infectious. We took him into the middle of the Bush. Mark I'm talking about the middle of the middle of nowhere. And we ended up doing bulldog. We're playing bulldog and tag. We're doing a community session and the age was 6 to 60 and we got photographs. I'd love to dig them out because there's Ollie Phillips, England Sevens captain playing tag against 60 year old women
MARK PAYNE 00:15:43
Like Ollie, Michael's enthusiasm, passion and drive is infectious. And a constant reminder to me of the good that sport can do.
RAYA PHILLIPS 00:15:56
Thank you very much. Mark with Michael from Skrum there. Great story. Very entertaining,
OJ BORG 00:16:02
Fabulous story. Now this week's top 10 is dramatic finales and you know, there are some very, very good ones. I'm guessing Mark that we've gone through this week based on the Tour de France.
MARK PAYNE 00:16:13
Yeah, and my amazing ability to curse Primoz Roglic from what seemed like an unloseable position, I've cursed him to the point where he lost it. When you know, I, you know, I should have put money on it.
OJ BORG 00:16:25
Yeah. That is the reason I know people. I know people who did put money on a man. I dunno. I've done podcasts for the past three weeks on the Tour de France and the man who's won it. I'm still struggling with his name. Does anyone have the right pronunciation? Because I thought it was okay Ta-Jay- Pog-atch-ar
MARK PAYNE 00:16:46
See I’ve gone with Ta-day- Pog-atch-ar but I particularly enjoyed Sean Kelly, his pronounciation of it, which is Tadd-edge Pog-ack-car.
OJ BORG 00:16:55
I've heard. So Pog-atch-ar is the one that I've heard and then I've heard Poga-char I've have heard poga-char. That was, everyone was doing Poga-char. Shall we just from now on? Can we all agree? Just call him the Pog - the pogmeister.
MARK PAYNE 00:17:07
Pog versus Rog.
OJ BORG 00:17;17
Yes. Okay, good. Okay. So I'm guessing it's based on that. I must've been just before we get to the top 10, I sort of wanted it to be closer. I did. I wanted, I thought I sort of wanted pretty much Roglic to win it. I thought they had the best team. The tactics were pretty good. And I quite like Primoz and I was sort of rooting in all of the mountains, but the way he lost it and the crushing defeat and the fact that people are, and this is not me, I'm just, I'm repeating what's out there when somebody does something superhuman in cycling people immediately questionnaire. And it has been pointed out that the team at UAE Emirates has a funky past.
MARK PAYNE 00:17:43 Yeah. I mean, I'll tell you what, what springs to me. And I don't even know if he brought up this right here as well, but I, if you watching it, it was one of those moments where you suddenly felt the need to tell people that don't care about cycling. And that's when you can tell it's a really good moment. I remember watching it and I texted my mum watching, cycling with me when I was younger. I hadn't paid zero attention and said, well, turn off what you're watching and turn it on because there's incredible thing happening. I said, the exact words were, “they're going to have the closest finish in Tour de France history, like turn it on. And then he won by a minute. So it was amazing.
RAYA HUBBELL 00:18:15 And it's also one of those things where it's very rare that you have a time trial on the last day and a time trial up a mountain to finish. And there was just so many different variables that made it quite exciting. And then of course, when he starts taking over and the time is going down and I mean, yeah, I don't think anyone would have thought it was a whole minute. There was just no way, but incredible performance. But yet, like you said, you know, the rumour mills start flying and people start being accusatory before anything's even been proven or,
OJ BORG 00:18:47
Well, let's just celebrate the fact that a man who was 21 when he went at 22, the day after the youngest winner of the Tour de France, since, 1903, possibly ever, depending on how you, how you manage that sort of thing, um, he won it. So let's celebrate that until, until further notice. So where are we starting then? Mark where are we starting?
MARK PAYNE 00:19:07
You know, the obvious place to go when we're talking about great finales and particularly given the story we had is the Tour de France is closest ever finished. Like we mentioned before, which is Laurent Fignon and Greg Lemond, and we've alluded to this finished, but if you're new to cycling and the messages that I've got, people that are quite new to cycling and listen to this podcast and are kind of getting into it slowly with us hammering it every now and then this is one of the greatest sporting moments full stop. So you've got Laurent Fignon he’s sort of an older traditional cyclist - cycles with glasses doesn't wear a skin suit, rides on an old fashioned bike.
OJ BORG 00:19:45
He looks like it looks like the guy at your school who possibly runs the Dungeons and dragons club in the lunch breaks,
MARK PAYNE 00:19:53
Or at least the one who won’t let you into the library after eight o'clock.
OJ BORG 00:19:56
Yeah, exactly. who frisks you to make sure you don't have bubble gum as you go in there.
MARK PAYNE 00:20:00
And then you've got Greg Lamond who we’ve spoken about before on this list and it, for different reasons, uh, riding with tri-bars, an, aero helmet - he looks like he's from a different era. And, basically what happened earlier in the tour, Greg Lemond did put 50 seconds into him in a 40 odd kilometer time trial and now to do pretty much the same again on a much shorter time trial was about 20K. And basically the logic was, there's no way that he's going to be able to overturn this 50 second deficit on the final day a bit like what was happening with Pogacar and Roglic and crazily. It came down to the fact - that he lost by - eight seconds. And this is the most incredible thing I've ever read. Apparently his famous ponytail. If he cuts it off, That was 8 seconds worth of drag.
OJ BORG 00:20:53
I had a ponytail for many years. It was all based on a bad haircut. I had one. Yeah, yeah. I had a really bad haircut. I walked into a, hairdresser's holding a picture of Jason Donovan. I said this place, I, I was sad. I was so emotionally scarred by refused to cut my hair for about a decade. Um, so yes, so you're telling me basically had I taken up cycling at a younger age. I should have cut off my ponytail and it would have done better.
MARK PAYNE 00:21:15
Yeah.
OJ BORG 00:21:17
Wow. Eight seconds of ponytail. Brilliant. I love it. Okay. Um, how'd you want to mark this Mark
MARK PAYNE 00:21:23
I haven't gotten a nice catchy phrase for it.
OJ BORG 00:21:26
Closeability
MARK PAYNE 00:21:27
That’ll do
OJ BORG 00:21:29
Eight seconds in the tour, de France is a ridiculously small moment to come down to the final stage and it still be that I'm going to give it a nine. Yeah.
RAYA HUBBELL 00:21:35
I'm with you. I, you, I don't think he quite understand the distances that are travelled in the tour de France until you spend an entire summer, namely last year, watching the tour de France like the live coverage from start to finish with your boyfriend at the time. Um, and even I who love cycling, didn't quite understand it until I realized that I'd done nothing, but watch cycling for two full weeks. Apart from one day, eight seconds is extraordinary. I want to, I kind of want to give it eight to get a nice round number, but you know, I'm tipping the scales at nine or 10.
OJ BORG 00:22:10
Yeah. I agree with you. Is there any reason you only watched two weeks of the Tour de France? Did you just not fancy with the final week?
RAYA HUBBELL 00:22:15
Three weeks!
OJ BORG 00:22:18
You only know, I'll tell you what, you only know the true distance is the Tour de France. When you have driven around behind it.
RAYA HUBBELL 00:22:22
Have you really had that opportunity?
OJ BORG 00:22:25
I've done it twice. Yeah. I've done two tours. So I've done fair felt like saying like two tours of duty. It's like being in Vietnam, but, um, I did two tours. And the first one I did, which was very much as a reporter and doing podcasts for the BBC, it was okay. But I mean, literally there was a couple of drives, which are outrageous. You'll do a big long day. So at 10, 12 hour days, and then you have to drive five or six hours. It is quite literally a lap of France. And some of it is on hairy roads and you're tired. And you're arguing with the people in the car. It's not the best. The worst drive we ever did was, we had this new fangled. I think it was a Renault and it was one of those cars that has all, it's all singing, all dancing and they've thrown everything at it on a very hot day, possibly the hottest day. For some reason, the engine management went mad and it turned on all the heated seats on the hottest day. And also we couldn't get the windows to roll down fully. You've now literally all of us, including our female producer sat in our underwear as we drove off the top of this mountain. And then the second, the second tour I did, which was very much the same distances, but I wasn't reporting. I was doing like live shows around it and it meant that I drove instead of driving to like the starts and the finishes, the races, I just drove from like vineyard to champagne seller to cafe, to mountainside cafe, to pub in the... You know, it was just, I just did this like amazing like three week jaunt around, uh, around France. It was amazing. But yeah, the distances I agree are ridiculous.
MARK PAYNE 00:23:46
Now I went to go for a football one. There are so many great football stories of coming back from, you know, last minute moments. I nearly put Watford, sneaking into the play-off final after conceding a last minute penalty, I nearly put Manchester United beating Bayern Munich in the Champions League final.
OJ BORG 00:24:01
I know the one you've gone for, you’ve gone for the rivalry, the other one?
MARK PAYNE 00:24:08
Yeah, but just because the stakes were so high it’s Manchester City winning the Premier League in 2012. This was just one of the most extraordinary weekends in football. I can remember. This is again, the way I judge this in terms of the drama is did you feel the need to tell someone that doesn't care about the sport and that is, I did that a lot. “Did you see?”
OJ BORG 00:24:28
Did it, did I need to tell anyone who wasn’t into sport? No did I need to do is tell everyone who knew who was a Manchester United fan about the game for the next year, yes.
MARK PAYNE 00:24:35
So I don't know if you know about this, Raya? Cause I don't know where you are in terms of…
RAYA HUBBELL 00:24:42
My love for football. Yeah. Right.
MARK PAYNE 00:24:46
Well basically what happened? Manchester United Man City, you have a long standing rivalry, typically dominated by Manchester United, who basically won everything. And particularly during the nineties and noughties Manchester City were the smaller brother got some investment, significant investment, it has to be said, but still was struggling to take that final step. And win their first league title, they come into the final game of the season. All they need to do is match Manchester United’s result, they're at home against a team that's threatened with relegation. They're the favourites to win. Obviously Manchester United are away against the mid table team, obviously still favourites to win, but it seems like it's destiny. It's finally going to happen. Manchester City somehow conspired to lose the lead. They're trailing in injury time Manchester United have won. The game is over they’re pretty much celebrating on the pitch and in injury time they score two goals. One of which is 93 minutes into the game to win the league. And the crowd goes wild. It's one of those moments. You just, if you've never seen it before, look it up. It's incredible.
OJ BORG 00:25:43
It is an emotional moment. I grew up in Leicester and everyone there, it was full of glory supports cause Leicester, you know, this is years before the chance of winning the league.
RAYA HUBBELL 00:25:53
Glory supporters!
OJ BORG 00:25:55
Yeah. They'd come in every year were wearing United tops. My brother's a United fan and he grew up a bit in Leicester, mainly in Malta, you know, it's from my childhood United won everything. And I think unless you're a fan, you get a bit of animosity towards that team. And I also had a bit of a soft spot for Man City. Now it's very, it's a very different Man City, which were backed by one of the richest men on the planet. And they had one of the richest teams around them they won the league to the Manchester city of years before. But I remember that final day from a, from a true, “you can't write it” perspective of sporting drama. It's an eight. No, it's a nine. The fact that it was Manchester city versus Manchester United is all of your tens. I give it four out of, seven top marks.
RAYA HUBBELL 00:26:40
Do you know the, one of the main experiences I've ever had of Manchester city and Manchester United is a very long time ago when I first moved to the UK, dated someone from Manchester and on one of our dates, we went to watch, we went to watch a Manchester United at home play Manchester city. So it's called a derby and this was maybe the week before Rooney signed for Man United. And the only thing I could hear in the crowds for 90 minutes, I basically didn't pay attention to the game. I couldn't tell you who won, probably Man United at the time. But Manchester City fans going “Rooney is going to Chelsea. He's getting to Chelsea” for two minutes. and for me, I think that's why football frustrates me is that if you go, you want to watch these amazing games and I'm just in incapsulated with what's going on in the fans
OJ BORG 00:27:37
I go for the theatre
RAYA HUBBELL 00:27:39
It is. It's theatrical. So back to my point here is that you, this goes to the theatrical of football. Um, there's sometimes a real beauty to it, but other times you just can't write this stuff. You couldn't bet on something like that happening.
OJ BORG 00:27:58
You could, you could write it, but people would say stop overthinking it. It's like, it's like a 2020 where, you know, we've had all sorts of things happen already. Then we, what was it? There's something happened earlier in the year. Like we had earthquakes and then there was like weird rain. And then there was, then there was fire. Then there was the pandemic. And then halfway through the pandemic, we had murder Hornets, you know, it was just like, stop overwriting it, man. And then there was like, there was like an asteroid which claimed close to earth. And then they found possible life on Venus because they found killer gas. You know, it's just, that's what I feel overwritten. And it's almost, if you weren't there to see if you didn't know what happened, you'd go, come on. You're never going to get that script through. Cause it's unbelievable. But believe it baby believe
RAYA HUBBELL 00:28:38
Unbelievable Jeff, right?
MARK PAYNE 00:28:43
Well, I was just going to say with that. And we've all of these. What I would say is when, when this article goes up on the website, there will be the clips that you'll be looking for. And every single one of these comes with amazing commentary of people that capture the moment, perfectly. Everyone, who's a football fan, knows ”Aguero!” with twelve o’s. And if this is one that you probably won't know the commentary, but if you've ever followed endurance racing in motorsport in any way, you'll recognize the voice of John Hindaugh a guy from the Northeast of the country who’s a very enthusiastic fan. And he was a perfect man to commentate on what is probably one of the most gutting things that's ever happened at Le Mans. So if you don't know the history, there's always a team that is nearly, nearly gonna win nearly that every year they almost get it. And it's typically like if you're talking about Man United and their dominance in the nineties and noughties Audi were the team to beat, they won it every bloody year, unloads, the teams came close, but not close enough to beat them. So Peugeot in the early 2000s got to the point where they were leading and had four cars drop out in the last three hours, pretty devastating, but nowhere near what Toyota have had. So in 2014, they were on pole. They led for most of the race. One of their cars lost a load of time. The other one got hit by a GT car, did a back flip and crashed while it was leading. In 2016, they thought they've got it sorted. And this was the, this is the moment in particular. They have got all the way to the final lap of a 24 hour race where they've planned for four years to get there and a part on the car that costs a hundred hundreds of millions to develop that cost five pounds breaks. And they are stranded directly under their pit crew on the last lap with no way of finishing. They eventually tour around too slow to qualify, to finish the last lap. They ended up getting disqualified and were already been overtaken by the race leaders. They end up coming well, one lap away from them on victory and lose it all 23 hours and 58 minutes in.
OJ BORG 00:30:43
I mean, cue the sad music from Romeo and Juliet. That's what happens to that moment. Absolutely that moment. I mean, that's not a close finish. That's just, I mean, you throw your steering wheel at the wall.
RAYA HUBBELL 00:30:58
Could you imagine the level of sleep deprivation that you're suffering from at that point? And I like, I am, I struggle when I'm sleep deprived for one night. Like this is a 24 hour period. I was no way I could go through, um, as a competitor losing another final lap, I would be devastated, an entire team with that sort of sleep apnoea would be managing it.
OJ BORG 00:31:27
Yeah. I mean, I mean, you'll know this better than me, Raya, as an endurance athlete, soon as you start doing big things where you are at your physical limit, your emotions become really uncontrollable. Yeah. Like really uncontrollable light. I did this bike ride, which was three days, and it was really long days in the saddle. And part of that reason was the terrain was just a lot harder than I thought it was going to be. But I was, I started to get really quite emotional towards the end when I did my Everest thing, which took us whatever it was like 20 hours. I was, I was, I was in tears towards the end. Just not for any reason other than I couldn't control my emotions.
RAYA HUBBELL 00:32:03
It's really interesting because endurance sport is not just about how fit and how long you can go for it. It's not just about the food and the nutrition side of things. It's actually about taking yourself to such an, a limit depleting your body of so much energy, whether that be nutrition or even muscle wastage, you name it and your body just, it starts to mess with your hormones, boy, guys, and women included. And you become a wreck. I mean, I don't know how many people have said to me at the, at the, on the red carpet, um, finish of an iron man. How many people have cried or they're around people in the finish line have cried and it's, it's not just because you're so proud of yourself for finishing. It is because you are physically and mentally broken. Um, and an iron man doesn't take 24 hours. I mean, for some people again,
OJ BORG 00:32:58
What are you saying? Don't you look at me when you say that sort of thing. What's the world record?
RAYA HUBBELL 00:33:06
07:57:00
OJ BORG 00:33:08
I’ll do it in six
MARK PAYNE 00:33:14
Is this Britney Spears that time where she claimed she did a hundred meters in six seconds?
OJ BORG 00:33:18
This is the Britney Spears claim, or it's the dear leader It's Kim Jong Un, who basically set every record, including he shot, I think an 18 hole round of golf. Cause he got 18 holes in one. I mean, obviously
MARK PAYNE 00:33:32
Talking of golf you're seamlessly led me on to one of the others on this list, which is the 2012 Ryder cup, the miracle of Medinah. Now I'm not a big fan of golf in general, but I love the Ryder cup. There's something about it that just draws you in. And I can remember sitting in a pub and when I was, I was out with friends and I just thought, “Oh, they're not going to win.“ And it was just on, in the background and everyone was doing the same thing. Everyone had kind of had a half interest in it. And then slowly through the day that interest rose to the point where at the end of it, the whole pub seemed to be surrounding the TV and people were shouting turn it up. You know, it was only silence to start with. It was one of the most incredible moments. So, but you don't, if you don't know what happened and going into day five,
OJ BORG 00:34:10
Don’t give it away, spoiler!
MARK PAYNE 00:34:15
If you've not seen the box set, get started, pause this, come back! But yeah, it's US leading 10-6 on the final day. America needed four and a half points to win and then basically there's, there's a massive toing and froing through the game. The first four matches are won by Europe, including Rory McIlroy who only got to the ground, to tee off on time because he was given a lift in a police car. Cause he was late to the, to the tee. That's a story in itself. He wins his match. Justin Rose puts Europe in front. Zach Johnson wins matched for America, goes back and forth, back and forth to the point where there's three games left in play America leading to their drawing. The upper one, as that stands, America wins the Ryder cup. It looks like it's over. Sergio Garcia is facing Jim Furyk on the 16th hole. Furyk starts to celebrate as the ball is on the way to the hole because it looks like it's going to go in to give him a two shot lead, which will basically mean he's guaranteed half a point and he's probably going to win it. It gets to the hole and sort of swivels round it. It's like it's been remote controlled. It moves around the hole goes off the side and then Garcia ties that hole and Furyk never recovers. He loses the next two holes. Sergio Garcia goes from losing the match to winning it. That turns the game around. Martin Kaymer the other European that’s having a fight against, Steve Stricker that wins and in the end Tiger Woods ends up giving up his match. It’s over Europe wins it and they’ve come back from I think it's one of the biggest deficits in Ryder Cup history, incredible.
OJ BORG 00:35:47
I also don't follow golf particularly every now and again. I’ll watch a little bit of it, but it's, you know, it's not my bag baby, but I remember watching parts of that and being absolutely blown away and it, but it's one of those where I think golf can be confusing. Anyway, I think that the rider coat could be confusing with holes and splits and points and the rest of it. But it was, it was, it was commentated on so well that you were just, you were wrapped up in the Sports drama. Yeah. I'm gonna give it 10 out of 10 and minus five for being such a posh game
RAYA HUBBELL 00:36:21
Says the guy whose love is of cycling another pretty possible.
OJ BORG 00:36:26
How dare you! The bicycle is an egalitarian workhorse.
RAYA HUBBELL 00:36:33
Listen I totally agree with you. Totally agree
MARK PAYNE 00:36:32
How much did the bikes they were riding in the Tour de France cost out of curiosity?
OJ BORG 00:36:35
This year? About "£12,000
RAYA HUBBELL 00:36:41
Okay. Most of, most of them, most of them top £10,000. Yeah.
OJ BORG 00:36:44
Oh God. Yeah. That's that's the irony recycling though. Isn't it? That it is gone for. It was, it was, you know, the away for, for working class people to get about the tour de France was about working class. It was always about poor people then got corrupted by, you know, middle class, the middle classes, especially in the school sentence. Think about golf. I think golf has always been posh. I don't think there was ever never a time where people were jumpers for holes where they just knocking balls about
MARK PAYNE 00:37:07
Yeah, you would never get two lads from Dagenham going around whacking balls around with a pair of sticks.
OJ BORG 00:37:13
No, it's always been a posh game, like tennis. I think tennis has always with, I mean, there are games which have been traditionally played by the upper classes. I mean, there's no working class circuit for pro fencing as the that's just called twatting your mate with a broom handle.
RAYA HUBBELL 00:37:25
Not one that I know of
MARK PAYNE 00:37:26
I mean you could just say that’s a fight in a pub. There’s plenty of those going on round here.
OJ BORG 00:27:31
You mean like a knife fight? People with colanders on their face?
RAYA HUBBELL 00:37:39
Exactly. That blade is not regulation size.
OJ BORG 00:37:46
Is that a foil? It looks more like a shank to me
MARK PAYNE 00:37:47
Because in upper-class circles, they used to throw down a challenge and they'd go and get swords and get dressed up. Whereas in a pub, when someone in a normal person has a fight, they just punch the guy in the face.
OJ BORG 00:37:56
I've got a challenge for you. Mark I've got you here. Mark well, this is, hang on. Well, this is it. Okay. So I've got a challenge for you Mark for next week, right? And that is, there is a sport that I saw mentioned, which is full contact, medieval fighting. So they all wear armour. They all have swords. They all have swords and it's like a proper fight league. Okay. They have training camps, they have the works, they don't pull any punches. You're not allowed the two things. You can't do it. You can't stop. And you can't, you can't manipulate the small joints. Everything else you can do.
MARK PAYNE 00:38:29
Sort of like early UFC rules but with armour?
OJ BORG 00:38:31
They call it like the ultimate UFC. It's big in Australia. So my challenge to you is let's have an interview on that for next week.
MARK PAYNE 00:38:41
I mean, I'll try. Should we carry on with this?
OJ BORG 00:38:43
Let's do one more.
RAYA HUBBELL 00:38:45
Yeah.
MARK PAYNE 00:38:46
Okay. Well, I couldn't leave this one off the list because it's the one that I have the most visceral memory of. So back in the mid-2000s Lewis Hamilton was, you know, before he was a dominant driver was starting to look like he might be a nearly man. He’d just missed out in 2007 his debut season, he’d had an incredible battle with his teammate. Fernando Alonso who was the reigning champion. The title seemed to be destined to end up with either him or Alonso. The pair managed to mess it up over at several races with various different clashes. And yeah, essentially it came down to a race where you needed to finish fifth. He ended up at the back of the agreement with an electrical problem and finished sixth. So just missed out. The next year. He comes to Brazil. The final race of the season needed to finish fifth. He's main title rival Felipe Massa needs a win in order to stop him from taking the title. It seemed like a fairly easy proposition that weekend, but McLaren really struggled. So he could only qualify fourth Massa was on pole. It suddenly looks more and more dramatic. Then it got worse. There was huge downpours at the start of the race. The race was delayed. Hamilton does manage to get to fifth and then they mess up his pit strategy, bring him into late. He goes down the field to seventh, works his way back up to fifth. Every time he got to that magic fifth position, something would happen in the end. It comes down to a point where the track is dried, Hamilton’s in fifth and then it starts raining and he has a decision to make. Does he come in for wet tyres or does he stay out and try and see if it dries out? He pits Massa pits. All the leaders pit apart from the two Toyotas and a couple of back markers, he just needs to maintain the fifth position he's got and hope he holds on. A bizarre set of circumstances happen. One of the backmarkers, who’s still on the dries has got, more pace, goes past them. And in doing so, moves him off the track. He loses track position. A young guy called Sebastian Vettel overtakes him. He has got no chance at this stage of overtaking him. He's more than a second clear goes into the final lap and the downpour just becomes extreme. And I can remember I was with a guy who absolutely hated Lewis Hamilton who was literally standing on the chairs going and he's blown it. He's blown it. And like the geek. I am I, have the live timing thing open, and you can see it happening in slow motion. All of a sudden he was the guy in for who hadn't paid for wet tires was losing 10 seconds. Like every sector, it was 25 seconds in front. And it was like, it was just a matter of if he was going to lose it in time and on the screen, as Hamilton came up with final corner that other team has celebrated, Hamilton goes past him and crosses the line in one movement. It's not even like he goes past them and then celebrates it's all way around them crosses the line. And if you've never seen the footage, it's, it's amazing. The guy is in the Ferrari garage literally punching the wall and staring with shock while he's girlfriend Nicole Scherzinger bizarrely at the time…
OJ BORG 00:41:45
Who looks like his auntie at the time.
MARK PAYNE 00:41:47
It was just the most, I mean, you can't get much more dramatic than winning it on the final corner of the final race of the season as far as drama is concerned
OJ BORG 00:41:53
Yeah. I mean, I'm not the biggest, I'm not, I'm not the biggest motor sport fan. Not anymore. I sort of lost the love of it, but I, that is another one of those that transcends not just the most well, but transcends sport in general to become Oscar worthy where you get to that. 8 out 10.
RAYA HUBBELL 00:42:17
Yeah. I'm with you. This is, this was sort of right at the beginning of his career before anyone knew whether he was going to be arguably one of the best sort of racing car drivers of all time, he was still pretty young. There was still a huge amount of, shall we say theatrics, taking it back to football for a second, because of the sort of roughing and toing and froing between his, his teammate, Fernando Alonzo. Yeah, I loved this moment. I thought it was unbelievable because you just didn't think he could, he could make up the time and right at the very end, just making that move suddenly, suddenly people sat up and I think we thought, okay, this kid's going to do something good here. So eight out of 10,
MARK PAYNE 00:42:57
If you want to see the rest of the top 10 and go to our website and check out her feed, it will be published there.
OJ BORG 00:42:59
Amazing, amazing, amazing, amazing. Which, I think brings us to the end of another show. Thank you very much to Mark as always. Thank you very much to Ray Hu-bell, we didn't do your week in sport. You want to do yours quickly? Should we end the show on it?
RAYA HUBBELL 00:43:16
Well, I, the reason why I was upset that we haven't done the weekend sport is actually mine was pretty boring, but I was really excited to hear how you got on. Cause you did something quite remarkable this way.
OJ BORG 00:43:27
Yeah. And I played it down beforehand. I did, I did part of the second city divide, which was, um, it's a 600 kilometre plus ride between two of the UK cities, Manchester and Glasgow. People from Birmingham. Don't @ me. I didn't say they, they were the two second cities. Okay. It's not me who came up with it anyway, I'd read it all, had a big old faff about it. And then we started out and it was a lot harder than any of us thought it was going to be not really because of the distance. Not really because of the climbing, even though every day was a 100km or there about. That one day was 150km and one was 95km. But in the climbing was anywhere between sort of 2000m and 2,250m per day with fully laden bikes. But some of it was un-rideable and it's one thing going up a steep hill when you're on tarmac or on a road, because you can, you can sit in and you can weave in the rest of it. When you go into what is a gravel path, you about wheels go in you bang, banging up and down things. It is hard work. I am broken from it. I am absolutely broken. This week has been tough because of it.
RAYA HUBBELL 00:44:21
What sort of bike were you riding?
OJ BORG 00:44:22
I rode my cyclocross bike. And after all the faff, making sure I was wearing the right clothes and having the right bag and the rest of, I went out with the wrong tyres. Luckily luckily somebody had tweeted me, who runs singletrack magazine, a guy called Chips and bizarrely. He actually lived not far away from our first stop and he dropped me off a pair of actual gravel tires because trying to do 100K on really aggressive mud tires was killing me. It was really killing me. It was great. I'm glad I've done it. It was type two fun, but yeah, my knees are a mess. I'm a mess emotionally. I'm going to cry.
RAYA HUBBELL 00:44:59
No, pull yourself together bud. We're super proud of you though.
OJ BORG 00:45:03
It was very good. I'd recommend everyone have a crack
RAYA HUBBELL 00:45:06
Round of applause good going, great work
OJ BORG 00:45:11
We should all do it anyway. It's been great. Thank you so much for listening to this. The Good Time Sports Club it has been a Shocked Giraffe production. I'm OJ Borg
RAYA HUBBELL 00:45:21
and I'm real humble. Thank you very much to Mr. Payne. Mark Payne as well for his production and also who's the other shout-out Mark it always goes out to
MARK PAYNE 00:45:31
James Watkins
OJ BORG 00:45:33
There you go, for additional support as well. I thank you so much for listening. Make sure you download this. Make sure you subscribe to it. Make sure you rate it as well. If you don't give it five stars, I'm telling Raya where you live and we'll be back next week with hot middle aged. No, its not. Middle-aged what’s it called?
MARK PAYNE 00:45:47
Middle class?
OJ BORG 00:45:48
Medieval is what I'm thinking about. Not middle age, not middle-class medieval fight news. We'll see you next week.
RAYA HUBBELL 00:45:53
Bye.
