Kanu scores but it's not enough: Portsmouth are dumped out of the FA Cup by ManUtd (and a really great & cheeky 2nd goal from blockhead Rooneh).
Kanu scores but it's not enough: Red Stripes 2-3 Sex Pistols. Having only 1 sub definitely hurt us, as well as several of us, myself included, being severely hung over.
"Show me the way, to the next whisky bar..."
Thursday night drinks and then drinking & staying out until 3 a.m. both Friday and Saturday night is no way to prepare to play footy - I am truly amazed that Tony Adams was able to pull it off so well for so many years.
Don't know how the hell you did it, Big Tone,
but I'm sure glad you stopped.
Arsenal-Bolton FA Cup 4th round: rinse and repeat. Except this time it will be Bolton-Arsenal (oop Norf). A truly horrible game to watch, at least the first half. The second half was average. I am glad that the Mad Dog replayed it at 2 p.m., because I realized about 2 a.m. the night prior that there was no way in hell that I was making it up at 7 a.m. to catch it live at 8 at the pub. It was still very difficult to stay awake during the first half even at 2 in the afternoon.
After 30 minutes you had the feeling that the game had 1-nil written all over it; at the end of the half when Henry went for the career highlight reel cheeky backheel that didn't come off- it was cleared off the line (instead of turning and trying to blast into the net with his right foot), which was Arsenal's only real chance to that point, you had the feeling that it was going to be 1-nil for Bolton, Arsenal's bogey side. And shortly after the half 1-nil to Bolton it was. After only beating Bolton in 1 of these teams' last 7 meetings, and losing away to them last year and this year in the Prem, not to mention being dumped out of last year's FA Cup by them as well, I'm thinking at this point that perhaps Bolton:Arsenal is the new Florida football:Georgia football. Soon after Arsenal started asking all the questions as they say, and it finally paid off on 78 minutes in the form of a Kolo Toure diving header at the back post from a Cesc free kick and a Gary Speed deflection. By no means pretty, but it did the trick and saved them from being dumped out of the cup early for the 2nd year in a row, which would be embarrassing for a team that has played in 4 of the last 6 FA Cup finals. As Myles astutely noted, "Bolton scored an Arsenal goal and Arsenal equalised with a jammy Bolton goal."
So the 1-1 draw means a replay in 2 weeks, this time at Bolton's ground, where the Bolton hoodoo over Arsenal is much much more powerful. Hopefully the lads can have a Cerrano from Major League moment in the Reebok Stadium dressing room: "Fuck you Jobu, I do it myself!' The winner gets a home date in 5th round (round of 16) against Blackburn.
They were also showing Sampdoria-Inter and I saw Materrazzi get headbutted again, this time in the face {insert bad joke, clever remark, or witty snark here}.
On another TV was T Woods winning the Buick Open in San Diego. That is 7 wins in a row on the PGA Tour, giving him the 2nd longest streak ever. He also owns the 3rd longest streak ever when he won 6 in a row a few years back. Byron Nelson famously won 11 straight tournaments in 1945, which has always been seen as absolutely untouchable, akin to Joe DiMaggio's 56 game hitting streak in baseball. Hell, before Woods came along the 2nd longest streak was 5 in a row by Ben Hogan. Tiger can't possibly win his next 4 to match Lord Byron, can he?
And finally, from the Department Of Truly Epic:
I woke up this morning and read King Kaufman tell about the River Plate supporting tattoo artist who did a back tatt of the Boca Juniors logo for a Boca supporter. Except that he tatted a penis on dude's back instead. No, really. Swindle's all over it too. The next time an overenthusiastic yuppie tells you that UNC-Dook basketball is the most intense rivalry in all of sports, kindly tell him to fuck off and point him in the directions of any one of those links. The dude is suing the tatt artist, which made me think of something interesting: damn near everyone in Argentina is either Boca or River, and to say that they are passionate about it is a bit of an understatement. So dude will obviously be found guilty, which makes me think that the most important part of the case will be the judge who gets assigned to it. A River-fan judge will likely just give him a fine or make dude pay to have the tatt removed or whatever, but if dude draws a Boca fan he might be in big trouble: Boca-fan judge may go all Judge Joe Brown on his ass and make the River guy get a tatt of his own: not of a giant penis, but of a giant Boca logo on his back. And trust me, to the River fan, that would be 1,000 times worse.
Try explaining this tatt on your back
to your longtime buddies in the season
ticket holder section of El Monumental.
10 comments:
I still think Celtic-Rangers are worse, because it has the class warfare and the mutual success of Boca-River Plate, but it also has the nationalistic undertones of Barca-Real Madrid or Athletic-Real Madrid due to the massive influx of Irish fans (on both sides) to the derby. And then of course there is that whole religious war thing.
Though, interestingly, it's not the most nasty rivalry in Scotland, which, for some reason, is Aberdeen-Rangers. Not even the fans of either club can explain that one.
Yeah, that Aberdeen-Rangers situation is nutty - I just read a good article outlining the history of that one on Four Four Two:
http://www.fourfourtwo.premiumtv.co.uk/page/BigRead/0,,11442~944878,00.html
It's a very good read.
That link didn't work; here it is:
http://www.fourfourtwo.premiumtv.co.uk/
page/BigRead/0,,11442~944878,00.html
I have a subscription.
I have to admit though, that song that Aberdeen fans sings about the injured Ranger player is both unquestionably offensive and incredibly funny. The perfect rivalry sing-along.
the violence of the old firm rivalry is worsened by acts sectarian violence outside of football. football is the convenient excuse.
aberdeen/rangers - people outside of glasgow hate glasgow. aberdeen are the only club outside of the old firm to never get relegated, so they see themselves as rightful challengers, but always fail.
anyway, ian durrant was only going to drink his talent away as it was.
the old firm is filled with sanctimony, each side claiming the other is worse. i found it cute that in that article a rangers fan talks of how atrocious it is that aberdeen fans sing about injuring a player when his side regularly sings songs about being knee high in fenian blood. charming.
quick question to moin, though...where are you getting the class warfare in the rangers/celtic rivalry? they're both heavily historically working class clubs.
I read somewhere, I think it was "Football Against the Enemy", that said something to the effect of, over most of their history, the Catholics, especially in Scotland, have been poorer than the Protestants. So that's kind of where I was going with that. It's a pretty stretch, I admit, but it couldn't have helped the situation.
without delving too much into scottish history, that's a yes and a sort of.
any perception of class distinction likely comes from celtic fans seeing the scottish footballing establishment (as a reflection of the greater scottish establishment, ie protestant) as being biased against them in favor of rangers.
that said, celtic were founded as a charitable institution for the poor by a priest but were funded by local catholic businessmen with extra cash which was used to poach players from the O.G. catholic team from edinburgh, hibernian.
so just to make it longer, i see where you were going with it and arguably you could be right to draw a Boca/River Plate connection(common man v. establishment)...a stretch though. boca and river plate are second teams to people through out the country. whereas in scotland you either support one of the gruesome twosome or you don't. there is no connected second team loyalty being tied to class (or even religion for that matter).
i'm rambling. sorry.
just nice to see someone take at least a minor interest in some aspect of the dinky league i follow.
Funny- I have nothing against the SPL, but I think that I like listening to Bobbeh on FSC talk about the SPL in his crazy Scottish/Canuck accent more than I do the SPL itself.
The names of the clubs in the SPL are 2nd to none though - outside the big 2 & hearts they all sounds so obscure and badass.
fair comment.
if it i names you like, go a league lower and you get queen of south fc and my beloved and fantastically named partick thistle fc (to borrow from billy connoly, often thought to be really named partick thistle nil)
useless triva - scotland has in st. jonstone, britain's only senior side with a "j" in their name, and in inverness caledonian thistle, the longest name of any senior side in britain. almost makes up for the sub-standard football. almost
Patrick Thistle fo shizzle.
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