Bruno was not so much a big personality as a buffoon – it was like the Monster Raving Loony Party romping home in a general election. To make up for this injustice, I hereby place Redgrave at the top of my list of the three most unsung – or should that be the three least sung? – heroes of Britain’s sporting century.Consider too the Guyana-born boxer Dennis Andries, who won the World Boxing Council light-heavyweight championship for Britain not once, not twice, but three times. It included the oarsman and four-time Olympic gold medallist Steve Redgrave, repeatedly overlooked in the voting for BBC Sports Personality of the Year. Surely.
A few weeks ago in this space I ventured my own list of the century’s top sporting achievers. As good as Men Behaving Badly was, it surely didn’t deserve the ultimate accolade Even Simon Nye was indignant, and he wrote it But Ali is bound to transcend that depressing trend. Not even a forgetful Joe Public would make Stephen Hendry or Frankie Dettori the Sports Personality of the Century.

A few years ago, in a poll to celebrate BBC TV’s 60th birthday, voters overlooked Hancock, Steptoe, Fawlty Towers, Dad’s Army, Porridge and suchlike, and chose Men Behaving Badly as their favourite all-time sitcom. When it comes to voting for the greatest this or that, Joe Public tends to exhibit the memory span of an unusually forgetful goldfish. In the sporting arena, one of the most distinguished lists is that of past winners of the 45-year-old BBC Sports Personality of the Year award, which on Sunday is to be complemented by an award for the century’s supreme sports personality Switch on to see who will come second behind Muhammad Ali. Not a day goes by without the publication of a new list, from the 100 greatest music-makers of the Millennium to the 100 greatest boiler- makers. IF EVER there was a dead cert it was that the last month of the century, indeed the last month of the you-know-what, would be full of lists.

The World Cup catastrophe has been the catalyst for the greatest upheaval in New Zealand rugby since the Springbok tour of 1981, an introspection which shows little sign of slowing.. It has been but in a perverse and unwanted way many did not consider. The pro-Smith and Sloane faction would argue against guilt by association.Most rugby followers thought this year would be fascinating. The first maintains the new coach must have no links to the All Black regime of the last four years, and that would mean success for Gilbert. If there is an impasse at the vote, an outsider like Shelford, Ross Cooper or John Boe could sneak through.But the arguments seem clear now, though they will become murkier in the next fortnight’s run to the selection There are two lines of thought.