Sports Category
Sports news, commentary and scores with wit and added value. We compare and contrast the best and worst sports reporting in the mainstream press, blogs, TV and online. We love the English Premier League (Arsenal, Liverpool, Spurs, Manchester United and Manchester City) and all things football but we cover cricket, rugby, the Olympics, tennis, golf, F1 and highlights of the sporting year.
Geoffrey Wheatcroft hits ‘cheating’ footballers with Jessica Ennis
IN today’s article attacking football and footballers, tells Guardian readers beneath the headline “From Jessica Ennis to Joey Barton. Could a contrast be more ghastly?” that athletics is so very noble. He might have compared and contrasted drugs cheat Dwaine Chambers to likeable Phil Neville or cycling diver Philip Hindes and Craig Bellamy, the charitable firebrand who joked: “If I ever wrote an autobiography – and I won’t – it would be called Don’t Google Me.”
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Sports fans who go for a themed funeral – a film
HOW hardcore a sport nut are you? Errol Morris has a film about spors fans who take their fandom into the next world:
Spotter: Next Draft, BoingBoing
A Day in the Life of London’s Olympic Park – a video
A DAY in the Life of London’s Olympic Park – a video by Duncan McLean:
For the Gooners: Robin Van Persie’s career at Arsenal in photos
ROBIN Van Persie has quit Arsenal for the greenback pastures of Manchester United. Arsenal fans may miss RVP. The treatment room will certainly be less busy. His time at Arsenal wasn’t all about great goals. In fact, aside from last season, the injury-prone striker often struggled to get going:
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Posted: 16th, August 2012 | In: Sports | Comment (1)
Take That Gaia: Bonneville Speed Week in photos
TO the Bonneville Speed Week, Bonneville Salt Flats, Utah, USA. This is the annual event that sees hundreds of car builders and drivers gather on the salt flats to try and break land speed records in various different categories of vehicle. This is a hark back to the halcyon days of what Iowahawk calls “the global warming era“. This is salt and nitro. “Take that, Gaia!” (Photos with added Shelby and Donald Campbell.)
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Robin Van Persie signs for Manchester United: Piers Morgan promises to kill himself
ROBIN Van Persie has left Arsenal for Manchester United. Bad news, inded for Arsenal fans. Still, Piers Morgan promises to kill himself by throwing himself off Santa Monica pier “in lead wights”. (Eric Idle is away.)
Robin Van Persie at Manchester United: first photo
ROBIN Van Persie has left Arsenal for Manchester United. Arsenal fans rejoice:
Sun writer Kris Kamara says you cannot trust the Sun
DID you all read “Chris Kamara’s Championship Verdict” in the Sun?
Kris Kamara did. He tweets:
“Can I openly apologise to every Team/ Fans in the Championship The paper I write for! I see I have been stitched up!! The only piece from me is I thought Leeds would do well, all the other predictions are nothing to do with me. I know only too well the last thing fans want is some smart ar*e saying there team is going to struggle before a ball is kicked. I am so annoyed & was given assurances that they only wanted a piece on who I thought would do well. So once again apart from the main piece the rest is nothing to do with me. Sorry.”
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Rob Beasley v Andy Goldstein: football pundits at war
IN recent days the Sun has brought us “Boorish football needs to get the Olympic message” (Steven Howard), “Our Olympic heroes have humiliated arrogant footballers” (Hunter Davies) and “How vile football is back”, by Rob Beasley, who goes on TalkSport to debate his stance with the excellent Hawksbee and Jacobs. Only Hawksbee is away and the god-awful renegade health-club DJ Andy Goldstein is standing in for him. It does not go well.
One of Beasley’s complaints is that the media hypes stories to trigger readers feedback (see out headline about a “war”) and that fans in the stands “eff and blind”. Goldstein then oversteps the mark:
Posted: 14th, August 2012 | In: Sports, TV & Radio | Comment
London 2012 legacy watch: Olympic stadium goes up for sale – advert in full
London 2012 Legacy Watch: The stadium goes up for sale on a board at Hackney Wick station:
PS – Can Jessie J sing an entire song on her own?
Spotter: Tiernan Douieb
Mo Farah running away from things: photos
MO Farah Running Away From Things is the Tumblr of the day:
Give the Olympic stadium to Leyton Orient and make them Team GB FC
THE London 2012 Olympic stadium would make crap football ground. Sure, West Ham United fans want a shiny new place, but surely not that one. The club’s manger Sam Allardyce is, however, like his bosses, keen for the Hammers to relocate to the massive bowl:
“If they keep it for athletics, the only time it will ever get a big crowd again after the Olympics is when they hold the World Championships there in five years’ time. You only have to look around the world at some of the Olympic Stadiums that have been built. They’re white elephants now. There are weeds growing there. Look at the ‘Bird’s Nest’ in Beijing. Look at Athens.”
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Flashback: The Indoor League – 81 pints and the Terry Yorath table-football fight
THE Indoor League was broadcast live from the Leeds Irish Centre. Your host was Fred Trueman, proud Yorkshireman and cricket great from the period when only men born in the northern Republic could represent it at bat and ball. Your commentator was Sid Waddell, the erudite Geordie with the common touch. (Read his great quotes here.) In the early 1970s, The Indoor League made it onto the ITV network. It was serious business.
Sid Waddell recalled one infamous bout as he surveyed the room:
“Fred Trueman used to stand up there, on the stage, giving it large in a cardigan. The shove ha’penny was over there … here would have been the bar billiards. And that’s the door out of which I had to smuggle Terry Yorath when the fight broke out at the table football.”
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Posted: 13th, August 2012 | In: Flashback, Key Posts, Sports, TV & Radio | Comment
RIP Sid Waddell: the magic voice of darts in great quotes
RIP Sid Waddell, the voice of darts. There was only one words to describe your contribution to the noble art of arrows: “magic darts.”
“Darts players are probably a lot fitter than most footballers in overall body strength.”
“Jocky on the oche looking cocky”
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Posted: 13th, August 2012 | In: Sports, TV & Radio | Comment
London 2012: Olympic athlete gives finger to BBC at closing ceremony
LONDON 2012: all those happy, smiling faces on the telly were truly uplifting. The event was fantastic. Everyone was in the mood to live and love. Well, almost everyone. Who is the Olympic athlete seen giving a finger to the watching millions?
London 2012: every British Olympics medal winner – 4 free giant posters
WHO did win a medal at the London 2012 Games? To help you answer that, we’ve stuck all the winners’ faces onto giant posters you can print out and keep. (click each picture and let it load – they are huge.) Learn their names and in six months see how many you can remember. Chances are it will be the ones who are the most photogenic and most likely to cure your dandruff and / or shaving rash. (Don’t worry everyone, it’s only 1453 Days until the Rio Olympics!)
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London 2012: It ain’t over until Paul McCartney sings Hey Jude
SIR Paul McCarntey, that superannuated choir boy, is now the the proverbial singing ‘fat lady’. No job is too big for The Beatles survivor, whose rendition of Hey Jude will officially end whatever it is you want ending. It’s the Fab Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse:
Posted: 12th, August 2012 | In: Sports | Comment (1)
Thanks for the Olympic McDonald’s (photo tribute)
THANKS, McDonalds. Thanks for a great London 2012 Olympics! Now for Rio!
London woman knits Olympics in her garden (photos)
TO Walthamstow, London E17, where resident Mary Haggerty has created a tableau of knitted Olympians in her back garden. The beheaded swimmers are thought to be an attempt to bridge the gap between Team GB and our rivals in Afghanistan:
Posted: 12th, August 2012 | In: Sports | Comment (1)
London 2012 in photos: double winners Mo Farah and Usain Bolt epitomise humanity at its best
JOY. Before reality encroaches like a shadow on our lives once more, we should bathe in the light that is Mo Farah. After Mo won a thrilling 10,000 metres gold at the London 2012 Games, Mo won a thrilling 5,000m gold at the London 2012 Games. The Somalia-born Londoner epitomises the grace, courage, charisma and talent we’ve watched for the past two weeks. He and many of his peers have shown us the best of humanity. It’s been brilliant. It’s been great telly. The talk is of an Olympic legacy. This is it: memories of sporting excellence. Here are 26 photos of Mo’s stirring show – with added Usain Bolt. C’mon – do the Mo commotion:
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London Olympics 2012 day 14 – the best photos
OUR daily look at the best photos of the London 2012 Olympics. Day 14…
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London 2012: Des Lynam bemoans the ‘grating female voice’ (more John Motson, then?)
FORMER BBC sports link man and pundit wrangler Des Lynam is writing about the Beeb’s coverage of London 2012. He worries about Gary Lineker and the “grating” female voice. It’s on with the chauvinism in the Daily Telegraph. Anorak has two words on Lynam’s unreconstructed attitude to droning, grating commentators: John Motson:
Note: When Motson left the BBC, Match of the Day began to use a woman, Jacqui Oately, as a commentator and sofa sitter Mark Lawrenson shaved off his moustache. Coincidence? Or progress?
Spotter: @johnwarrender
Alternative Olympic Sports: the Olympic ring (rubber) dive
ALTERNATIVE Olympic Sport presents the Olympic ring (rubber) dive:
The future of Olympic dressage (video)
DRESSAGE is the poetry of man / woman in harmony with a horse. Horses can be expensive. People can be expensive. The future is to combine the two. (The more I watched this vireo, the more I liked it. The one disappointment being that two horses did not perform synchronised dressage possibly in water.)
Spotter: @HorseHorseTV.
