Bristol City celebration and Cricket World Cup final were among the highlights in a year when sport too often seemed to reflect the corrosion of the world around it
The sight of Bristol City’s manager sweeping up a 10-year-old ballboy in a dance of pure joy to celebrate their team’s last-minute cup victory over mighty Manchester United last week added a note of sweetness to a year of conflict and contradictions. Many sports lovers had found themselves spending too much time in 2017 worrying about the integrity of what they were being asked to applaud: the integrity of the competitor, the integrity of the competition.
From state-sponsored doping to tax avoidance, from child-abuse cover-ups to corruption in sport’s most powerful governing bodies, so much dishonesty seemed to have seeped into the foundations that nothing felt entirely stable. Maybe sport, rather than providing an escape from daily cares, was just reflecting the corrosion of the world around it.
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