I was never going to compete in it but I wanted to

“I was never going to compete in it but I wanted to take part in it.”It may be necessary to remember the stirring example of people like Maynard when the show at last starts. The Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games need a total of 42,500 volunteer workers and are far from finding them. And yet there was Maynard, a volunteer, who has provided his services for nothing for at least four hours a week for four years because he believes in the Olympic ideal, thrilled that Atlanta is staging the event and proud that his employers, Delta Airlines, are one of the main sponsors.”This is only going to happen once in my lifetime,” he said. They are supposed to be about sponsorship, television rights, franchises, a certain soft drink, and gold medals worth millions.

It was what we were promised if we put in a certain number of hours.”Stumbling across Maynard in the Olympic Centre in downtown Atlanta would be enough, momentarily, to persuade anybody that the modern Games had lost their way. For almost four years Jeff Maynard has prepared meticulously for the Olympic Games. He has made several small personal sacrifices along the way but he has never missed a session which mattered Any spare time has been dedicated to the cause

Sixty-four days from now Maynard will get his reward. He will be at the opening ceremony of the 26th Games in Atlanta. True, he will not see the colourful spectacle unfolding only yards away because he will be too busy helping participants into their uniforms. Such is life for those who slave behind the scenes, whether at a village fete or the largest sporting gathering in history.
“I won’t be able to get more than a glimpse at what’s happening, but it is the opening ceremony, what everybody’s been waiting for since we were awarded the Games,” Maynard said “Quite honestly, I’m thrilled at being there. As a European I cannot feel personal shame about this trade as it was conducted solely by royalty or those connected with royalty, members of the aristocracy, and individuals wealthy enough to hire and crew ships engaged in this appalling trade.

How does it feel to be the greatest player the game of rugby has ever produced?”).That said, it would be a shame to let BBC Radio Five Live’s coverage of the Clash of the Codes pass unremarked. This, you will have heard if you have tuned in for two minutes in the past couple of weeks, is the National Radio Station of the Year. They promised us: “You won’t miss a tackle.” First of all they couldn’t raise their touchline team, then they lost the game altogether, leaving us with the embarrassed blatherings of the poor bloke covering the European Cup-Winners’ Cup final Tricky stuff, hubris.. Shaun reckoned that six O-levels was the minimum requirement for understanding the rules of rugby union: it strikes me that anyone brainy enough to know what a ruck is ought to be brainy enough not to get involved in one.This is not a Sport on Radio column, which is probably just as well since there is only so much you can say about Cliff Morgan’s interviewing style (“Now Jonathan, let’s take the gloves off. Penalty to Wigan.Sportsnight’s coverage of the match was more restrained than Sky’s But Eddie Butler was generous in his praise of Wigan.

The skills of Martin Offiah, he said, were “one of the finest sights in any sort of sport”. Butler reckoned Bath would win the rematch under their own rules. Shaun Edwards agreed, noting the intellectual difficulties of the rival code. It was an “earth-shattering” encounter, and twice we were told that it was “ground-breaking” What it patently wasn’t was ground-filling. It was also, naturally, “historic”, although in Bath’s case a better adjective might have been “prehistoric”, given their dinosaur- like reactions to Wigan’s first-half speed.But Bath applied themselves, and there was a lovely moment when Jon Callard finally succeeded in grabbing hold of Gary Connolly’s ankle: he just hung on, refusing to let go even when Connolly had struggled to his feet. Callard’s face had a look of innocent determination, like a dim but keen gun-dog who had been chasing birds all day and was not going to bloody well let go now he had finally caught one. Eddie Hemmings had been at the hyperbole bottle before the transmission started, and assured us in all seriousness that the match “has grabbed the imagination of the entire country”.

He should know by now that the only things that can do that are the Princess of Wales’s thighs.Still he banged on. The latter, better known as the music from the Old Spice advert, is actually based on the writings of romantically inclined 14th-century monks. Whether or not this has influenced the severe tonsures worn by many of the Wigan players is open to conjecture: certainly Shaun Edwards otherwise has precious little in common with Abelard and Heloise.The vocal build-up was as hysterical as the backing music. Gamblers looking for omens for Euro 96 might like to note that Italy beat the Czechs 3-2 in the final composer-count.It was a delightful exercise, and a timely reminder that Tina Turner need not be obligatory accompaniment to any sporting activity. And it was appropriate: the Premiership has never been short of prima donnas.No such subtlety at Maine Road for Super League Special (Sky) where the “Clash of the Codes” took place after an unlikely concatenation of “Simply the Best” andCarmina Burana.