Matt Maher: The heroes and zeroes of a year like no other

Among the many, many lessons from this most tumultuous 12 months is while sport is at base level a form of entertainment, it does not exist in a bubble.

Just as the impact of the coronavirus pandemic has exposed the best and worst of society, so it has the same in sport.

Heroes include Marcus Rashford, the Manchester United striker who has made as many headlines by campaigning for social justice than he has scoring goals (and he’s managed more than his fair share of the latter).

Rashford has prompted the government into not one but two U-turns, first in the summer when he helped get the free school meals programme extended over the holidays, then in October when his petition to end child poverty led to the announcement of the Covid winter grant scheme. The 23-year-old is from a new generation of sportsmen and women who appear determined to use their influence and position for good and have not forgotten their roots.

Earlier this week, world heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua revealed he had made a six-figure donation to the amateur boxing federations of England, Wales and Scotland.

The plight of amateur boxing, overlooked in the government’s £300million emergency grant for sport, was recently outlined in this space. Many clubs vital to their communities have been left facing an uncertain future.

Joshua, who saw his own life turned around by a chance trip to Finchley ABC, does not need telling how transformative these venues can be.

“It is no secret that without boxing and the family created around my amateur gym, my life could have been very different,” he said.

“The sport has given me a lot and I want to help highlight the issues affecting grassroots clubs and do what I can to keep the lights on for those most in need.

“I am not using this as an opportunity to criticise government for its lack of funding towards boxing, these are unprecedented times, however I would like to use my platform to respectfully ask them to rethink their stance.”

In the early days of the pandemic there was a sense government saw sport as an easy target. Health secretary Matt Hancock infamously urged Premier League footballers to take a pay cut in order to ‘play their part’ (something neither he or his colleagues were prepared to do). The players responded by setting up the #playerstogether fund which, since April, has helped raise millions for NHS Charities Together.

Closer to home, the region’s senior clubs all stepped up to the plate. The charitable arms of Wolves, Villa and Albion have all done sterling work, from delivering thousands of meals to the vulnerable to making phone calls to those in isolation.

While football was shut down during the first wave, parts of The Hawthorns and Villa Park were given over to health services, while Molineux became a storage base for thousands of pieces of PPE provided by the club’s owners Fosun for use in the city’s hospitals.

It hasn’t only been the pandemic which has demonstrated an increasing willingness among athletes to speak out on issues upon which their predecessors might have remained silent. For several months now football has been highlighting the Black Lives Matter movement with teams taking a knee prior to kick-off, a gesture first seen when Villa hosted Sheffield United in June and which has been repeated in cricket, motor racing and countless other sports.

Boos heard at recent matches involving Colchester and Millwall, while depressing, were a reminder of the work still to be done. Chief among the year’s frustrations has been the inability of many sports, particularly football, to look after their own houses.

Negotiations between the Premier League and EFL over a rescue deal for the latter were predictably protracted and driven by self-interest, with Project Big Picture sitting front and centre as Exhibit A. The financial impact of the pandemic has exposed a few home truths about the richest league in the world though you have to wonder whether those running the show have taken any notice.

There was the unseemly sight of several clubs, including Newcastle and Tottenham, attempting to take the public pound via the government furlough scheme before being shamed into backtracking.

Arsenal, meanwhile, made more than 50 staff redundant (including popular mascot Gunnersaurus) while negotiating a new contract with striker Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang worth around £55million over the next three seasons. Granted, football clubs have bottom lines to worry about, yet there are few other businesses which flout their wealth quite so willingly. Just maybe the Gunners’ current troubles on the pitch are down to some form of karmic realignment. For just how out-of-touch the game’s decision-makers remain, meanwhile, you need look no further than the introduction of pay-per-view, a crass attempt to get more money out of supporters in troubled times, thankfully withdrawn following the predictable backlash.

As we head into 2021, fans remain locked out of stadiums. Without them sport has been largely sterile and soulless yet even in such unappealing form, it has been much better than nothing.

At a time of hardship and worry it has served as a distraction, a reassuring sense of order at a time when little feels normal.

The escape has been welcome, though this year has also proved that when at its best, sport can deliver much more than merely that.