Late at night, just before deadline some drunk would ring the sports desk. With slurred words he would ask: “”Me and me mate wuz just having a bet, see. We wanna know which horse came last in the 1953 Melbourne Cup.” On another night it would football. Rarely cricket. That was a decade and a half ago, when people still went to pubs and made obscure sporting bets. Now the obscure sporting bet is under threat from another source and a story will illustrate the point. In Nepal last month, miles from the nearest phone or newspaper sports desk, several Australian and English trekkers bizarrely starting talking about the FA Cup.
I told them about the time I went to an FA Cup final. I was in England in 1983 on one of those onerous journalists’ fact-finding missions and the organisers had arranged for us to go to Wembley Stadium on a quiet Monday, just after the weekend’s final. But the final had been a draw and had to be replayed that Wednesday night. Would we like tickets? And thus I went to the Manchester United vs Brighton final, I told my fellow trekkers. “”Brighton!” the Englishman scoffed. “”Brighton has never been in an FA Cup final. It’s in the bottom of the fourth division.” “”I’m pretty sure it was Brighton,” I replied _ taken aback at being accused of being on a fact-finding mission and not finding the critical fact of the team names of the competing finalists who played before my own eyes. “”It was Brighton,” I repeated.
“”I’ll have 10 pounds on it.” And so in the heat of the moment in the cold Himalayas I had a bet in a foreign currency about a foreign football game. “”Couldn’ta been Brighton,” chirped in a bloke who worked for the Queensland Sports Academy. “”I’ll have 10 pounds on it, too. Whatever that is in Oz money.” Then our Sherpa guide chimed in and I was up for something like $75. The bet then became something of folklore for our two-week trek. Derisory comments were made about unreliable journalists and how you could never trust the papers. The experts in everything English and sport had spoken. Resolve ebbed and flowed. “”I’m sure it was Brighton. 1983. Against Manchester. OK it might have been City not United, but it (italic) was (end italic) Brighton.” “”Are you sure it wasn’t Chelsea?” I went weak at the knees. I felt like a witness being grilled by a QC. It actually could have been Chelsea.
Oblique references to the bet, the final, football and the unreliability of journalists were made virtually every day. “”I’ll look it up when I get back in The Canberra Times files when I get back,” I promised. “”And I’ll send you the money. Or you can send me yours,” I added without conviction. The $75 aside, it was all good fun. Fun that will be erased in the age of the information super-highway. In future, before discussion gets within a neurone of the male ego or assertions of I’m right and you’re wrong, someone will be wired into
sport.idioticbetsavoidance@megagates.com.world. And the facts will be known without any fact-finding missions or idiotic bets. As it was, we would all have to wait, it seemed, until I could search the archive in Canberra. Back in Kathmandu I toyed with the idea of ringing the sports desk at The Canberra Times, but the phone call would have cost more than the bet and they would have rightly hung up in my ear. So we waited. On the last night we went out to dinner in Kathmandu and we met up with another Australian _ I think his name was Bruce _ who had arrived early for the next trek. For some reason Singapore came into the conversion and how it had changed to being the most characterless city on earth. “”I was in Singapore in 1983,” I began. And I could not resist one of those oblique references. “”You know, the year of the famous FA Cup Final.” And then Bruce chipped in, utterly unprompted and without hesitation: “”Aw you mean the final between Manchester United and Brighton when they drew and there had to be a replay on the Wednesday night.” Stunned silence. Lord forbid that an information super-highway should ever deny me the pleasure of it.