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John Crean

It happens so often it must be more than carelessness or simple bad luck.

 With the scent of victory so strong it's almost overpowering, the smell of defeat creeps in. When triumph seems a certainty, disaster becomes a sickening reality.

 It struck a great team and a good team last week and it will occur time and again in the coming year.

 Australia, the Ashes safe and their reputation as world beaters enhanced, contrived to lose to an England team that had settled for a draw.

 Newcastle, desperate to give new coach Ruud Gullit a belated Christmas present, threw away a 2-0 lead to Liverpool and lost 4-2.

 How, why, do these things occur? Australia like nothing better than to bash the Poms when they are down, but they let an ordinary-looking English side rise spectacularly from the Ashes.

 The Aussies, chasing a less-than-gargantuan 175 to win, were on cruise control at 130-3. As bookmakers offered the type of odds against the English side which could lead Shane Warne into the arms of temptation, wickets started to fall with alarming regularity.

 With the 'Barmy Army' of English supporters beginning to believe in Christmas miracles and Australians by the thousand crying in their tinnies, the impossible unfolded at the MCG.

 No matter the odds, no matter the unlikeliness of it all, England won by 12 runs. Mark Taylor, mate, what happened?  'We do tend to lose matches when the major prize is already won,' said Taylor.

 True, Aussie cricket sides have a habit of losing 'dead' matches - perhaps it's something in the national psyche.

 As awesome as the Aussies are, total domination of world cricket is still a long way off. They have an Achilles heel and it's laziness - sad, really.

 You have to feel sad for Newcastle and Gullit. Two-nil up away from home and there is a jauntiness about your play, even though you are down to 10 men.

 The clock tells you there are 23 minutes left, you think of the pleasure pulsing through football-crazy Tyneside.

 Then up he pops. That fresh-faced kid who everybody loves after 'that' World Cup goal for England.

 Michael Owen, 'Roy of the Rovers' incarnate, scores twice and Karlheinz Riedle adds another two. Carelessness, bad luck or what?  Every loss is hard to bear but it's particularly galling to let slip a 2-0 lead. The manner of defeat must have been very distressing for Gullit.

 When he was at Chelsea, his retort to accusations that he acted the playboy was that Cup wins don't come the way of absentee managers.

 Now with Newcastle, he's under fire for spending too much time in his native Holland. Oh, how he would have loved to reply that wins over Liverpool don't come the way of flyaway bosses.

 If Newcastle, like the Australian cricketers, had not flown into sport's Bermuda Triangle and emerged battered, bruised and beaten, Gullit could have gone Dutch as often as he wanted.



Will leaders ever fail to avoid curse of the Bermuda Triangle?