Why Capello really dropped John Terry

Of the thousands and thousands of words that have been written about The John Terry Situation this week, Louise Taylor’s ridiculously florid piece in the guardian on Wednesday which starts:

Fabio Capello’s still somewhat limited English vocabulary may not yet incorporate the term “invidious position”

must have been the turning point where Fabio decided that he had to go. Not because of Ms Taylor herself, but, I think, because of the following piece of genius from Freaky Trigger’s very own Patron Saint of Sport, Lord Harry of Bassett:

Dave Bassett endorsed [Glenn] Roeder’s view that a Rubicon has been crossed. “The problem is John Terry’s a wrong-un. He’s masquerading as one of the chaps but he ain’t because this shouldn’t happen,” the former Wimbledon and Sheffield United manager said. “Of course you have players misbehaving when they’re married. But they aren’t doing it to a team-mate’s missus. That’s off bounds.

“It sticks in the throat. There’s an unwritten rule that you don’t start messing with players’ missuses. I’ve had players who have left their missus or had bits and pieces on the side but they’ve not gone off with a team-mate’s bird. That’s crossing a line and where it comes unstuck with Terry. I don’t recollect it in all my years in football.

Gawd Bless yer Harry!

CarsmileSteve in FT / TMFD • 2 Comments

The Most Important Game Ever Made #23: Druuuuuuuuugs

Been away for a while and will probably be away for a while longer, but I have a brief window to advance this now-glacial series a little further. So then, Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds:

William Shatner’s version, given a little extra ‘treatment’ for the YouTube generation by videoist Paul Heriot. I remember Lee and Herring describing this as Shatner believing that he had to be on LSD in order to sing the song, and Heriot certainly seems to be running with that ball (and also the Star Elephant that will forever be in any room Shatner inhabits). Personally, I love Shatner’s vocals and I think this might be the perfect song for his somewhat unique stylings… but this is a series about Beatles Rock Band and not Shatner Session Band so we’ll move on.

more »

Vic Fluro in FT / TMFD • 1 Comment

Baseball roundup

I’ve left it a little late, huh? The season could be over tonight, around 11pm. That’s Eastern Standard Time, Bronx Time, the time at Yankee Stadium, where the World Series returns this evening after a brief and inconclusive middle eight in Philadelphia. But now we come back to the chorus, the refrain heard so often in early autumn: the Yankees are about to win the World Series.

It’s enough to set your teeth on edge. The privileged golden boys of baseball – Derek Jeter, Andy Pettite, Mariano Rivera, Jorge Posada and his mentor Joe Girardi – all of these guys first won the World Series way back in 1997, when owner George Steinbrenner was still giving great quote to reporters, when the World Trade Center was still standing, when the Yankees were still on WPIX every day through the summer and the “YES Network” (“Yankees Entertainment Sports”) was still just an agitprop gleam in Steinbrenner’s crinkly eye. more »

Tracer Hand in FT / TMFD • 7 Comments

Films Are Short – GET A NEW BLADDER

Things I have never really understood.

a) Pies at football
b) People going to the toilet during a movie

Both of these are predicated on the same issue really. Football matches take less than two hours. They take place, usually, in the afternoon – cannily timed between usual meal times. And yet at half time there are queues for the pie stall you cannot believe. You would think they were knocking out tubs of Ambrosia (foor of gods not rice pudding) for the stampede for a piss poor Pukka. Can’t you wait or do you have to graze at every opportunity?*

Ditto, films are usually about two hours long. I was taught, post potty training, how to hold it in for at least that long. Perhaps you had a few beers beforehand, perhaps you are drinking a VAT of coke. Perhaps this will add strain but you only have yourself to blame. Nevertheless for NAMBY PAMBIES with peanut sized bladders there is now a useful i-Phone App. Introducing RunPee: an application that tells you the best time in a film to have a wee. HAS IT COME TO THIS? more »

Pete Baran in FT / TMFD • 7 Comments

I Hate Andy Murray

Andy Murray chastises a tennis ball

During Wimbledon’s inaugural set of night-time tennis on Monday night, played under what’s become the most famous roof since the Sistine Chapel, I found that I loathe every particle of Andy Murray.

Now, I realize Andy Murray is a professional athlete. Macho theatrics and being as interesting as a pile of firewood come with the territory. But Wimbledon is not just a collection of freakishly fit young adults whacking things between each other, it’s a drama, and in this drama he pushes buttons I didn’t even know I possessed. more »

Tracer Hand in FT / TMFD • 62 Comments

Its Not Just Cricket, Its Maths!

I cannot say I was over the moon when the Netherlands beat England in the opening game of the 20 20 World Cup.Clearly as a neutral it is great when a minnow beats a big gun, especially when said big gun is hosting the tournament. To win such a game at the “Home Of Cricket” is even more exceptional. However I am not a neutral, I want England to do well, and thus I could appreciate the excitement of the result, it felt horrible, we looked like we were going out.

Last night however, when England beat Pakistan comfortably I felt a little robbed of a close game. more »

Pete Baran in FT / TMFD • 2 Comments

Suspicious? Don’t be ridiculous!

Two recent results from the South African Vodacom Second Division:

Young Pirates 2 Real Madrid (not that Real Madrid) 26

Namaqua Stars 50 Kakamus Cosmos 0

Extraordinarily, the South African FA is suspicious, and is investigating. They’ve already suspended all the match officials. My favourite bit, from this story from Kick Off, is from the spokesman for Namaqua Stars: “It’s quite possible to get 50 goals in one match. I wasn’t at the match, but the score at half-time was around 25-0. It is a genuine result, not fake, but we are concerned because how can Real Madrid score 26 times against such a good side as Pirates?”

Yes, 25-0 at half-time explains it all.

Martin Skidmore in TMFD • 2 Comments

Blind swordsmen are like football teams with ten men

Hard to beat. Love and Honour the sadly generically titled final film in Yôji Yamada’s samurai trilogy is a sedate, old fashioned tale which features a blind swordsman. The ICA for some reason had to show it on DVD, whose reduced resolution made it look like a fifties Japanese film, which was exactly how it felt (like a low powered Ozu). This is no Zatoichi though. Instead we have a court food taster who ingests a bit of poison and it removes the power of sight. A few rumours and a wife needing to do what they can to survive and this peon finds himself committing to a battle for honour with a local samurai.

As we reached the climatic battle, and all the training sequences showed just how hard it is to fight someone when blind, I thought it might be the antidote to Zatoichi. The food taster wasn’t that handy with a sword in the first place, so by rights he should have been diced to pieces. SPOILERS: more »

Pete Baran in Do You See / TMFD • 3 Comments

UFC vs WWE

I’d never watched any of the ‘ultimate fighting’ stuff, bar a little in a pub once. It looked very boring to me. I’m a big WWE fan – as silly as it is, I am hugely entertained by that. At the weekend I saw an ad for the next big Ultimate Fighting Championship event, and the main match seemed to be a world title fight between someone called Randy Couture (who inexplicably seems not to have a line of clothing to promote) and Brock Lesnar, who used to be in the WWE. This intrigued me: fans of UFC will often regard the WWE superstars with contempt. Obviously it’s all fixed, and the wrestlers help sell their opponents’ moves to a very blatant degree, so those who dislike the WWE deduce from this that the stars are just showy bodybuilders with gimmicks, and wouldn’t last five minutes in a fight with, for instance, a top ultimate fighter. (A couple of top ultimate fighters had tried their hand in the WWE, but never amounted to much as far as I am aware – obviously it demands somewhat different physical skills, and to get to the top it helps to have some sort of distinct personal style too, of course.) more »

Martin Skidmore in TMFD • 3 Comments

Ted Williams’ frozen head has a myspace page

this week the slugz of time talk cryostuff as the inspiration (?) for futurama gets read out and discussed, interspersed with a forgotten olivia newton-john classic about fate and “the gift of life extension”.

as for Ted Williams’ frozen head, it’s all true. it doesn’t have the same ring as “Andre the Giant has a posse” but times have changed and memes move on. Williams, the slender and irascible baseball player once known as the Splendid Splinter, author of The Science of Hitting, and generally agreed-upon greatest hitter of the last 60 years, was swindled by his son on his deathbed to sign his body over to Arizona-based Alcor Life Extension Foundation, who, upon the death of Teddy Ballgame in 2003, froze him up real good so that perhaps one day he could redon his spikes and dig his heels into some futuristic batter’s box. in the meantime, his frozen head rants on myspace.

Tracer Hand in FT / TMFD • 1 Comment