Close-up of Blackburn manager Paul Ince’s notebook during the 4-1 defeat against West Ham on Sunday morning. Spotted by oofuss (Terry O’Connor) from the West Ham mailing list I’m on. Click to enlarge.
Archive for the 'Football' Category
“You make your own luck†in sport they say. Gary Player once said, “The harder I practice the luckier I get†as if things were really that simple.
No team deserves to win a game dropping Hayden twice before he’d scored 4 or chasing 334 but Lady Luck did not shine her torch on the Black Caps at Perth tonight. Falling 7 runs short with 5 wickets in hand is an outstanding performance in anyone’s book, and more evidence that the summer has been turned around since that awful shellacking by Sri Lanka in December.
But … but … We could have done without Rauf firing Vincent out when he was looking in great touch and don’t get me started on the rain interruption! It’s hard enough being competitive in Australia when everything from the travel schedule to having to play the best team in the world is stacked against you. For the last seven or eight years this Black Cap side has backed itself to score 11+ an over in the final ten if they have wickets in hand (and they bat accordingly). Duckworth-Lewis doesn’t take that into account (and probably shouldn’t even try) but it was the rain break that killed the run chase – and it never seems to happen to Australia IN AUSTRALIA.
[And on the subject of luck: how about losing your best striker for seven months to a munted ankle in his first ever England training session. And your new star signing doing his ankle ligaments 20 minutes into his first game for the club - out for seven weeks minimum. I'd like to see Gary Player explain away that rubbish.]
Still, we scored 335 against Australia and Oram’s 100 was the fastest ever by a New Zealander in ODIs. Our luck will have to change soon.
A bad weekend for all the teams I follow. The horror, the horror.
The Hammers have now lost seven on the spin, haven’t won in eight and haven’t scored in 10 and a half hours 11 hours (a club record); The Lions became the second Wellington team this year to lose a major rugby final; The Knights have also lost seven in a row but at least scored a couple of times in Adelaide; The Black Caps rolled over and had their tummy’s scratched by Sri Lanka in that unwatchable tournament in India and my Dad’s team (Torquay United) have also lost six in a row so there’s no respite at home.
Common sense says, like the crap weather, this has to change but I struggle to see when. West Ham could easily get turned over by Colchester in the Carling Cup on Thursday morning the way we are playing; the rugby season is over; the Black Caps have to beat Pakistan to progress in India and we never beat them when we have to; I can’t see the Knights winning again this decade and the future isn’t promising for The Gulls (sorry, Dad).
Oh, and Newtown Athletic had the weekend off (or a “bye†if you prefer) due to the long weekend. At least that isn’t a defeat…
The pass out of defence seemed to accelerate as it hit the wet grass and skidded towards me. Like most other enthusiastic, Sunday, footballers I couldn’t rely on skill, experience or talent to guarantee that the ball wouldn’t bounce away in some random direction (or worse, pass under or around me without contact of any kind). Instead, I found myself doing a large number of maths, geometry and physics exercises in a very short space of time.
While trying to stay aware of the players around me, I had to estimate the height and speed the ball would reach by the time it arrived so that I could then angle my foot in such a way that the ball (after contact) would drop limply beneath me – mine to then have my way with. I understand from childhood coaching manuals that this is called ‘trapping’ and I share it with you now only because on Sunday morning I pulled it off and it felt great! Actually it wasn’t perfect as it came off my calf rather than my boot but I got all the angles right and could look up trusting that the ball would still be there when I looked back down again.
I know what I’m good at on a football pitch. I have what they used to call ‘an educated right boot’ which means when I can look up I see an opportunity (a player in space ahead of me, or a space that they can run into) and I can generally put the ball where I want it, or close enough. But I can also write a book about what I don’t have: pace, stamina, determination, bravery, guile, left foot, etc, which means that in most games my ‘educated right boot’ might as well be on the sidelines, doing its nails. Because an ‘educated right boot’ needs time and space to be effective.
So, this year I decided to concentrate on only one aspect of my game: my first touch. Almost every Sunday morning, with the boys from Newtown Athletic, I trundle down to Rugby League Park (where the Hurricanes and Lions usually train) and we chase a ball around and try and stick it between two cones. As we don’t keep score, players change sides often and no one yells at you for being out of position, I have found the perfect environment for simply enjoying the game and working on the things I wished I did better. Like trapping.
Former West Ham United Manager Harry Redknapp once said of a triallist, “He traps it further than I can kick it†but that’s no longer true of me. A few minutes after the calf-trap described above I found myself chasing a high ball across to the right-hand corner of the pitch. Using my trigonometry skills I put myself where I thought the ball would be only to see it bounce higher than expected and have it bounce off my throat - and land softly at my feet. “Good controlâ€, I heard someone yell and I thought ‘yeah, good control’, and looked up for an opportunity for that ‘educated right boot’.
