Archive for July, 2009
England is the sceptred isle of sport
The 2010 Rugby Women’s World Cup. The 2012 Olympics. The 2013 Rugby League World Cup. The 2015 Rugby World Cup. All major sporting events. All coming to England in our lifetime.
This sceptred isle, it is fair to say, is back on the sporting map. England is awash, fully booked even, with major sporting tournaments for the next decade. What a time [...]
Pipe down Jenson, concentrate on your own legacy
Just shut up. Yes, you heard. All you pessimistic fools and scared F1 drivers need to stop worrying about Michael Schumacher’s legacy and get on with your own job, whether that is thinking off some way of slagging off the slightly camp looking German or throwing away the driver’s championship.
Michael Schumacher won 7 world championships. [...]
Heartbreak of a hero
I don’t care that Edgbaston isn’t suited to two spinners. I don’t care that he isn’t in a rich vein of form with the ball. I don’t care that Monty Panesar’s inclusion in the England squad would be tactically absurd. The fact is that Luton’s finest export salvaged the Cardiff test match singly handedly, batting for what [...]
Champions get back in the success saddle
To watch the best endure failure is good but to see the broken rise and claim victory is infinitely better.
How nice then it was this weekend to see several sportsmen putting to bed recent personal torment to succeed where they once stumbled. Lewis Hamilton drove masterfully to win the Hungarian Grand Prix after a lifetime since his last [...]
Separated at birth: Brothers Grin
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The same slightly awkward grin, check. An identical aura of sporting suaveness, check. Nationalities beginning with the letter ‘S’, check. The similarities are too much.  If Roger Federer, the record breaking tennis Swiss superstar, and Johan Edfors, the big-hitting Swedish golfer, aren’t secretly related by blood, Pope and Swift are the proverbial uncle’s of a monkey. Which, in turn, would mean [...]
Tom is no average Joe
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Tom Daley is quite obviously not your average fifteen year old. Britain’s youngest ever Olympian and now a World Champion, the Plymouth Plunger certainly knows how to break the moody teenager mould.
Daley should, if he were to conform to the teenager sterotype, be hiring and firing girlfriends with alarming regularity, sneaking into the room of the latest love interest whilst on [...]
Foolish full-backs heading in wrong direction
Kyle and Kyle wasting time at Tottenham. Sounds like a good spoof drama doesn’t it? No maybe not. But the move by the two right-backs, the highly-rated Naughton and the lesser known Walker, to White Hart Lane from Sheffield United is wrong for so many reasons. Nevermind the fact that they both play in the same position [...]
No story yet still glory for Cink
Sport is so often about the narrative, about the accompanying tale or the uplifting story that runs alongside success.
The Open at Turnberry was no different. Narratives aplenty, ready made back page stories by the gallon, pick a player and they could tell you one as well as Aesop himself.
How funny then that the eventual winner [...]
Fitting farewell to Andrew ‘Freddie’ Flintoff; the man who makes test cricket special
Put that in your pipe and smoke it Chris Gayle. As if the first Ashes test in Cardiff wasn’t gripping enough, England’s victory at Lords was impressive if only for it’s continued displays of brilliant test cricket. I challenge all you new-age, twenty20 kids to find me a more exhilarating, more heart-warming and more bloody brilliant [...]
I do love a good hypocrite….
2oth June 2009; Kia Joorabchian on Carlos Tevez future transfer plans: ‘We ruled Liverpool out because of the competitive nature of Manchester United and Liverpool. He has a lot of respect and a lot of love for the fans of Man United and I think he would rule Liverpool out as being the biggest competitor.’
13th July [...]