Category: sport

The Return of the Double Header

Posted on

Twice the fun – well, sort of.
Football Friday returns to Cape Town tonight with the PSL Double Header at the Cape Town Stadium: Vasco da Gama v Supersport United at 6:00pm and Ajax Cape Town v Kaizer Chiefs at 8:45pm and which is expected to get a crowd of forty… forty-five thousand. I’m quite excited about going along to watch, but nowhere near as excited as my son, who has been talking about nothing else all week. He’s been begging to go back to the stadium since his first visit to watch Portugal and North Korea in the World Cup. I would have loved to have taken him to the Bafana Bafana v USA game in November but the 9:30pm kick off time was prohibitively late. (Although, given the level of excitement in that encounter, he probably would have slept through it anyway.)

Sadly, given his age and usual bedtime, it’s unlikely that we’ll be able to stay for much (if any) of the second game, but that won’t bother him since I haven’t told him that the second game is on. Clever daddy.

It also gives me the opportunity to put this photo of the stadium on here, taken during the World Cup quarter final between Germany and Argentina last July, which combines my love of things football, things Cape Town and things sunset all in one well-organised collection of pixels. Brilliant.

It also reminded me that I now understand the apathy amongst some people when it came to the idea of Football Friday – the practice of wearing a football shirt on Fridays in the lead up to the World Cup – as Cricket Friday has come been launched. Cricket Friday is the brainchild of the Lead SA initiative: the same people who told us that driving with our headlights on would reduce road accidents by 30%, only to be told that those stats came from Sweden, where it’s dark for 6 months of the year and 75% of all RTAs involve moose, which are notoriously photophobic.

While I’m all for supporting the national team (as long as they’re not playing England), Cricket Friday doesn’t really work, initially  because the alliteration which made Football Friday so catchy just isn’t there (in fact, since there are no days beginning with C, they might as well just give up now) and also because Football Friday came on the eve of the biggest thing to hit SA since democracy, whereas Cricket Friday comes ahead of five ODI matches between SA and India, one of which will be washed out tomorrow.
It’s not quite the same.

However, while tomorrow may be Cricket Saturday (see the problem there again?), today is definitely Football Friday and Alex and I will be enjoying an early evening hot dog and ice cream at the Waterfront before heading to Block 225 for some Vasco action.

Jo Flo

Posted on

Incoming from my Dad:

Did you know?

Former Blade Jostein Flo is one of very few players to have a move or specific tactic named after him. In Norwegian, it is called “Flopasning” – translated into English as “The Flo Pass”. It gained prominence during a period of the early 1990s when the Scandinavians were ranked as the world’s second best team and utilised a very basic ploy of full-back, usually on the left, sending up a long diagnonal ball up to the totemic Flo.
Though a striker, he would raid down the right using his height to his advantage by heading the ball on for a central midfielder or striker who knew their job was to dart through and test the opposing keeper. Something of a long ball tactic eschewed by purists, it proved highly effective for a prolonged period as defences struggled to formulate a plan and is still used by many Norwegian clubs.

I did, actually.

This was taken from Darren Phillips’ The Sheffield United Miscellany and holds particular relevance for me since I apparently, allegedly resembled the lanky Norway striker (and notably not his more famous younger Chelsea-playing brother Tore André) in those early 1990s. It all came about when a friend in Halls at Newcastle University looked at the poster of my beloved Blades on my wall and asked why I was on it.
Turns out that after a few drinks and in poor light, one tall blond bloke looks very much like another tall blond bloke.

I never really saw it myself – I was far more handsome.

But the nickname stuck and you’ll still see me in one of my Sheffield United shirts – or that of the 5-a-side team I play for here in Cape Town – with the name “Flo”  proudly across my back. Back then, it was very popular with fans at Bramall Lane as it was only three letters long and therefore cost less to have on your shirt. His squad number at the Blades was 12, but 21 has always been my lucky number, so I turned that around a bit.

I didn’t know this though:

Jostein Flo was a very good high-jumper during his youth and remains on his country’s list of all-time best practitioners of the ‘Fosbury Flop’ with a leap of 2m 6cm in 1987.

Use it, don’t use it…

Flying news

Posted on

Another two parter – this time with airlines doing nice some altruistic (sort of) things for people.

I like KLM’s surprise for social media users (spotted via @tara_lawson). And though it was just a bit of an experiment, it worked for them, with over a million mentions on twitter alone. Someone, somewhere will be able to tell me how much that is worth to a brand.
(And someone is going to pull me up on the meaning of the word “altruistic” too, aren’t they?)

The best bits for me were that they were taking ordinary people in an ordinary situation and making their lives just a bit better and then they were not just giving gifts out, but that those gifts were considered and tailor made for each of the recipients. That shows real thoughtfulness because those are the gifts that mean the most – even to a “stranger”.

And they’re right: “Doing something that creates a real smile on somebody’s face is much cooler than attaching a smiley face”.

Nice work, Ogilvy.

Meanwhile, er… Ogilvy have created a brilliant campaign for KLM’s rivals, British Airways, on the back of the Ashes tour to Australia.
With England set to win the final match (and the series and the Ashes with it) tomorrow, BA have launched an online promotion for flights from Sydney to London, offering to discount flights by the largest amount of runs England scores in a single Ashes innings.
Apparently:

The tongue-in-cheek campaign is running on Australian sites only, such as the Sydney Morning Herald, and uses the strapline “Do something you never thought you would do. Cheer on England”.
Andrew Boggs, business director for the British Airways account at Ogilvy London, said: “The idea was to offer Australian cricket fans some consolation in defeat – without resorting to triumphalism or condescension.”

Right, Andrew. I’m sure the Aussies don’t see it as triumphalism or condescension. *cough*

Because they have been so very dominant in the series, England haven’t actually had to have too many innings’. However, I think I’m right in saying that their knock in the current match in Sydney was their best at 644 (A$644 = £415) – knocking about a third off the cheapest flights to London.

Throw in some cricket lessons for them as well and I think that’s a pretty good deal.

Altruism

Posted on

Altruism:

Altruism is selfless concern for the welfare of others.
Altruism focuses on a motivation to help others or a want to do good without reward.

And today, I have a couple of examples of this selfless concern for you.

Firstly: me.
I gave my worms the once over this evening. Concerned (selflessly so) for their welfare after a stonkingly hot day, I dug deep into their rotting home, which was both uncomfortably warm and unpleasantly smelly. They need a bit of a turnover every now and again to keep their bedding (newspaper, rotting kitchen scraps and some compost) aerated and homely – in worm terms.
This was not a nice job and I think that if I wasn’t a parent and hadn’t been through all those difficult and testing dirty nappies in the recent past, I would probably not have been able to stick it out.

But despite the heat and the smell, my worms are now happily ensconced back in their breeding trays, fed, moist and happy (I didn’t actually see any smiles, but it was getting a bit dark).

Secondly: Captain Blade
It’s not all fun and games being the mascot of a sporting team. There are surely only so many kids you can wave at and hug, only so many photos you can pose for before you start wondering if there might be more out there in the world of gainful employment.  And if you put a foot wrong, you are instantly and unnoticeably replaceable. One goon inside a comical foam rubber costume looks very much the same as another goon inside a comical foam rubber costume.

So maybe Deepdale Duck, the comical foam rubber costumed mascot for Preston North End FC was looking for a little more excitement in his life when he decided to (allegedly) “put off” Derby goalkeeper Stephen Bywater by shouting at him during a penalty and was escorted from the ground. Quite why he was removed is beyond me – presumably all the fans were being deathly silent so as not to disturb Bywater’s concentration. Presumably Bywater requires absolute peace and quiet before he lets a penalty past him. (It did go in, so maybe Deepdale Duck’s actions were successful, but Preston still lost 2-1).

And those were the events that prompted Captain Blade – the Sheffield United mascot – to hold an altruistic half time sit down protest in the centre circle at Beautiful Downtown Bramall Lane, charmingly described by The Guardian thus:

“Free The Preston One.” In a season of farce at Bramall Lane, we have reached a new peak. Club mascot Captain Blade has downed cutlasses staged a sit-down protest in Sheffield, holding a banner in support of Deepdale Duck, who was dragged from the field against Derby at the weekend.

That’s pretty brave of the Blades mascot when you think about it. If a foam rubber duck can be arrested for shouting during a football game, then such mascot insubordination as half time protests on the pitch should surely result in a sacking.

The thing is, we’ll probably never know if it did.

Bafana Bafana v USA – Photos

Posted on

As promised here, some few photos of the Nelson Mandela Challenge at the Cape Town Stadium last night, to brighten up your day.

And while Cape Town put on a great show, Bafana were less impressive and went down to a (probably undeserved) 1-0 defeat after a 85th minute debut goal from 17 year old Juan Agudelo.

Of particular disappointment to me was the much-vaunted debut striker Davide Somma, who had promised to “destroy” the United States (presumably merely in a footballing sense) in a press conference earlier in the week and then did… nothing.
True, the service to him from the rest of the team was pretty woeful, but he looked confused by the passing game of Bafana and offered very little.
Still – apparently Pitso Mosimane was delighted with his performance – ?!? – and the fans loved him. Apart from those sitting around me, that is: they thought he was rubbish as well.

It was a good night out though – even if the football wasn’t of the highest quality – and you can relive bits of it by having a look at this Flickr set.