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Mum's birthday, and that World Cup thing

Mum’s birthday

I’m over a week late in adding this entry, for which I offer my apologies. It was recently mum’s birthday, and so I found myself taking my first holiday at Karova, and travelling back to Stoke for some celebrations. Matt, Kath and myself treated everyone to a meal at the Draycott Arms, which was nice. Unfortunately my Nana was not feeling well and so Granddad and Nana didn’t make it. I took my new camera with the intention of getting some practice - turns out this photography thing isn’t as easy as it sometimes looks. People tend to move about, or so I’ve discovered I hope mum had a good time

I had thought about staying for the weekend too, but my hay fever goes crazy over there - too much grass and pollen and such. Instead I drove back home, as I didn’t fancy spending an extra two days with red-raw eyes, itchy throat, dripping nose and continual sneezing. Over in Llandudno there’s plenty of sea air and subsequently a lot less airborne irritants. Unless you count seagulls. In which case there are lots.

The World Cup

This World Cup has been on, for those of you without a television or newspaper, or for those of you who happen to be American. For any Americans who might be reading, the World Cup isn’t like the World Series. In the World Cup, people from other countries, and even other continents take part too. Think of it like a one-event Olympics and you’re on the right track.

England were, as expected, dire. I can not wait for the day when English attitude stop being so damned apologetic. I’m tired of hearing us be considerate and nice. Sport is like war, but with the understanding that you’ll actually follow rules and no-one is going to get hurt. The object is to beat the opposition, whereas in England it seems to be understood as ‘to try your best, or just have a go’. There’s a complete lack of sporting confidence and killer instinct that’s required to win. But then, that’s to be expected when our coach is a person renowned for not having any emotion.

The above whinge is not to say that we didn’t have a few good moments of play. Cole scored an amazing goal in one match, and for the last 55min of our last game I was proud of our team. They fought hard to win, even with a man down. I have a few observations however:

• Lampard. Commentators seemed obsessed with mentioning that he’s had the most shots of anyone in the tournament. They failed to realise that he never bloody scores. Which means his shot-to-goal ratio is the worst in the tournament. Get him off the pitch, he’s useless. I started to dread the England build-up-play, because I knew at any moment Lampard was about to get a touch of the ball and ruin it. Perhaps just move him to somewhere where he doesn’t need to try scoring a goal.
• Defensive play is stupid. England have been a victim of their own poor playing style for many years. One day someone will inform them that scoring a single goal and then spending the rest of the match doing nothing but sitting in your own half and defending will always end in tears. Go out, get another goal. And then another. The best form of defence is attack. If you’re busy attacking the opposition, unless they are dramatically superior, they can not be attacking you.
• Penalties. In future, if you can’t score a penalty in the interview, you don’t make it to the team. We always get the worst end of the deal when a match comes down to penalties. It’s a long recognised problem, it needs addressing.
• FIFA. They promise to end players diving by getting tough - then fail to do so. I think the commentators finally picked up on a simple realisation: every team out there dives. They cheat, blatantly. We don’t (well, not as often, for sure). It costs us matches. So, either FIFA have to get the cheats sorted out (I suggest automatic red-cards for anyone caught diving after a TV re-play, and a slap in the face to go with it), or we have to lower ourselves to Ronaldo’s level and be cheaty whining po-faced b*******.

I’m hoping tonight’s 3rd place decider match will be entertaining. I doubt the final will be, they have a tendency to be boring.

This year at Karova, there are no chiggers in the grass, and so we’ve started playing footy at dinner again! Hurrah! You can see some of our fine talent in the attached photos. Of course, I was taking photo’s, so there are none of me.

Entry Information

Posted:

Sat, 8th Jul 2006 at 14:07 UTC

Filed under:

• Journal

Tags:

• gran
• granddad
• kath wilcox
• matt ward
• mum
• nana
• poppa
• stoke