Long Time No Blog

Well, now my summer of lazing on the sofa drinking lots of tea and following the cricket (hooray!) is over, it’s time to get this thing going again ahead of the next interesting chapter of my life (interesting to me, maybe not so much for you).

In just 41 days time (not that I’m counting) I’ll be jetting off to Salvador in Brazil to start a six month trip around South America, sounds just a little bit better than sitting at my desk eh?

Just got to sort out a million and one things now, like my jabs, some suitable clothing, no end of accessories and quite a few financial things before I’m good to go – I’ve been waiting for this for almost two and a half years, since I came back from my little Eastern Europe jaunt – it’s amazing how these things manage to creep up!

It could be you

So, the first team exits Euro 2008 via a penalty shoot-out and, like night follows day, the first reaction of “penalty shoot-outs are a lottery” came from Croatia’s manager Slaven Bilic, following Turkey’s victory.

If lotteries were won by skill, technique and holding your nerve, I’d agree with him – but they’re not, I don’t think it’s much of a coincidence that your unlikely to hear a German describe a shoot-out in this way, do you?

0 out of 3 aint bad

That was the song wasn’t it?

While feeling a little hungover after birthday celebrations in a Warsaw park a year ago I wrote in my little notebook three goals for the year ahead, they were…

1 – Make a proper effort to learn Spanish properly

2 – Likewise, but with the guitar

3 – Get a decent job, or at least one with decent prospects.

Needless to say, I have failed miserably.

I’ll do the same again this year, but I’ll restrict it to 2 targets…

1 – As 1 above

2 – Not to be in the country on my birthday next year.

Hopefully I’ll have more success this time!

A little premature?

Not just me, with my blog yesterday, but Bradford (Park Avenue) chief executive Bob Blackburn, and the Telegraph and Argus for publishing the Nicky Law to Avenue story.

As I said previously, I felt Law was out of his depth when managing Bradford City, it seems contract’s are a subject he struggles with too, he won’t now be joining Avenue – he had assured them he didn’t have a contract at Alfreton Town, but it turns out he did – he wasn’t aware that a “piece of paper” he signed was actually a 3 year contract.

Oh dear!

Avenue on the March?

Bradford (Park Avenue) have announced ex Bradford City manager Nicky Law is to take the reigns at the Horsfall Stadium, after they recently parted company with ex boss Benny Phillips.

Although I never rated Law in his time at VP, I wish him well at Avenue, he took over at City when we were in meltdown after the Premiership experience and, to me, he always seemed to be way out of his depth – him being a cheap appointment by Geoffrey Richmond because he had done well with financially troubled Chesterfield in the 4th division.

Avenue have lofty ambitions these days, being bankrolled by a sugar-daddy the Unibond League 1 club (average attendance about 300) recently announced plans to buid a 20,000 capacity stadium – maybe one day it will play host to a Bradford derby in the Football League – but I won’t hold my breath!

Some Light Reading

OK, the content is probably tedious, but you can’t argue with the title, or the sentiment!

http://hmrcisshite.blogspot.com

So, maybe the public aren’t that stupid after all

Viewers complain about too much Rugby Union on the beeb.

Quite right too, even more scandalous is the vast amounts of our money they squander on the rights for the 6 Nations with no competition, making it the most expensive program per viewer on the box.

I’m sure they’ll respond to the public’s concerns next time the renewal comes up, honest!

An accident waiting to happen

Anyone with the slightest interest in football (and plenty without) will have no doubt seen, heard or read about the shocking injury suffered by Arsenal’s Croation striker Eduardo yesterday.

Plenty have had their say on the incident too some, from both sides of the argument, have been ridiculous, talk of a life ban is almost as stupid as those saying things like “Taylor was only sent off because of the injury”, or “the tackle wasn’t that bad” – but it is about time that the authorities started to clamp down, before more serious injuries occur, and handing out the standard three match ban, the same as you might get for a shove on your opponent or “raising your hands”, isn’t going to deter offenders in the future.

It’s not about taking the physical side of the game away, no-one wants to see that happen less than me, but no true football fan wants to see studs-up challenges over the top of the ball, the reason they are often called “leg-breakers” is because of what we saw yesterday. I’m not for a moment suggesting Martin Taylor set out to cause an injury, but the fact that his challenge was reckless, rather than deliberate, isn’t of much consolation to the poor bloke who had the bone in his leg sticking out of his sock simply for trying to play football.

What’s wrong with Super League?

I should be pretty excited at the moment, tomorrow Bradford Bulls play St Helens at Odsal, the most successful clubs of the SL era, and two of the best teams in this years competition go head to head, but I just can’t build up any enthusiasm for the game at all, it’s doubtful that I’ll even watch on television.

It’s not just this game, SL as a whole just isn’t appealing to me at the moment, Rugby League is still my favourite sport and I can’t put my finger on the problem exactly, I guess it will pass – but you never know.

No-one can doubt that RL players in SL now are fitter and more athletic that they have ever been before, however I do wonder if this has been to the detriment of the skill level, and taken away some of the unpredictability of the game, to me the game is becoming more and more “run into tackle x 6 then kick” and there seems to be less and less imagination and freedom in the play.

Maybe that was always going to be a consequence of professionalism, maybe we have to wait until the competition is truly even before skill can again start to come to the fore on a more regular basis but, for now, I think I’ll stick to watching some lower league and amateur action, where players aren’t half as fit and athletic, but have a bit of time to try something out, you still have the spectacle of little guys running round big tired forwards, and there’s still a bit of the “biff” that sanitised Superleague has cleaned out.

I’ll give it about six weeks, then Superleague will probably have never seemed more appealing!

Linguistic Lunacy

It’s today been announced that oral examinations in GCSE language courses are set to be scrapped, meaning the youth of today could soon achieve qualifications in languages that they can’t even speak.

Of course, the oral exams are the hardest part for most learners, but removing them because they “cause stress” is absolutely ridiculous, shouldn’t education be preparing kids for life?