'Arry's Beautful Game

Always sticks in me craw when you hear one of the same-voiced men on Radio 5Live tell yer that it was a good night for British clubs in Europe. Which clubs exactly? Did Port Vale get a point at the San Siro? The mighty Shrewsbury nick a late winner in Madrid.

Nah, just the usual suspects. And I can't pretend that I'm whipped up into a patriotic fervour about watching any of 'em.

Chelsea never looked in bother after John Terry revealed the sort of opportunism and finesse that might normally be reserved for a top footballer’s legal team and a trademark Anelka penalty kick. The one-two-roll-off-my-shoe is a vast improvement on the 2008 final effort. It’s very cool. But when he does miss one he’s going to look a right ninny. Again.

United, having been given a lesson in how to play away in Europe by Rangers, took the Wally Smith approach to Valencia – and added a spicy Mexican finish. Good to see Rio back. Although the Rio back is creakier than an Eastenders plotline and he stood up on the plane over and, bless ‘im, had a booster seat, too. Apparently Gary Neville wouldn’t let him share his pram. Toys everywhere.

"Hey Rio! Get your own armband!"

Apart from Chiquitita’s goal (and what is it with these chumps who can’t put a perfectly decent name on the back of their shirts, eh? I mean there was one fella in Twente Enschede’s had the exotic name of Ruiz, but on the back of his shirt it said ‘Bryan’. Next we’ll have Dimitar Berbatov with the legend ‘Dave’ emblazoned between his shoulderblades) it was all a bit drab. And Fergie won’t give a fig.

Arsenal looked cool enough. Apart from a bit of va va voom from the pain-in-the-asp Cleo, it was pretty straightforward, and Fabianski jumped to the front of the permanently retreating queue of Arsenal keepers. Not being all that shit gets you the green jersey there at the mo.

Which brings us round to the team I like the most this season already. Spurs.
Now I know Harry talks a load of oars and rowlocks about Spurs not having thebus=dget of the big biys when they’ve spent more than anyone except Man City in the last 12 months, but you can’t deny that he’s slung together a team rich in entertainment.

Wednesday might’s line-up was the sort of death-defying;y positive line-up that should’ve seen his side take a good pragmatic new-kids-on-the-block pasting, Redknapp should’ve been sitting there with a face like smacked haddock (what’s new?) as he tried to explain what he was thinking by leaving his side so open.

But not a bit of it. They had spirit, enterprise and a well-friendly ref. Job done. They also have Rafael van der Vaart.

And this is his Mrs and I wouldn't kick her out of bed for van der Vaarting.

Up til Wednesday I reckoned on Rafael being one of these fancy dan Ajax scholars: you know what I mean... cultured left foot, smart passer, bit of a sulky twat when things don’t go his way.

Well you know what...? After Wednesday I think I was almost right. Except he wasn’t sulking so much as losing it like that other great free spirit of the Spurs midfield Paul Gascoigne. Half the time he was Johann Cruyff, and the other half he was Lee Cattermole. A great addition to the British game.

Of course the penalties were, in no particular order, stonewall, innocuous and bloody unfair. Bale was hacked down, Crouchy was as sinned against as sinning, and as for the handball... well what the hell does this ‘deliberate’ mean.

Surely you could have a more clear-cut law that said if it hits your hands it’s a pen. Cos if the refs are trying to prove intent in most cases they’re going to have bring a bloody psychiatrist’s couch onto the field of play and asked the offending player about the relationship he had with his mother. (And let’s face it, enough fans out there on the terraces have very clear ideas about the nature of an referee’s relationship to his mother).

It’s just another of them woolly laws that just muddle everyone up. Like the ‘active’ shite in the offside rule. Was he active? Yes say I! He’s a living breathing moving man and he was two yards in front of the last defender. Off-frigging-side. Simples, as that annoying Luka Modric-lookylikey meerkat says.

Luka Modric and father

Anyway... Spurs. However they wangled the result, they’re a delight. Bale is a rampaging Hulk compared to the Dr David Banner of a left-back that first arrived at WHL. Huddlestone looks as solid a bet as there is for the holding midfield role at international level. Modric is like a masterful little fella, they’ve always got that twat it up to Crouchy option but it’s never over-used, and ‘Arry’s got as good a bench as there is in the Premier League.

And what’s even more pleasing is that they can’t string together any good results in the league, and yet Redknapp still has them maintaining width, keeping the ball moving.

All of which might tend to make you think that the trusty old geezer is a shoo-in as next England manager. Me, I’d pick him.

Given his positive selection policy one might be wary of revisiting the Keegan years, when England were frequently as open as a particularly pretentious sandwich. But Harry’s got more nous than the Tyneside Messiah.

Chances are we’d have a few nights hiding from behind our bar-stools but it would not be dull, or one-paced, or witless. And Christ knows we like our noble failures in this country, If you’re going to go out, go out with not a holding midfielder in sight.

And let’s hope the Europeans clubs are swinging straight and true this morning. It's golf - but if the Americans lose, do we care?

Easy Ryder

It’s the Ryder Cup! The only time of the year when golf matters. Or indeed two years.

Golf. What a bloody stupid game it is. I’ve had several gos at it, but I’ve never seen the benefits. Every so often a mate by the Blue Bell urges me to reconsider, promising me that I shall gain the following:

(a) A bit of exercise. Right, Your average amateur golfer looks like a Pringle-patterned weeble. If I want a bit of exercise, I’ll get a dog.

(b) It’s a challenge. It’s not a challenge. It’s a bloody trial. Tiny white ball into tiny unseeable hole. And hit it with this – a tiny parallelogram on the end of a stick!

(c) Nice to have the comradeship of your mates. It is indeed. Trouble is when I play golf I never fuckin’ see them. I’m always waist-deep in nettles and hawthorn cursing the Lord God on high. And mentally selecting a Labrador or a Jack Russell to go off with on me next aimless ramble. It starts off with you and your pals and ends up with me beating the hell out of the undergrowth with a 9-iron.


In fact, short of sticking pins in your eyes, golf has to be the most masochist thing anyone has ever invented. Apart from supporting Middlesbrough Football Club, and that’s enough self-harming for any man.

I think I could take the twitched putts, the burrowing into bunkers, the zigzagging across the fairways, if it wasn’t for the fact that once you get to the 19th the place is full of the most God-awful middle-class V-necked pillocks on God’s green earth.

It’s like a frigging Daily Mail Readers’ convention in there. If there’s owt worse than the combination of check trousers and right-wing cobblers I’d like to know. It’s little short of a Peter Alliss cloning laboratory.

And just in case you’ve forgotten where you are, there’s always a telly on in the corner showing Sky Sports 763 HD’s coverage of the Yankee Doodle Processed Meat Corporation Golf Tournament from Buttkissee County, Alabama. Yawn.

Golf is a sport that lends itself to those with a psychotic mentality. To be the very best at it, it helps if you are asocial, amoral, asexual and a loner. You look at your Faldos, your Woodses, your Nicklauses. Time may yet be kind to them but let’s face it in their pomp these blokes wouldn’t know a social life if it walked into their house with a crate of ale, a bucket of spicy chicken wings and a goalkeeping bloopers video. (Yes, I’m THAT easy to please).



But here’s where the Ryder Cup matters. Here, there is an importance to be attached to camaraderie, to fellowship, to team spirit. Which is, to my mind, why Faldo was such a lame captain. He still thought it was about him. And really the man’s never particularly empathised with the workings of another man’s brain.

(Incidentally this is why John McEnroe is the king of all sports summarisers. He’s harsh, he’s fairbut he always empathises.)

Inevitably most of the attention is going to be on a man whose capacity for self-absorption is unsurpassed in modern sport. Tiger. It’s a good name for him isn’t it? Solitary, often seen prowling late-night bars, and quite possible endangered and more than a bit frosty.

Who will Pavin get to play with him? And if she’s not silicon-enhanced and peroxided, will he be interested? (That’s still the quandary around Woods... utterly gorgeous wife, even by Sweden’s extremely high totty rating, rich as a three-year-old Christmas cake, and he goes after some of the most crumpled and rumpled looking jailbait imaginable. Who’d’ve thought it? World’s Greatest Golfer Likes His Bit of Rough.)

If I was Pavin I’d send him out for a single point on the last day. And leave it at that.

So at Celtic Manor – with, we trust, a Welsh rain blowing up the Americans’ waterproof trousers like wet ferrets – we will enjoy shouting that unique sporting refrain ‘Europe, Europe, Europe.’ I mean whenever else does your average Brit vow his support for the continent of which he’s barely a part? Weird isn’t it? Can you imagine watching Inter-Man United and shouting ‘Come on Premier League!’ (Or ‘anything other than ‘Avanti, Nerazzurri!.)

Home advantage is important in the Ryder Cup. This way, when Phil Mickelson plays out sideways from behind a mighty oak. we don’t have to put up with quite so many dickheads shouting ‘In The Hole’ -which is coincidentally exactly where I’d put my fist if I heard that coming from a bloke near me.

So this is the golf tournament I care about. It’s nice to see Americans beaten. They won’t mind that much – they just thank God for all his blessings and toddle off home.

I’m concerned that Monty’s already written a Loser’s Speech. But then his experiences in major golf tournaments have prepared him well for such an eventuality. I’m annoyed that Pavin’s banned tweeting by his players. Though most of ‘em probably wake up each morning and tap out summat to @God.

But you look forward to the pairings. Is it a circus or some pepperoni salesmen! No it’s that Molinari brothers! And who’s that wandering up the twelfth with a three-hole lead – it’s the return of the Macs. Rory and Graeme!

There’s only one bloke who looks like he shouldn’t be there. Peter Hansen.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/golf/8946525.stm

He’s 32 but he looks 72. He’s already getting the tag unsung. I’m hoping he’s the lumpen Swede that takes out Woods on the final day.



Do it for Elin, Peter, son. Can't see Europe losing.

Commonwealth? It's Bad For Your Health!

Well here’s an opportunity if ever there was one. The sort of chance that even Fatty 'I've Got A Head Like A Bowling Ball' Yakubu could tap home.

The organisers in Delhi appear to have mucked up big time. And muck’s the right word. Collapsing bridges, dirty sinks, animals footprint everywhere – doesn’t India realise they are about to play host to the cream of world sport?

Well I say cream – it’s not even semi-skimmed, is it? Not one athlete worth his Bolt has bothered to incorporate this swollen appendix on the corpse of the British Empire into his busy schedule.

The Commonwealth Games is bloody pointless. The only reason it’s there is to flannel the egos of sportsmen and women who might otherwise only set foot on a podium as a stunt double. All we’ll have to look forward to is Sue Barker saying crap like ‘And more medal news – and it’s good news for Huyton as Phil No-Mark has just bagged the silver in the 20mm pistol summat or other. He was just pipped by a one-eyed narcoleptic Fijian fella.’

I hear some spokesmen for the England team assure us that these really are important Games – for example the top three netball teams in the world will be competing. Netball. That’s the game where you have to stand still when you’ve got the ball. Basketball but without the bouncing or running or fun (unless you’re the sort of bloke that gets moved on from the perimeter fences of school tennis courts all too frequently).
State of the art equipment as featured in many a British comprehensive school

And any road, for Chrissakes do we really need a massive substandard shindig just so so lanky birds can play pat-a-cake? Let ‘em have the World Netball Champs and have done with it.

The Commonwealth Games is to the Olympics as my grandson Wilf is to Usain Bolt. It’s like what the Olympics would be like if it was sponsored by Primark. It is the Pound Shop of major international sporting competitions.

And now Delhi have provided us all with the excuse we needed. Finish the damn thing.

My first reaction to hearing that the athletes’ village was a bit substandard was ‘Great’. British sportspeople are always telling us how shite our country’s facilities are so surely they’ll be used to it. Might even give them the edge over them pampered, over-sportified Aussies.

But now I’ve seen the pictures and they look like they’ve been sent in to Watchdog by some irate holidaymakers. I’ve got visions of Nicky Campbell staring into my lounge through my telly screen with his ‘concerned’ face on. Shudder.
He’s a kind of TV Blair. You suspect he means it, so you’re bewildered as to how he can come across so fake.
Why haven’t the Indian authorities got their shit together before now? (Unless the shit they’ve got together is being rammed down every available bog and plughole in the athletes village and that looks feasible).

One of the problems is that all the tiptop construction workers of India are working for tuppence a week for the wealthy lovelies of Dubai. These blokes could erect a skyscraper quicker than a teenager’s todger.

But in all seriousness I dunno why it’s such a bleeding mess. And judging by the emergency meetings convened by India’s leading politicians – neither do they.
It’s not a good time for the reputation of the Asian subcontinent – although I’ve never much rated that phrase. ‘Subcontinent’ makes it sound like it’s not quite up to the rest of the landmass. Pakistan’s cricketers have, I think, finally departed our shores although I wouldn’t bet on it.

Of course an unholy row has broken out now after the aptly named Ijaz Butt – given that most of his orations come out of his backside – responded to the pressure by saying England’s players were throwing matches, according to some bookies he’d spoken to.

Not sure you should be telling the world you've been chatting to bookies after what’s been going on, Ijaz, but y’know, as the laser-witted yoof of today might put it, ‘Whatever!’

Of course it’s nonsense and the England team have reacted with upper lips stiffened and jaws jutted. ‘What us? Cheating? How dare you!? Next you’ll be telling us we rub dirt on to the ball to affect its ability to swing! Tsk!’

Of course Butt was resorting to the first rule of playground debate which is to adopt the ‘So what, you’re just as bad’ argument which is silly cos (a) he has no evidence and (b) whatever you think of Pakistani cricket – and there are some bloody wonderful players of the game even in the latest batch – the fact is that when it comes to corruption and in-fighting they are without peers.

Some might argue that the Carling Cup is the Commonwealth Games to the FA Cup’s Olympian status. Especially if you live on Miseryside. But I warm to the competition more and more each year. Top teams don’t go all out to win it, and teams from lower divisions trot out on to the pitch with the mantra of ‘Just enjoy yourself, lads’ so you tend to get very open and decent games of footy.

It really looks like Moyes and Hodgson have got their work cut out, mind. The Toffees bought Beckford but can’t buy a goal – I think those two things are linked somehow. And if you want to know why Liverpool are going to win nowt this season just look at the rest of the squad on show v Northampton. There’s more depth in Wayne Rooney’s thought processes.

Whatever you do put October 17th in your diary. It’s the Merseyside derby and you will want to miss it. Oh and I think that’s the day that the Delhi plumber’s popping by to fix Tom Daley’s cistern.
'Probably going to take a coupla weeks mate, but don't worry, I know some eight-year-olds who could do it in a day'