By Martin Gillingham - 8 May 2009
 

Rugby hadn’t seen anything like it for 25 years since its last football-style, penalty shoot-out. The prize? A place in the final of the Heineken Cup – the Champions League of rugby.

 

I’m talking about Sunday’s semi-final between Cardiff and Leicester at the Millennium stadium in Cardiff. The tie finished 26-all after 80 minutes with an additional 20 minutes failing to break the deadlock.
 

 

So it went to penalty kicks where, as in football, the headline grabber was the man who missed.
 

Martyn Williams was the villain, the man whose nerve gave way, the man who ultimately cost Cardiff a place in the May 23 final. Yet Williams, a British Lion and one of the world’s greatest players, is someone known for delivering when it matters most. It was evidence, if it were required, that greatness is no guarantee of immunity when the pressure gauge is going off the dial.

So which others have been guilty of sport’s greatest chokes? Here, in no particular order, are six to mull over. Please feel free to pass comment or offer a few of your own below.
 

After months of hype ‘n hysteria, the phoney war was over and an England cricketer finally had the chance to show that our Ashes triumph of 2005 hadn’t been a fluke. Ahead of the 2006/7 series in Australia there had been doubts about our team. Key players were struggling for form, the inspirational captain was missing, and the main strike bowler was known to be of vulnerable temperament.

 

Desperate to counter claims in a parochial press that this was the worst England team to have ever toured Australia, Steve Harmison was tossed the ball by his new captain Andrew Flintoff and told to get the first Test underway at the Gabba with a high-speed, whistler around Justin Langer’s left lughole. Harmison wound up, steamed in, and duly sent it innocuously wide of Langer’s off stump and straight into Flintoff’s hands at second slip.
 

In the same way the par three competition and champion’s dinner have become part of the traditional pre-amble to the Masters at Augusta, so the opening of a letter bearing a Florida postmark and signed by Scott Hoch informing the Royal and Ancient committee that he wouldn’t be flying over to play in the Open Championship the following week, became a perennial ritual throughout the 1980s and 90s.

 

Hoch (pictured), every inch an American, hates links golf and once described the Old Course as “the worst piece of mess I’ve ever played”. Hoch, to be fair, is a very fine golfer and in 1989 was involved in a sudden death play-off for the Masters title with Nick Faldo. At the first extra hole, the 10th, Hoch had a two-foot putt to win. And missed. Half-an-hour later Faldo was slipping into his first Green Jacket and the sobriquet “Hoch the choke” was coined.
 

The grainy black ‘n white TV pictures, a big heavy leather ball, and those clogs they used to wear, offer a comical angle to memories of the climax of the 1968 Challenge Cup final at Wembley. But they were no laughing matter for Don Fox. Leeds were leading 11-10 but Fox, with the last kick of the game, had a conversion from right in front of the posts to win it for Wakefield Trinity.

 

Instead of going through what should have been the formality of bisecting the posts, the ball sliced off the side of Fox’s right toecap and wide. Fox sunk to his knees while the not-so-mellifluous tones of Eddie Waring comforted him and us with the words, “He’s a poor lad”. A further attempt to console Fox came in the form of the Lance Todd Trophy for the man-of-the-match, but friends say it is an experience from which Fox, who died last year, never fully recovered.
 

Gordon Smith’s miss at the end of the 1983 FA Cup final when Brighton were drawing 2-2 with Manchester United is so celebrated that it gave a Brighton fanzine the title “And Smith Must Score”. But, let’s be honest, football’s biggest chokes involve the penalty spot. And where those are concerned look no further than any number of candidates over the past couple of decades who were wearing the three Lions at the time.

 

In fact, try googling “England lose on penalties” and if you do I bet you’ll come up with a search that runs in excess of 500. And one name will feature more prominently on that search than any other – Stuart Pearce. In Turin in 1990, it was the Nottingham Forest defender’s miss from 12 yards that cost England a place in the World Cup final after it had finished England 1 West Germany 1 after extra-time in the semi-final.
 

Jana Novotna choked twice in the space of a few minutes on Wimbledon’s Centre Court during the 1993 women’s singles final. Firstly, when leading Steffi Graf 4-1 and 40-30 up she served a double fault and duly imploded, losing the match in less than 10 minutes. Then at the prize-giving, a hapless Duchess of Kent tried to console her with a few words, “Don't worry, Jana, you'll be back next year” which left the young Czech blubbing for the rest of the night.
 

Sebastian Coe might seem an odd choice. After all, his position in the pantheon of Olympic greats is assured by his back-to-back Olympic 1500 metres triumphs. Fiercely competitive and deeply cerebral, he was in many respects the perfect athlete. Yet even he experienced failure, a mental lapse that could have come to define the career of a lesser man.

 

Victory in the 1980 Olympic 800 metres final in Moscow had seemed to be Coe’s destiny. He was the best half-miler the world had ever seen and was in the shape of his life. But he lost; not so much because of the brilliance of his great rival, Steve Ovett, but rather because of his own tactical ineptitude. “If you ever wanted to show somebody how to make every mistake in an 800 metres, just tell them to watch this,” he once said.

Martin Gillingham represented Great Britain in the 1984 Olympic Games and 1987 World Championships at the 400 metres hurdles. Since retiring from the track he spent 12 years in South Africa where he was a radio talk show presenter and writer for a Sunday newspaper. He returned to the UK in 2003 and can now be heard commentating on athletics for Eurosport as well as rugby for Sky Sports, ITV and Setanta.

 
Comments

How about David Bedford at the 1972 Olympics in Munich when he
advised Britain "to get in the beers, put your feet up and watch
me win the gold medal"? In the end he was blown away by Lasse
Viren and was nowhere to be seen.
By Olympic fan

21 May 2009 at 16:09pm