Category: Sportonomics (Page 6 of 10)

I’m very close to being depressed. Here are 6 reasons:<br />
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– England’s cricket team lost to Pakistan in a match they dominated. Exciting cricket, good for the game, but not for the England team. This matters because losing matches and series becomes a habit, one that England don’t need to pick up before the Ashes next year.<br />
– Meanwhile, Australia are getting a nice confidence boost by slapping a weak West Indies team.<br />
– In rugby, I am worried that England will be hammered by New Zealand tomorrow. <br />
– The tennis masters has been a disaster. Everyone is injured. It looks like a third tier event.<br />
– I am hungover.<br />
– The phrase “go-forward” has become a noun in rugby. Sample from <a href=”http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/rugby_union/international/4443488.stm”>Zinzan Brooke’s column</a> on the BBC:<br />
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England will need Tindall at his best on Saturday. He won’t need to be flash, but if they want to get any <b>go-forward</b>, he will need to be the man.<br />
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This has been around for a while now. Can we stop it please? It’s just awful. <br />
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Here are <a href=”http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=%22get+go-forward%22+rugby”>some other offenders</a>:

It’s a very big moment for three players, all turning out for England this weekend in different sports.<br />
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First up, it’s little Ian Bell. He would have been dropped if it wasn’t for Michael Vaughn’s dodgy knee, so he in the first test to play Pakistan in Multan. If you haven’t been to Multan, nor have I. No clue where it is. Anyway, expect lots of headlines like “the Multans of swing” if someone gets a few wickets with the old ball moving in the air.<br />
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Next to look at himself in the dressing room mirror and not panic before running out for his country is Pat Sanderson. Playing your first test against Australia is pretty daunting, given that they have two of the best flankers in world rugby in George Smith and Phil Waugh. To get a run in the side, Pat is going to have to scrap mightily well against those two. I wish him luck. He’ll probably get raked and stamped to buggery as well.<br />
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Lastly, it’s the new Bobby Moore, future of England etc Rio Ferdinand. He’s been around a long time, but I fail to see how he is higher up the pecking order than Campbell, Terry, Carragher, Woodgate, etc but Sven likes him. A good game against Argentina and he’s in for the World Cup. A shoddy performance, even Sven might think he’s more Bobby Dazzler than Bobby Moore and dump him for good. <br />
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Thank god for my 42″ plasma and skysports subscription.

I don’t know why the autumn rugby test internationals are exciting, but they are. Perhaps it’s the welcome break from football, or the feeling that winter is approaching, which makes me long for the pub and the feel of a barber jacket, although I have never owned one. Or the smell of leaves. (Stop it).<br />
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There is something pointless yet meaningfull about it all. I yearn for the All Blacks to win the grand slam, walk away with the tag of best team in the world, safe in the knowledge that when it comes to the World cup, they’ll balls it up.<br />
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I love the new faces in the England team, the desperate scramble for places. I really enjoy the fact that the matches mean nothing, yet one bad performance can somehow be almost career-ending. Both style and results are equally important.<br />
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It’s also a hemisphere battle, always South v North. The double header of England vs Australia and Ireland vs New Zealand this Saturday is very tasty. It gives the imagination free flow. (So if Wales are 40 points worse than the All Blacks, and Ireland lose by just 10, does that mean… etc etc)<br />
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Which leads me to think every year: each autumn all three major Southern Hemisphere countries come over. Why not do a North v South match? Include France, forget the lions for a while. It might just be silly idea, but it could be something special.

Advertising products during football programmes is just obvious, right? Cars, phones, booze, they are all easy choices. <br />
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So, we have a Tuesday Champions League match featuring Liverpool. Cut to the ads. A new electric shaver – yes, that’s good. Next up – footage of a boy pouring a goldfish from a plastic bag into a pond. What could this be? Voiceover: “It’s good to be out in the open” Yes yes, where’s the car/phone/holiday/creditcard?<br />
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“So that’s why Philips have introduced the new open MRI scanner.” Scene of woman in hospital, looking like a model, grinning as she is about to have a wonderful MRI scan.<br />
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What on <i>earth</i> is going on? Since when has needing an MRI scan been a fun, aspirational thing? And how big is the market for MRI scanners anyway? And during the football? <br />
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You can just hear the pub banter – “Mate, mate, you should really upgrade your MRI scanner – it’s looks shit. And now they’re open. Brilliant. Look at mine.”

It’s that time of year again. A couple of weekends ago, thousands of people were irritated by Nike. Again. This time, it was Hyde park, Battersea park and some others as well. I got caught up in the Battersea park run. It was hugely annnoying. (<a href=”https://minto.net/blogs/archives/55-Nike-nightmare.html”>see last year for what it’s all about</a>)<br />
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Why? It’s not the disruption, or even the music. It the slogan on every shirt. And people are <b>still </b>wearing these bloody shirts as they go running round London.<br />
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This time it was: “I will run a year.”<br />
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What the hell does that mean? Really. What does it mean? “I will run <b>FOR </b>a year”? In which case, is that non-stop, like Forrest Gump, or just once a week? And if you give up after a year, then that’s not much good, is it?<br />
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“I will run a Nike race each year”? More likely, but a poor sentiment.<br />
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“I will run around London wearing this fucking shirt for a year”? Ah, now we have it.

ITV had all the sport last night. Champions League football, and the Frank Bruno documentary.<br />
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Both were predictable. In the football, Scholes was sent off for ManU, and <a href=”http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/europe/4349012.stm”>Henry scored an amazing goal</a>. He now has overtaken Ian Wright’s 185 Arsenal club record, and probably 70 of those goals would be in any other player’s top 10. If he goes elsewhere, I fear for the gunners, who have over-achieved in terms of spending power for many years.<br />
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But the Bruno documentary was sadly predictable in other ways. Frank was a national treasure, an icon, a decent boxer and a hell of a puncher. He never shook the “Uncle Tom” tag, gabbling about it as soon as he had won the world title. But the worst aspect was all those friends who watched him descend into masses of drugs, sleeping in the garden, strange phone calls in the middle of the night, feeble stunts and hopeless DJing, and did nothing. Yet they all are happy to chat on TV about it. Poor Frank, bit of a mess, not the brightest, losing it. And, oh look, he’s gone mad. So why didn’t you DO something? The predictability is not that Frank had mental health problems, but that his “mates” did sod-all to help.<br />

A strange week in the beautiful (ugly) game. Jonathan Woodgate seems to be on a <a href=”http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/europe/4332894.stm”>scoring frenzy of own goals</a>, England <a href=”http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/internationals/4326110.stm”>qualify</a> for Germany 2006 thanks to other results just as the knives sharpen for Sven and Becks, and <a href=”http://news.ft.com/cms/s/7110585c-3a81-11da-b0d3-00000e2511c8.html”>Sep Blatter goes all greed-is-bad</a> on, of all places, FT.com. Football is very weird at the moment.<br />
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But never mind football. What is <a href=”http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,3605,1586025,00.html”>Megan Dodds obsession with Roger Federer?</a> And who is Megan Dodds, you may ask. I have no idea. She seems to merit a Q&A in the Weekend section of the Guardian.

The super series should be the Lions of cricket – but it lacks several things:<br />
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– the tour atmosphere – it’s too quick, an in-and-out job<br />
– history, which can’t be helped<br />
– passion. It all seems a bit half-hearted<br />
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There is an excellent piece summarising all this on <a href=”http://content-uk.cricinfo.com/ci/content/story/221079.html”>cricinfo </a>(which has become one of my favourite sites.)<br />
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Sometimes I like to point out the weirder pictures that are used on sports sites, and here is one…. it’s in a review on the BBC of <a href=”http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/cricket/england/4312638.stm”>who should replace Simon Jones</a> on the Pakistan tour, but they have used a really weird picture of the bowler Liam Plunkett. It looks like they have put one of those S&M red balls in his mouth, like in Pulp Fiction. See what I mean?<br />
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<img src=”http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/40877000/jpg/_40877588_plunkett203.jpg” alt=”” />

I can’t get excited by Andrew Murray breaking the top 100. I know it’s good, I know, I know. He’s only 18, he’s the future. Stop it.<br />
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The reason why I am not popping out of my shorts like the British media is that a player breaking the top 100 is so run-of-the-mill for other countries. We latch onto success and smother it so hard, and then get upset and criticise when whoever it is we just put on a pedestal doesn’t quite win the big one. It’s a self-destructive streak, and it’s played out in offices and pubs all over the country. I hate it.<br />
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So, yes. Murray is in the top 100. And as if to prove it, <a href=”http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/tennis/4296600.stm”>he backed it up</a> and in his next match beat a very good player in Robby Ginepri, who was in the US Open semi. That should move him into the 80s. <br />
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This is a remarkable achievement for a player that started the year ranked 400+. His potential is huge. Yet, he could also be another Tommy Haas (lots of promise, lots of injuries, lots of disappointment, no big title) or a Magnus Norman (currently residing in the “Where are they now?” file). Or, God forbid, a Tim Henman.<br />
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You smiled at that, didn’t you? You hate Henman. We all do. Bloody choker. That’s the problem. We all have a go at Tim, but he’s actually far better than we think. If Murray matches his career, we will be fortunate indeed.

There are facts, and there are opinions. Here are the facts:<br />
<br />
– Jonathan Woodgate transfered from Newcastle to Real Madrid in 2004, for �13.4m.<br />
– He was injured. He stayed injured for a long time.<br />
– After a year of inactivity, he made his <a href=”http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/europe/4273704.stm”>La Liga debut for Real last night</a>.<br />
– He scored an own goal, and was sent off for a second bookable offence after 65 minutes.<br />
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Here’s Jonathan’s take on events:<br />
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“It was not the best start in the world.”<br />
No, no it wasn’t. It’s pretty fucking awful. I would call that the worst start you could imagine.<br />
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“I want to thank the public, who were brilliant when I was walking off. They were all clapping and cheering.”<br />
Hmm. Now I know “Woody” isn’t an intellectual, but did it not cross his mind that the crowd were possibly being sarcastic? No? Not a chance? They were pleased with his performance, were they? Were they?