Category: sport

Hooligans

Posted on

English football at it again, I suppose?

Not like those nice Serbians. Or the lovely Croatians. The darling Greeks.
And I won’t hear a word said against those absolute sweeties from Italy.

But yeah. Always an English problem.

And always a football problem. You never see any trouble at a rugby match.
Well, unless it’s an SA schools match. Or an SA provincial rugby match. Etc etc.

But yeah. Only the English football. Or the South African rugby. Or the Irish ploughing.

Wait… what?

Not more ploughing news?

Yep:

It’s another brilliant article from the Irish local press.

The Electric Picnic turns out to be an annual music festival in County Laois in Ireland. It’s actually pretty big. And the Ploughing? Well, that’s the Irish National Ploughing Championships as mentioned (extensively) in this post here.

“More assaults and trouble come from the Ploughing match than the Electric Picnic,” Judge Cody said as he inspected an occasional licence application by The Wrens Nest. 

Judge Cody asked Garda Sergeant JJ Kirby if he was right to suggest there was more assaults and trouble from the National Ploughing Championships. 

“The statistics would back that up,” agreed Sgt Kirby. 

That exchange is so much better when you do it with Irish accents.

I love the fact that Ploughing is the third most important subsection of the local news site.

Just ahead of “National News” there.

And it really is great stuff. Everything you’d expect from a local Irish news site.

The big news, including the National Brown Bread Baking competition results:

The photos of all the lovely girls*, and the suspense! over next year’s venue.

As for the prospect of trouble at the National Ploughing Championships, Judge Cody decided that the best way forward was the grant all of the alcohol licences which for which applications had been made.

Hey, itis Ireland, after all.

* iykyk

Tenuous links to niche sports continue

Posted on

Incoming from the TA:

With reference to your blog post re: odd sports. Saw this in Killarney on our golf trip.

And attached, this:

Before we even go any further, can we just acknowledge that – much like the link for the European Tram Driver Championships – I didn’t request this? Furthermore -and perhaps more importantly – can we note that while out in Ireland playing golf, one of my friends (and regular readers) chose to stop to take a photo of this?

I think those two points say a lot about this blog and its readers.

And if you thought that this post was going to end there… well.. you’re clearly not a regular reader.

TO THE INTERNET!!!

It turns out that the World Ploughing Organization began running World Ploughing Events in 1953. The first one was in Cobourg, Ontario, Canada in 1953, and already, beagle-eyed readers might have worked out that Killarney was the second World event.

The trophy went across the border to Northern Ireland with Hugh Barr from Coleraine crowned as Champion. Aged 23 at the time, he had only taken up ploughing a few years previously after the death of his brother from meningitis. It seems that had a natural gift (Hugh, not his brother).

Amazingly, there’s even footage of him ploughing:

And Killarney would be the first of Hugh’s three World Championships. He retired undefeated after his hattrick of world titles: this win in Ireland, then 1955 in Uppsala, Sweden and 1956 in Shillingford in England:

He won both of these latter matches with an increasing points difference on each occasion. As defending world champion, he automatically qualified for both these matches and, as such, never competed domestically after his first win in Killarney.
He had decided no matter what happened, he would retire after Shillingford. And so, as three times world ploughing champion he has every right to claim the title as undefeated champion of the world.

So impressive was his name and his gravitas in the ploughing world that he became the go-to consultant for Ransomes of Ipswich: the world’s leading plough manufacturers at the time. You’ll likely know them as the inventors of the world’s first lawnmower, and they have since gone on to invent the Power-Driven, Five-unit Gang Mower (1964), the Turf Groomer (1986) and the frankly terrifyingly named Magnetic Bed Knife (2004). That last one so completely scary that even the image of it in Golf Course Industry magazine is blurred.

But I digress. Often.

It seems that it would be difficult to overestimate Hugh’s input to ploughing at all levels.
In 2015, aged 89, he was made an MBE for his services to farming.

And in 2019, he was the guest of honour at the unveiling of… you guessed it:

This is all getting a little bit too Father Ted for me, to be honest.

13 teams from all over the world competed over the 2 days in Killarney in 1954.  As the monument was unveiled flags representing each of these countries were raised as the Irish National Anthem was sung.
Bernard O’Sullivan – a Killarney local – designed this magnificent work of art*, which will stand the test of time and be admired by future generations who will be reminded of the importance of ‘Ploughing’ and the motto ‘Let Peace Cultivate the Land.’

Sadly, Hugh died in 2023 at the ripe old age of 97. But although he retired from competing in ploughing competitions after Shillingford, he continued to promote ploughing and judge local, national and even international events for much of the rest of his life. Everywhere you look online, he is remembered fondly and it’s clear that he left a massive legacy to the ploughing community:

There is no doubt that the performance of Hugh Barr has inspired the members of the Northern Ireland Ploughing Association to the heights they have attained, with further world titles won by Thomas Cochrane, David Wright, Samuel Gill and David Gill.

And what of the World Ploughing Contest? Still going very strong, having traveled all over the globe: New Zealand, USA, Canada, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Sweden, Germany Kenya, France, Croatia. 2023’s contest in Russia was canceled because… Russia. But they were back in business last year in Latvia, and this year’s contest has just concluded in Estonia, where the first contestant on the list was called Adrian Tilling.

You couldn’t make it up. And I didn’t.

And they’re all set up for the next decade and beyond already, with a planned return to Ireland in 2034, under the watchful eyes of Anna May McHugh (seen in the light blue outfit above), who has been chairperson of the Irish National Ploughing Association for an incredible 51 years:

Ah. There she is now, still doing her thing, so she is. Just last week, would you look now?

And on the right, the General Secretary of the Irish National Ploughing Association, Anna Marie McHugh – Anna May’s daughter.

It looks like ploughing on the Emerald Isle – be it North or South of the border – is in good hands.

* their words, not mine

The (nerdy) sporting weekend

Posted on

It’s amazing what can pique your interest, hey?

This weekend, I’ve enjoyed watching some really great sport. The football on Friday was great, but it was Sheffield United, so of course I would be interested, and they won, so of course it would be great.
But it was other events this weekend that made me remember that it takes something extra special to get you invested when you’ve got no skin in the game. And those sort of things are fairly rare.

Sure, there are artificial ways of generating interest, like a small bet on the outcome (thank you, Aston Villa) or a fantasy football match-up (curse you, Aston Villa), but when you are just watching because you enjoy the sport, and you’re not rooting for one side or the other, well, it needs to be wow! to generate that same sort of interest.

That’s happened twice for me this weekend.

This morning’s game in the Australian NRL Finals was a superb watch, with both sides giving it absolutely everything for the whole 80 minutes, and Manly winning only after a – literally – last second field goal attempt missed by a couple of metres. 50,714 in the stands, 26 on the pitch, probably hundreds of thousands in front of their TVs across Australia and the world holding their breath as Matt Burton launched the ball into the Sydney night air. I was in the gym and I had to stop cycling to give my full attention to that last play of the match. Because concentrating and pedaling is hard.
And then the instant juxtaposition of relief, jubilation, heartbreak and despair as my legs realised that they had to start exercising again the rugby result was set in stone.

But even that had nothing on the Geoguessr World Cup final. And I know that I keep banging on about this, but just so you know, I could have been doing something much, much, nerdier this weekend…

…and maybe I did.

But that’s for another blog post.

Because that final. Best of 5 games – or first to 3 if that’s your preference – and wow, did it deliver.

As a very basic introduction, players each start on 6000 points (I know, right?), and lose points the closer their opponent is to the correct location, and the further they are away. Ten 1 minute rounds per game.
When you run out of points, you lose the game.

I’ve just enjoyed watching stuff. I don’t mind who wins. I’m not invested. Yet.

The favourite, a French guy called Blinky, is already up 2-0 and cruising to a crushing victory, and comes within a whisker of wiping his opponent, America’s MK, out and winning the World Cup. Based on the fact they could have been dropped anywhere in the world (but ended up in Latvia), if Blinky had been just 5km closer to the actual spot or MK just 5km further away, it was all over.

Here’s the twenty minutes of madness that followed.

The score is 4035-46. No typos here. No missed digits. One guy is basically two games up and four thousand points clear. The other is on forty-six points. It’s nothing. It’s impossible to turn this around with just two rounds of the third game to go.

But obviously, he does. It’s an amazing comeback. But it’s still only 2-1.

And in the eighth round of the fourth game, Blinky has MK down to 66 points again. The event is being staged at the City Hall in Stockholm and there’s a crowd of a few hundred watching it live. And as they hit the tenth round, it was like that field goal attempt (which hadn’t happened yet, but still). Held breath. Wide eyes. And then just sheer incredulity as MK drags in back to 2-2 with a guess just 12km off in the middle of rural Mexico. Literally a horse in a river.

How?!?

This is now running almost an hour overtime, but nobody is going anywhere.

Final round. The decider. NMPZ. Just a single image of a place anywhere in the world.
No moving. No panning. No zooming. WYSIWYG. Where G is guess.

Round one. It’s rural. Literally nothing to go on. And yet they both immediately plump for Mexico: about 50km apart from one another.

But it’s Ghana. Everyone is confused. They players look at each other and both laugh. Even the best in the world get it horrifically wrong sometimes. And when that happens, they usually both get it horrifically wrong the same way.

The tension is broken for a moment.

Heads are shaken. They reset. We go again.

Round two. There’s a guy burning some leaves in a wooded area. That’s all you’ve got. Both players go for Thailand. It is Thailand. Of course it’s Thailand. You don’t get two Ghana anomalies in one game.

Round three. It’s a slightly overgrown path in the field. It’s Peru. Blinky is closer.

Round four. It’s a brown dirt road. Nothing more. They both go for Argentina within 4 seconds. They’re each about 50kms out.

I’ve completely given up on Bournemouth v Chelsea now.

Round five: It’s a road and a mountain in Turkey. Obviously, they both go Turkey. It takes them 7 seconds.
Mind blowing.

Round six: It’s a grey road and some trees. It’s in Russia, but Russia is big. They’ve both a long way off.

Round seven and Blinky is holding a decent lead thanks to that Peru guess, but we’ve seen this all before in the last 20 minutes.
Another road. Some green grass. Both hit central Bulgaria inside 10 seconds. It is central Bulgaria.

Round eight, It’s north east USA. MK’s home turf. They’re both there in about 10 seconds again. Nothing to choose between their guesses. And we’ve got a maximum of two rounds left.

Nkunku scores and I hardly notice.

Round nine: As the crowd sees it, there are gasps. Because it’s a town, and there are French flags everywhere. Does Blinky recognise the place? He zones straight in on Colmar in Eastern France… MK goes further north, closer to Belgium. Aaaand…

It’s Germany (despite the flags) but it’s only just over the border. It’s enough. Blinky wins.

I am emotionally exhausted. God knows how they feel.

270,000 viewers online. That’s four times the figures for last year’s World Cup.

Maybe there will be a million in 2025*. Maybe I’ll be there in the finals**.

I almost feel sorry for Spurs and Arsenal today.
Because they are surely never going to get to that sort of drama.

Are they?


* very possible.
** not possible.

The Geoguessr World Cup is on…

Posted on

…and while Geoguessr might not be your cup of tea, it really is like watching that niche sport at the Olympics, in that you really should give it a go, even if it’s just for a few minutes.

It’s all livestreamed on the Geoguessr Youtube Channel. Completely free of charge, with full expert commentary on the A-stream.

Some beautiful locations on show alongside some absolutely insane knowledge. Different matchups and game modes, including the dreaded NMPZ: No Moving, Panning or Zooming. This is basically just a static image from a random Google Maps location anywhere in the entire world and you can watch in amazement as they pinpoint it to within a few hundred metres.

Once you get invested… wow, it can get quite intense.

GO AND WATCH SOME OF IT!

But the best bit for me is that you can have a go yourself – not competing directly with the best of the best – but using your skill to see how close you would get to the eventual answer. And then playing the same sport and wishing that you knew which sort of telegraph pole that they use in the midlands of Sumatra*.

* I’m appalled to note that I do actually know this one.