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Sports correspondent & historian with |
Sports fans have a soft spot for sensational upsets where a little-known outsider grabs victory at telephone number odds.
Less than a month into the new year, two mammoth upsets have grabbed media headlines worldwide.
Last week’s prelude to the Australian Open saw amateur tennis player, Jordan Smith, collect a $1 million dollar bonanza when he beat a star-studded line-up in the “One Point Slam” in Melbourne.
A sudden-death one-point contest pitted 24 of the world world’s best professional tennis players against a similar number of Australia’s best amateurs and a number celebrity of celebrity wildcards.
A Melbourne newspaper report stated a match consisted of a single point. Win and you advance, - lose and you are out.
Instead of a coin toss to open proceedings, a game of “rock, paper, scissors” decided who served.
NSW amateur champion Smith eliminated world number two Jannik Sinner on his way to defeating women’s professional, Joanna Garland, for the seven-figure monetary prize.
Just days before the AO prelude upset, arguably the biggest upsets in FA Cup history took place, when lowly ranked Macclesfield Town knocked out defending titleholder Crystal Palace.
The teams, who were separated by 117 places in the English football professional leagues, saw found reputations mattered little, with the team from the small England northwest town beating the Premier League heavyweights 2-1.
During 1962, I had the good fortune to be on the sideline of one of the biggest upsets that befell a touring international team in our country.
Work and studies were halted at the Hodderville Training Farm outside Putaruru, and students boarded the old pre-war bus to watch the touring Australian side play lowly Thames Valley at Te Aroha.
The only recognisable player in the team of no-names selected to play the touring Aussies was All Black Kevin Barry.
In front of 5000 parochial rugby fans, the home side upset the odds with a narrow 16-14 win.
Twenty years later, I was again witness to one of bigger upsets suffered by a touring team, when Australia was given a bloody nose at the Rotorua Stadium. The Bay team were in the middle of a horrible season where they won just two matches.
The Bay of Plenty Steamers led by 16 unanswered points at the break in play, before going on to smash the tourists 40-16. The Bay of Plenty’s six touchdowns were awarded to Hika Reid (2) John Cameron, Ron Preston, (Sir) Gordon Tietjens and Mark Basham, with Preston slotting five conversions and two penalties.
The other side of coin can be hard to handle when your favourites are on the wrong side of an upset defeat.
We were in San Francisco for the early rounds of the 2013 America’s Cup, and caught some of the preliminary action between Luna Rossa and Artemis, in the challenger series.
After we left San Fran, Team New Zealand achieved its objective of winning the challenger shootouts and seemed to have the “Auld Mug” ready to bring back to New Zealand, when they shot out to an 8-1 lead.
It was with complete amazement that we watched from afar as Oracle rattled off eight straight victories to retain the prized piece of silverware, 9-8.
A decade later, it is still hard to comprehend how the Cup holders could come back from such a massive deficit.
The America’s Cup upset is my contender for the biggest upset in world sport - EVER.
