The thought struck me on the last rattler back from the Grand National, as Avanti’s wifi faltered somewhere outside Crewe and the Masters stream on my phone froze yet again. I was watching the world’s best golf tournament, on a train journey back from the world’s greatest steeplechase, having seen the best football match of the season – Real Madrid against Bayern Munich – earlier in the week. Is there a better month in the sporting calendar than April?
Augusta always delivers. Club football hits peak levels of drama and jeopardy. Then there is Aintree, Paris-Roubaix, the start of the County Championship cricket season and the World Snooker Championship. To round it off, the life-affirming sight of the great and the ordinary doing remarkable things at the London Marathon. “April is the cruellest month,” writes TS Eliot in The Waste Land. But he was not a sporting man and was living in very different times.
Reasonable minds may disagree. You can certainly make a case for July, with the mighty trifecta of Wimbledon, the Open and Tour de France. This year the World Cup adds even more heft. As do Olympic Games when they take place. But as special as these events are, they come around only every four years.
Some American readers may opt for October, when the baseball playoffs are in full swing and the NFL, NBA, NHL and college football seasons are up and running. But April trumps them all, with chaos, thrills and classic moments baked in every year.
How, for instance, could you take your eyes off the Masters on a Sunday when momentum was veering wildly? At halfway Rory McIlroy was six shots clear on 12 under. After six holes of his final round he was two back on nine under. Many thought his mind had gone. Then he made four birdies in seven holes.
What of Justin Rose? Between the 5th and 9th he made four birdies to go two clear heading into the back nine – including one of the shots of the day out of the pine straw at the 7th. He looked calm. Composed. Then, staggeringly, he bogeyed 11, duffed a chip on 12 and took five at 13 after having an eagle putt to go 12 under.
That is the beautiful treachery of Sunday at Augusta: where the margins are wafer thin and the pressure makes even the stiff upper-lips go wobbly. Where would we be now if McIlroy’s third to 15 had not stumbled over the water? If Scottie Scheffler’s birdie putt at 17 had not wiggled at the last moment? Or if Rose had kept his cool?
We forget, too, that club football often hits its peak in April. Look at the Champions League. For six months or so it dawdles along. But then the quarter-finals and the first leg of the semi-finals arrive and it goes into overdrive. Last week, Real Madrid and Bayern had 40 shots between them in their epic first leg, with 16 on target, and it could have easily been 4-5 not 1-2.
In a world of rigid systems and set pieces, this was football how we remembered as kids – attack, attack, attack, as if Brazil v Italy from 1982 had returned to cast its spell on a fresh generation.
Then again, Real Madrid v Bayern was hardly an outlier. Aston Villa’s quarter-final second leg against Paris Saint-Germain last April was a classic. So was Inter’s extraordinary semi-final 7-6 win over Barcelona, which stretched over April and early May.
In 2024 the quarter-finals were even more spectacular, with Real Madrid knocking out Manchester City on penalties, PSG beating Barcelona 6-4, and Arsenal losing 3-2 to Bayern Munich. Is there a better month in European club football?
While the Premier League title is awarded in May, its more decisive moments often arrive in April as well. Remember 2024? Arsenal were favourites until they lost 2-0 at home to Aston Villa. They won their final six games, but still ended up two points behind Manchester City.
In 2023, Arsenal also blew the title in April after draws against Liverpool, West Ham and Southampton, and a 4-1 defeat to Manchester City. While in 2022, Manchester City’s 2-2 draw with Liverpool in April effectively proved decisive, given neither side lost again. Does anyone expect Sunday’s showdown between Manchester City and Arsenal not to determine this year’s race?
At the weekend there was also a vintage Grand National to devour, with I Am Maximus coming from 10 lengths back to reel in Jordans to take his second victory in the race. While some still bemoan the National has become too soft, I disagree. Crucially, while Saturday had plenty of spills and thrills – with seven fallers and seven unseated – there were no deaths.
Do we really want to go back to 1951 when the Guardian wrote of “gallant beasts doing their purposeless best … Out of 38 riders, and 144 legs, only three riders and 12 legs came home.”
Between 2002 and 2012, 11 horses died in the race before the fences were rebuilt using softer cores instead of rigid timber frames, allowing horses to brush through the top and have a better chance of landing safely.
There was an epic Paris-Roubaix race, with Wout van Aert outsprinting Tadej Pogacar on the last lap of the André-Pétrieux velodrome. After five hours of drama, punctures, cobbles and chaos Van Aert burst into tears. Pogacar must have felt like crying too after missing out on his final monument by the width of a bike wheel.
The good news? He will be back next year. Which will make it, along with the rest of April’s sporting calendar, compelling viewing.
