Category: sport

Day 472 – Back for the final

Posted on

But not by choice.

So this is an interesting one. We’re heading back home today, and we’ll be back in time for the Euro 2020 Final this evening. We’re not coming home specifically for the final. I think that even if England were in it, I probably wouldn’t be doing that.
And maybe England are in it. Or maybe they’re not.
As I write this, we’re more than 60 hours away from their semi-final kick off, so I have no idea what’s going to happen.

See?

If you’re wanting my predictions, you’re foolish. I can’t even manage to predict the result of one lot of games right, so asking me to predict to two lots is clearly ridiculous when I probably don’t even have the right teams to choose from for the second one.

Anyway, may the better team win and all that.

(I will not be staying up for the big show down between whichever South American teams end up in their final, either.)

Day 461 – Poor takes

Posted on

First off, I got a miserable 4/8 right on my Euro 2020 R16 predictions. That’s why I’m not a betting man. No-one could have foreseen France’s weird capitulation, Holland and Sweden’s decisive red cards and England’s… er… win.

It’s not for me to talk about what’s racist and what’s not, but I am completely happy to talk about how you can choose your sources to suit your narrative. So this tweet:

…might seem to make a very fair point until you look at the other UK newspaper front pages this morning and note that the good doc has only chosen the to share the ones that don’t feature Raheem Sterling. Like ignoring the front page of The Sun. Which is usually a very good idea, fair enough, but not for his reasons.

Or The Times:

Even the FT (That’s Financial, not Football) got overlooked:

But while we’re on the subject of poor takes, did England really win? Or is it all part of the “experimental vaccine” plot? Which doesn’t exist, but if it did, was England’s “win” actually just to keep our minds off it?
Sarah Plumley BA PGCE thinks so:

To which the all-knowing Dj42(74404412) sagely replies:

Seems legit, and will surely be proven true when we crash out at the hands of Ukraine at the weekend (not an official prediction) and suddenly realise that we’re now 5g-nanobot chipped, somewhat magnetic, DNA-manipulated, mind-controlled mutant zombies.

Or just a bit less vulnerable to Coronavirus infection. One of the two, anyway.

And not me, anyway, because I won’t see a vaccine for many months yet, thanks to SA’s disastrous vaccine rollout (see 6000 miles… passim).

Sarah’s tweets are a veritable smorgasbord (have you ever known of a smorgasbord that wasn’t veritable?) of Thin Aluminium Millinery: Epstein, Big Pharma, IVM, Trump, “Sheeple” every second post.
It’s amusing to watch her calling other people “brainwashed”.

You could argue that maybe I’m just choosing the tweets that suit my narrative.
However, in Sarah’s case, there weren’t any others available.

Day 457 – Busy morning

Posted on

A busy couple of days, in fact. The bar is now installed: fridges and bookcases have been moved, plans have been made for new glasses and new lighting – it’s all looking good and I can’t wait to get the last bits done.

Tonight though, I’m going to chill in front of the fire and watch some football. It’s been almost 72 hours since the last game, and I’ve been missing it. I actually got ahead of myself and thought that yesterday was Saturday (kids not at school, Mrs 6000 not at work) and was hugely disappointed not to be able to watch Denmark beat Wales last night.

Now, I don’t often do this (because it looks very silly when I’m wrong), but I’m going to see if I can predict the Quarter Finalists with any degree of accuracy – just for a laugh (and knowing that I can simply pop back and edit this post to make myself look better if things don’t go as I expect). No screenshots, please.

So, here goes:

Denmark
Italy
Netherlands
Belgium (just, depending on which Portugal team turns up)
Spain
France
Germany
Sweden

Wow… did he just…?!?
Yes. Yes, I did.

Let’s pop back on Wednesday morning and do a post-mortem together.

Day 453 – Rain and England

Posted on

Over 100mm of rain today has soon put me in my place as far as celebrating the lack of winter goes.

Never mind though. We had a successful trip out to The Flats this morning to renew some passports (no, we’re not going anywhere), and there’s a free-standing fireplace to light and an England game to ‘look forward to’ this evening.

Yes, I enjoy watching football, and yes, I’m English, but I’m no huge fan of the England national team.
Sure, I’ll watch them if I’ve nothing else on, and I’ll support them against the other team, but it’s not life-ending for me when they don’t do well.
‘Nice when they win, meh when they don’t’ sums it up nicely.

I was saying recently that this is likely because when I was growing up, the England team had no relevance to me. All the games were played at Wembley. That was somewhere I’d never been and never seen – it meant nothing to me. (It still means very little to me.) So it was always based in London, and London was a long way away and… well… had no relevance to me. Added to that, the fact that none of my heroes were ever involved, and you really shouldn’t underestimate the effect that can have on a young kid’s level of interest.

Then there was the playing style. English domestic football was always more physical, more rough and tumble; harder and faster. And yet when I watched the England team, they always slowed it all down and played to the foreign opposition’s strengths instead of their own. I never understood that.

Aside from the matches of the 1990 World Cup, most of which I spent in Germany and had to be seen to be a total England supporter, I can only think of one other memorable England game: the 2001 5-1 win against Germany. For some reason (beer, probably) I felt like a proper fan that evening, as we watching in the Britannia in Headington before heading down the Cowley Road. That was a fun day.

But look, I’d much rather be watching Sheffield United: then and now.

That said, it’s either the England game or sitting outside in the rain tonight, so I think I’ll still be watching this evening.

Day 446 – Some photos

Posted on

(at last!)

Just a quick in-and-out (careful now) from me here today, because I have to play football half an hour and I’m n kilometres away from where I need to be to play football at that time.

But I did manage to edit some photos – mainly of birds – from the weekend: here they are.

Here’s a Little Egret having a bad hair day, just to get you in the mood.

I know that these are feathers (I did Biology for GCSE), but the term “bad feathers day” doesn’t really exist, and I’m trying to be whimsical.

Have a lovely evening. As mentioned, football for me, then the Ramaphosa announcement, then France v Germany, at least one of which should be an absolute humdinger. Two if we’re properly lucky.