Justin Rose became the first English major champion since Nick Faldo when he won the US Open – and what a very English winner he is.

Okay, he was born in Johannesburg, but everything else about the 32-year-old smacks of England.

Golfers very often tend to be cool customers, carrying themselves with a slow swagger. The whole grace of movement goes with the territory of the game, smooth swing and all that.

But not Rose. His upright gait and awkward crowd acknowledgement look forced despite well over a decade on tour.

He has been playing on the PGA Tour for a while and the language has got to him a touch, but again he doesn’t often carry it off in interviews. He sounds like an Englishman speaking American. And well done to him for that!

There’s nothing awkward about his swing by the way. He’s no Ernie Els but the technique is probably the best out there, demonstrated amply by his two impeccable long shots down the 18th.

Another point to not about his performance at 17 and 18 is that he focused his way through the nerves. People sometimes accuse players of bottling key moments and ascribe the failure to nerves. I often think the failure is a lack of concentration allowing nerves to influence. True, pure concentration, what is often described as being “in the zone”, can dispense with negative nerve influence. That to me is the state Rose was in on those two closing holes.

But back to the English-ness of Rose, his reaction in the dressing room after Phil Mickelson’s chip missed was a very honest picture of the guy. Elated to have achieved a life’s goal, but also a touch of I don’t know where to put myself and general awkwardness. Again, excellent.

I don’t know if he had time to think about his acceptance speech but I don’t think I’ve ever heard a wiser one.

If he came up with this off the cuff then fair play to him – a career in politics beckons: ”A lot of us come from great men and we have a responsibility to our children to show what a great man can be.”

Justin Rose became the first English major champion since Nick Faldo when he won the US Open – and what a very English winner he is.

Okay, he was born in Johannesburg, but everything else about the 32-year-old smacks of England.

Golfers very often tend to be cool customers, carrying themselves with a slow swagger. The whole grace of movement goes with the territory of the game, smooth swing and all that.

But not Rose. His upright gait and awkward crowd acknowledgement look forced despite well over a decade on tour.

He has been playing on the PGA Tour for a while and the language has got to him a touch, but again he doesn’t often carry it off in interviews. He sounds like an Englishman speaking American. And well done to him for that!

There’s nothing awkward about his swing by the way. He’s no Ernie Els but the technique is probably the best out there, demonstrated amply by his two impeccable long shots down the 18th.

Another point to not about his performance at 17 and 18 is that he focused his way through the nerves. People sometimes accuse players of bottling key moments and ascribe the failure to nerves. I often think the failure is a lack of concentration allowing nerves to influence. True, pure concentration, what is often described as being “in the zone”, can dispense with negative nerve influence. That to me is the state Rose was in on those two closing holes.

But back to the English-ness of Rose, his reaction in the dressing room after Phil Mickelson’s chip missed was for me a very honest picture of the guy. Elated to have achieved a life’s goal, but also a touch of I don’t know where to put myself and general awkwardness. Again, excellent.

I don’t know if he had time to think about his acceptance speech but I don’t think I’ve ever heard a wiser one.

If he came up with this off the cuff then fair play to him – a career in politics beckons: ”A lot of us come from great men and we have a responsibility to our children to show what a great man can be.”

Although there is no major football tournament this season, and 99.999998 per cent of pro footballers are in Marbella/Caribbean/Vegas, the beautiful game still dominates the sporting agenda.

Mourinho today, Pellegrini expected later this week, so it goes.

But at least at this time of year other sports do get more of a look in.

I spent three days last week at the PGA Seniors Championship at Mottram Hall, where some big golfing names took in the south Manchester sunshine.

I guess in sporting terms you could hardly get further away from the frenetic action of the Premier League. It was all done at a gentle pace, summed up when, after striking his tee-shot at the par three 16th on Thursday, Sam Torrance joined a member of the crowd on a nearby bench, sparked up a cigarette before watching his playing partners hit.

Another phlegmatic moment came when Frenchman Roger Sabarros strolled up to find his ball directly behind a tree on the 14th. “Ah. Pas de chance,” he sighed before knocking it back out onto the fairway and carrying on.

This not to say the tournament wasn’t competitively fought. Ian Woosnam was battling his game all week and was rewarded with a fine final round 65. On Saturday, after threading his approach through a five yard gap between trees to about 12 feet, he was upset that it hadn’t taken the borrow and gone closer.

Incidentally Woosie’s was one of several fine walks on display around Mottram Hall over the week. At just over five ft four in, the Welshman’s short stride and forward tilt makes him distinguishable from well over a hundred yards. But he can still strike the ball superbly and is a true champion of the game.

I played in Wednesday’s pro-am with affable Irishman Des Smyth, who eventually tied eighth after fading in the last two rounds. It was a great experience and an education to watch such a top operator at close quarters.

Again, he was extremely easy going but, you sensed, with a steely determination lurking underneath. All very enjoyable, let’s hope the tournament returns to Mottram next year.

:: On the subject of golf, the US Open goes to Merion this week. A top track and relatively short, which is why many are backing Graeme McDowell. For a similar reason maybe Luke Donald will go well.

Before the General Election, David Cameron promised he’d protect the NHS.

Instead, his Government has cut almost 4,000 nurses, and A&E waiting times have hit a ten-year high.

Meanwhile, the NHS is reeling from a vast, top-down reorganisation that nobody wanted and nobody voted for.

It’s cost us £3billion.

Now we have an A&E crisis that started on this Government’s watch.

When Labour left office, A&E was doing well.

98% of patients were seen within four hours.

But since 2010, the number of people waiting longer than four hours has nearly trebled, and more and more patients are being held in the back of ambulances as they queue to come in.

The North West has lost hundreds of nurses since May 2010. Nurses are the backbone of our NHS.
But the Government has failed to grasp the seriousness of its cuts to nursing numbers.

That is one reason our A&Es are struggling.

The impact on us locally is shocking.

Data published by NHS England shows that the target of 95 per cent of patients being seen within four hours at A&E was missed in 31 weeks out of 35 by Central Manchester Hospitals (which include Trafford General), and in 30 weeks out of 35 by Wythenshawe.

Some of that reflects the long, cold winter we’ve had, and the position has been improving in recent weeks.

But there is also a deeper cause of the A&E crisis.

The government’s devastating cuts to budgets for social care mean fewer older people are getting the help they need to stay healthy and independent in their own homes.

Trafford has cut over £2million.

Yet, just when the NHS is under huge pressure, George Osborne has clawed back £2billion from the NHS budget in ‘underspends’.

He’s using money that should be invested in our NHS to massage his budget figures.

That’s disgraceful.

This week in parliament, Andy Burnham said Labour would support the NHS immediately by investing £1.2bn of this over the next two years to ease the crisis in social care – tackling a root cause of the pressure on A&E. You can read the whole debate at:

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmhansrd/cm130605/debtext/130605-0003.htm#13060568000002

For older people, this could make a huge difference, by enabling them to stay healthy and independent in their own homes for longer.

For example, it could allow for an extra 70 million hours of home care across England over the next two years or provide home care for an extra 65,000 older people each year.

We need to ensure that our NHS is protected and not destroyed by this Tory-led Government.
And we need a guarantee that any decisions about the future of A&E in Trafford will take account of the pressures we’re facing now.

That’s why, in the debate in parliament, I demanded that the secretary of state publish the advice he’s received from the Independent Reconfiguration Panel, which he will consider when he makes his decision about services at Trafford General.

And why I think we should wait for NHS Chief Sir Bruce Keogh’s report into the future of emergency care.

I want to see fewer people having to go to A&E because they can get more appropriate care in the community.

I don’t want older people, or people with dementia, or people with mental health problems having to go to A&E.

It’s the wrong place for them to be.

But right now, it’s devastatingly clear that there simply isn’t anywhere else for them to go.

We can’t take services away without the right community health and social care services that prevent people needing to go to hospital in the first place.

It’s nearly the weekend and it’s far, far too sunny to be in the office.

So stop stressing out about the welfare debate, the IMF or the protests in Turkey. Here, instead, is a picture of the MP for Denton and Reddish with two badgers.

You’re welcome.

Alex Bell

“I think I am artistic in sport. . . When I look at a football pitch I suppose, yes, I see it as my canvas,” Manchester United number 20 Robin van Persie told sports writers.

Has the Dutchman, speaking after he sealed the Premier League title for his new club with an almost poetic hat-trick, got a point? Can football, or indeed any sport, be considered as an art form or does it touch us as art from time to time when beauty can be captured among the chaos?

Think about a Roger Federer winning backhand against the relentless tenacity of Rafael Nadal to somehow keep the 2008 Wimbledon final alive. Think Bobby Moore’s composure and timing when tackling Jairzinho in the penalty box in Brazil in the World Cup quarter final in 1970. Think Jonny Wilkinson kicking an egg shaped ball on the half volley between two posts to win the Rugby World Cup down under against the home nation.

All are moments surely worthy of top billings in any sports photography exhibition, but in art exhibitions, maybe not?

Art: the study of creative skill, a process of using the creative skill, a product of the creative skill, or the audience’s experience with the creative skill. The word art can refer to several things and is open to interpretation. 

I don’t know whether any Da Vinci, Monet or Picasso enthusiasts would class sport as an art form. Probably not. I would think that writers, painters or musicians themselves are just as competitive as sports men and women, and they knowingly work within what are considered as ‘the arts’. It is their chosen field, they know what they have entered.

Can the bridge of sport and art be breached? Surely only the most sublimely talented sports players can be considered artists in their own right. They know their sport, appear at ease when others don’t and seem to be blessed with much more time to execute their skills. 

Two creative directors decided Zinedine Zidane’s talent was so majestic they set up 17 cameras at the Bernabeu stadium in Madrid in 2005. 

The end product was a 90-minute film named ‘Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait’, which will be shown at next month’s Manchester International Festival. The screening will feature a live performance by Glasgow quintet Mogwai who provided the supporting soundtrack for the movie. The film follows the French footballer’s on-field behaviour, movement, his choices, and is football on film as you won’t have seen it before.

Art born from sport maybe. In 2006, a year after the film was shot, Zidane unknowingly provided the watching sporting world with three extraordinary passages of play during his country’s 2006 World Cup Final defeat against Italy in Berlin. Seventeen cameras weren’t shooting footage for a film studio that day but tens of thousands of fans and hundreds of professional photographers snapped stills inside the Olypmic Stadium, capturing moments still talked about in pubs around the world today.

The mercurial Frenchman chipped a penalty kick-in off the cross bar, before in the dying moments violently head-butting an opponent and seconds later walking past the World Cup taking any French hopes of winning the grandest prize with him down the dark and empty tunnel.

Zidane possibly provides the greatest argument for sport as art. Carl Lewis’ gliding running style, Muhammad Ali dancing and tormenting his opponents in the ring, Ronnie O’Sullivan clearing a snooker table of its balls in the most perfect way possible in a little over five minutes. These are other select moments when sport reaches its rhythmic best for viewers.

Sport, then, is not within the conventional arts field but can sometimes touch upon it in those timeless moments. There are certain sports men and women who are so creative, so instinctive within their chosen field that we can begin to think they may be artists.

Van Persie certainly thinks so. With his bow legs and cowboy swagger, before lighting up Manchester and the footballing world over the past nine months, he honed his skills as a youngster in ‘the cage’ – a concrete yard in Kralingen, Rotterdam.

He might not have thought of ‘the cage’ as “his canvas” but his recent claims that the turf of Old Trafford is so are seemingly plausible. 

I wonder if his parents, dad Bob, a sculptor, and mum Josee, a painter, think he’s an artist, a footballer, or both?

@AWBellMENMedia

Alex Bell

“I think I am artistic in sport. . . When I look at a football pitch I suppose, yes, I see it as my canvas,” Manchester United number 20 Robin van Persie told sports writers.

Has the Dutchman, speaking after he sealed the Premier League title for his new club with an almost poetic hat-trick, got a point? Can football, or indeed any sport, be considered as an art form or does it touch us as art from time to time when beauty can be captured among the chaos?

Think about a Roger Federer winning backhand against the relentless tenacity of Rafael Nadal to somehow keep the 2008 Wimbledon final alive. Think Bobby Moore’s composure and timing when tackling Jairzinho in the penalty box in Brazil in the World Cup quarter final in 1970. Think Jonny Wilkinson kicking an egg shaped ball on the half volley between two posts to win the Rugby World Cup down under against the home nation.

All are moments surely worthy of top billings in any sports photography exhibition, but in art exhibitions, maybe not?

Art: the study of creative skill, a process of using the creative skill, a product of the creative skill, or the audience’s experience with the creative skill. The word art can refer to several things and is open to interpretation. 

I don’t know whether any Da Vinci, Monet or Picasso enthusiasts would class sport as an art form. Probably not. I would think that writers, painters or musicians themselves are just as competitive as sports men and women, and they knowingly work within what are considered as ‘the arts’. It is their chosen field, they know what they have entered.

Can the bridge of sport and art be breached? Surely only the most sublimely talented sports players can be considered artists in their own right. They know their sport, appear at ease when others don’t and seem to be blessed with much more time to execute their skills. 

Two creative directors decided Zinedine Zidane’s talent was so majestic they set up 17 cameras at the Bernabeu stadium in Madrid in 2005. 

The end product was a 90-minute film named ‘Zidane: A 21st Century Poet’, which will be shown at next month’s Manchester International Festival. The screening will feature a live performance by Glasgow quintet Mogwai who provided the supporting soundtrack for the movie. The film follows the French footballer’s on-field behaviour, movement, his choices, and is football on film as you won’t have seen it before.

Art born from sport maybe. In 2006, a year after the film was shot, Zidane unknowingly provided the watching sporting world with three extraordinary passages of play during his country’s 2006 World Cup Final defeat against Italy in Berlin. Seventeen cameras weren’t shooting footage for a film studio that day but tens of thousands of fans and hundreds of professional photographers snapped stills inside the Olypmic Stadium, capturing moments still talked about in pubs around the world today.

The mercurial Frenchman chipped a penalty kick-in off the cross bar, before in the dying moments violently head-butting an opponent and seconds later walking past the World Cup taking any French hopes of winning the grandest prize with him down the dark and empty tunnel.

Zidane possibly provides the greatest argument for sport as art. Carl Lewis’ gliding running style, Muhammad Ali dancing and tormenting his opponents in the ring, Ronnie O’Sullivan clearing a snooker table of its balls in the most perfect way possible in a little over five minutes. These are other select moments when sport reaches its rhythmic best for viewers.

Sport, then, is not within the conventional arts field but can sometimes touch upon it in those timeless moments. There are certain sports men and women who are so creative, so instinctive within their chosen field that we can begin to think they may be artists.

Van Persie certainly thinks so. With his bow legs and cowboy swagger, before lighting up Manchester and the footballing world over the past nine months, he honed his skills as a youngster in ‘the cage’ – a concrete yard in Kralingen, Rotterdam.

He might not have thought of ‘the cage’ as “his canvas” but his recent claims that the turf of Old Trafford is so are seemingly plausible. 

I wonder if his parents, dad Bob, a sculptor, and mum Josee, a painter, think he’s an artist, a footballer, or both?

@AWBellMENMedia

Alex Bell

“I think I am artistic in sport. . . When I look at a football pitch I suppose, yes, I see it as my canvas,” Manchester United number 20 Robin van Persie told sports writers.

Has the Dutchman, speaking after he sealed the Premier League title for his new club with an almost poetic hat-trick, got a point? Can football, or indeed any sport, be considered as an art form or does it touch us as art from time to time when beauty can be captured among the chaos?

Think about a Roger Federer winning backhand against the relentless tenacity of Rafael Nadal to somehow keep the 2008 Wimbledon final alive. Think Bobby Moore’s composure and timing when tackling Jairzinho in the penalty box in Brazil in the World Cup quarter final in 1970. Think Jonny Wilkinson kicking an egg shaped ball on the half volley between two posts to win the Rugby World Cup down under against the home nation.

All are moments surely worthy of top billings in any sports photography exhibition, but in art exhibitions, maybe not?

Art: the study of creative skill, a process of using the creative skill, a product of the creative skill, or the audience’s experience with the creative skill. The word art can refer to several things and is open to interpretation. 

I don’t know whether any Da Vinci, Monet or Picasso enthusiasts would class sport as an art form. Probably not. I would think that writers, painters or musicians themselves are just as competitive as sports men and women, and they knowingly work within what are considered as ‘the arts’. It is their chosen field, they know what they have entered.

Can the bridge of sport and art be breached? Surely only the most sublimely talented sports players can be considered artists in their own right. They know their sport, appear at ease when others don’t and seem to be blessed with much more time to execute their skills. 

Two creative directors decided Zinedine Zidane’s talent was so majestic they set up 17 cameras at the Bernabeu stadium in Madrid in 2005. 

The end product was a 90-minute film named ‘Zidane: A 21st Century Poet’, which will be shown at next month’s Manchester International Festival. The screening will feature a live performance by Glasgow quintet Mogwai who provided the supporting soundtrack for the movie. The film follows the French footballer’s on-field behaviour, movement, his choices, and is football on film as you won’t have seen it before.

Art born from sport maybe. In 2006, a year after the film was shot, Zidane unknowingly provided the watching sporting world with three extraordinary passages of play during his country’s 2006 World Cup Final defeat against Italy in Berlin. Seventeen cameras weren’t shooting footage for a film studio that day but tens of thousands of fans and hundreds of professional photographers snapped stills inside the Olypmic Stadium, capturing moments still talked about in pubs around the world today.

The mercurial Frenchman chipped a penalty kick-in off the cross bar, before in the dying moments violently head-butting an opponent and seconds later walking past the World Cup taking any French hopes of winning the grandest prize with him down the dark and empty tunnel.

Zidane possibly provides the greatest argument for sport as art. Carl Lewis’ gliding running style, Muhammad Ali dancing and tormenting his opponents in the ring, Ronnie O’Sullivan clearing a snooker table of its balls in the most perfect way possible in a little over five minutes. These are other select moments when sport reaches its rhythmic best for viewers.

Sport, then, is not within the conventional arts field but can sometimes touch upon it in those timeless moments. There are certain sports men and women who are so creative, so instinctive within their chosen field that we can begin to think they may be artists.

Van Persie certainly thinks so. With his bow legs and cowboy swagger, before lighting up Manchester and the footballing world over the past nine months, he honed his skills as a youngster in ‘the cage’ – a concrete yard in Kralingen, Rotterdam.

He might not have thought of ‘the cage’ as “his canvas” but his recent claims that the turf of Old Trafford is so are seemingly plausible. 

I wonder if his parents, dad Bob a sculptor, and mum Josee, a painter, think he’s an artist, a footballer, or both?

@AWBellMENMedia

Alex Bell

“I think I am artistic in sport. . . When I look at a football pitch I suppose, yes, I see it as my canvas,” Manchester United number 20 Robin van Persie told sports writers.

Has the Dutchman, speaking after he sealed the Premier League title for his new club with an almost poetic hat-trick, got a point? Can football, or indeed any sport, be considered as an art form or does it touch us as art from time to time when beauty can be captured among the chaos?

Think about a Roger Federer winning backhand against the relentless tenacity of Rafael Nadal to somehow keep the 2008 Wimbledon final alive. Think Bobby Moore’s composure and timing when tackling Jairzinho in the penalty box in Brazil in the World Cup quarter final in 1970. Think Jonny Wilkinson kicking an egg shaped ball on the half volley between two posts to win the Rugby World Cup down under against the home nation.

All are moments surely worthy of top billings in any sports photography exhibition, but in art exhibitions, maybe not?

Art: the study of creative skill, a process of using the creative skill, a product of the creative skill, or the audience’s experience with the creative skill. The word art can refer to several things and is open to interpretation. 

I don’t know whether any Da Vinci, Monet or Picasso enthusiasts would class sport as an art form. Probably not. I would think that writers, painters or musicians themselves are just as competitive as sports men and women, and they knowingly work within what are considered as ‘the arts’. It is their chosen field, they know what they have entered.

Can the bridge of sport and art be breached. Surely only the most sublimely talented sports players can be considered artists in their own right. They know their sport, appear at ease when others don’t and seem to be blessed with much more time to execute their skills. 

Two creative directors decided Zinedine Zidane’s talent was so majestic they set up 17 cameras at the Bernabeu stadium in Madrid in 2005. 

The end product was a 90-minute film named ‘Zidane: A 21st Century Poet’, which will be shown at next month’s Manchester International Festival. The screening will feature a live performance by Glasgow quintet Mogwai who provided the supporting soundtrack for the movie. The film follows the French footballer’s on-field behaviour, movement, his choices, and is football on film as you won’t have seen it before.

Art born from sport maybe. In 2006, a year after the film was shot, Zidane unknowingly provided the watching sporting world with three extraordinary passages of play during his country’s 2006 World Cup Final defeat against Italy in Berlin. Seventeen cameras weren’t shooting footage for a film studio that day but tens of thousands of fans and hundreds of professional photographers snapped stills inside the Olypmic Stadium, capturing moments still talked about in pubs around the world today.

The mercurial Frenchman chipped a penalty kick-in off the cross bar, before in the dying moments violently head-butting an opponent and seconds later walking past the World Cup taking any French hopes of winning the grandest prize with him down the dark and empty tunnel.

Zidane possibly provides the greatest argument for sport as art. Carl Lewis’ gliding running style, Muhammad Ali dancing and tormenting his opponents in the ring, Ronnie O’Sullivan clearing a snooker table of its balls in the most perfect way possible in a little over five minutes. These are other select moments when sport reaches its rhythmic best for viewers.

Sport, then, is not within the conventional arts field but can sometimes touch upon it in those timeless moments. There are certain sports men and women who are so creative, so instinctive within their chosen field that we can begin to think they may be artists.

Van Persie certainly thinks so. With his bow legs and cowboy swagger, before lighting up Manchester and the footballing world over the past nine months, he honed his skills as a youngster in ‘the cage’ – a concrete yard in Kralingen, Rotterdam.

He might not have thought of ‘the cage’ as “his canvas” but his recent claims that the turf of Old Trafford is so are seemingly plausible. 

I wonder if his parents, dad Bob a sculptor, and mum Josee, a painter, think he’s an artist, a footballer, or both?

@AWBellMENMedia

Alex Bell

“I think I am artistic in sport. . . When I look at a football pitch I suppose, yes, I see it as my canvas,” Manchester United number 20 Robin van Persie told sports writers.

Has the Dutchman, speaking after he sealed the Premier League title for his new club with an almost poetic hat-trick, got a point? Can football, or indeed any sport, be considered as an art form or does it touch us as art from time to time when beauty can be captured among the chaos?

Think about a Roger Federer winning backhand against the relentless tenacity of Rafael Nadal to somehow keep the 2008 Wimbledon final alive. Think Bobby Moore’s composure and timing when tackling Jairzinho in the penalty box in Brazil in the World Cup quarter final in 1970. Think Jonny Wilkinson kicking an egg shaped ball on the half volley between two posts to win the Rugby World Cup down under against the home nation.

All are moments surely worthy of top billings in any sports photography exhibition, but in art exhibitions, maybe not?

Art: the study of creative skill, a process of using the creative skill, a product of the creative skill, or the audience’s experience with the creative skill. The word art can refer to several things and is open to interpretation. 

I don’t know whether any Da Vinci, Monet or Picasso enthusiasts would class sport as an art form. Probably not. I would think that writers, painters or musicians themselves are just as competitive as sports men and women, and they knowingly work within what are considered as ‘the arts’. It is their chosen field, they know what they have entered.

Can the bridge of sport and art be breached. Surely only the most sublimely talented sports players can be considered artists in their own right. They know their sport, appear at ease when others don’t and seem to be blessed with much more time to execute their skills. 

Two creative directors decided Zinedine Zidane’s talent was so majestic they set up 17 cameras at the Bernabeu stadium in Madrid in 2005. 

The end product was a 90-minute film named ‘Zidane: A 21st Century Poet’, which will be shown at next month’s Manchester International Festival. The screening will feature a live performance by Glasgow quintet Mogwai who provided the supporting soundtrack for the movie. The film follows the French footballer’s on-field behaviour, movement, his choices, and is football on film as you won’t have seen it before.

Art born from sport maybe. In 2006, a year after the film was shot, Zidane unknowingly provided the watching sporting world with three extraordinary passages of play during his country’s 2006 World Cup Final defeat against Italy in Berlin. Seventeen cameras weren’t shooting footage for a film studio that day but tens of thousands of fans and hundreds of professional photographers snapped stills inside the Olypmic Stadium, capturing moments still talked about in pubs around the world today.

The mercurial Frenchman chipped a penalty kick-in off the cross bar, before in the dying moments violently head-butting an opponent and seconds later walking past the World Cup taking any French hopes of winning the grandest prize with him down the dark and empty tunnel.

Zidane possibly provides the greatest argument for sport as art. Carl Lewis’ gliding running style, Muhammad Ali dancing and tormenting his opponents in the ring, Ronnie O’Sullivan clearing a snooker table of its balls in the most perfect way possible in a little over five minutes. These are other select moments when sport reaches its rhythmic best for viewers.

Sport, then, is not within the conventional arts field but can sometimes touch upon it in those timeless moments. There are certain sports men and women who are so creative, so instinctive within their chosen field that we can begin to think they may be artists.

Van Persie certainly thinks so. With his bow legs and cowboy swagger, before lighting up Manchester and the footballing world over the past nine months, he honed his skills as a youngster in ‘the cage’ – a concrete yard in Kralingen, Rotterdam.

He might not have thought of ‘the cage’ as “his canvas” but his recent claims that the turf of Old Trafford is so are seemingly plausible. 

I wonder if his parents, dad Bob a sculptor, and mum Josee, a painter, think he’s an artist, a footballer, or both?