Category: Sport (Page 16 of 24)

You have to hand it to the Roland Garros spectators. They have always been fiercely partisan, adopting players on a whim and barracking others to distraction. They played a huge part in the famous Serena Williams – Justine H-H semi a few years ago, and treated the Williams sister very unfairly.<br />
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Yesterday, they took it to a whole new level. In the Grosjean – Nadal match, the umpire refused to leave is chair to examine a mark which (the French) Grosjean thought was out. Result: play was held up for 10 minutes or more whilst the crowd bayed for blood. A football crowd acts with more dignity.<br />
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To the players’ credit, they were the ones who calmed the crowd down. There were several options. The umpire could have suspended play, which would have been fair enough. The tournament referee could have spoken to the crowd, but was too spineless. So the players took steps. Grosjean and Nadal gave each other looks as if to say “up to you, mate”. Grosjean appealed to the mob to calm it, and Nadal, through a chorus of boos, served. The two men started a gentle rally, ignoring the mahem, and as noise subsided their play became more intense. It was the best thing they could have done.<br />
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Nadal showed remarkable composure for an 18-year-old in his first French Open. He cut out the fistpumps, rode the cheers that greeted his every error, and kept his nose in front. The winner will be decided today, but the crowd are clearly a poor third in this sorry spectacle.

So – the question after the best final for ages is: should Liverpool be allowed to defend their title. I have seen acres of guff about this, but the answer, surely, is “NO”.<br />
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First off, Everton can’t be sacrificed. That would be a massive injustice.<br />
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Assuming there are a limited number of teams that can be in the Champions League, a place for Liverpool means sacrificing a team from somewhere else, a “lesser” country. Not so bad, perhaps, from an English perspective, but is it really fair? A qualifying round for Liverpool would be a compomise, but it surely forces a team that didn’t initially require a qualifying match to play one, which again seems unfair.<br />
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Essentially, any plan to include Liverpool upsets another team somewhere else. But really, why do we stick to this notion that the holders of a trophy have an inalienable right to defend their prize? If they can’t make it up to the mark to qualify, bad luck. <br />
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Over time, our notion of defending the title has changed anyway. In the past, Wimbledon champions got a bye to the final in what was know as the “challenge round”. Not such a good idea. And things have changed in football too. World Cup winners Brazil will have to qualify for Germany 2006.<br />
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And was the competition so enhanced by having Porto in it this year? Hardly. What extra interest do the champions bring? Very little in football terms. <br />
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Liverpool should stop complaining. They won the title – most fans, players and managers would swap that for a year out of the tournament. If they are such a good team, they will get back in for 2007.

If that’s the Argentinian second string team, what the hell are their coaches doing? That 15 looked good enough to trouble any side, and gave the lions lots to think about – particularly in the scrum.<br />
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On the upside, JonnyW looks ready to play in the tests now – he was sharp, fast and accurate in everything he did. The lions didn’t actually play that badly, they were just out played at times. True, they split a few balls, but they were turned-over fair and square enough times for Richie McCaw to be relishing the battle ahead. Neil Back looks a clever inclusion in the squad, and I still have a hunch that the backrow will be the old guard of Hill-Back-Dallaglio, with only Corry and Owen in with a shout of a test spot.<br />
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Equally, I liked the coaches reaction from Woodward and McGeechan – no panic, honest assessments and no criticisms of the players. No over-excited messages to the all blacks. Perhaps Alastair Campbell hasn’t joined the party yet.<br />
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There aren’t too many good documentaries on football about, but Alan Hansen is doing his best. <b>Life after football</b> was an emotional, intriguing insight – aside from all the-football-is-a-drug comments, which sounds like a justification for losing the plot.<br />
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Gazza is a traditional subject for this, given his playing in China and generally being all over the shop, with not much up top. His honest assessment: “I was too scared to plan ahead… and then I just hit the bottle.” A sad figure. Les Ferdinand and Alan Shearer hardly seemed to have it all worked out, but given their wealth and stature, they have time.<br />
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Unsurprisingly, booze featured very heavily – Neil “Razor” Ruddock confessed that he just goes off the rails when drunk; that the discipline and structure lacking after retirement is just too much for men whose sole life-skill was kicking a ball about in front of thousands of fans.<br />
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One comment by Tony Cascarino that “players are not nice people to be around, not when they finish playing” made me wonder how awful that must be, given the behaviour of current players. They all get divorced, it seems. Hardly a surprise.<br />
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Of the current youthful crop, Frank Lampard at least admitted that he is thinking about the future, unlike Rio Ferdinand who just thought the subject was “depressing”, and could only talk about fashion and music. But both recognised that the pampering the players get leaves you utterly unprepared for later life. As Ruddock said: “I had no idea how to find a dentist. Or how to get the car cleaned.”<br />
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But Hansen’s “I’ve been there” style has one major problem. He’s doing ok. Very ok. He sits around in his lazy style, quipping his way through matches with Lineker et al, picks up the odd commercial, and then makes poignant documentaries for the BBC. Sympathy rating: nil. What some ex-players who have hit the skids must have thought when the suave Hansen turned up in his lovely coat and asked them about how short-sighted they were during their careers I dread to think.<br />
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And the only player to have planned a career after football DURING their playing days, the only one to not miss the game? Lineker. He always wanted to work in the media, apparently. He tried to avoid seeming smug, but you could see him thinking “Ha! All those fools who never thought ahead. I did. Snooze, you lose.”

So Sir Alex thinks that there was little between ManU and Chelsea this season?<br />
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Before Yesterday’s match, he said: “We don’t need to use tomorrow’s (Tuesday’s) game to provide proof that we will be challenging Chelsea next season. There is nothing between the sides and they know fine well we will be one of their main challengers next season.”<br />
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Riiight. Nothing between the sides, apart from 20 points in the league, losing to Chelsea 1-3, and two trophies. The man is clearly getting soppy. It wasn’t too many seasons ago that winning the Premiership alone wasn’t enough. Now the FA cup is their only chance of success.<br />
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I would imagine that the only players who would get a sniff of a game for Chelsea right now are Rooney and Ferdinand. Maybe van Nistelrooy when in form, but no-one else. If Fergie thinks his team are going to challenge for the title next season, he will need a run of luck, players free of injury and a dip from not just Chelsea but Arsenal too. Won’t happen.

As I mentioned before, most people think snooker is dull. Well, they wouldn’t if they saw last night’s Peter Ebdon / Ronnie O’Sullivan match. <br />
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Ronnie led 8-2 and 10-6 during the match in a first-to-13. Ebdon had earlier claimed that it was a priviledge to be on the same table as a genuis like Ronnie, but showed little deference in slowing down the game, and grinding his way back in. Ebdon won 13-11, but came in for heavy criticism among tv pundits for taking 5 minutes to make a break of 12. The BBC revelled in showing pictures of Ronnie clearly getting frustrated, asking the crowd what the time was, and giving Peter the stare.<br />
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But after the match, both men refused to criticise the other, not playing to the set-up. Cue classic TV moment. Peter Ebdon: “I would never do that to Ronnie, I respect him too much. He is a supreme athlete.” Switch to press conference with Ronnie: “Right now, I don’t know if I’ll be back next year, I need to chill out.” Inhales deeply on cigarette. “You gotta do what you gotta do.”

I have no idea if Arsene Wenger is married or not, but he does seem obsessed with the idea of the wife as a metaphor.<br />
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Recall, if you will, his comment after Arsenal won without losing a game last season. Alex Ferguson had the nerve to suggest ManU had played the better football. Patently untrue, but never mind. Wenger saw him off with the wonderful quote that “everyone thinks they have the prettiest wife at home.” <br />
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Clearly flushed with success at besting Fergie with that one, he is at it again. This week, asked about the allegations that Chelsea ‘tapped up’ Ashley Cole, he commented “If people come to your window and talk to your wife every night, you can’t accept it without asking what is happening”. Well, no, I suppose you can’t. But this one doesn’t quite have the same ring as the prettiest wife jibe. <br />
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Perhaps he should have gone with “If someone at a party keeps groping your wife’s bottom, you are eventually going to have to have a word.”

I admit it. I like snooker. I know, how sad. There is a proviso. I only get interested during the World Championships. Which is also terribly tragic. I hate it when people are only interested in tennis during Wimbledon, but there we go.<br />
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But yes, suddenly during the 2 weeks of non-stop coverage from the Crucible, Sheffield (does it host any other events?) I get transfixed. Will Ronnie self-destruct? Will Jimmy White ever win? (answer: no). Will any of them ever have normal complexions? (answer: no. I think they all suffer from vitamin D deficiency.).<br />
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And I suddenly remember why I like snooker. One reason is that once, when I was young, I was ill and off school for two weeks. And all that was on was snooker, the world championships. I had no option but to get into it. <br />
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The other (real) reason is my late grandpa. He was a big, BIG snooker fan. He also loved rugby, but I could hardly take him out into the garden and practice tackling, could I? Even into his 80s he could kill me on the green felt of the snooker table. He taught me all the intricate shots, the nuances of the game (not that I can play very well). And he wasn’t pale and spotty like snooker players today – he was charming, caring, and tanned very easily. His favourite player was John Parrott, who was probably a good player to be a fan of. Better than that boring Stephen Hendry.<br />
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My grandmother, who was probably not a snooker fan but indulged his passion for the game, also had opinions on it. She thought Jimmy White had “a cheap face”. She was right. Her comments on a couple of other players (Joe Johnson in particular) bordered on the unrepeatable. What she would have made of some of the players today I dread to think.<br />
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So for 50 weeks of the year, I forget about snooker. And then it’s on tv all the time, and I have a secret, hidden passion for it. I admire the skill, the tactics, the fact that to win the tournament you have to concentrate like almost no other sport. It looks so easy on the telly, but it’s bloody difficult to play. And I think of my grandpa, who would have been watching, quietly appreciating it, looking forward to discussing the matches with me. Playing snooker was our bond, our way of sneaking off and being boys away from the women. They were special moments. And I love the game – there, I said it.

Poor old Paula. I’m not sure which she will find harder to live down – her Olympic drop-outs, or having to “relieve” herself in front of thousands of people on the street and a worldwide audience of millions. There has been more coverage of her needing to go than her race time – which is the second or third fastest time ever or something, depending if you count pacemakers / mixed mens-womens fields etc. <br />
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So. What should we do about it? Force her to wear a nappy? Given her figure, we might notice. It should be pointed out this has <a href=”http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/athletics/2324737.stm”>nearly happened to Paula before</a>, in Chicago, at the 22 mile mark as well. But she is not alone. Several other leading runners have been known to “shit all over the place” during marathons as my dad put it so delicately yesterday.<br />
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In fact, running such long distances is a classic recipe for a complete lack of bowel control. We either need to recognise this and get over it, or turn this into a more interesting aspect of the race. Perhaps runners could be given two medals – one for finishing, one for a dirty protest. Or bookies could take bets on which mile the “unscheduled toilet stop” might take place. We could even get clock timers on the screen like they do for pitstops in Formula 1.<br />
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And commentators could be a little less delicate. “Yes, that’s it, textbook stuff. She just shat in a drain. And she’s off again. Brendan, a relatively quick poo?” That kind of thing.

For – chucking flares, rioting fans – this is not just one club. Both Juve and Inter should have made UEFA think about banning Italian clubs from europe for a year or two. That might make them get their houses in order.<br />
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Against – no-one died.