The first notable British success was the Leeds Rhinos regaining the Rugby League World Club Challenge title, beating the Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles 26-12 at Headingley in February. Ryan Hall was the star of the show and solidified his reputation as the game's leading winger to an international audience. He went on to retain his International Winger of the Year title in 2012, helped no doubt by this early season 2-try performance.The late winter and early spring belonged to the Welsh as they brought home their 11th Grand Slam by sweeping through the Six Nations Tournament. They did so with an impressive points difference, over a England team that managed four largely uninspiring victories and an inconsistent if (relatively) exciting Ireland team.
As the spring turned into early summer, two great sporting dramas unfolded in football. Manchester City won, lost, then won again the Premier League title. The league run in was dramatic and suspense-filled. It was expected that the 'unmissable' derby at the end of April would be the most dramatic night, but a poor United performance meant the occasion was a little flat, even if it changed the league leadership. What the 1-0 City win did was set up the last day, when the drama really came to life. City led then trailed. Joey Barton blew a fuse that prompted his Franglish lessons. United finished their season as title holders, before City proved themselves as Champions with the 94th minute Aguero strike meant some really noisy neighbours could sound off and celebrate.
If the domestic season belonged to City, in Europe the stars aligned for Chelsea to finally (surely??) satisfy their owner with a Champions League victory. Love them or hate them, you couldn't really help but support Chelsea on their journey, especially as party crasher extraordinaire JT was missing from the final. Charmed existence and Petr Cech penalty saves saw Chelsea roll on from the desperate February night in Napoli to dump out Barcelona and disappoint Bayern Munich in their own back yard to lift the Champion League title. I can't imagine watching Chelsea again with such enthusiasm for them to win. It was a special campaign and 19 May 2012 special night...and then a few months later they sack the coach that won the prize! Classic Ambramovic eh!?19 May 2012 wasn't just a special night for Chelsea FC - Leinster Rugby were also celebrating a European Cup triumph of their own. They retained their title against national counterparts Ulster at a sold out Twickenham stadium. It represented 3 wins in four years and a record winning total and margin in the final of the northern hemisphere's premier club competition. This has really created a dynasty in club rugby for the boys in blue and cemented this teams place in history.
The early summer saw some more Rugby Union, but none of the home nations really excelled themselves during their respective summer tours, although Scotland earned a notable win in Australia...but this is about glory and exciting, so not much can be said about the summer international series really.
Similarly worth skimming over is Euro 2012. Ireland were probably the worst team involved, trying to play like a relegation battling Premier League team in a cup tie against a bunch of guys who actually bothered to learn the techniques required to perform with a football. England weren't much better and scratched their way to an unimpressive quarter final penalty defeat to Italy.
We also had a bit of British success at Wimbledon for the first time in 76 years - but it wasn't Andy Murray, who valiantly reached the final but just fell short against Roger Federer after giving everything he had physically and emotionally. It was Jonny Marray in the men's doubles with his Danish partner Freddie Neilsen. Coming all the way from late wildcard entry to Wimbledon champion is the stuff great stories are made from...and dodgy Kirsten Dunst vehicles too.
But all that was OK, and football didn't really matter anymore anyway, the summer was in full swing and we all saddled up to the great ride towards the home Olympics, and the man peddling us there was Bradley Wiggins. He became the first Brit to win the Tour de France and set the country on an upwards path. Leading the race from stage 7 onwards, he really sealed the win with his second stage win dominating the time trail on the penultimate day, but not one to rest on his laurels, he went all out the next day to help team-mate Mark Cavendish win the race down the Champs-Élysées for the fourth successive year. It was the great tour for Britain, with British riders picking up seven stage wins and 1st and 2nd positions on the final podium. Allez Wiggo and welcome to summer!!
Froome, Cav and Wiggo were just the warm up act to the real star event of 2012 - the London Olympic Games. And boy what a games these were. Great Britain landed third place in the medal table with an overall haul of 65, made up of 29 glorious golds, 17 scintillating silvers and 19 brilliant bronzes. There were so many brilliant individual performances its impossible to list them all so I'll just pick out some of my personal highlights. Team GB got off to a slow start with Lizzie Armistead picking up the first medal with silver in the women's road race on the Day 2 proper of the games. Day 3 provided an unexpected but incredibly tense and enjoyable bronze from the mens gymnastic team - I found a new respect for the athletes of this very demanding sport. We had to wait until Day 5 to taste gold for the first time. Almost inevitably, rowing and cycling came good and started the gold rush, with Bradley Wiggins backing up his Tour victory with a gold medal in the Time Trail only days later. A Gold-Silver combo in the mens C-2 canoe slalom was another personal highlight of week 1, as well as roaring wins in the velodrome for the men's team sprint and pursuit squads and 'Queen' Victoria Pendleton. Then came 'Super Saturday', although you could argue that title doesn't even do it justice. It started with the thrilling and powerful display from the men's coxless fours, with the women's double skull following suit at Eton Dorney. The women's team pursuit raised the flag in the velodrome before all eyes turned on to the Stadium and the athletics. Jess Ennis had carried her tag as the face of the games extremely well as she romped to personal bests through day one of the heptathlon before crowning it with an equally brilliant day two of competition. And just as she finished celebrating a roar went up from the long jump where Greg Rutherford leaped to a slightly less expected gold. There wasn't much time to celebrate that before the starters gun went to start the men's 10,000m and Mo Farah cruised round the track in total control before making that epic kick for the line to take gold and bring the Mobot to the international audience. The Sunday was pretty super too - Ben Ainslie's fourth gold in four games painted the Dorset coastline gold before Andy Murray showed incredible resilience to finally win something big at Wimbledon and finally stop being that Scottish tennis player and became that British tennis hero. 
He had to beat Djokovic in the semi and Federer in the final to take a well earned gold, and followed that up after a very short break to win silver with Laura Robson in the mixed doubles. The men's pommel horse final fitted in and around the tennis with my red button switching and Louis Smith came as close to victory as he could in picking up silver, with Max Whitlock taking a surprise bronze. The equestrian team then stepped up to gold winning action with the jumping more enjoyable to watch than the dressage, but massive credit to both. Laura Trott showed there was someone to take the flame from Pendleton in women's cycling and Sir Chris Hoy cemented his place as Britain's Greatest Olympian with a tearful victory in the keirin. The Brownlee's brought home gold and bronze in the triathlon and Mo Farah backed up the 10km with the 5km gold on the final Saturday, before boxing brought the games home for Team GB. Nicola Adams had already made history as the first woman to take boxing gold, then the men took over with four more medals including golds for Luke Campbell and then on the final day for Anthony Joshua. Jade Jones, Beth Tweddle and the women's hockey team also gave some special moments. Some British eyes could have been forgiven for switching away from the Olympics on those last few nights to watch coverage from over the pond of the US PGA Championships at Kiawah Island. Anyone doing so would have seen Rory McIlroy seal his place at the top of the golfing world in winning his second major at the age of only 23, and doing so by a tournament record margin. This was part of a stand out year for Rory in which he lead both the US and European money lists and picked up number player of the year awards.
Next up were the Paralympic Games. I'm not going to lie - I barely watched these games. A combination of big Wigan Warriors fixtures, the start of the NFL season and a late summer holiday to Barcelona where coverage was hard to come by meant I missed much of the excitement of what has been called the greatest ever Paralympics, and certainly the biggest and best attended Paralympics in history. Paralympics GB also landed third place in the medals table, with 34 golds, 43 silvers and 43 bronzes making an incredible total of 120 medals for the GB athletes. Athletics, cycling and swimming were the headline events, with the most notable performers being David Weir, Sarah Storey and Ellie Simmonds in the respective sports - all three have seen their performances recognised with nominations for the BBC Sports Personality of the Year.
Another distraction from the Paralympic Games was one of our Olympic heroes gunning for personal glory. British tennis hero Andy Murray was back on his crusade to win a major and justify his place amongst the sports elite. The weather delays and the elongation of the tournament to the Monday night just helped build the tension as Murray made it to his second grand slam final in a row. Djokovic was the defending champion and the favourite going in to the final, but Murray has always been known for his tenacity and battling qualities. Murray started well, as he had done in the Wimbledon final, and here he got two sets up, before a Djokovic fightback left all Brits feeling the same sense of inevitability that Andy just couldn't get over the line. The first set tiebreaker felt endless, running on for 22 points. Some of the rallies were incredible, one getting up to 54 shots. The match equalled the record for duration at 4 hours and 54 minutes. Every time Andy broke, you felt Novak would come back, but when Novak broke you didn't feel like Andy would wane like he had in big matches before. He carried the fight and eventually sealed it with a 6-2 final set...and we could go to bed! Another late finish for UK viewers!
Autumn started to roll in, and after the summer of cycling, Olympics and tennis, you wouldn't think it could get much better - but 2012 had more to come, and the end of September saw one of the greatest sporting comebacks ever. I nearly had to miss watching the Ryder Cup because I was supposed to be cycling coast to coast across England, but circumstances cancelled that trip and I'm happy they did. It's been nicknamed the 'Miracle at Medinah' after Team Europe battled back from a 10-6 deficit at the start of the final day to overcome their shaky singles reputation to emerge victorious at 14.5-13.5. I always say about the Ryder Cup that its when golf becomes sport. Sure individual sports can have their merits and can be enjoyable to watch, but they never quite match the drama and passion of team sports for me - golf does this once every two years and is far more enjoyable for it. The Europeans had barely turned up on the first three and a half sessions and analysts everywhere were predicting a blow out win for the Americans. But then Mr Ryder Cup Ian Poulter turned things around with some inspired play in the last group on the course as the Saturday play drew in. Some momentum was picked up, but experts were still predicting a clear win by as much as eight points for the Americans. In a remarkable day the scoreboard kept getter bluer and bluer as the points stacked up. In the penultimate pairing, Martin Kaymer had some wayward work on the greens to thank Steve Stricker for as he came home to tie the scores up and ensure the Ryder Cup was retained and Molinari took the final game from Woods for the icing on the cake as the cup was won. The spirit of Seve was lauded as a massive factor in the win, but it was a man on the fairways that truly inspired the win - Ian Poulter, Ryder Cup legend.October saw the end of a glorious career of another sporting hero. Some say Frankel is the greatest
racehorse of all time. The British thoroughbred retired as the highest ranked horse in the world, with a record of 14 wins from 14 starts, 10 group one wins and nearly £3million in prize money. The 2012 Champion Stakes saw Frankel take on some unusually soft ground that put his place in the race in doubt up to the morning of the race. A poor start put Frankel on the back foot early but he fought back to take the race by 1.75 lengths. Horse racing isn't my thing but you have to give credit to this remarkable sporting icon.October also saw the end of Warrington Wolves' Paul Wood having two testicles. The main storyline coming out of the Leeds Rhinos second consecutive Grand Final victory wasn't Kevin Sinfield's man of the match display, it was the pain defying stint Wood put in with a ruptured testicle in the second half. Despite defeat and losing a ball, Wood took it in good humour, tweeting that he was sure he had left something behind when he left the hospital the following day. His teammates credited him for playing his b*ll*cks off and he became an uncomfortable media must have, with his story reported all over the world.
The rugby league year ended with an emphatic but uninspiring international series which England dominated against the Welsh and the French. It looked like the end of a long season for France's high quality forward pack as they couldn't keep pace with England, and the depleted largely part-time Welsh were never at it. Things looked good for England with them being able to try out a lot of backs combinations and give a number of players their debut, but the competition wasn't really tough enough to give us much indication of the strength of the squad we'll have to take on the Aussies and Kiwis on 2013. A total of 172 points scored over three games suggests the opposition wasn't up to much.
When the autumn series in once code finished, the rugby union autumn internationals started. This England faced a much sterner test playing the best the southern hemisphere has to offer, after a big win against Fiji to start the series. Narrow losses to Australia and South Africa raised questions about the on field decision making of captain Chris Robshaw with choices on when to kick a goal and the time taken to make such decisions being seen as critical to England's defeats. However, the series ended with possibly England's biggest win against a southern hemisphere since the 2003 World Cup final. England defeated New Zealand 38-21 and ended their 20 match losing sequence against the Kiwis in the process. A strong start and a well disciplined almost error free performance helped England get well on top in the first half before a second half try-fest saw New Zealand threaten to power England out of the game, until England put up three tries of their own to record their record winning margin in their seventh triumph over the All Blacks.
2012 had one more great sporting achievement in store for British fans. India welcomed England for a four match test series. England hadn't won a series in India for 24 years and things couldn't have started much worse at the end of what had been a dismal year of test cricket. England's abject failure to play spin bowling looked set to continue after the 1st test nine wicket defeat in Ahmedabad. The only bright note was the 176 scored by captain Alistair Cook in the follow on second innings. Changes were made to the bowling line up with Monty Panesar coming in for Tim Bresnan to take 11 wickets in the match. Cook and Kevin Pietersen showed the Indians how to bat on their own wickets, both contributing centuries to a 413 1st innings that gave Panesar and Swann the platfom the work from. A ten wicket victory levelled the series. The 3rd test saw Steve Finn come in for injured Stuart Broad, but Monty and Cook both picked up where they left off in Mumbai to give England a big 1st innings advantage. In the 2nd innings the seamers led from the front, taking three wickets each and restricting India to only a small lead before the batsmen knocked off the runs needed in quick time. England left Kolkata with a 2-1 lead. The fourth test wasn't very exciting. The slow low wicket saw runs scored at only 2.27 runs per over through the whole test. India were able to get Cook, but Pietersen, Joe Root and Matt Prior fought hard to give England a strong starting point. James Anderson bowled his arm off to take four wickets and restrict India to a small 1st innings deficit. Jonathan Trott and Ian Bell batted out over after over to put the match in a position where India couldn't win and the historic 2-1 series victory was sealed with a draw in Nagpur. It was Cook's first series as permanent test captain and he demonstrated his ability to lead from the front and carry his team. During the series he became the highest test run scorer for England in India, the first captain in world cricket to score a century in each of his first five tests in the job, the Englishman with the most test centuries and the youngest batsman to reach 7000 in world cricket. He cemented himself in English cricketing history and made himself the final hero of my 2012 run down. What a year for British sport. Forget the bad stuff a few days and remember how great thsi year was. I know one thing I'll be doing this Christmas peiod, I'll be watching the DVD of the Olympics once or twice!
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