1) XFL
In 2000, WWE supremo Vince McMahon announced the launch of a new league to rival the NFL: the XFL. It would take place in the off-season and do away with the traditional American football rulebook for a more extreme interpretation inspired by wrestling’s emphasis on outrageous entertainment, all of which boiled down to pre-game fireballs, on-field violence and a disturbing focus on cheerleaders.
More than 14 million people tuned into the opening game on 3 February 2001. McMahon took to the field like he would a wrestling ring to stir up the crowd, but unfortunately the game did not live up to the hype. Slackened rules on big hitting caused a raft of injuries, not least in the opening scramble which had replaced the mundane coin toss: two opposing players ran from 20 yards towards a ball waiting in the centre and the one to grab it secured possession for their team. An early scramble left one player, Hassan Shamsid-Deen, with a separated shoulder.
Other missteps included allowing players to print anything on the back of their jerseys which led Rod Smart to wear He Hate Me in place of his name (the explanation for which makes little sense). Even the name, XFL, was confused; many assumed the X stood for extreme, but an Extreme Football League already existed so it was clarified that the X officially had no meaning – it was essentially the X Football League.
Ultimately the XFL could not attract enough star names and the lack of protection for running backs, wide receivers and quarterbacks made for tediously low-scoring games. Interest quickly faded and the league folded in May after only one season, with the WWE and NBC each reportedly losing $35m on the project. It was roundly mocked by the media: Saturday Night Live poked fun at the names of franchises like New York-New Jersey Hitmen and Las Vegas Outlaws with their fictional team, the Kansas City Shoplifters.
McMahon has since claimed he will bring the XFL back, only bigger, better and more X than before. “We are going to make this the WWE of the football world, just like it was supposed to be the first time,” he said in 2014. “You want football and you want violence, and that is what the new XFL is going to give you. It’s going to be the ‘attitude era’ of football, if you will. Hell, even the cheerleaders are going to be hotter this time around.” LO
2) Stanford Super Series
VHS or Betamax. Sony PlayStation or Sega Saturn. Facebook or Myspace. As consumers, sometimes we have to choose between two products – and sometimes we choose unwisely. The ECB, an uneasy presence among cricket’s nouveau riche, was given a consumers’ dilemma in 2008 as two new tournaments were launched, ingeniously blending the dynamic new Twenty20 format with infinite stacks of cash. One, the Indian Premier League, is now the sixth most-watched sports league in the world. England chose the other one.
Allen Stanford was not a natural fit with English cricket. The brash Texan businessman arrived at Lord’s by helicopter with a suitcase full of cash (you can almost hear the MCC’s indignant gasps) and upset a number of players by flirting outrageously with their wives during the series. Beneath this unseemly exterior, Stanford did harbour a passion for the game; he had initially invested in cricket in his adopted home of Antigua out of personal, rather than business interest. Then the money came rolling into view.
England were not Stanford’s first port of call. Inspired over lunch with Michael Holding to hold a high-stakes tournament at his own stadium in Antigua, he reached out to India, South Africa and Australia, all of whom had committed to the IPL. The ECB, creators of the Twenty20 format, had kept its best players away from that unpleasant business, then watched in horror as TV rights were sold for a billion dollars. It hastily hitched itself to Stanford’s bandwagon, with the final destination a $20m game of cricket.
Following two editions of the relatively successful Stanford 20/20, with teams representing Caribbean islands, the first and only Stanford Super Series was essentially one game, pitching England against the best of the West Indies, clumsily rebranded as the Stanford Superstars. After a couple of meaningless warm-up matches, this Frankenstein fixture was won comfortably by the Superstars, sweeping up the prize money as England returned home, unsure exactly what they had just taken part in but certain they had lost.
The ECB was tied into a five-year deal, with the Super Series set to hit Lord’s, but that all came spectacularly unstuck only three months later as serious allegations over Stanford’s wider business dealings began to snowball. He was eventually sentenced to 110 years in prison for defrauding investors to the tune of $7bn. Former West Indies Test cricketer Dinanath Ramnarine, then the head of the West Indies Players’ Association, claimed that Stanford had asked the Superstars to reinvest their winnings with his bank.
There was never another edition of the Stanford Super Series and Chris Gayle’s match-winning six off Andrew Flintoff was the last shot ever played at the Stanford Cricket Ground. If there is a silver lining to this murky cloud, it is the West Indies, the chief beneficiaries of Stanford’s dalliance with the game, going on to win two World T20 tournaments. Theirs may be the only angle from which Allen Stanford’s involvement in cricket looks anything other than an expensive mistake. NM
3) Anglo-Welsh Cup
English rugby had its own knockout cup competition between 1971 and 2005 – and a fine one it was, too. Between 1996 and 2003 Twickenham sold out four times to see Bath win the last of their record 10 titles, Leicester break Sale’s hearts and Northampton get stuffed by London Irish and Gloucester in back-to-back finals, both times making a future Guardian rugby writer cry.
This was rugby’s answer to, if not equivalent of, football’s FA Cup. Upsets were far, far rarer, especially once the game went professional at the top level, but it was a storied and beloved competition. Coventry, Bedford and Gosforth were among the early winners and, of the two of those clubs who still exist under those monikers, it is almost certainly the highest honour either will ever win.
In 2005 the RFU Club Competition would be ditched and replaced by the Anglo-Welsh Cup, with the four Welsh regions competing alongside the 12 Premiership clubs. As for clubs such as Cornish Pirates, Rotherham, Coventry and Bedford? Bugger ‘em, they could play in their own competition with the other minnows.
The RFU and WRU had big ideas for the competition and, to give it its due, it was not immediately a disaster. The two semi-finals were held at Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium and the showpiece final at Twickenham. Powergen, the sponsors, agreed a deal with the BBC in which club rugby was on free-to-air TV, English clubs had the carrot of Heineken Cup qualification for the winners dangled in front of them and Welsh interest was maintained when the Ospreys and Cardiff Blues won in 2008 and 2009.
But back to the format and therein lies the real joke. Rather than a straight knockout competition, the 16 teams are divided into four groups, with the four winners advancing to the semi-finals. Fine, until someone came up with the brilliant idea that the four pools are then paired off, with each team playing others in a different group but accruing points against their group rivals.
If you’re still with me, it hasn’t come to pass yet but this means that should a team lose every match then it is entirely possible that their three group rivals can also lose every match by more, thus sending our hypothetical side through to the semi-finals, despite a record of three defeats from three.
In 2009-10 things started to go south. Rather than a spectacle at the home of English rugby, the final was contested in Worcester. Sixways is a fine stadium but its tenants have been perennial relegation scrappers and its capacity of 12,000 is some way down on Twickenham’s 75,000. Furthermore, the match was played on the same day as the Six Nations finale. Powergen ended their sponsorship after the inaugural competition in 2005-06 and their successors, EDF, did not extend their initial three-year deal.
These days – oh yes it’s still going – the Anglo-Welsh Cup is a far cry from that which saw teams willing to defy the Lions and continues to take place largely on international weekends, with second-string players to the fore. That 2010 final at Sixways resulted in Northampton winning a thriller 30-24 against Gloucester to lift their first piece of top-flight domestic silverware. The future Guardian writer, who had cried at the defeats by London Irish and Gloucester in 2002 and 2003 respectively, forgot it was on. DL
4) Coppa Italia
Earlier this year Alessandria, founder members of Serie A but now in Italy’s regional third tier, reached the semi-finals of the Coppa Italia. Despite losing emphatically to Milan over two legs, I Grigi (the Greys) caused a significant ripple with their return to prominence. They were the first third division team since Bari, in 1984, to reach the final four – and a rare underdog story in a competition that is weighted in favour of Italy’s giants.
The Coppa Italia has suffered from relentless tinkering throughout its existence, with group stages in place for Bari’s breakthrough year, but as it stands, there are seedings, schedule issues and two-legged semi-finals that all favour Serie A’s top sides. In its past 10 editions, only three other lower-league teams have reached the last eight, including Spezia, beaten by Alessandria in an outlier of a quarter-final last season. By comparison, the FA Cup has had 19 lower-league quarter-finalists in the last decade and three semi-finalists in 2008.
In the same year Portsmouth won the Cup, the Coppa Italia excluded clubs below Serie B entirely. It didn’t stick but shows that in a tournament organised by Serie A, the presence of lower-league sides is an afterthought. Last year, Alessandria saw off fourth-tier Altovicentino, Serie B’s Pro Vercelli and fellow Lega Pro side Juve Stabia, all in August. They needed the luck of the draw, too – teams progressing to the third round have a 70% chance of an away trip to a top-flight team, parachuted in and given a home advantage that they keep in the fourth round, the end of a bottleneck that cuts 70 teams down to only eight.
After winning in Palermo, Alessandria were one of the eight qualifiers for the Ottavi di finale – joining eight teams from the top of Serie A, dropped in three rounds from the final with a home game for starters. It took an extra-time win at nearby Genoa, and Spezia shocking Roma on penalties, to create a path for Alessandria to break Serie A’s stranglehold on the latter stages.
Their journey was not helped by the tournament’s bizarre scheduling: three games in August, two in December and the rest when international, continental and Serie A fixtures allowed. Alessandria’s historic semi-final against Milan took place over the course of a month, with their seven-month cup run ending in a 5-0 defeat at San Siro (as the higher-ranked team, Milan had home advantage for the second leg).
The only lower-league side to win the cup are Napoli, hardly a minnow, back in 1961-62, with Ancona the last Serie B finalists back in 1994. The big clubs do suffer in one respect from their dominance, as enthusiasm is dampened by a lack of competition. Last year, Milan’s quarter-final win over Carpi was watched by just over 12,000 fans; in 2013, less than 9,000 rattled around the San Siro as Inter beat Bologna.
Alessandria, you imagine, would still gladly switch places; despite an unbeaten start to their league campaign, they are already out of this year’s Coppa, losing to Perugia in the second round. Their campaign lasted two weeks. Milan’s will not begin until January, with four games – three at home – on the road to the final. There’s not much romance to be found in a tournament hamstrung by its own unfairness. NM
5) IFAF World Championship
The problem with starting a world championship for American football, one might think, is that the United States are rather too good at it, but this potential issue was sidestepped in the inaugural 1999 competition when the USA deliberately withheld from entering.
Unfortunately for the organising body, the International Federation of American Football (IFAF), the event was not the spectacle it might have hoped for: only six associations sent a team – Mexico, Japan, Sweden, Australia, Finland and the hosts, Italy – and it culminated in an uninspiring final between Japan and Mexico: 60 minutes of scintillating to and fro ended in a 0-0 draw, with Japan registering the only score in overtime to win the first IFAF World Championship.
Things did improve four years later when Japan won in Germany in what, in hindsight, can now be officially labelled the competition’s heyday. Since then, the US has ruined Japan and everyone else’s fun by entering a team each year and, despite putting heavy restrictions on their own player selection, the US swept to 2007 and 2011 triumphs without defeat.
Heading into the 2015 edition, however, the USA’s brilliance at their own sport was not the biggest problem. The controversial IFAF president, Tommy Wiking, was involved in organising the event due to be held in his home country, Sweden. But eight months before kick-off, the Swedish association revealed that the funds it had raised to hold the event had mysteriously disappeared; it was also announced that supermarket magnate Wiking would be taking a leave of absence from his role, citing unspecific health reasons.
Things then took another odd turn when the IFAF website announced that Wiking would be resigning from his post as head of the international body, only for the plucky Swede to take control of the IFAF website himself, unresign, and tweet that he had been the victim of a coup d’état from within the organisation. A deep rift has since developed in IFAF with some recognising Wiking as their leader and many others answering to his rival, Finland’s Roope Noronen, following a stormy annual congress when both claimed to have been elected president.
Without funds, the 2015 tournament was hastily moved from Stockholm to the far less international Canton, Ohio’s eighth-largest city. Germany, Morocco and others dropped out to reduce the total entrants from a championship-high 12 to an awkward seven, rarely the magic number when it comes to organising a tournament. The hosts USA won the underwhelming affair, of course, to serve a reminder to IFAF that if it ever manages to put on a world championship of American football with a truly global reach, it is unlikely to be very competitive. LO
6) BDO World Darts Championship
Held every January at the Lakeside country club in Surrey, the BDO world championship is not such a terrible tournament in itself. It’s a straight knockout, devoid of fiddly format changes, with enough seeded players to add structure without stifling a strong outsider’s path to glory. The problem with it is more fundamental than that; simply put, it is not a real world championship.
By definition, a world champion is the best in the world at their chosen pursuit. With all due respect, Scott ‘Scotty 2 Hotty’ Waites is not the best darts player in the world. He won the 2016 final, regaining the title from Scott Mitchell (Waites can at least claim to be the best darts player in the world called Scott) but with an average of 87.54. That standard would have resulted in Mitchell being obliterated in the early rounds of the PDC world championship, darts’ true blue riband event.
Plenty of sports have either split into factions or failed to unite under one banner, but to lend each division credibility, there ought to be either discernible differences (rugby union and league, for instance) or a sense of equilibrium, as seen in the distinct leagues that provide well-matched contenders for the World Series and Super Bowl.
That’s not the case in darts, where members of the original BDO play the same sport as those in the breakaway PDC but do so less well: a symptom of the latter’s exponentially increasing profile since forming in 1992. Virtually every BDO player up to snuff, from Phil Taylor to Raymond van Barneveld, inevitably joins the PDC, a rival body set up by players to maximise darts’ earning potential. As the BDO world champion, Waites qualified for this year’s Grand Slam of Darts, a chance to pit his wits against the best of the PDC. He lost all three group games.
In the last two PDC finals the losers racked up triple-figure averages in front of baying crowds at Alexandra Palace but the talent pool at Lakeside grows ever shallower. That can make for open brackets and unpredictable outcomes, such as the Australian 66-1 outsider Tony David winning in 2002, despite haemophilia affecting his throwing arm. It can also lead to scenes that do the sport no credit: David’s countryman Anthony Fleet having a memorable horror show in 2010, and this shambles from 2015.
The BDO world championship is still undeniably tough to win and its champions can do no more than overcome the best opponents available to them. Sadly, when that amounts to less than 10% of the best players out there, you end up with a man grinning on stage, holding a trophy that says he’s the best in the world, when he knows he is not. Flaws don’t come much more fundamental. NM
