Tonight was the first practice for the Falcons, my daughter’s U-10 soccer/football/whatever team. Ten players of varying ability and personality type. We have our talented but mercurial striker, great scavenger of other team’s mistakes, l[…]

Some totally unconnected things:
1) Wayne Rooney was unsettled in Merseyside, and life became harder for him there after he was signed to write a column for The Sun which attracted much anger towards him. Rooney was said to have been advised on this […]

Olympic Quiz
This was a quiz I put together for a work charity night, with a roughly Olympic theme. Because it was a charity/fun quiz there are a higher than normal proportion of questions which require (unless you’re a complete obsessive or sh[…]

TV Poker is pretty compulsive to watch, but no more so than when E-List American celebs are playing. Challenge TV shows a World Poker Tour celeb spesh from probably 2002, with minor movie stars like Jennifer Tilly and James Woods (okay, Woods isn&#82[…]

Now I know that Paula Radcliffe is not in herself an Olympic event, though the amount of accidental P.R. news I stumbled across puts a lie to this. She got more coverage than any of our winners, and the 10,000 metres (surely one of the dullest races […]

Thursday 26th August
This missive was written in my parents place in Spain, and for suspense value, shall let out on a day by day basis. My parents like the Olympics. It is hence much harder to avoid, as they have the power over the TV remote. Nevert[…]

Whether it’s a silly season story or not, the credibility of the Woodward to football rumours demonstrates yet another way in which ‘sound business principles’ are making their way into football. The objectification of management &#[…]

Defenestrated
Just in case anyone’s interested in keeping up with the not-exactly-shock-a-minute final 24 hours of the transfer window, the Guardian has a rolling update going. It doesn’t look like anything much is happening, though.
Tal[…]

Bye bye Bobby
“We’re in a dog-fight, so the fight in the dog will get us through – and we’ll fight.” – Sir Bobby Robson
I knew Sir Bobby’s days were numbered on Saturday when he left St Alan of the Gallowgat[…]

Marvellous article from G. Strachan in the Guardian, about the dread spectre of ‘player unrest’, about which we hear a great deal these days.
Gordon, typically forthright, says it doesn’t exist, that it’s made up by malign sh[…]