Jennifer James provides a lesson on living with disappointment
The Insider is not a sports fan—football, tennis and cricket all passed me by at school and I have never really bothered to catch them up since. I was heavily criticised for my stickwork in hockey and was more or less a liability at netball too, neither sports which inspire the level of coverage or depth of adulation that football does.
However, even someone as disinterested as I had no way of avoiding the recent spate of British sporting defeats over the past month. England barely scraped through the group stage of the World Cup and dropped out in their first knockout match, Andy Murray lost to Rafael Nadal in straight sets and the England cricket team lost a game to Bangladesh.
The Italian has been doubly distressed as far as the World Cup was concerned with the defending champions being sent home even earlier than England and his fallback option, Holland, losing in the final after a less than sportsmanlike performance. Even the happy fact that
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