Sport regenerates itself as relentlessly as a big city. When we come to the silly business of picking teams of the century nobody was left to speak for Josie Synott and the boys. Even the best of men wither and the toughest of mountains succumb and the greatest of buildings come down. The earliest generations of men and women to excel at organised sport got their last headlines on their tombstones long ago. That was their lot.
Mortality is a back-pack full of stones.
We won't make it too far. The marks we set will be easily surpassed and the heroes we make will be sepia-coloured and frayed by the time the world completes another lap. None of our kings and queens of sport will be on all-century lists in 2099. Our stadiums will be rubble, our memories washed away, our arguments, rivalries and passions trivialised by the decades. In a hundred years somebody will sit down to review a century of sport.