Category: sport

Draft Night 2024

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You may remember other draft night posts here, here, here and here.

And this year was a rather low key affair, given that 40% of the participants were on other continents (in 4 different time zones and with a total time difference spanning 19 whole Chilean hours), and 33% of the remaining participants were out of town. Add in some late working and a dental appointment straight from Hades itself, and suddenly, we were – quite literally – all over the place.

Still, the joint magic of football and technology pulled us all together in some shape and form, and it was 2 hours of good fun: a degree of silliness, some catching up, and equal amounts of ridicule and admiration of each other’s choices.

We’re playing Fantrax again this year, and – should you be interested – you can have a look at the selections that were made here. Do let me know who’s going to win the league, please.

After an uncomfortable night (the dentist one was me, see?), this morning started early with pool issues. One of the pipes on the cleaner had broken, and thus, I had to plunge – elbow-deep, nogal* – into the icy waters. I’m the only one that ever does these jobs. There was some posh chick floating around on an old door, but she said that there wasn’t room for both of us on there, and so I had to manage by myself.

It’s now mid-afternoon and I’m still shivering.

And, in an infrastructure maintenance follow-up, the solar people came to fix the solar. Nothing major, although it could have been. Just some loose bits after those winds on the weekend. The guys brought down a chunky bracket – 750g of premium aluminium – which had been twisted like the rules when a Big 6 club is playing. That’s been replaced now, and another couple of them added for good measure, but it does seem like we got away with one during the storms.

This afternoon: horseriding (not me), and this evening, football (me). Both of which events which have no occurred in quite a while, mainly (if not entirely) due to various reasons.

A busy day. Hence this blog post going out now.

* thankfully starting at my hand.

Olympics

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It’s all over and some people are struggling a little.

Needs more punctuation, sure. But I feel her pain. It’s a bit weird to not have some sort of minority sport on in the background while you’re working. And we’ve got another 18 months before we can do that again, albeit with curling and speedskating.

And let no-one say that GB didn’t do its bit to help out:

They say that there is bad blood between the UK and their neighbours across the Channel, but we’ve clearly gone out of our way to assist by reenacting this year’s Gilets Jaunes protests in their hour fortnight of need. Although, it’s only August, so still plenty of time for a French uprising to finish the summer off.

And let no-one say that Yorkshire didn’t do its bit as well:

God’s Own Country chipping in with almost as many gold medals as all the other bits of GB put together. A small disclaimer that this version of the medal table was put together by the good folks at… er… BBC Yorkshire.

But I’m sure it’s accurate. And 14th leaves us ahead of some very big countries. And Ireland.

I’m guessing that this will be the last post here on the Olympics – at least for a while. Because I can’t help but think that the whole Raygun saga is far from over, and might still come back to bite someone (possibly me) in the arse.

This B-girl Raygun “protest” theory is clearly nonsense.

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Earlier, someone linked to a huge – s t r e t c h – by local “expert on everything”, Graeme Codrington, in which he explains why Australian “B-girl” RayGun’s atrocious performance at the Olympics was actually just a protest about the “sport” being included in the Games. Here are some highlights (of his theory – there were no highlights in the actual performance).
Please ignore the smugness if you can.

How likely do you think it is that Australia selected a completely useless competitor for the Olympics? Not likely, right? Should this have alerted you to a bigger story, and to do a touch of research before posting? I think it should have.

A quick search will uncover that her name is Prof Rachael Gunn, and she’s a university professor, with a focus on breakdancing, gender and politics. She’s also a really well established breakdancer and has represented Australia at World championships for many years, to much acclaim. Did this give you pause for thought? It should have.

Slightly more research will uncover that she’s recently written an academic journal article entitled “The Australian Breaking scene and the Olympic Games: The possibilities and politics of sportification”. The theme of this paper is a concern that if breakdancing is institutionalised via the Olympics it is likely to lose its very essence. Her argument is that if the sport is forced to adhere to a strict code that gives points for certain elements and is centrally controlled by a body not strongly linked to the sport (like the IOC) it will stop being the sport she loves. Does that information give you pause for thought? It should.

Let’s pause for thought, as instructed. Here’s that paper, written two years ago.

And here’s how Graeme sees her performance:

The most likely story here is that her dance at the Olympics was a supreme expression of what she believes is the essence of her art form: an anti-institutional dance of rebellion and defiance. Could it have been a throw down. A challenge. The judges gave her a zero – and by doing that she was the winner of a dance that is a form of protest.

STREEEEEETCH! But then of course:

I know I am a full-time researcher so this type of info is maybe easier for me to track down, but we should all make some effort.

Eww.

Anyway, I made some effort and I found out that if this was indeed a protest, then it’s a long held gripe that she has. Indeed, RayGun seems to protest in many of her routines, given her Instagram videos.
Here she is… er… protesting in Cyprus, Sydney and the UK with form and style that seem to pretty much match exactly what she did in Paris this week.

Here she is last year, talking about how they’ve had to work hard in Oz to get athletes to the Olympics:

For many traditional Olympic sports, there is a clear pathway for athletes to qualify. For the Australian breaking community, the past three years have been a scramble to get everything in place for the road to Paris. A qualifying event in the Oceania region later this year has yet to be locked in.

“The last three years has been really fast putting all that [infrastructure] in place,” Gunn said.

“It’s been really intense, we’ve had to build a lot, and on top of training and on top of reimagining ourselves as Olympians, [it’s] been really fast-paced the last couple of years. But we are ready, we’re going to get there, and we just need the support now from the Australian public.”

Which is a bit weird, given how much Graeme says she hates the idea.

And here she is extolling the virtues of Breaking being in the Olympics, a whole three weeks ago:

Breaking provides an opportunity to explore the “faster, higher, stronger” ethos of the Olympics in new ways. It shows us that we truly don’t know every point on which the body can spin or launch its weight, the different shapes it can make, or all the ways it can move.

And finally, here’s an interview with her after her disguised protest, in which she disguises it still further…

…by not saying it was a protest at all.

After her performance, the 36-year-old Macquarie University lecturer explained she wanted to leave a creative mark.
All my moves are original. I was never going to beat these girls on what they do best, the dynamic and the power moves, so I wanted to move differently, be artistic and creative because how many chances do you get in a lifetime to do that on an international stage?

It is Genius!

Listen, I know I’m not a full-time researcher, but this type of info was very easy for me to track down, so maybe Graeme should make some effort.

Jeez. The lengths some people will go to to get some attention.

Also, please share this post. Thanks.

Here we go again. Again.

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After the disappointment of last time out, and the exhilaration of the previous campaign, it’s the start of another football season, kicking off (for us at least) at Deepdale in Preston, this evening.

And usually about now, I’d offer some sort of salient comment or knowledgeable opinion on how things are going to go for my beloved Blades this time around.

But I actually have no idea.

We’ve got rid of some great players, we’ve got some promising new players in, we’ve had a decent pre-season, but we haven’t really been tested, we have all sorts of boardroom issues hanging over us, we’re starting on -2 points, and this is the Championship: a notoriously difficult league.

In fact, I’m not even sure what a successful season looks like. Promotion? Play-offs? Avoiding relegation?
But then, if you don’t have a goal, you can never be disappointed when you don’t hit the target you never set, right?

And, with the club’s video package at an eye-watering £180, I’m not sure how many of the matches I’m going to be watching anyway.

Ah, here we go again. Again.

A new sport

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We can tell just about exactly where the local building work has got to by which brands of plastic wrapper we’re finding in our back garden.
The roof is done (using Marley roofing membrane), the electrics are going in (Voltex), and it looks like the bathrooms are well on their way (Cobra – a classic choice).

And after the excitement of the Pole Vault this week, we’re being treated to a new sport, which – given that breakdancing has made it to the Olympics this time around – I can only imagine we might see (or… er… hear) in LA in 2028.

Unintelligible Shouting.

I’m not exactly sure of the intricacies of the laws of this new sport, but given that we have experts in the field working next door at the moment, I have gathered at least some knowledge of how it works.

Points are clearly awarded in the commonly used Artistic Impression and Technical Merit categories, much like its sister sport, Synchronised Artistic Swimming. But unlike the swimmers, it’s not about getting your collective leg over together, but more on the volume, raucousness and lack of coherence in your presented piece.

And the competition is pretty tough.

Earlier, we enjoyed endured a 45 second long spiel of what was likely some request for a part or tool. But this was a request which came out in one single string, apparently without breathing or punctuation. It was scored highly from that point of view, but honestly, you’d have to be there or fairly nearby to hear it, which really let the whole thing down; and the judges will rightly dock points for that sort of oversight at this level.

Step forward competitor number two – appropriately enough working on one of the bathrooms. Utilising the echo of the presumably newly plastered walls, he belted out… something… so loudly that the person on the other end of my phone call asked if everything was ok. And I was inside our house at the time.
But again, concentrating too hard on one single aspect of the performance was a rookie error: he got a reply to whatever he was asking, and the officials were quick to jump on that, asserting that if a reasonable reply could be given, then whatever was asked – while obviously ridiculously loud – was also clearly comprehensible.

And with a couple of the others out of the way, the pre-event favourite (who I have to say sounded pretty much like competitor number two again), stepped in and swept through to the gold medal position. Ostensibly addressing someone in the same room, the volume was actually offensive, prompting nods of both pain and approval from the assessors. And the judging panel were further favourably impressed by the fact that not only were they unsure of what language he was using, they were also at odds as to whether he was, in fact, singing. The use of intensity, pitch and general slurring earned a remarkable 96.74% overall, and I think we can all agree that a score like that is unlikely to be beaten.

Please.

This project is four months in now, and running long overdue. Thankfully, (and I think this is perfectly clear from my ramblings above), I don’t believe that it’s had any effect on my sanity at all.