At the old Cliff training ground at Manchester United many years ago, we were talking to Sir Alex Ferguson one morning about one of his stalwarts who was past his prime. A once reliable player had been caught out a few times, embarrassed in our eyes. “Don’t you think it’s time he bowed out?” someone ventured.
With that question, Ferguson’s face turned a familiar puce. “Who the f*** are you to tell a great player he’s finished? Who the f*** are you telling him when to retire?” he shouted. I am not sure I fully appreciated the diatribe at the time, being in my cocksure twenties and less appreciative of all it took a top footballer to establish himself in the first place, but these days I hope I would understand.
Ferguson’s instruction has certainly echoed in my mind whenever watching Andy Murray over recent years: straining and striving not so much to win a fourth elusive grand-slam singles title but often just to win any match against any opponent; to overcome the ravages of a serious hip injury, the ageing process, the march of time in the fearsomely exacting arena of elite tennis.
As Murray has cursed and raged against the dying of his light — “I don’t have a clue what I’m doing,” he berated himself only this week in Dubai — a younger me would have joined the chorus saying, “Come on, Andy, time’s up. Don’t do it to yourself.” The prevalence of that opinion is one reason Murray came off social media.
I would have thought of legacy and reputation, and asked the sort of questions that Murray, who turns 37 in May, has faced for five years now. “There’s a lot of people telling me to stop playing tennis, that it’s sad, and they don’t want to see me playing like this, and he can’t stay fit, and he can’t do this, why is he still doing this,” as he said a few years ago.
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But in the week Murray as good as confirmed that he is approaching his farewell summer, with a last Wimbledon to come and possibly a highly emotional, climactic appearance at the Paris Olympics (which would be a fitting finale in Team GB colours given his two gold medals and all the pride and pleasure he has given the British nation) I have found myself cheering on every tough battle, channelling my inner, defiant Fergie on Murray’s behalf — why should anyone else tell him when to quit? — and hoping that he might yet eke more from his body and be rewarded for his struggle.
Of course it has been painful to watch at times, and even more painful for Murray to play. At the 2019 Australian Open, he broke down in a pre-tournament press conference when he was asked nothing more exacting than: “How have you been feeling?”
He has been to dark places but as he heads into the last few months of his career, I recall him telling The Guardian: “Sport is a strange one. People seem desperate for you to retire and stop doing what it is that you love doing.” He had a message for those people: “Don’t be sad for me. I like doing this, and I’m choosing to do it. No one’s forcing me.” They were heartfelt words even if, over recent months, it really has not looked like much fun.
When to retire? And should a top athlete listen to anyone else — media, public opinion and all the chatter about preserving a reputation when it comes to calling it a day, as Murray will imminently, more than four years after his most recent tournament triumph?
These days, older and more admiring of longevity and the dedication it takes, I am much more inclined to celebrate those who resist calls to go at their athletic peak, and who struggle on regardless of what the world might say on social media.
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Of course you can quickly Google countless lists of the athletes who went on “too long” — footballers who dropped down the leagues such as Teddy Sheringham playing on at Colchester United into his forties and finishing with relegation.
Boxing has given us many tragedies of those who never knew when to quit, but if welfare is not an issue then why should it matter to us if a sportsman or woman keeps going even as their powers decline? Not what they were, some might sigh. But, as we all find out, who is?
Is it not wonderful that Mark Cavendish refuses to accept that his race is run even though he will turn 39 before the start of this year’s Tour de France?
In 2021 he produced one of the great comebacks, not only in cycling but in all sport, when he returned from clinical depression, an horrendous virus and being dumped by more than one team to win four stages (five years after his previous victory) and equal Eddy Merckx on 34 Tour stage wins. He wrote a book, took part in a documentary, his greatness assured.
He could have left it there, gloriously so, but he was not done despite another team writing him off. As he chases a record 35th stage victory this summer, the odds are stacked against him in age, the relative strength of his Astana-Qazaqstan team and the prowess of Jasper Philipsen and other younger rivals but Cavendish races now on his own terms.
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He may miss by a millimetre or a mile — and he may also pull off an extraordinary piece of history — but he rides knowing that his record will stand up whatever happens, and that he can handle any outcome.
Likewise, you sense, with Lewis Hamilton who will be 40 by the time that he races for Ferrari for the first time in 2025. He can expect to be in a procession behind Red Bull for the next two years, at least, but keeps going.
Like Cavendish, he has an incentive given that he can surpass the record he shares with Michael Schumacher of seven F1 drivers’ championships, but it would hardly rank as a failure if he does not get there and, given the odds, it cannot be the only reason to race on. The money is phenomenal but Hamilton insists that the move to Ferrari ignites the love of the sport, the childhood passion.
As Murray once said when explaining why he has battled on: “At the core of it, I love tennis. If you love doing something, why would you stop just because you’re not doing it as well as you once did?”
Love can be part of the problem, as Arsène Wenger admitted a couple of years ago when he acknowledged that he should have left Arsenal, not to retire but to seek a different challenge. “My fatal flaw is I love too much where I am . . . where I was. I regret it,” he said in a moment of candour. In his case, we can say that a great man did go on too long.
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But I have been circumspect about writing anyone off, or ushering them into retirement, not only since Ferguson’s angry tirade but some years later, in December 2005, watching his United side crumble in Benfica, sure I was watching the beginning of the end.
“Ferguson will leave Old Trafford with everything to his name apart from a happy ending,” I bashed, with certainty, into my keyboard. I even questioned whether, phenomenally successful as he had been, he should be free to choose the manner and timing of his departure from Old Trafford. What did I know? Years later, Ferguson did conjure an almost perfect ending.
Ranked No 67 in the world, Murray seems extremely unlikely to have a similar glorious finale but, as his fellow Scot would put it, who the f*** is anyone else to tell him that he went on too long or that it was not worth trying to squeeze every drop out of a tennis career that has put him among the true greats of British sport?
