Good Luck

Just wanted to wish the England team all the best against Germany tomorrow.

I think it'll be a humdinger of a match between two great footballing sides.

Although our recent record against the Germans at major tournaments isn't great (I'm thinking of 1990 and 1996 particularly) but overall I think the score is 12-12 (and I'm being generous by giving Germany the two draws that they then won on penalties.

Our world cup hasn't been great so far, but I'm forever hoepful that we have a chance.

Disappointed

Disappointed, to say the least.

I thought England had done enough to win last night's football match.

Before the absolute howler from Green we looked very comfortable and dominating. Cracking early goal from Stevie Gerrard and he seemed to be playing really well for the first 30 minutes.

But after Green's error, the game seemed flat. England still did most of the attacking, but seemed to lack something.

To be fair, USA were pretty well organised, and hard to break down. That's how they set up their stall (only one player in the squad is classed as a centre forward/striker) so that made it difficult, but there was hardly any threat to Green's goal (only Green himself!)

I blame the damn Vuvuzelas!

Oh well. A draw is a point. So, all we need to do now is spank Algeria and Slovenia and everything will be cushdy.

Beckham gets told off for kicking a football

As we all know, Beckham is out of the worlds greatest competition, Football's World Cup, after he ruptured his achille tendon in March, but he couldn't resist having a few kicks of the ball despite an on-hand medic warning him against it. Footage can be seen at the link below.

Beckham gets told off for kicking a football

I suspect I'm not the only English fan who watched this and thought, bl**dy hell, wouldn't it be great if they announced he was fit before Friday (staight swap for Wright-Phillips.Sorry Shaun.)

Yay for me

Here's a link to a caption competition I won recently.
http://www.footballfancast.com/caption-competition-gallery/attachment/capcompwinner26feb-2
Of course, like all Football fans (especially English ones!) I'm gutted for Beckham who is unlikely to feature in the World Cup in June because of a torn achilles tendon.

Here's a link to an article for the local newspaper where I took the photo (from the top front seat of a double-decker bus!)
http://www.eveningnews24.co.uk/content/eveningnews24/norwich-news/story.aspx?brand=ENOnline&category=News&tBrand=ENOnline&tCategory=xNews&itemid=NOED12%20Mar%202010%2010%3A52%3A07%3A910

I am of course hoping for other things (i.e. stories) to get published this year, but the small amount of kudos for anything published no matter how small is always appreciated :-)

Laurie Cunningham 8 March 1956 – 15 July 1989

It's 20 years to the day that Laurie Cunningham died in a car crash in Madird.

Laurie joined West Bromwich Albion Football Club in 1977. Laurie broke a lot of round as a player and a man. 30 years ago it was are for black players to be playing professional football and racist abuse from the terraces was shocking (a bit like being in Spain or Eastern Europe nowadays). So, Albion had three black players in the shape of Cunningham, Cyril Regis and Brendon Batson this was unheard of. It coincided with a period of time where Albion were one of the best footballing teams in Europe.

Laurie was the first black player to represent England at any level, and also the first to represent them in a competitive international.

His skills as an Albion player got lots of attention and in 1979 he was the first English player to sign for Real Madrid for £995k.

Desipte early success in Madrid he didn't quite recapture the form that made him one of Albion's greatest ever footballer and he had a bit of a Journeyman career, but was looking forward to facing Madrid in the Spanish topflight for local rivals Rayo Vallecano; a club he had just helped gain promotion.

Still, for those of us who saw him play, he will live long in the memories, and twenty years on his magic is missed.

A couple of years ago I showed the video below on this blog, and you can see how great a player Laurie Cunningham was. you will also notice the aforementioned racism from the crowd.



And the strangest thing is when walking into work this morning I was thinking about a close friend who died in a car crash less than 2 years after Laurie (before I realised it was the anniversary of Laurie's death.)

Once again....

I'm back after another enforced lay-off from the blogging scene. The last few weeks have just been a bit darn hectic and I've have no "me" time whatsoever.

I'd like to blame part of my absence on having a brother-in-law visit for a week, but apparently this was before my last blog. Shame - I could've moaned about him monopolising my PC for the whole week, and that because I'm a such a generous host he cost me a fortune in food, drink, petrol, electricity, spending money, and valuable web-site maintenance time too.

Here's a quick summary of what else has gone on over the last few weeks.

THE GOOD
- The mighty Baggies are going great in the English Football PRemiership.
-England are doing great too - yay!
- Ben has some more teeth - the top two are now through, so he has 4 chompers to bite with.
- Ben now enjoys joining in with pretend rough play (wrestling, chasing etc) with Luke and I.
- Ben's obsession with Mickey Mouse has reached feverishly funny proportions - put anything with Mickey in front of him and you get a big old beam, the finger extends towards the Mouse and squeels in delight!
- Ben has developed the ability to clap - yay Benji!
- We went to a good friend's wedding, followed by Legoland the day after.
- Luke is learning to read at school.
- Luke good loads of praise from his Teacher at parents evening - sounds like he's one of the smartest (if not the smartest in his class!)
- I had a good work trip to Cheltenham - hard work but enjoyable.

THE BAD
- A Goldfish died (a couple of days ago.)
- Roger Rabbit died - in fact I discovered his solid corpse about an hour ago when I went out to feed him. I think he must've had a bad fall down his ladder last night. RIP good bunny - you served the family well and 8 years is a decent stretch.
- I've been working my balls off at work over the last couple of weeks - absolutely shattered so looking forward to a bit of RandR and the weekend.
- Wendy had a bit of a tummy bug which she caught from Ben.

THE UGLY
- Ben had a really bad bug for about 10 days - both ends! This started when I was away overnight in Cheltenham, so I was really miffed to not get home until 10.30pm the following night due to a late finish in the office and car trouble on the way home.
- I managed to come down with the bug too - at the wedding reeption! Great time to start vomitting. Even worse both Ben and I were mega poorly while at Lego land too so we didn't get to go on anything (not quite true. We went on a train and Ben went on the Carousel with Wendy and Luke.) So Wedny had to take Luke on all the spinny rides (which she hates!!!)
- Like most people in the western world, my finances have taken a fair walloping thanks to pesky credit crunch. It's really annoying to think this is caused by really sloppy Banks, Mortgage Advisers etc. So the ole pension has probably had a bit of a hit, but it's the share-based saving that have been decimated. Even more annoying, my bank is one of the ones that the British Government have had to bail out and they haven't passed on the interest rate reductions! Great!
If I had money to spare right now might be an idea to buy shares. Oh well! Cest la vié!

Sunday night...

...I can't believe there's a football match on at 10.30pm on a Sunday night!

As it's a friendly England will probably go with a weaker team than normal to try some newbies out, which is what firendlies are for. I'm pretty sure it should be a comfortable game against Trinidad and Tobago, probably even easier than Wednesday's 2-0 stroll against the USA.

David Beckham (he of the USA's Major Football League's LA Galaxy) is captaining England tonight, which is really weird because it's nearly 2 years ago since he gave up the captaincy and lost his place in the squad under Mclaren's dodgy management.

Pride (but robbed)

Just want to say congratulations to the England Rugby team for their tremendous effort in the World Cup - they're still World Champions even though the scoreline suggested otherwise.
Once again it's the referee who got scared by the big occasion and the result was affected. Add the incorrectly disallowed try/conversion and a couple of the missed penalties and the trophy was our again.
Having watched the ref miss a blatant forward pass that led to Australia deny us back in 1991, it's disappointing to be on the wrong end of dodgy crucial decisions again.
But, the England players were massive and have brought pride to the nation at a time when the Footy team are wobbling.

Smashing!

Absolutely brilliant! Hats off to the England Rugby Union team for following up last weeks win over Australia with a thrilling victory over France.

Fingers crossed that the boys can become the first team to win back-to-back World Cups in next weeks' final.

Here's the winning moment from 4 years ago.