Sport For All (not just Sky subscribers)

Maybe I'm warming to Capello

2007-12-14T13:18:31+01:00

I just read this quote:

"I can't stand the rubbish that gets talked about by everyone, players, fans, the media, club officials. Why should I waste my time listening to people who are clearly less intelligent than me?"

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An Italian managing England?????

2007-12-13T03:48:42+01:00

Personally I disapprove. He might be the best man for the job but even if he did win the World Cup with England, it would be like sharing it with Italy.

Furthermore, there are at least 10 English people who could do as good a job; including Sam Allardyce, Harry Rednap, Steve Coppell and my aunt Mabel, but not including Steve McClaren.

Under an Italian coach it will be all diving, feigning injury, arguing with the ref and girly hairstyles..... Ahem.... no change there then.

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Why Roy Keane is a top man

2007-12-09T14:21:33+01:00

One of these days I might go through the archives and find the best of the quotes from Roy Keane's 1.5 seasons as Sunderland manager. For now though I'll just share with you a quote from what he said to the BBC interviewer after yesterday's defeat at Chelsea:

Interviwer: "You took off Kenwynne Jones, was that just because he was tired?"

Keane: "No not at all; we expect all our players to put in a full shift. We don't expect them to come off tired, we expect them to come off shattered"

Wouldn't you just love to have him managing your team?

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Twice in one day

2007-10-06T23:01:39+02:00

I enjoyed watching two rugby games today: How weird is that?

If anything, the France - NZ game was even better than the England-Aus one

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Big Girls' Blouses

2007-10-06T15:52:06+02:00

I just enjoyed watching a game of rugby and I just enjoyed watching England win. Both of which are not things that I enjoy too often. The game was great but not as good as seeing the Australian players cry at the end.

The girls

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Spot the difference...

2007-04-30T12:53:49+02:00

Two football stories in The Sun this morning....

Niall Quinn:

"Roy (Keane) is an exceptional talent and somebody who is not here purely to win a match every weekend - but to build this club into an amazing force again"

Glenn Roeder has vowed to restore Newcastle to the top end of the Premiership next season.

Which one is more believable?

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A sad indictment

2007-04-13T15:14:27+02:00

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/fa_cup/6551233.stm

I blame Sky

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How do you get promoted when you're already God?

2007-04-02T10:19:20+02:00

One fan, who had told me earlier that he loved Quinn so much he would give him a kidney, suddenly changed his mind. "The bloke's a legend," he declared, "he can have both of my kidneys."

http://www.sunderlandtoday.co.uk/ViewArticle.aspx?ArticleID=2218018&SectionID=1107

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The Future's Bright - it's Red & White

2007-04-01T02:29:23+02:00

You may or may not have noticed but Sunderland haven't lost a league game this year. If you're from gypsy stock (like I suspect I might be) you probably think that me merely mentioning that fact will put the mockers on it. But that doesn't worry me.

We may or may not get an automatic promotion place this season, we may or may not go up via the playoffs. But I can say with absolute confidence that if we don't go up this season, we will piss it next.

The reason for my confidence can be expressed in four words: Naill Quinn and Roy Keane.

Sunderland fans have known Niall was a top man for some time now (we always loved him more than Kevin Philips) but I'll be honest, I had contempt for Keane until recently. I now think that his time as a star man for Man Utd, when he won League titles, FA Cups and the Champions(!) League, was simply training for his main purpose in life - to make Sunderland great.

We've had our false dawns at Sunderland in recent years but this one is different. This time it is right. This time we have a chairman and a manager who are talented and focussed. I am supremely full of faith. By 2008/9 we will be established as one of the very topclubs in Britain.

I can feel it in my water.

http://www.ftmforum.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=8117

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Steve McClaren - it's simple...

2007-03-25T00:46:32+01:00

I'm ashamed to say that I happen to know that Steve McClaren is a regular reader of my blog and this is a personal message to him. So my apologies to all of you who are not the current England footbal team manager.

Steve mate, your country needs you to resign. Be a hero.

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The Most Priveliged Footbal Fans

2007-03-17T02:39:10+01:00

You might not realise how good it is to be a Sunderland fan.

You probably think that we are a yoyo team whose trophy room doubles as the vacuum cleaner cupboard. Well you might be right. You are right; but what you don't realise is that we hate the one team in the world that every other football fan would love to hate - Newcastle.

I should point out that the Newcastle trophy room sees even less action than the Sunderland one; less action than Anne Widdicombe even. They last won the FA Cup in 1955 and the League in 1926. Mind you, they have got damn close to the silverware a few times since but, much to the amusement of us Mackems, it always ends in tears.

Newcastle are the only team to lose FA Cup games at Wembley in 3 consecutive years. They famously threw away a 13 point lead in the Premiership in the same season as Kevin Keegan did his "Ah'd love it" rant and the tears flowed down the bare chests of the big Magpie lumps.

Whilst they were crying, we were too - with laughter. Just like we'd laughed in 1974 when Super Mac (Malcolm MacDonald) was reduced to desparate defending because he wasn't allowed a shot all game in the cup final that the Mags lost 3-0. We laughed when former Sunderland player Dennis Tueart scored from an overhead kick for Man City against them in the League Cup a few years later.

We laughed in 1990 when we were 2 - 1 up on aggregate at Sid James's Park in a play off final and they decided to have a pitch invasion. (They had tried that one previously, most notably in 1974 when they were forced to replay a game they had already won). That game effectively got us promoted that year.

In 2002 we laughed when they were 3-1 up in the Interpisspot Cup Final against Troyes Paperboys Reserves and eventually lost 4-3. This year they went a step further actually winning the alledged trophy. However the tickertape parade around the city never quite got off the ground; the trophy is so irrelevant they were informed about their 'victory' by post because no one had noticed. Still it was a route into the Uefa Cup and for some reason, winning the Uefa Cup is thought of as an achievent; in television circles if nowhere else.

After playing a series of teams of dentists and goat herders, Newcastle finally got to play a decent team in the Uefa cup. And after 20 minutes of the 1st leg of their last 16 game against AZ Alkamaar, they were 3-0 up and dreaming of a trophy again.

On Wednesday night it all went pear shaped again for them. Alkamaar managed the 2-0 win they needed to overturn the tie and Newcastle's season was over.

My brother rang me up and how we laughed!

We were still laughing today when we read of Glenn Roeder's excuse for the failure. It was his defenders! Well Duhhhhhh!!!!. Glen mate, you spent all your money on an injury prone striker who's only in it for the money, you should have spent a few bob on a defender or two.

Slagging off your players in public is the first move in the downward spiral that leads to the sack for a manager. I expect a few more giggles in the weeks (let's hope it's months!) ahead.

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6 Nations in my personal order

2007-02-27T13:52:48+01:00

Now that I'm a rugby fan, I thought it is only fair for me to rank the 6 teams in order that I'd like them to win - if that makes sense.

1. Ireland: Because I'm 51% irish and the rugby team is an example to how people can have differences yet still share the same piece of land

2. Wales: Because I feel sorry for them. Welsh people are usually nice people but the poor buggers never win owt.

3. Italy: Because I think it's funny that 99/100 italians don't even know what rugby is and yet they find themselves competing with nations for which rugby is one of the top 2 or 3 sports. And sometimes they beat Scotland

4: Scotland: I suppose I don't feel quite so sorry for Scotland as I do for Wales because at least Scotland are good at curling

5: France: I've got nowt in particular against France, but I suppose they do take rugby seriously and as such are one of the giants, and it's always nice to see giantkilling

6: England: Because I have a chip on my shoulder about the English, probably borne out of the tendency for them to go right over the top everytime they win anything (for instance when they beat Scotland at rugby)

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Rugby Fans: An Apology

2007-02-25T22:32:20+01:00

A few years ago I made the important recognition that poking fun at someone or attempting to ridicule them is in fact merely an attempt to cover your own shortcomings. I have therefore tried to stop doing that and I feel better about myself as a result.

It occurred to me today that I have unnecessarily scoffed at rugby as being a game for gays or thickos. I recognise now that whereas that might be true, I only said such things because I was jealous that I wasn't involved in the sport in any way.

Xylophone hereby announces that he watched a game of rugby on tv on Saturday, felt involved and thouroughly enjoyed it. He would therefore like to apologise to any rugby fan he may have attempted to ridicule in the past.

Still can't understand the bloody rules mind.

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The best second of my year so far

2007-02-25T21:33:23+01:00

Like all evil things, there's a scrap of goodness about Sky tv. And that scrap is its 24 hour free sports news channel. It has become a bit of a family ritual for my son and me to sit watching the scores coming through on a Saturday afternoon.

Being a basically sensible lad he is a keen supporter of his home town team Sunderland. When Sunderland went one-nil up against Derby on Saturday we whooped and cheered together because we knew this one was an important game. If we won we'd be snapping at the heals of our opponents at the top of the table, whereas defeat would see us slump to about 8th place and the great run we've been on lately would be at an end.

However, we chewed our nails together as Derby came back into the game and were utterly dejected when the equaliser came late in the second half. Now, I'm not in the least bit superstitious but I have a little routine that I do every time Sunderland play - I make a cup of coffee in my Roy Keane mug. Honestly, it's just a joke really but I'd never forgive myself if I had tea, or used the wrong mug and we lost.

My ma-in-law (76), on the other hand is very superstitious. In fact I think she's from gypsy stock though she denies it. She has a red and white football shaped mug which she rubs in the expectation that a superior being is watching the pot carefully and when it's rubbed goes immediately to where Sunderland are playing and empowers their players to do better.

She's a canny old stick really, she lives on her own, and she's a more avid Sunderland fan that most. If they're playing round these parts she usually goes to watch. So, with just about 2 minutes to go on Saturday, I rang her to make sure she'd rubbed her pot. In fact I got the impression she'd rubbed the glaze of it, bless her.

All the final results were coming in and we were just about resigned to settling for a draw when suddenly the Sky presenter launched into his typical 'there's been a goal at Sunderland..' speech. Geoff Stelling is a likeable bloke, he's a keen Hartlepool supporter - a fact that he singularly fails to disguise every time his favourites score - and presents the show with a mixture of humour, excitement and passion. For what seemed like a minute, but was in fact about 5 seconds, we were kept dangling on the fact that a winner had been scored in the 93rd minute; but a winner for who........?

My son and I stood like Johnny Wilkinson statues (yes, stood, we'd both leapt from our seats during the first second of the five). Our basic life support systems, like blood pumping, were suspended while adrenalin production was increased to full capacity. We knew that the next thing we see would either send us into extasy or spoil our weekend completely. Four more seconds passed as Geoff built up the tension and then there it was: Sunderland 2 Derby 1.

Psycologists call it imprinting. I know that the sight of those two words and two numbers will stay with me forever.

Despite having not breathed for 5 seconds we screamed and jumped with gay abandon. The reporter described the goal and told the world who had scored it but we never heard. After a further 10 seconds passed the phone rang. It was my brother in Sunderland. I can't remember what we said except that I'm sure 'WOO-HOO!!' was part of it. I had to cut him off after a further 10-15 seconds as I had to ring ma-in-law. That conversation involved more 'get-in!s' and we asked each other which player had scored but neither of us knew.

I left her with her faith in the power of the footbal-teapot reinvigorated.

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