Thoughts on This and That

I’ve been in contact with a few people about my plans for heading to Madrid and trying to get into the world of TEFL (teaching English as a Foreign Language) but, it would appear, that my plans for a new way of life have been dashed. Here’s an extract from an email I got from someone this morning…..

“TEFL isn’t about taking a class full of young people, hanging round with the students in cafés and bars afterwards and sleeping with a girl from each class you take, but it seems to be an impression that many people seem to have”

AAAargh, if that’s true what the hell am I going to do now?!

Was it ever in any doubt? Atlético ended Sevilla’s unbeaten record with a 2-1 win tonight, meaning great results for all my teams this weekend, which has to be a first.

It’s the big one next week, the Madrid derby against Real, no doubt that’s when the good start to the season will all go tits-up but, that’s football.

Wasn’t yesterday fun? It didn’t rain, Yorkshire did what they needed to do to stay up, City won away at Cheltenham and the Bulls trounced Salford in the play-offs.

To cap it all off I even had a nice curry and a very welcome few beers.

Now can Atlético beat Sevilla tonight and cap off a great weekend? I doubt it, but I can but hope.

The Superleague play-offs got underway last night, and the first game of the series brought us a shock, as third placed Leeds were knocked out of the competition by Warrington, who finished sixth at the end of the league season.

For those unfamiliar with the sport of Rugby League the Superleague competition uses a play-off system to determine it’s champions. The top six from the league stage qualify, and the higher you finish in the league the more weighted the system is to help you into the Grand Final, the winners of which are the champions, - as an example if you finish first you can qualify for the final by winning one home game, lose that and you get another chance at home - if you finish sixth you can only get to the final by winning three away games in three weeks, lose one and you are out - even then you’ll have to face the team that finished 1st or 2nd and have had plenty of rest. It’s not a perfect system, but it’s a good one and the drama cannot be denied.

When the system was first brought in I was totally against it, believing the champions are the team who come top of the league however, in SL the fixture list is unbalanced (there are 12 teams and 28 weekly rounds, and everyone doesn’t play the same team) and, if you are truly a champion team, surely you should be able to perform under high pressure circumstances in a knock-out situation, as well as week in, week out?

My team, Bradford Bulls, have become something akin to play-off specialists, making the last five grand finals (winning three), and last year we became the first team to win the competition despite finishing outside the top two in the league (we finished 3rd). There has been a lot of upheval at the club this year, and form has been patchy but, while I wouldn’t advise putting money on us to make it again, I wouldn’t totally rule it out.

Whatever happens in terms of my club you can guarantee four weeks of tense rugby league, with plenty of quality thrown in for good measure. Last night’s 18-17 win for Warrington at Leeds was a great start, so try and catch a game or two if you can, you are almost certain to be entertained.

I was pondering something today, when this little gem suddenly popped into my head…

“You might be able to see your destination, but that doesn’t mean you are going the right way about getting there”.

Is that the most prophetic thing I have ever come up with? Probably.

Aussie batsman Darren Lehmann hit a brilliant 339 off just 403 balls as Yorkshire looked to make sure of avoiding the drop by beating Durham at Headingley today.

Thanks to that, and some decent bowling, we are in a pretty good position and it would be some cock-up if we didn’t get what we needed out of the game (1 point more than Durham) having said that, this is Yorkshire and I’m not taking anything for granted just yet.

Lehmann’s knock fell just 2 runs short of breaking a 101 year old record for the record innings by a Yorkshire player (George Hirst, 341 v Leicestershire in 1905) and, while I’m glad of the contribution he made, I’m just as glad a Yorkshire record didn’t fall to an outsider - after all it’s bad enough that we let them play for us, never mind steal our records!!

On a more serious note this is Lehmann’s last game for Yorkshire, he may well go a long way to keeping us up this season but, unless we find someone decent from somewhere, I fear for us next year - and as the greatest county in the history of the game there is no way that we should be dropping back into the second division.

OK, maybe the title is a little melodramatic, I’m not on the verge of doing anything bizarre like that but when I read stories like this, and this, I can’t help but have a little sympathy with these guys. Especially the 95 year old, let him have some uncomplicated fun for gods sake, he’s probably had to put up with all sorts of crap from women in his long life.

My ire was further raised when I read something on some girls blog bemoaning how complicated men are, and pondering what we really mean when we say something - is the girl serious? I take it she can’t be and it must be a piss take. I’d say the majority of men are rather simple souls when it comes to these things, especially compared to the devious, manipulative species that is the human female. What’s more annoying is I can’t find that blog entry again now, but when I do I’ll post the link and you’ll see what I mean.

Now, I’m not one of those folk who constantly bemoan the fact they don’t have a girlfriend, I’m not sad enough to think my life can’t be complete without one, and I’m not one of these fantasists who think that any girl who so much as talks to me, or smiles in my vague direction wants me, I know plenty of each of those types (maybe you recognise yourself here) and, in fact I pity them more than I pity anyone else in the world because whatever they do in life they are always going to be disappointed and, to me, thats very very sad.

Anyway, whats got me unusually worked up tonight is a quite simple story - I met a girl (a friend of a friend of a friend) on a night out in Manchester in April (yes, thats 5 months ago) we got on quite well, then a couple of days later, by sheer coincidence we bumped into each other again in a bar. We were having a good time, just chatting about random things, she seemed to be not uninterested so I chanced my arm and asked her out, in my own unique “make it sound like it’s a joke to avoid potential embrassment though make it clear it isn’t just to be sure style”. She seemed keen on the idea and we swapped numbers, and even came up with a bar that we’d both like to visit - sounds simple so far doesn’t it?

Anyway we exchanged a couple of messages over the next few days, then I came up with a firm date and time and put it to her, the response no reply - this being in early May (that’s May as in four months ago). For a couple of weeks afterwards I awaited any sort of response, but it became clear none was forthcoming and, gradually, I forgot all about it and all about her - until tonight when my phone beeps “Hi Asim, how’s things? How about that drink this weekend? I still haven’t tried the new Kro out, have you?”. I mean, it’s not even a reply to my message and it’s four whole months in coming.

Unbefuckinglievable, I’m sure you’ll agree (pardon my French) especially when there are women out there trying to claim WE are the complicated ones, you couldn’t make it up could you?

I’m not a rude person by any stretch of the imagination, and I feel bad because I am just going to ignore the message and not reply, but when it’s been four months in the making who can really blame me?

Right, time to breathe out and have a stiff drink.

I was tipped off about a nifty (never thought I’d use that word) little programme called Google Analytics recently, I bunged the code into my blog and it tells me how many people have visited and what they’ve looked at, as well as providing pie charts telling me how many recurring and new visitors I have, what site you’ve all come from and, to top it all, a map of the world with dots showing where people who visit my blog are located.

I heartily recommend it for anyone who has a website/blog, but what has suprised me is finding out that so many people actually read the rubbish I spout, and even more bizzarely most of you come back for more after your initial visits. I seem to have regular visitors from as far afield as the US, Oman, China and Australia - I would address you in your native tongues as a gesture of goodwill, but I can’t speak American or Australian, and more to the point I wouldn’t want to!

I suppose these days such banality is actually interesting, you only have to see the number of clones of the likes of Heat magazine that are kicking about in any newsagent to see that so, now that I’ve gently insulted my merry band of readers, I’ll make sure I keep posting nonsense for you all to read.

Anyway, thanks for visiting, please come again, and even better maybe leave a comment now and then, even if it’s only to insult me!

In the blurb and hype surrounding tonights edition of Panorama the programme makers claimed they had uncovered evidence that would “blow the game apart”. Did it? I don’t believe it did, it was only confirmation for most football fans of things that we know go on surrounding transfer deals in football.

To me the programme contained very little real concrete evidence of wrong-doing, just a lot of supposition and a lot of nudge, nudge, wink, wink. There does seem to be a paper trail showing that two agents, Craig Allardyce and Peter Harrison have been involved in the making and receipt of illegal payments but there was little real evidence of any actual “bungs” being received by any managers, or others officially involved in clubs. The subject of illegal approaches for players was also brought up, but I for one don’t have a clue how that can ever be cut out.

There are those that say that bungs go on in the game, always have and we should just live with it - but for me that is a totally unacceptable attitude and this is something that needs to be weeded out of the game. In the end it is us, as supporters who suffer, when money that we have put in (through admission money, merchandise purchases and TV subscriptions) leaves our club, and the game, in this way and it is us who suffer if certain managers only buy players represented by certin agents, because someone, somewhere is getting a cut of the deal and not because they are the best option available to the club.

Can this sort of corruption be cut out of the game? I’m not sure, but the FA have got to try all they can to make sure it is.

Actually I can do both, rather well if I do say so myself - but to finish the line off “the only thing about me is the way I walk” or, is for the moment, because it won’t be for much longer.

I had an enjoyable day with a friend on Saturday up in the Lake District, doing a bit of walking, drinking tea and eating cream cakes which was all well and good until the next morning when my knee and foot were swollen to silly levels and I could barely walk.

I’ve had a few problems with the knee recently so I thought it might be a good idea to go to a doctor and see what he had to say and apparently, my problems could come down to my unique walking style. Plenty of folk who know me have commented on it in the past, I have a tendency to swing my arms a lot and veer across to the right, but it seems the way I walk puts too much load onto my right side which could be contributing to the many problems I seem to have with that leg.

I’m not sure how easy it’s going to be to change the way I have walked for 26 years, but I suppose I better give it a go - in the meantime I just hope the physio I have to go see is going to be gentle with me, though I do look rather fetching with the tubigrip supports I have on my foot and knee, which make me look like I am wearing a giant white tights, on one leg anyway.