Marc Pozzo
Manchester City’s three-time winners have been hailed as English football’s greatest-ever team after the FA Cup final demolition of Watford completed an historic campaign.
Pep Guardiola’s side became the first English club to win the Premier League, FA Cup and League Cup in the same season thanks to their staggering 6-0 success at Wembley on Saturday. Equaling the record margin of victory for an FA Cup final was the perfect way to cap a remarkable year for City, who followed their record-breaking Premier League triumph in 2017-18 with an even more astonishing run this term.
They are the first English top-flight side to register 50 wins in all competitions in a single season. Guardiola’s men also scored a record 169 goals in 61 games this season, beating their own previous best of 156. City now rank high on the list of the greatest English teams of all-time. What do we with ourselves now the season is over? Well, we do have the 1st June to look forward to, I guess.
A few weeks ago on the Breakfast Show that I co-host with TK, we spoke about two influences that keep popping up in my life. (Is that what you’re trying to say?) He asked me which school teacher had the biggest influence on my life, and I piped up “Paul Nenjerama at Hartmann House, which was my junior school”. Paul really was a good teacher and, I suppose, shared my love for sport as well. He was always firm but fair and no-one ever tried to get on the wrong side of “Nenji” as the banana baton was never far from his clutches!
I still see Paul from time to time, and when I went to the Castle Tankard a few weeks ago – who do I bump into? Nenji! He said “ah, I’ve been hearing my name on the radio” so I laughed and said “well I’m glad someone listens!”
That same week TK asked who was the most influential person I’d interviewed or met? And again, I didn’t hesitate, because it has to be former Australian Prime Minister, Bob Hawke.
Blow me down, later that day, I received word from my friend Much Masunda, who had listened to the Breakfast Show that day (as he does most days), to say that Bob Hawke had passed away last week.
This is what Much said: “Bob Hawke, the former Australian Prime Minister from 1983-1991, made an indelible impression on you many years ago when you were a ‘rookie’ broadcaster. I thought you would like to know that he passed away earlier today at the ripe old age of 89 years. He would have turned 90 in December 2019.” Bob joined the Labour Party at the tender age of 18 before enrolling as a student at the University of Western Australia in Perth for his first degree. In 1953, he won a Rhodes Scholarship which was tenable at the revered University of Oxford where he’s believed to have set quite a formidable record for beer drinking.
He was the most successful Labour Party leader in Australian political history, renowned for his maverick leadership style, as well as his love for sport and beer. He caused quite a stir, when in 1983, he declared a national holiday in Australia when it won the much-coveted Americas’ Cup yacht race. He used to invite journalists to his home for casual briefings on a variety of topical issues, and was instrumental in replacing “God Save the Queen” with “Advance Australia Fair” as the National Anthem of Australia!
He and I had the most interesting interview – politics, sport and socializing were the favoured topics in our 45 minutes together. He then invited me to the-then Australian Ambassador’s home that evening for “pyjamas and cricket videos” where he asked if I’d ever seen his famous party trick of downing a beer at cricket matches. “Of course” I replied, and he said, “well I’ll do it again!” And so he did, followed by applause like he was used to in the cricket stadiums from those present that evening. (He did say he swore off alcohol while in office.)
Hawke’s eight years as Australian Prime Minister – still a record for a Labour leader – stands in conspicuous contrast to the most recent decade of turmoil in Australian politics. No prime minister has served a full three-year term since another long-serving leader, Conservative John Howard, left office in 2007. For many Australians, both men – though ideological opposites – recall a kind of carefree stability that is lacking in today’s politics. But it’s Hawke who still holds the highest approval rating of any serving Australian Prime Minister.
Brooks Koepka held off a late charge from Dustin Johnson to capture his second consecutive PGA Championship on Sunday, completing a wire-to-wire victory for his fourth major title in nerve-wracking fashion.
A near-collapse saw Koepka’s record seven-stroke lead reduced to a single shot, but he withstood making four bogeys in a row on the back nine and another at 17 for an unexpectedly narrow triumph. Koepka fired a four-over par 74 final round at windy Bethpage Black to finish 72 holes on eight-under 272 and defeat Johnson by two strokes, replacing him as world number one as a result.
Koepka, who seeks his third US Open win in a row next month at Pebble Beach, became the first man to own back-to-back titles at two majors simultaneously by capturing the Wanamaker Trophy and the $1.98 million top prize. The 29-year-old American became the PGA’s fifth wire-to-wire winner after Hal Sutton in 1983, Ray Floyd in 1982, Jack Nicklaus in 1971 and Bobby Nichols in 1964. Koepka joined Tiger Woods as the only back-to-back stroke-play winners of the PGA, Woods having done it in 2006-07 as well as 1999-2000.
Koepka seized a tournament-record lead of seven strokes after 54 holes on 12-under par 198. No man has led a major by so much so late and lost. But Koepka came close. Johnson, who shot 69, shrank the margin to four shots at the turn and just one with four holes to play, only for Koepka to outlast his US compatriot. Johnson, seeking his second major title after the 2016 US Open, was hoping to match the best final-round win comeback in PGA history, John Mahaffey’s seven-shot rally in 1978. Instead, he completed a career “runner-up” Grand Slam, having placed second at the 2011 British Open, 2015 US Open and last month’s Masters.
Koepka became the first player to win his first four majors in less than two years, joined by Woods, Nicklaus and Hogan for winning four in eight starts. What a player and what a great guy, too.
We look forward to the third major of 2019 in mid-June – the US Open at Pebble Beach. Guess who’s the defending champion? Brooks Koepka.
