As United recorded another 3 points away from home, I was once again reminded of this comment from the Sheffield United subreddit:
Nope. Stress levels through the roof.
I headed straight towards the IV brandy after that last 10 minutes.
Category: sheffield
Local cricket
While the Boy Wonder was out and about doing a thing today, he spotted some SA vs England cricket action.
A quick look at the internet determined that this was the SA U19s vs the England U19s, playing their first 45 over ODI of a 3 match series.
And then I forgot all about it.
But the cricinfo page was still open when I came back to my laptop after horseriding (not me), this evening. And it turns out that England won – somewhat convincingly – bowling SA out for 87 and then knocking off the required total with [ahem] 189 balls to spare.
Eina fok!
But you’ll notice that they still “only” won by 5 wickets. That’s because, of the 18 players who batted, only 4 of them* (2 from each side) made it into double figures. Wow.
Cricket matches are clearly going to look very different – apparently mainly much shorter – in the near future.
If you’re in or around Cape Town on Sunday, you can watch the second ODI at WPCC.
* one of them being Archie Vaughan, debutant and captain of the England side, Sheffield born, and son of ex-England captain Michael Vaughan.
What a night
After having spent much of the evenings this week watching late night footy or being out and about with the Molton Brown boys, I was actually quite knackered and I wasn’t really looking forward to last night’s match at Beautiful Downtown Bramall Lane.
By the way, I do recognise that despite being about football – the number one sport globally – this is still a bit of niche post for most readers, but MMIRIM, so I’m putting it here anyway.
But I watched, and thank [Deity] I did.
Grit, courage, effort, attitude, belief, damn hard work.
What a night.
There’s a thing that I have seen from watching almost several hours of football over the last n years, and that’s that the best teams somehow manage to grind a positive result out of games that they really shouldn’t be able to. And when you don’t play at your best, but you still manage to get a win: that’s the sign of a team that’s going places.
Me though, not so much. The adrenaline coursing through my veins meant that I didn’t get to sleep until about1:30, and amazingly – if anything – I’m more broken this morning than I was going into last night.
EDIT: Look, not everyone enjoyed it.
Here’s an excerpt from a Sunderland fans internet comment about the game:
“Shellshocked doesn’t go far enough to describe how I feel.
I feel utterly numb and inconsolable right now.
I feel like I ought to flog the cheap tat that is Sheffield hallmarked silver that’s in my collection to make a point. That place has always made vastly inferior crap anyway. I hate that village in Yorkshire. I hate everything about it.”
Mate. It was a 1-0 defeat.
Calm your tits, hold onto your silver collection, take a deep breath and try to enjoy your weekend.
Good luck with real life.
THIS CITY IS OURS
Actually, the Caps Lock was accidental, but I’m not about to remove it now.
The first Steel City Derby in almost 5 years ended in a United win and some wendy tears.
1-0, 3-0, 5-0… The scoreline doesn’t matter. All that anyone cares about is the result.
The result that went our way, because we were the better team. Because we are the better team.
This has been a good day. This will be a good evening. Tomorrow morning might not be quite so much fun, but that’s a risk I’m willing to take.
Yes, another Black Label, please.
UPDATE: Now with added highlights for easy reference in the future.
Old grounds
The Tim Traveller has been travelling again, this time looking for “Football’s Oldest Stadium”. And the way he has phrased that (as he notes early on in the video below) is very important.
This offering appealed to me even more than most of his stuff, given that it was about football, there were honorary mentions for Beautiful Downtown Bramall Lane and Sandygate, and not least because of the repeated Channel Four Football Italia references throughout.
In case you don’t have time to watch (but please do find time), “Football’s Oldest Stadium” might well be the Arena Civica Gianni Brera in Milan, which was built for King Napoleon (yes, him. Watch the video.) and opened in 1807.
Whereas the oldest football stadium remains Sandygate.
And the oldest League football stadium remains Beautiful Downtown Bramall Lane.