'It is reaching a stage when sport is too big and too rich for mere humans'

Back in 2000 the media's finest were hit and miss with their predictions on the unfolding of sport's future

- Sean Ingle

Imagine tumbling back in time to 1 January, 2000. You pick up the 70p Saturday Guardian, with its spectacular photograph of Earth from space and a headline that hails the dawn of the new millennium. Soon you are reading a host of predictions for how the 21st century will play out - across science and sport, lifestyle and life itself - many of which oscillate between the fantastical and the terrifying.

By 2010, a newborn will have a robot pet, you learn from Andy Beckett's brilliant essay Born to be Wired. By 2030 they will be "in brain-to-brain contact, via electronic implants, without needing to speak with family members, lovers and friends". If that is not wild enough, one expert reckons that by the end of the 21st century, "it is not clear whether we will be people or robots".

Yet that assumes humans even make it that far. Because over in the sports section, the heavyweight boxer Julius Francis is warning of Armageddon. "If we are facing the end of the world I want to be ready," he says, ominously.

What were the smartest minds on Fleet Street thinking about the future of sport when they woke up in the year 2000? And, 25 years on, how accurate were they?

The first thing that stands out when you dig into the archives? No one predicted the rise of women's sport. In fact the one columnist who focused on the issue was breathtakingly unreconstructed. "In your wildest dreams can you see a women's All Black team?" wrote Robert Alexander in the Belfast Telegraph. "Could they generate the same type of atmosphere when performing the 'haka'? I think not! On the other hand if they donned the grass skirt and did a Maori dance before kick-off it could be quite an exciting sight."