Oral Tracey | The sporting ups and downs of 2018

The year 2018 was not an ordinary one for sports. For starters, it was the year of the quadrennial staging of the biggest and most popular single-sport event in all of sports, the FIFA World Cup finals. The magnitude, spectacle, and drama of the Russian-staged version of the greatest show on earth provided enough exciting twists, turns, colour, and competence to ignite claims of Russia 2018 being one of, if not, the best-ever-staged World Cup tournament. France turned out to be worthy champions with a team referred to as the 'Blackest team ever to have won the greatest prize in team sports', with approximately half of the team being of African descent.

Millions of Brazil fans, myself included, were again left bitterly disappointed with yet another World Cup failure. Again, the feeling was that of Brazil giving away another title. The effect of Brazil's demise was somewhat cushioned by the embarrassing first-round exit of the then defending champions, Germany, as well as the routine World Cup flop of the best player of the modern era, Lionel Messi, and his hapless Argentina team.

A further scan of the 2018 sporting radar picks up the high-profile attempts by retired sprint legend Usain Bolt at playing serious professional football. Initially, the world took it for a joke, but as Bolt persisted, we were all forced to take serious notice as Bolt's failed attempt at football turned out to be the actual joke we all thought it was initially.

GETTING WORSE

The Windies test cricketers refused to go unnoticed in 2018, and just when we thought things could not get any worse, they did. Not only were they soundly beaten 2-0 in the two-Test series against Bangladesh in November, but they were totally annihilated by an innings and 184 runs in the second Test at the hands of the once lowly Asian minnows. This was a reminder, if we needed it, that the Windies team found ways to get worse in 2018.

There were other major events during the year, with Kingston College winning the ISSA/Digicel Manning Cup for the first time in 32 years and Clarendon College responsible for taking the symbol of all-island schoolboy football supremacy, the ISSA Olivier Shield, back to rural Jamaica for the first time in 14 years. The Michael Ricketts, led Jamaica Football Federation (JFF) administration was left with egg on its face, after bowing to the powerful Kingston and St Andrew Football Association (KSAFA) in their high-profile dispute about the proposed changes to the Red Stripe Premier League qualification process. KSAFA's threat of a boycott of the qualifiers worked as the JFF was backed into a corner and yielded, which was typical of the kind of wobbly leadership we have come to expect from the JFF in recent times.

Alia Atkinson continued to be her dominant self in short-course swimming. The national rugby league and rugby union teams qualified for their respective world cups. Fedrick Dacres continued to enhance his reputation as an elite world-class thrower in 2018, even as Jamaican sprinting continues to a search for a post-Usain Bolt identity.

Without even a modicum of doubt, however, from a Jamaican perspective, the greatest sporting achievement in 2018, which culminated in one of the nation's greatest-ever sporting moments, was the historic qualification of the Reggae Girlz for the 2019 FIFA Women's World Cup finals. It was a journey with a story of beating the odds and the triumph of the human spirit over adversity as this group of girls and their support staff set about achieving the unlikely feat of clinching an automatic berth to the World Cup finals at the expense of regional powerhouses Mexico and Costa Rica. In addition to the qualification itself, perhaps the most indelible mark was left by the sight and sounds of the Jamaican girls, half of who were not born and do not live in Jamaica, delivering their touching rendition of the Jamaican national anthem inside the dressing room moments after the end of the game, perfectly encapsulating the meaning of the moment for the Girlz and for Jamaica. Bon voyage, 2018. Let us see what 2019 brings.