The So Called Non Celebration

This season it seems like every week there's a so called 'non celebration'. It's become a football fashion, a kind of fad. Like The rocking baby celebration when a player recently becomes a father (Gareth Bale has done both of these celebrations over the last few weeks).

The thing that I don't like about the non celebration is that the player isn't so much as doing it out of respect for his former club and supporters but to make himself seem like such a decent kind of bloke in front of the cameras. It just comes across so false.

Okay so I don't expect a player to run the length of the pitch and slide on his knees right in front of the fans that used to sing his name, like how Emmanuel Adebayor did when he scored against arsenal a few seasons back.
But don't score a goal and give a look like someone just pissed in your cornflakes.
How about some middle ground. Like an understated raised hand and an acknowledgment to the team mate who assisted the goal.

Sports Personality Of The Year

So well done to Andy Murray for being the first Britain to win a grand slam since other countries started getting good at tennis.

So after so much British sporting success this summer there’s now an overload of contenders for the BBC Sports Personality of the Year. Will it be Andy Murray, Bradley Wiggins, Jessica Ennis, Mo Farah, David Weir or maybe Rory Mcllroy? Or what about… to tell the truth I couldn‘t give a shit who wins. I’ve not watched the cringe-fest evening on the TV since I was a kid.

But whoever even makes it on the list would be a much more worthy winner than when Zara Phillips won it in 2006.
I’m sure you don’t need reminding that she won the individual gold in the three-day eventing competition at the World Equestrian Games in Aachen Germany.

Remember that? Course you do, the nation was gripped as we saw how Zara and her horse jumped over them fences in such style and did that sideways dancing thing to with such grace.

It was so special that the performance can’t be found on youtube. Because of course that would devalue it.

Christ almighty that must have been a very barren year for British sport.

London 0lympics 2012

So after seven years of build up the Olympics games came and went. And guess what, it was a success. Did people get to work or was everyone squashed onto the tubes from first train to last train? And
was there gridlock traffic throughout the city? No. I’m sure that people wanted it to be just so that they could say “See, told you so. Bloody Olympics.”
The whole city coming to a standstill was just a growling fever called Olympic Paranoia.
Sure the anti-Olympic lobby had some good points. One was the corporate feel to it. Yes fine but so does every major sporting event.
The brands might well be everywhere around the venues but you didn’t see them on the tv. Not like in other sports. Especially something like Formula 1 which is basically a walking advert.
Before it all began I heard a few people say its basically just a glorified sports day. Those people must never have seen Usain Bolt run.

Anti-Social Eaters

I read today that food and drink in the London Olympic venues is going to be expensive. Really, you don’t say. Of course it will be. That’s a given.
But people will still be queuing up to get a seven quid burger to wash down with their five quid coke. Some people just love stuffing their faces with junk food at sporting events, the cinema and theme parks. Its like everything else going on is a backdrop to the main attraction of food.

But if they want to spend a fortune fine, it doesn’t bother me. What bothers me is the anti-social eaters. I’m talking about the people that think that its perfectly acceptable to eat their lunch on the tube.
A sandwich is bad enough but the people who bring on stinking junk food are a breed apart. I’ve been annoyed with people on the tube many a time. Who hasn’t. What with being squashed against someone with too much perfume or aftershave on. Or bad body odour. Or someone who keeps sniffing or coughs without putting their hand over their mouth.
But Never have I been more annoyed with the person who sat next to me with a Big Mac and fries.
Or the woman who sat down opposite me on a near empty carriage and chomped away on fish and chips. The stink of it.
These people must have no self awareness about what cunts they are.

Rugger Boys Jagerbomb

What with it being played in New Zealand, therefore the matches kicking off in the morning, you might not have noticed that the rugby world cup has begun. If you’ve missed the start then don’t worry as it goes on for a whole seven weeks.
Many times I’ve given it a go, but I just can’t get into egg chasing. Mainly because there’s a huge flaw in the game.
Yes there’s constant scrums that are tedious and stop the flow of play, but my main issue is that when there’s an offense the other team then gets a chance to kick for three points (if its within the kickers range which is usually just in front of halfway). Too many games are decided by who committed the least amount of innocuous fouls.
Rugby league got rid of this flaw and the constant scrums and so in my opinion makes it a better sport than rugby union.

The other crap thing about rugby is rugger boys. Sure go out for a few drinks after the game but do you really have to challenge each other to a press up competition after a couple of pints?
Do you have to call each other by your nicknames all the time?
Do you have to put your arms around each others shoulders, sing Oasis songs and then throw up in the gutter?
Do you have to down Jagerbombs and cheer when you slam the glass down on the bar?

That brings me on to the latest drink craze that is Jaggerboms. It’s a not very strong single shot in half a glass of a bad smelling energy drink which you have to wait around for an eternity while the bartender lines them up to do a Jager-train.
If you are a rugger boy and want to act the big man then have a shot of whiskey will ya.

Like Tennis, Hate The Crowd

“When Andy Murray is winning then he’s British, when he looses he’s Scottish.” That tired cliche has been banded about over the last couple of weeks. British, Scottish I couldn’t care less what you call him. I don’t think he cares. If I was him though I would care more about my mum being there at work every day. She coached him in the early part of his career and is there watching whenever he plays. He’s a top tennis player who travels all over the world, but she’s always there watching over him. No wonder the mummy’s boy looks so grumpy.

I’ve been watching quite a bit of Wimbledon this year. Maybe because there’s no World Cup or European Championships this summer. I wouldn’t say that I’m much of a tennis fan but if its on then I’ll give it a watch. Though its still no substitute for football during then summer months.
What I can’t stand about it is the Wimbledon crowd. Earlier on in the tournament Andy Murray complained about how some people were shouting out “come on Tim.” I agree with him, not because it might put him off his game but because its just not funny. The first time it happened maybe. But then to repeat the same so called joke over and over is more than tiresome. The crowd still laugh because they always do whenever anyone shouts out anything.
And the crowd are all so polite, it would be better if it was more of a football type crowd. Then whenever someone makes an unforced error people would shout out something like “what are you doing? you’re shit!”
Then there’s the people in the crowd. The cameras always focus on celebrities, politicians and royalty or royalties relatives in the case of Pippa Fucking Middleton.
You wouldn’t see Pippa Middleton down Brisbane Road watching Leyton Orient.

Blatter Deserves A Slap

Is it acceptable to punch a seventy five year old man in the face? No of course not, unless the man in question is Sepp Blatter.
The unbelievably smug president of Fifa really thinks that he’s the main man in world football. Not the players, not the coaches, not the fans but him. Like last summer when Spain won the World Cup Blatter handed the trophy to the Spanish captain Iker Casillas and then instead of getting out the way, he stood there as the players celebrated, as if the glory was his too.
Now there’s the corruption allegations and the farce of the Fifa presidential election where he is the only candidate . Then man has to go, but he won’t as the FIFA old boys have it good. Its like the Masons or some other secret organization where the members are too scared to fall out of line.
Then at work today I head on the radio that Blatter is going to form a committee to look into Fifa’s corruption problems. And on the committee will be 88 year old Henry Kissinger. I thought it was a joke, Henry Kissinger, from Richard Nixon’s administration will look into corruption. It must be a joke. When I got home I had to look it up to see if its true. It is and apparently Kissinger is a long-term associate of Blatter’s. Well that figures then.
I still think it’s a joke or Blatter is just taking it further to see what he can get away with. I expect him to soon announce other members on this committee to be Vladimir Putin and the Crown Prince of Qatar.

Issues Of The Day Like Hair

Lot of news going on today, like the budget. What’s gone up? What’s gone down? How will it affect you? Has booze gone up? It’s stayed the same. Okay so let’s move on. The Libya situation. Is the UN military right to intervene? With all the cutbacks that David Cameron has enforced over the last few month why is he so eager to go charging in? Does Colonel Gaddafi dye his hair? Come on, no one has hair that black at the age of 68.
On the subject of hair, while watching Match of the Day last weekend I noticed that Mark Lawrenson has always had that brushed back layered look on top with it being on the verge of a mullet at the back. Alan Hansen Hansen’s side parting never changes either. But at least his hair doesn’t look dated.
Not like former spurs manager Gerry Francis who is still rocking the mullet. Infact its even worse as its receding at the front and even longer at the back.
Roberto Baggio is still persisting with that ponytail rattail thing. Its worse than his 1994 World Cup final penalty miss that he blasted over the bar.
Chris Waddle blasted a World Cup semi final penalty way over the bar. He also had the mullet of all mullet’s but to Waddle’s credit at least he had the sense to get rd of it in the early nineties.

Talksport Bordom

The radio station Talksport was the obvious place where former Sky Sports employers Richard ‘smash it’ Keys and Andy ‘do this up will you love’ Gray would end up. Especially after Keys did his half hearted apology on the station where he claimed that his departure was part due to ‘dark forces at work’
Talksport is a station that encourages its hosts to air their own views, sometimes you get the feeling that they’re just doing it to get a reaction.
Keys said that he will be giving his own views on the programme and not just asking the questions. Well I’ve caught bits of their midmorning programme over the last two weeks and I’ve heard no such thing. All I’ve heard is two blokes drone on about football at a snails pace. It doesn’t fit radio. All they ever talk about is football, there are no tangents that they go off on. Three hours five days a week Richard keys asks Gray questions and he finds new ways to repeat himself. Its all so straight down the line and so boring it hurts.
They can’t last, how can they, what are they going to talk about when there’s no football going on.
Why am I still listening? I’m not, I only did a few times just to see how bad it could get. Once I watched paint dry to see if it really was boring. It was, so I stopped. I wont be doing it again.

Stratford Spurs FC

So David Beckham is training at Tottenham. There was no big deal when he trained at Arsenal a couple of years back in the MLS off-season. But there wasn’t a chance that he might turn out in a Premier League game for them like he might at Spurs. So there’s been news reports from the Tottenham training ground in Chigwell and football hacks and pundits giving their opinion on whether it will be good for the team or not. Because they must be pro or against him in a lilywhite shirt.
“They only want him for the shirt sales,” is a lazy response I’ve heard various people say. A work colleague told me that in the Tottenham shop you can buy a shirt with Beckham on the back with the number 77. I told him that you can have anything printed on the back of a shirt if you ask for it. I can have my name printed on the back, it doesn’t mean that I will be running out at White Hart Lane this weekend.

Its been a Tottenham heavy news week. Should they move to the Olympic stadium? Well it makes obvious sense as a business decision. But tradition is a big part of any football club and that’s countering the pure business decision.
At first I was totally against them moving to east London. Tottenham Hotspur Football Club should play in Tottenham! North London, not east! But then most Tottenham fans like myself are from the surrounding areas, not Tottenham itself. And Stratford is not too far from Tottenham, its only that the postcode changes from N to E, its not like the Olympic stadium is in west London or on the other side of the river. The transport links to White Hart Lane are awful where as you don’t get any better than transport links at Strafford. On a selfish standpoint- Stratford is three tube stops away from me. I could be door to door in half an hour.
If it happens I’m sure that in time I will get used to it but at the moment even with all the plus points it just doesn’t feel right. It doesn’t help when there’s stories like the one in the Evening Standard on Thursday that said that Tottenham may have to change their name to something like ‘Stratford Hotspur.'

But of course that’s just bullshit scaremongering. I fucking hope so.

Sport At School

The education secretary Michael Grove has said that £162m will no longer be set aside for the national PE scheme. The money that was for sport will now be spent as the headmasters see fit to.
Many people may think that its right that the headmasters should spend their budget how they please. Maybe so. But I think most headmasters will drastically cut their sports funding.
Well so it should be, right? I mean maths, English, biology, chemistry, physics, geography and history are much more important. Those are the subjects that are going to get you on in life aren’t they? Well for most people yes, but sport is good for all kids. To boil it down, sport keeps them fit. And for those who really like it and take it seriously it can keep them out of trouble.
Michael Grove’s proposal doesn’t surprise me as the last time the Tories were in power they didn’t care about sport and sold off as many sports fields as they could.

When I was at school in the 80s and early 90s I wish there was a certain amount of the money that our headmaster had to allocate to sport. Especially my secondary school as the sporting facilities were between nonexistent and pathetic.
There was no sports field so most of the our outside PE lessons took place in the school playground. That or we got on the school bus to the sports field or athletics track. This wasn’t so bad as it was only a few minutes away, but swimming lessons were a complete farce. A forty minute round trip to the pool, plus changing time left us with enough time in the water to do three or four lengths.
I appreciate that most comprehensive schools don’t have a sports field or swimming pool but some new tennis rackets and cricket bats wouldn’t have gone amiss. Our school football kit was tatty early 70s style kit that was used by all years. It was an embarrassment to play in.
My school wasn’t run down and in desperate need of funding, it was just that sport was low down on the headmasters priority.

Due to a spree of injuries and a girl getting a football in the face for about a week he banned us from playing football in the playground. Football in the playground was one of the few things I liked about going to school. There was always about four games going on at once, and when in position of the ball you had to try and remember who was on your team and had to dribble past people who were involved in another game. Instead of a Monday night bore of a game on Sky between two teams that are quite happy to settle for a nil nil draw I would rather see four professional teams play playground style.

Living In The Past To Make Money

The radio stations usually on at work are Magic FM or Absolute Radio. On the odd occasion XFM. I don’t care for these stations (XFM was a great station in its formative years up until Capital Radio bought it and turned it into play listed landfill indie) but at work whatever is on is just background noise.
The last couple of week its mainly been the Christian O’Donnell Breakfast Show on Absolute Radio, and they’ve had this feature about football players. Because of the general noise in the office I haven’t quite grabbed what its about but what I do know is that interviews with footballers are boring.
Players today’s are boring enough with their generic post-match clichés but players from the past are usually worse.
Martin Peters droned on to Christian O’Donnell about playing in the 1966 word cup. He was on autopilot as he’s no doubt repeated the same story time and time again. Geoff Hurst was on too and he droned on about the hat-trick he scored. He still protests that his second goal was over the line even though it blatantly wasn’t.
Geoff Hurst makes a living out of the hat-trick he scored and I don’t blame him. Footballers didn’t earn a huge amount back then (and they will make a point of telling people this and then protest that they‘re not at all bitter) and most of the 66 team have sold their winners medal. The other week Nobby Stiles sold his for £188200, good luck to him, your average Manchester City player earns that in a week.

But surely Peters and Hurst must be sick and tired of talking about something that they did in their twenty’s. It takes living in the past to a new level.
But it’s a living.

No More Football Phone Ins

Well it’s been a week now and I don’t want to hear anymore about the England football team. Now I’m not of one them English people that pretend to be happy that England are out of the World Cup because they like to appear oh so contentious and edgy. But I’m not disappointed. My disappointment lasted from about when Germany's third goal hit the back of the net to when Emile Hesky came on just after their fourth went in. When needing three goals in fifteen minutes putting on Hesky seemed like a statement from Fabio Capello that said “Fuck it, who gives a shit anymore.” Sometimes I get like that when playing Fifa on the Xbox and losing by two goals near the end of the match. I start hacking over every player. Fuck it, who gives a shit anymore.

When the fourth went in I didn’t care if they got a fifth. I’m glad England went out getting a caning instead of losing of penalties and getting portrayed like heroic losers with people going to Heathrow airport waving their flags to greet the team. Because instead of bleating on about how unlucky and hard done by the England team were losing 4-1 can’t hide fundamental problems in the England set up.
Another plus is if England did go on to win the World Cup. I know it’s hard to believe right now but lets just say that Wayne Rooney stopped playing like a pub team player and changed England’s form around. And some sort of minor miracle happened and England did win it then The Sun would campaign for the team to be knighted. Sir John Terry. It just doesn’t sit right. There would be a World Cup winners song which will no doubt feature the unfunny self appointed fat cheerleader that is James Corden. Side note- Corden, you’ve had a good run but you can only get so far doing your wacky dancing party piece. Now please go away.
Imagine all the TV adverts the players would do. Imagine all the WAGS raising their profile.
Another good thing about England leaving the party early is that all the adverts using England to help sell their products are off the TV. Like that Carlsberg the best team talk in the world advert. The advert suggests that if the team are passionate and remain strong they can win the World Cup. Well I’m afraid that it takes a lot more than that. Like a good first touch and passing to your own player. It’s a Danish beer anyway.
Then there’s that Kit Kat advert (that for some reason features Sol Campbell sighing autographs) that suggests that England can win if you cross your fingers. Sorry Kit Kat but it will take a lot more than superstitious nonsense. Like a tactical gameplan and avoiding defensive howlers.

Three lions. Why? The only lions in England are in the zoo.

Shoot Out

So the football season is over, (well apart from the play off finals, the FA cup and Champions League Final) so no football until August then. No wait, the World Cup is this summer. I’m looking forward to it and will be watching every game like I always do. I want England to win but for me it’s always club over country as it doesn’t feel right cheering on Arsenal and Chelsea players that I can’t stand.

But there’s a few things that I won’t be looking forward to like people who have no interest in football talking about the match the previous night. I know that at some point I’m going to phone up my mum and she’ll say something like, ”It was a good game last night wasn’t it? It’s good that they got through but I don’t think that Rooney should have been sent of do you?”
To which I will reply , “Mum please don’t talk to me about football,”
Then I guess she will say, “I know about football, when you were a kid I used to watch you play sometimes.”
Finally I will say, “Yes and it was embarrassing when you used to shout things out like ‘go on kick the ball’. Could you put me onto dad please.”
At least my sister is honest about it. When the last World Cup was on she said, “Yeah of course I only like football when it’s the World Cup and England win.”

No doubt there will be some penalty shoot outs, and what will really get on my wick is that the commentator will say that it’s came down to the lottery of penalties. It’s not a lottery. A lottery is random chance. Say that Germany have fifty penalty shoot outs with New Zealand then I reckon that Germany would win about forty eight of them. And New Zealand would win about forty eight times against the Cook Islands. Doesn’t sound like a lottery to me.
When England went out of 1998 World Cup to Argentina in a penalty shoot out, the manager Glenn Hoddle said that they didn’t practice penalties because you can’t recreate the pressured of a penalty shoot out in training. But surely if you practice you get better which in turn will make you more confident of scoring. With Hoddle’s kind of logic why practice anything. What’s the point of strikers practicing one on one with the keeper when there isn’t the same tension and the crowd in training. Might as well not train at all. Just turn up and play.

Bring Back Kabaddi

I like sport. Or do I, because I’ve realised that I couldn’t care less about most sports.
Football yes. And I’ve always liked watching Athletics. I like playing the American football video game Madden but don’t get the chance to watch the real game much.
I used to watch a lot of boxing but not anymore. Not since the big fights moved to Sky, not since they made the fights pay per view and they come on at four in the morning.
The winter Olympics was on a few weeks back, I would liked to have watched some of the ice hockey but whenever I watched the highlights they had on downhill skiing, (which you can watch for fifteen minutes. Any longer and it’s repetitive boredom) dancing on ice, bowling on ice with brooms or as it likes to be called curling. What makes a person want to take up curling anyway?
I saw a little bit of cross country skiing. If you’re going to put on a pair of skis then go downhill. It’s the Winter Olympic equivalent of speed waking.

Rugby annoys me because it seems that most of the points are scored by a penalty kick. The crowd or players never dispute a penalty because no one realises when an offence has occurred. Then there’s a chance to get three points from the innocuous foul.
Cricket, test cricket especially is ridiculous. It’s a game where they leave the field for lunch come back again then go off a few hours later for tea. They play for five days and the game can still end up a draw. It can rain in the last session and it’s called a draw. Almost five days playing, a light shower and the match doesn’t even get resolved properly. Ridiculous.
Tennis, people try to care about it when Wimbledon is on but that’s all. Couldn’t care less if Andy Murray wins. But how could anyone like table tennis more than tennis? A miniature version of tennis on a table. Brilliant! It’s like preferring table football over the real game.
Basketball, one end to the other, score, score, score, bore, bore, bore.
Formula one, I only pay attention if there’s a crash.

No, really it’s football all the way for me. Or if they brought back Kabaddi on channel 4...

Why I hate Coventry

So it was FA cup weekend. And yet somehow I managed to avoided hearing all the usual cliques that get churned out every FA cup weekend like- ‘The Romance of the FA cup’ and ‘that’s the magic of the FA cup.'

My best and worst FA cup memories- The best is no doubt being at Wemberly stadium in 1991 seeing Tottenham beat the scum 3-1.
The worst was a game that I didn’t see live or even watch live on TV. 1987 I was ten years old, Tottenham got to the FA cup final against Coventry City. I remember my dad calling up to me in my room. I went to the top of the staircase and looked down to my dad at the bottom of the stairs. He had the biggest smile on his face.
“We got them, we got them!” He shouts with joy as he waves a pair of tickets.
I couldn’t believe it, I was going to the FA cup final!
But me and my dads joy was to be short lived.
“When is it?” my mum asked.
“16th of May,” my dad said.
“Well you can’t go then.”
We look at her like she’s mad. Like the last sentence that came from her mouth was in some alien language.
“Well that’s the day we’re going on holiday isn’t it?.” she says.
A feeling went through the pit of my stomach, a similar feeling in my stomach that I would feel a few years later when my first girlfriend dumped me.
Our pleas to change the flight for the day later fell flat.
“Sorry can’t change it, non refundable,” were the words my mum kept saying.
I was gutted.

Come the day of the final and of course the day of the holiday to Spain. The match kicked off when we were flying somewhere over France.
“What do you think the score is?” I kept asking my dad.
When we landed the match was over but we had no idea what the score was.
On the coach to the hotel we still didn’t know.
When we got to the hotel, checked in and took the bags up to the room the suspense was killing us. I went for a wander around the hotel in the hope of somehow finding out the score [it might seem weird now to let a ten year old just wander around a hotel but I guess it wasn’t back then].
So I walk around, then in the lobby I see a group of blokes walking towards me. They’re cheering and singing and I notice what shirts a couple of them are wearing. I check again as I don’t believe it. No, no please no! They spot me in my Tottenham shirt and a loud roar goes up. “Losers,! 3-2, 3-2, aargggrhhh,” and they point at me. I walk past them, run up to the hotel room, lie face down on the bed and burst into tears.
“The holiday is ruined, it's ruined. They might of won if me and dad were there,” I cried.
The holiday wasn’t ruined, I soon got over it. But when Coventry got relegated a few years back I laughed. I laughed as I remembered them blokes laughing at the ten year old me.
Bitter, me? Yes, yes I am.