Brian Viner: Heroes denied a sporting chance in the game of life

The sudden death on Monday, during a routine weights session, of the rugby league prop Adam Watene, Wakefield Trinity's 31-year-old South Sea islander, was shocking news. And while The Last Word is not in the business of casting gloom over the weekend, it seems worth reflecting that, for an area of human endeavour that celebrates strength and vitality, sport throws up a grotesquely large number of people whose lives are cut short, or seriously threatened, in what ought to be their prime. They say that death does not discriminate, but against sport, frankly, I think it does.

Few of us reach middle age, of course, without knowing someone who has been cruelly cut down long before their time, whether it is a car that did the dirty, or cancer, or some other fatal intervention. But not only does sport seem particularly cursed, the Grim Reaper all too often seems to carry off the most charismatic performers, as if it's more of a challenge that way.

Just in recent years we've lost the hugely popular cricketer Ben Hollioake, and the infectiously vivacious snooker player Paul Hunter. But every decade has its own tragedies. In the 1950s it was the Munich air disaster; in the 1960s, the wonderfully gifted Tottenham footballer John White lost his life in a lightning strike, aged 27, while "Champagne" Tony Lema, a golfer considered second in popularity only to Arnold Palmer, was just 32 when he perished in a plane crash in 1966. The similarly flamboyant Payne Stewart may have been a decade older when he went the same way in 1999, but he had only just won his second US Open. On Boxing Day 1970, the golden girl of British athletics, Lillian Board, died of bowel cancer scarcely seven months after running a personal best in the mile.

As for those who had at least completed their sporting careers, England's 1966 World Cup-winning football team has lost its two most magnetic characters in the form of Bobby Moore and Alan Ball. Across the Atlantic, Vitas Gerulaitis, among the most dynamic of tennis players, was only 40 when he died of carbon monoxide poisoning. And in 1948 Babe Ruth, one of the greatest of all sporting showmen, died of cancer aged just 53. But not even the Babe bequeathed his name to an illness. A much-loved New York Yankees team-mate of his was only 37 when he was claimed by amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, now globally known as Lou Gehrig's disease. What an irony that a sportsman as powerful and life-enhancing as Gehrig should owe his immortality to a dreadful, debilitating illness.

Anyway, in rather gloomily raking up all these tragic examples of beloved and charismatic sporting stars denied anything like their three score years and ten, I have no intention of putting the hex on Seve Ballesteros, the news of whose brain tumour transcended sport much in the way that his gigantic personality transcended sport, horrifying even those who don't know the difference between a bogey and a niblick, not least my wife, whose reaction to the headline was "Oh no, not Seve!" As he recovers from major surgery, let me add my voice to all those who passionately wish him well.

Tales of long-ago that blew my son's mind

My 10-year-old son Jacob has a book which purports to list all the world's sports, and last week, while my parents-in-law were staying with us, he asked his granddad Bob to name an obscure sport so that he could look it up in his book. "Knur and spell," said Bob, to which Jacob said "what?" in perfect unison with me.

So Bob explained to us a sport that was all the rage when he was growing up 70-odd years ago in south Yorkshire, where knur and spell even had its own leagues, with a bookmaker present at every match. As I understand it, the knur was a small hard ball, and the spell a spring-loaded device for sending it airborne, whereupon it would be smacked with a stick known as a pummel. The object was to hit it further than anyone else, and around Barnsley, where Bob lived, the most formidable players were three miners, the Sylvester brothers Lew, Walt and Wallace.

Bob and his mates used to love watching Lew Sylvester playing knur and spell, but he also played a children's version, called nipsy. Needless to say, none of this was in Jacob's book. Sometimes, only the oral tradition will do.

Hull living up to Heaton's boast

If Hull City beat West Ham United tomorrow, it will be their fourth London scalp of the season, bringing glorious new meaning to the title of The Housemartins' 1986 album London 0 Hull 4. A couple of years ago I interviewed the band's former front man and Hull-dweller Paul Heaton for a TV documentary. The programme wasn't about football, but before the cameras rolled we bonded over our shared love for the beautiful game, currently at its most beauteous on Humberside. Alas, Heaton is a Sheffield United fan.

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