Despite the heartbreak, this was one of the most pulsating weekends of sport in living memory. England lost to New Zealand in a remarkable women’s rugby union World Cup final at Eden Park, won a majestic T20 cricket final against Pakistan at the MCG and lost to Samoa in a rugby league World Cup semi-final so epic that they could turn it into a Netflix mini-series. Oh, and Brentford turned over Manchester City in the Premier League – and much more besides.
When I was a sixth-former and told a careers adviser that I wanted to spend my life in sport, he had to work pretty hard not to laugh. In the 1980s, with football mired in hooliganism and computer games and gizmos coming to
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