Showing posts with label sport. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sport. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Football

This article is classic Daily Mash.
The use of television has been a source of controversy in the sport, but experts insist it offers a fool-proof method for determining whether a team is good at football or whether it is simply a collection of absurdly over-compensated, second-rate commercial brands with ghastly, vulgar wives, locked in a sado-masochistic relationship with a cretinous media that merely reflects a society that has taken its natural intelligence, its sense of perspective and its values and violently drowned them all in a bucket of piss.

Yup, that just about sums it up...

UPDATE: I enjoyed this from NewsArse too.
NASA ‘faked England 1966 World Cup win’

A leading ex-NASA scientist has gone on record to confirm one of the longest-standing conspiracies in the football world: that the American space agency faked footage of the 1966 tournament in order to imply an England win.

Dr Robert Wellington—who worked for the agency throughout the sixties and seventies—spoke out following ongoing speculation on the internet.

“We needed a practice run for the moon thing,” he said, from his home in Florida. “And the soccer world cup seemed just the job. We wanted to see if we could delude an entire nation that they could achieve something that was frankly unimaginable. And it worked perfectly.”

“But we had absolutely no idea that it would become a recurring delusion,” he added.

Enjoy!

Monday, August 25, 2008

All hail the 2013 Olympics....

I did this for Trixy, but it sums up the general attitude, I think...


All hail the Tripod 2013 Olympics. Oh, and I still don't give a shit about sport in general and the Olympics in particular. What I do care about is that my money is about to be pissed comprehensively up the wall...

Tuesday, April 01, 2008

Referee!

Apparently, the Gobblin' King has been sticking his long nose into some debate about whether or not a bunch of overpaid irrelevancies should respect the referee, or something. I couldn't give two shits about football, but my impecunious Hellenic friend does extrapolate a neat point from it all.
Now, my first reaction, admittedly, was to think to myself that the decisions of referees in the Premier League are absolutely none of Gordon Brown's fucking business. But since then, I must confess, the idea has started to grow on me. I mean, read this bit again:
"Not only must the captain set the right example for the rest of the team; I believe he must take greater responsibility for the overall behaviour of his team-mates"

Yes, this is a splendid idea. I propose, therefore, that the next time a minister in Team Gordon's lineup launders money, or proves to be utterly incompetent, or launders money, or presides over a massive fuckup in their department, or launders money, then not only should that minister be sacked, but the captain of the Government himself should receive a yellow card.

And we all know what happens when you get two yellow cards.

Um... In this case, does two yellow cards mean that you get tied to a chair and then put in a windowless, soundproofed, concrete room containing nothing but your humble Devil and a piece of two-by-four...?

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Springing to attack

Via WebCommons, I find this entry on sport by Richard Spring MP and I really have to take issue with the following sentence.
Sport is in decline in this country, and one of the results of this is that many young people are insufficiently fit.

I think that Richard has rather put the cart before the horse here: young people are unfit because they do not play sport, not the other way around.

+++

UPDATE:
massive whoops! This is, of course, what Richard said. Never mind, I shall let this post stand, if only as a monument to the folly of not reading carefully enough...

+++

Sports—and especially team sports—in this country have declined for a number of reasons. The first is the pathetic idea that either everybody wins, or nobody does; I have concentrated on this before. In the last year that I was at a state primary school (in 1985/96, I think) we had a sports day in which everyone got the same prize, simply for running the race, regardless of where one had come in that event.

But even this would not be a problem: there is, despite constant attempts by the education system to stamp out the spirit of competition, an exhiliaration to winning which often more than compensates for the lack of any physical trophy.

Unfortunately, being able to participate requires that there is actually somewhere to play it. And this is a problem because, since at least the late 70s—and with a massive acceleration from the mid-80s onwards, schools and councils have been selling off playing fields for development. This applies especially to those schools in the innner cities—which, it could be argued, need them the most—because the price of land is so high in these areas.

This has accelerated still further under NuLabour who have favoured—surprise, surprise—the PFI approach; school fields are sold to development companies who are required to install indoor facilities which the school must be able to use. Unfortunately, these facilities are usually both inadequate and expensive and, as such, the participation in sport is reduced.

And so, instead of having lessons and then a couple of hours of sport and getting out of school at about 5 (as I did), we now have kids roaming the streets from about 2.30 in the afternoon, bored out of their minds, waiting for their parents to come home from work.

I have always maintained that schools are about more than mere academic work—this is what people pay money to public schools for, by the way—but, alas, government targets pay absolutely no attention to such things, for how can they be measured?

Sure, you could take measures of "satisfaction", but how can a child know that they would love to spend their afternoons with an oxyacetylene torch, sculpting in metal (as I did), if they have never had the chance to try it? And thus, how can they possibly express dissatisfaction at the fact that their school has no such facilities?

As I have stated many times—in the face of jibes from socialists—I know what a good schooling is (as does Cameron): so, who is better to advise on the best way in which to achieve a fine education—someone who has explored all of these facilities and been encouraged to do so, or someone who has never known what a broad and extensive schooling can offer?

Education is about more than mere academic exam results, especially when those results are so devalued—the very fact that we have an A* grade testifies to the degradation of the system on its own. In fact, as Matt Sinclair wrote superbly about, education is about more than economics.

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

The Olympics: fired up

There's been a big fire in the Olympic Park area.

Officials scotched rumours that the fuel was a massive pile of banknotes, with a spokesman reiterating that...
"...the Olympic Committee are not literally burning taxpayers' cash.

"Nor are they literally flushing it down the toilet or literally pissing it up the wall. These are merely metaphors..."

Your humble Devil would like to point out that he fucking hates professional sport, and totally fucking objects to paying for it in any way whatso-fucking-ever.

Still, we could always burn Seb Coe, only he'd be a bit damp; y'know, him being so washed-up an' all.

(Photo courtesy of FridayCities' iSD.)

Wednesday, October 03, 2007

Blogging All-Star XV

Via The "Sloppy Seconds" Englishman, Liberty's Requiem has assembled a topical blogging rugby team.

Your humble Devil features as the Outside Centre—when I played rugby, I did often play in that position and also as Fly Half: I was a tall, lanky bastard in those days and had a fair turn of speed, as well as razor-sharp shins...
Outside Centre
With a little bit more time and space to work with, the outside centre needs the ability to find the unexpected running lines to stun the opposition. A risky pick here, as I'm sure 10 minutes in the sin bin, alongside this team's number 8 for backchat to the referee is pretty much a certainty:
  1. —The Devil

Consider me flattered to be included with a number of other such luminaries, even if DuSanne anticipates myself and the poor little Greek boy spending much of the time in the sin bin. As long as the sin bin has some decent beer, I am sure that Mr E and myself will be more than happy to watch The Dude charging up the pitch, bellowing something about "Queen and country!"

I'm not sure that I can imagine Iain Dale as a hooker though: he would end up getting his ties dirty...

Anyway, go and peruse the whole run-down, as DuSanne's justifications for the positioning are worth reading: it requires a certain amount of understanding to see why Bob Piper would be on the same pitch as Blaney...