The BBC commentator and former Davis Cup regular Andrew Castle fears the final in Ghent will be a joyless affair. If so it would be a great pity for a number of reasons.
Having twice been in the proximity of terrorist attacks, in Madrid and London, Castle admitted he was reluctant to travel. But it was not just trepidation that chilled his bones but the incongruity of covering a sporting event in a country held in the grip of fear, with the capital, just 35 miles away, in lockdown and a terrorist still on the loose, perhaps with like-minded lost souls.
Castle would go, he said, responding to duty, obligation and solidarity with his workmates, but he was not comfortable about doing so.
He had wanted to celebrate what he reckoned would be an historic British sporting moment, courtside with his microphone to witness Andy Murray, his brother, Jamie, and the rest of the heroes raise the trophy of a competition that began in the United States at the turn of the last century and which Great Britain had not won since the year George Orwell went off to fight in the Spanish civil war.
Tim Henman, an even more illustrious Davis Cupper than Castle, felt similarly uneasy about attending the final, although he cited slightly different reservations for not going: travel delays because of heightened security that would create too much of “a hassle” for his wife and three children.
Are they right? People have to make up their own minds. Watching, playing or covering sport in what is a quasi war zone ought not be a bravery contest but journalists do not have the luxury of hand-picking assignments, even in sport. For all the wonderful times we have watching the best athletes in the world from privileged vantage points in packed stadiums in glamorous cities, there are times – such as these – when it gets a little tougher. You say goodbye to your family with a slightly heavier heart.
I am writing this on the 08.04 Eurostar from St Pancras to Lille, along with colleagues from the BBC and the Sun, and it would be fair to say the bonhomie is of its usual high standard, although black humour, that most British of antidotes to grim reality, is never far away.
We idled away the time reminiscing about the fabled Doherty brothers, Reggie and Laurie, who overwhelmed Belgium as the Victorian bulwarks of the team then called the British Isles in the competition then known as the International Lawn Tennis Challenge, at the original Wimbledon in Worple Road, in 1904.
What carefree times those were. The celebratory dinner at the Café Royal had a menu that looked like something out of a Downton Abbey script.
Afterwards, they sang, danced and played card tricks, smoked cigars and drank port, washing away the taste of the vintage champagne that had accompanied their feast of nine exquisite courses. Within 10 years, of course, the world would be plunged into its first global conflict and those innocent days would be gone forever.
The “plucky Belgians” – as they forever will be, for their doomed resistance against the invasion of their tiny country as well as their seemingly anointed role as sport’s whipping boys – have not reached a final since. Great Britain were there in 1978, losing to John McEnroe’s Americans. So, we are super-Belgians.
And, like the 12,000 Belgians who have tickets for the 2015 final, a travelling band of British fans, numbering a thousand or so will be there with a common purpose in the Flanders Expo. Victory will be sweet, defeat hard to take – but, probably less so, on both counts, because of the chill of uncertainty rolling through the Flanders flat lands.
When we arrived at Lille station, we were ferried to the venue by a bus, helpfully marked “British media”. As one of our number remarked: “Well, that’ll make it easy for some idiot bomber to spot us.” We laughed. Weakly.
The joylessness Castle mentioned was apparent when we got to the venue, and not just because it resembled a thousand other utilitarian, multipurpose ice boxes. There was no sense of history here, no context: just rows of hard, plastic seats around a drop-in clay court on which the teams would fight it out as best they could. Upcoming Christmas shows include Gent Militaria and Aussie Tours Oceanie Roadshow.
Perhaps, in this environment, it will be easier to bring some perspective to a mere sporting event: not life and death, fellas; maybe next time; only a game.
People keep saying that adjusting our daily lives to suit the wicked rhythm of cowardly terrorists is a victory for the forces of evil. It’s never that simple. A competition conceived 115 years ago by Harvard students to tickle the tummy of their old colonial overlords is worth something, sure enough.
But it’s not worth a single life.
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