Want to live the footballer dream?

Football fans get excited. Here we have the next step in first person gaming. I introduce you to I AM PLAYR. The new first person football game from the lads at WE R INTERACTIVE.

This is a must have game for every  football fan. How successful you are in the game depends solely on your decisions. If you go out and get smashed, you won’t train well. Your long-term girlfriend will find out about that one night stand. Oh and don’t piss the tabloids off – they will hang you out to dry the following morning.

Football galactico or drunken drop-out, you decide. Take a look at the trailer:

Here we go again

Let’s be honest it is not the best start. Strauss goes early – third ball to be exact. Siddle gets a birthday hat-trick (the 11th in Aus test history). England are bowled out for 260 and Swann gets smashed for two boundaries in his first over of the Ashes.

I hope I was wrong about this first session being decisive. England have it all to do on Day 2 they cannot afford to lose this first match. The Aussies came out like an angry tortured wallaby and simply blew us away.

All the credit must go to Peter Siddle. His hat-trick has left England 100 runs short just as we were trying to re group. Having said that the first innings was so typically English you could have written the first day review before it had started. Batsmen get in and then get out.

How many times have we seen KP, Cook and Bell make it to 40 or 50 and then not convert to three figures?

I have included Bell in that list as he should have made it from 70 –  at the very least he should have been a not out on the scorecard.

Lets hope our boys higher up the batting order can produce the goods now the pressure has been on – I would hate to see the selectors come under fire for taking them to Brisbane early. I thought that was a good decision. Fingers crossed we have a better second day.

 

 

Can we really win the Ashes

It is the night all cricket fans have been waiting for. The Ashes are here. The question we are all asking is can England really do it?

It would be naive to think that the Aussies will simply lie down and present their rears to the sky. Although arguably the weakest they have been. England are still in THEIR back garden. There are two reasons therefore for England,an over-pressuring nation, to worry:

1) The Gabba – an Australian fortress and it will require a tactical genius – up steps Andrew Strauss – to guide any touring side to victory. And….

2) IF we do NOT get off to a good start, by lunch time the Australians will have big smiles on their faces. The current indestructible force of English cricket becomes the same old flops of the last 23 years.

This is where I go big. This game will decide the series. Australia will either gain momentum and we could struggle to avoid a 5-0 whitewash or we will see England notch up an incredible victory.

It has been 23 years since England have won an Ashes series down under and it could all be over in just one session. However…..this is the most settled the English side has been for a long time. We have no serious injuries, The team is a sure thing and we are in form.

I truly believe that we can do what our 86-87 legends once did. It will be tough and most likely a roller coaster of emotion. That’s why we love the Ashes though isn’t it? I guess all we can do is wait……and prey. It’s going to be a long week.

Hockey – Security scares in Delhi

After a week-long preparation camp in Qatar, England will already be settling into their rooms in Delhi, with the European Champions being thrown into the deep end with a tough opening match against Australia we will see just how prepared they really are. unfortunately for England both Matt Dally and Simon Mantell haven’t made it as far as India due to ill-timed injuries. Matt Dally was ruled out after tearing his Hamstring during the camp and Simon Mantell has a severe foot injury.

England should still be confident though, there is more than enough talent present not just in their starting line up but within the entire squad, after all in order to become European Champions you have to overcome Germany (current World Champions), Spain and The Netherlands something that Australia have recently struggled to do.

England’s head coach Jason Lee will need to make sure he can keep his squad focused on the task at hand, especially as fears of safety for all of the participating teams echos around training camps. This is where the psychological battle lies for Lee’s team, they must concentrate on games as they come, something that may have been missing at the recent champions trophy. England didn’t look negative but the flowing hockey which they can play wasn’t there either, was it the high calibre matches that got the better of this 18 man squad before they even stepped out onto the pitch?

Speculation aside England have a tough group drawing the Hosts India, Australia, Pakistan, Spain and South Africa, tough? yes, but the squad can easily compete with these teams and after being ranked 6th in the world, they have finally been recognised as a dangerous outfit that no team should be naive about.

India’s Hockey Federation have assured all teams taking part that the security plans are flawless and everything shall run smoothly, yet with alleged threats from groups targeting sporting events – naming cricket’s Indian Premier League and the Commonwealth Games, as well as the World Cup, as potential targets it begs the question why do we even let events happen in areas of instability?

Fingers crossed everything runs smoothly and the England perform at their best and start their campaign with a good win over Australia. Anyone interested in watching the game can find it being streamed live on the England Hockey website www.englandhockey.co.uk

Schumacher signs up for F1 return

Yes it is true Seven-times Formula 1 world champion Michael Schumacher has come out of retirement after signing for Mercedes (formally known as Brawn GP). Schumacher will partner compatriot Nico Rosberg in the team that won the drivers’ and constructors’ titles in 2009 and with team principal Ross Brawn guiding him through every corner can the 41 year-old German racing god clinch another World Championship? Is it even conceivable to think that he will be able to achieve what he did before retirement three years ago, surely his body cannot cope with the demands of F1 at his age?

Yet in an interview with the BBC Schumacher claims he is in the best shape ever and cannot wait to get involved with the Mercedes Team. Obviously a question was asked about his neck after it prevented him from standing in for the injured Felipe Massa and he stated “I wouldn’t have entered all of this if it wasn’t confident,”

“That confidence comes from some serious training with my neck to make sure it can withstand what it couldn’t in the summer. There is no further issue with the neck – 100%.”

This new hunger for the sport which he left behind three years ago is all down to Ferrari, who asked him to return to racing to help out when Massa was injured. Yet I can’t help to wonder that if he could have raced, would he have signed for Mercedes this year. Or would that half a season have satisfied his need to race again. You always want what you cannot have and is this just another case of an old legend not bowing out gracefully?

Schumacher revealed he had spoken to Brawn in November about a potential return to F1 and that the return of the Mercedes name to the sport proved the final persuasion. Brawn and Schumacher go a long way back  to when he won his first title with Benetton in 1994-5. Having Brawn by his side once more must have been a huge attraction for the German as well as reuniting with a Team that originally paid for him to race in F1 with Jordan in 1991. It is almost a perfect story for Schumacher to come a full circle back to the team for whom he was originally racing in sportscars, before his move to F1.

Schumacher had signed a revised contract as a consultant for Ferrari, but he told Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo last week that he was off to race for the Silver Arrows meaning Ferrari had to let him go, reluctantly.

I have been lucky enough to watch Schumacher race around Silverstone and I have seen first hand how talented a driver he is. It will be interesting to see how current and former World Champions Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton deal with the return of the F1 ace whilst they are part of the same team.

I wish Schumacher all the best in his comeback to the sport and it would be amazing if he won another Championship, however I just can’t see it happening. Vettel, Button, Hamilton and if the car is as good as last year Rosberg have to be up there in the title contenders list. With the new points scoring system all I know is that it will be very competitive all season long and I really hope Jenson can win back-to-back titles.

Sporting Round-Up 2 – Sports best & worst bits of the week

Lets see who performed and who flopped this week, with my weekly sporting round-up picking some of the best and worst bits of the previous 7 days:

Richie Ramsay (right) enjoyed a landmark day in his career as he claimed his first tournament victory on the European Tour by wining the South African Open on Sunday. The Scotsman shot a final-round of 65 resulting in a tie with India’s Shiv Kapur, despite the indian having started the day five shots behind Ramsay. In the sudden-death play-off, it was to be the world number 240 who held his nerve with a birdie on the 601-yard 18th hole to win. As a result Ramsay moved up the ranks to be part of the top 120 in the world.

French tennis player Richard Gasquet has escaped a two-year drugs ban despite testing positive for cocaine after the Court of Arbitration for Sport backed his bizarre story of how the drug got into his system. See my previous post on Gasquet to see how the Frenchman explained why the banned substance was in his system. You should expect to see the former world number 7 to be competing in the Australian open next year.

Portsmouth had a fantastic week, ignoring the internal issues at Pompey the players went back to what is important, playing football. The south-coast side have been struggling this season, however you would never had known as Avram Grant’s side out-played an average Liverpool to win 2-0. The fist goal came from Nadir Belhadj who smashed in a shot from an acute angle to put Pompey ahead after poor defending from the Reds. The visitors had Javier Mascherano red carded for a nasty tackle on Tal Ben-Haim before Frederic Piquionne’s volley from a tight angle sealed the home side’s victory. If results go their way this coming weekend they could be out of the drop zone. One thing is for sure though they will have to battle all the way to secure a premiership spot next year.

With Pompey beating Liverpool, Fulham beating Man Utd 3-0 and Chelsea drawing 1-1 with West ham an ever-growing Arsenal side crept closer to the top of the table. If Arsene’s young guns win their game in hand in January they would be 3 points off the top and a point clear of Man Utd whose lack of defenders cost them on saturday. In August I don’t think that any pundit would have put Arsenal in this position as we come to the half-way point of the season.

Munster travelled to Perpignan for the pairs second confrontation in just over a week in the next round of the Heineken Cup. The sides battled well a week last friday with O’Gara’s boot kicking Munster to a 24-23 win, even though Munster were beaten 3-0 on try scoring by the champions of the Top 14. The Stade Aime Giral is a fortress for the home side and Munster crawled over the finishing line at home previously, so a Perpignan win was a favorite at the bookies. However Munster produced a mightily impressive performance to silence the boisterous home crowd and won the tie 37-14.

Not only did the result put them in a strong position at the top of Pool One, but they also made some tournament history by becoming just the third away team to win at Stade Aime Giral in the Heineken Cup after Leicester and Wasps

But sadly where there is good there is bad and there were definitely some bad moments in Sport this week:

The English Cricket Team had a bad week this week in their first test match against South Africa, England squandered the new ball on the first day and from then on it went from bad to worse to very lucky on the final day. England elected to take only 4 bowlers and 6 specialist batsmen as did South Africa, though South Africa actually used all 6 batsmen effectively, scoring 719 runs in two innings. England However did not flopping to 356 all out in their first innings and on the final day they ended up on 228 for 9 some 135 runs short. If it was not for Graeme Swann’s good performance with the ball and the bat then England could be looking at their first loss of the series and were let off the hook in my opinion by South Africa who with 6 overs left had Onions at the crease. England were lucky and did not deserve the draw.

Sadly a re-shuffle is required for England and the team selection needs to better this time, which may be the end of Ian Bell (above) in the test side who scored just 7 runs in two innings and was selected to ‘bolster’ the batting line-up. The sides lack of fitness at altitude may show the need for an extra bowler as Anderson and Broad looked tired and uninspired during the second innings. Personally I think Tim Bresnan needs to be back in the side as he is a class bowler and is fairly handy with the bat as he showed in the One day series earlier in November.

Yet another Manager fell to the guillotine of the Premiership, Mark Hughes was unfortunately sacked by Man City just hours after their 4-3 win over Sunderland. Hughes is being replaced by former Inter boss Roberto Mancini (who was already in the frame before Hughes even knew he was going), lets hope Mancini survives more than 18 months with Man City. For more info on the Welshman being sacked see another of my earlier posts.

Sulieman Benn received a two-match ban this week after he lost his cool during the third Test against Australia and had to be pulled away from Brad Haddin by the umpires. After a heated over, Benn went to throw the ball at Haddin and words were exchanged as Haddin pointed his bat at the West-Indian spinner. During this time Johnson got between the two and Benn began to push the two Australians – all resulting in a two match ban for Big Benn, meaning he will sit out of the next two ODIs.

Rafa Benitez is in a rather serious situation now with his side losing to bottom of the league Portsmouth, things need to change quickly at  Anfield otherwise a top four premiership place is never going to happen. Liverpool said they have to finish in the top four otherwise financial issue will arise but at this rate they won’t even be playing in Europe. If the Spaniard doesn’t start getting results then there is a fairly talented Welsh manager looking for a job as of last saturday.

Stade Francais scrum-half Julien Dupuy has been banned for 24 weeks after being found guilty of eye gouging. The French international, committed the offence on Stephen Ferris during his side’s 23-13 defeat by Ulster at Ravenhill last weekend. As a result of the ban Dupuy will miss France’s 2010 Six Nations campaign and rightly so, as there was conclusive evidence that he had committed the inexcusable act. With an ERC statement describing the offence as being  ”at the top end in the level of seriousness for an offence of this type”. Stade Francais are appealing for a reduced ban however I don’t see why the French scrum-half should be given the opportunity to appeal for such a disgraceful offence.

Is Phil just too “Powerful” for darts?

Phil “The Power” Taylor began his quest for an amazing 15th World Championship title with a more than convincing 3-0 win over Colin Monk. Taylor was impressive averaging 102.5 en route to his victory and never really looked unsettled. This is just the thing though, how do you beat somebody that nobody wants to play because nobody can beat him?

Monk released a statement before playing Taylor, where two things were obvious:

1) He was gutted that he had drawn Phil in the competition so soon;

2) He knew he was never going to beat him.

After the game Taylor said: “Everybody’s dream is to win the first round 9-0. It’s not very nice for Colin, I was sensing he wanted the stage to open up and swallow him up. This just sums up how good Phil is at the moment, even he understands that there isn’t a challenge he could not overcome in darts, but he is still as motivated as ever and this is what makes him great; his passion. His passion and determination to conquer all is one of the many reasons why Alexandra Palace is sold out whenever he plays.

Having said this though, not all the seeded players have the momentum and passion that “The Power” carries into each round with four-time semi-finalist Wayne Mardle being beaten on the opening night after a crushing 3-0 defeat to German qualifier Jyhan Artut ranked 153rd in the world. Along with Mardle three other seeded players have lost their opening rounds to players who have qualified to “make up” the numbers.

It is simply too easy for Taylor and if he doesn’t win his 15th title then it will be because he doesn’t turn up and he has to forfeit, there is just nobody out there who I see as a threat to him. So what next for the champ? His second round opponent will be either Roland Scholten or Steve Hine something that will not bother him in the slightest. You have to beat anyone and everyone to win and he has done it 14 times before.

There is only one question on everybody’s lips: Can anyone stop “The Power”?

Is English rugby safe?

The news all Guinness premiership managers wanted to hear arrived two days ago, salary caps in france have been approved by the French RFU. This time last year big name players from the English league were starting to negotiate contracts with major players in the french league. With no salary cap and ambitious owners the french teams that could afford it saw a boom in international talent arrive in the Top 14:

Toulon: Jonny Wilkinson

Brive: Rikki Flutey, Jamie Noon

Stade Francais: James Haskell, Tom Palmer

Managers in the premiership have been concerned all year that this was going to happen again, what is worse is that they are powerless to stop the journey across the channel from happening. With a salary cap of £4 million how can any premiership club compete with a french club who is willing to pay £600,000 for a player, a scenario that Jonny Wilkinson is sitting pretty in. The main problem with them leaving England for foreign shores is:

1) The development of English rugby players both from independent club academies and current international players decreases in quality as they are spread across different nations, with less competitive leagues. Although there is money in the Top 14 it is currently not as evenly matched in quality when compared to the Guinness premiership.

2) When top players leave for money they are putting “cash before caps” and it simply disrupts the international set-up from no-attendance of training camps to simply watching players play to make sure they are at the height of their game.

3) The English league becomes less competitive as big names leave teams in England for teams across the channel.

So as of the 2010/11 season teams such as Stade Francais will have to slash their wage bill from £20m to £7.1 million, meaning that there is now less of an attraction for players to move abroad. Although there is a bigger cap for french clubs it means that clubs like Toulon can’t afford to pay an individual £600,000. As well as the salary cap, teams must make sure at least 40% of their academy is included within the first team set-ups.

This pleases me a lot! The last thing I want to see is:

A) Rugby get to the point where players cost as much as footballers do now, with salary caps this cannot happen. B) The premiership becomes a lesser league, it is such a competitive league at the moment that even a bottom place side can beat the top team at the time, this is good for the sport as nothing is certain. C) Rugby players get paid so much they become a bunch of pre-Madonna fairies.

So at last premiership managers can rest easy knowing that they don’t have to compete with one thing that they have no control over ….. money. Something that will benefit everyone; player, club and fan.

Hughes out Mancini in, what a difference 18 months makes or does it?

Just two hours after Manchester City’s 4-3 victory over Sunderland, a statement was released from the City of Manchester stadium explaining the departure of manager Mark Hughes and 4 of the coaching staff. Only 18 months after taking over from Sven-Goran Eriksson as the City boss Hughes’ contract was terminated by the chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak, who spent nearly 200 million pounds in the summer.

City who have only lost twice so far this season and have drawn eight games in their last 11, with other results including their win over Chelsea and their bad loss against Tottenham. Unfortunately this meant that expectations were not met, expectations that were set before the spending spree occurred between the board and the coaching staff as mentioned in the club’s statement this evening:

“Prior to the current season beginning, with significant investment in players and infrastructure in place, the consensus between the board and coaching staff was that appropriate agreed targets should be set for the 2009/2010 season. The targets were agreed as a result of the player acquisition strategy of the club being radically accelerated in the summer as a result of very favourable conditions for any buying club.”

Manchester City as a result have lots of very talented individuals that other top-flight clubs would kill to have and be able to afford! Yet buying talent doesn’t mean there will be a football team waiting for you in August that are good enough to win the premiership. It takes time to build a championship side, time and money is exactly what every manager dreams of but the two never arrive together. Money was spent in August and Hughes is out in 4 months. The same happened to Ranieri at Chelsea, when Abramovich bought the club from Ken Bates.

Chairman who are not football people do not understand that results will not come until the team gels, there is only so much you can do in 4 months especially when your trying to deal with the ego’s of Robinho and Adebayor. Mancini is a good manager with an impressive record, however I can’t see him moulding a team that will be of champions league quality this season. I genuinely feel sorry for Hughes and I am not the only one:

Steve Bruce, the Sunderland manager, said in his post-match interview that it would be “disappointing” if Hughes, a former team-mate of his at Manchester United, did part company with City:

“You can’t build a football club in 18 months and one transfer window. I don’t think anyone is surprised by these things anymore. It is ridiculous. You are not going to encourage any young person to try and take this up. What is the point?

What are the stats? Managers last about 18 months in the Championship. It is longer in the Premier League, but that is because of the amount of time Sir Alex Ferguson, Arsene Wenger and David Moyes have been in their jobs.I am disappointed for Mark Hughes. Really disappointed.”

Lets just hope Mancini will get more than 18 months with a team that has so much potential.

Sport needs athletes, but have the “Suits” forgotten this?

Last week Rebecca Romero and Bradley Wiggins were told that their respective events in the Olympics were to be cut from the cycling programme as of 2012. The pair who are both Olympic champions of the individual pursuit were given no consultation, no consideration and no opportunity to defend their Olympic titles which they have dedicated their lives to. This is a fact that some athletes have to accept, however you would have thought that the International Cycling Union (UCI) would have had the courtesy to inform its athletes of the change in programme, is that too much to ask?

Well I guess the UCI had a different view on courtesy than most, as the first time Romero ( right) and Wiggins heard of the surgery performed to the cycling programme for 2012 was in the press release that the whole cycling world had access to. Romero originally thought that this was a joke, or one big mistake, an assumption she can be forgiven for as you would have hought somebody in authority might have given her a bit of warning about the fact they were dropping her event.

However the UCI can only suggest the changes to the Olympic event and it is not set in stone until the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) executive board gather in Switzerland to rubberstamp the UCI’s plans. Yet once again neither Wiggins or Romero were informed of this meeting and were once agin left to rely on the medias to find out what was happening to their futures.

Does anybody else thinks that this is just wrong? That two ambassadors for cycling who have dominated on the event for so long are left high and dry by two committees that have so much to thank them for. I for one would have little knowledge about track cycling if it wasn’t for the success that Great Brittain have had at multiple events, something that Wiggins and Romero can take lots of the credit for.

“Put the athletes first…there are no Games without the athletes, no breathtaking moments of brilliance, no spine-tingling magic. Putting athletes centre stage is not just about world-class venues, it is about creating an environment where they have everything they need to perform to their limits.” Seb Coe clearly cares about the well-being of the athletes, it clearly comes across in his quote above, but in this instance he seams like the only one who does care and the athletes have not come first here.

In fact the Athletes didn’t even come third. They were completely ignored. How can you ignore an athlete like Romero? She is only british athlete and one of two women in the world that has won medals in two Olympic sports in the summer games. This just doesn’t happen overnight and it takes nearly 10 years of training (or 10,000 hours) on average for an athlete to fulfill their dreams of golden glory. So mid way through their olympic training plans without any warning wy did the UCI and ICU not wait till after 2012? Simply because the governing bodies do not think like athletes and as a result shows a shocking disregard for the demands of modern elite sport.

The majority of would-be Olympians do not ask for much. Neither do they earn footballers wages. What they do need, however, is certainty. To dedicate themselves to something so difficult they need to know where they stand and precisely what is required of them. This is exactly why they have a four-year training period, it is almost a four-year contract to themselves. The athletes don’t break this contract so why do the ICU and UCI have the right to break it for them? One answer: They Do Not.

What happened to Wiggins and Romero is appalling but thankfully they are athletes that have the ability to adapt and they have taken on a new challenge in the 25km road race. However their ability to adapt should never have been put to the test in the first place.

Perhaps “putting athletes first” all the time is an unrealistic ambition. Maybe there are times when sport’s governing bodies need to take a wider, more strategic view of what is best for their sport. But there cannot be many and this was an example of how not to go about it. The governing bodies must realise that games are nothing without athletes to play in them, something that the suited memebers of the sporting world need to remember next time they change the rules.