Links on Friday

The beautiful game used to bring out the best in designers, keen to push the boundaries on the biggest stage of all. These Days, football shirts are basically designed to look good with a pair of jeans – The Art of the Football Shirt is a hipper-than-thou exhibition of when shirts were less marketing-department-orientated – some great photos here.

If you missed Carlton Cole’s epic Twitter thread on West Ham United’s ‘banter era’, it’s time well spent and basically War and Peace written by Del Boy Trotter.

Skater Christian Flores tries to land a laser flip down a triple set of stairs. For two years. Surprisingly affecting stuff!

Radio New Zealand’s Eyewitness show looks at the 1992 bomb blast outside the NZ Men’s Cricket Team’s hotel – it packs a lot into 13 minutes and confirms fall out from this incident is still ongoing in 2017.

All Black leadership group spends test week brainstorming sick burns

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NEWSDESK: In the build up to the Sydney test, All Blacks coach Steve Hansen has his new-look leadership group working on big hits on the opposition coach rather than the tackle bags.

“This group is all about getting better,” said Hansen. “That’s why I’ve challenged the leaders to come up with some sick burns on that shit wombat.”

“It’s a tough room,” said first-year skipper Kieren Read. “I thought my bits about Hooper looking like the son of Phil Waugh and a wheelie bin was pretty brutal, but the boys shredded it. It’s good to get the feedback.”

In the past, Hansen would work on lines in his suite with Richie McCaw and Conrad Smith before practising delivery on Ian Foster, but is confident the new approach will be as effective. Rumours that Aaron Cruden’s benching was related to nicking all his material from a late night Seinfeld episode were unconfirmed.

Caddy Williams celebrates Masters win by sprinting 800m to punch Tiger Woods in the face

NEWSDESK: Australian golfer Adam Scott’s unpleasant caddy Steve Williams celebrated the first Masters win by an Australian by running 800m to the car park and punching former boss Tiger Woods in the face.

Williams, who carried Woods’ bag for 13 major titles and earned an estimated $USD 13m before their acrimonious split, punched the world’s number one golfer in the face as he loaded his golf clubs into his sports utility vehicle in the Augusta National Golf Club car park.

Witnesses described Williams, who roughly pushed several golf fans out of his way and upturned a coffee cart in his haste to punch Woods in the face, as ‘crazed’, ‘wild-eyed’ and ‘funny-looking’, with sweaty chest hair and a gold medallion poking out the neckline of his white caddy’s overalls.

Williams, who has a history of bizzare, angry outbursts and carries other people’s golf clubs for a living, told reporters: “There’s nothing sweeter than winning at Augusta. And there’s nothing sweeter than seeing the final putt go in, dropping the bag and running to the car park to smack Tiger in the face! Bo-ya!”

Flawed genius file filling to bursting

First famous for his elegant play, then for his boozing and temper, Belfast’s Alex ‘Hurricane’ Higgins died this weekend. From biographer Bill Burrow’s interview with the Guardian:

What’s your own personal favourite Hurricane story?
I think it’s the legendary piss-up with him and Olly Reid where they were having a drinking competition and Olly Reid made him drink a bottle of aftershave because they’d run out of alcohol. So he drank a bottle of aftershave, and the quid pro quo was that Olly Reid had to drink a glass full of washing up liquid as a pretend crème de menthe. Apparently Oliver Reid was blowing bubbles out of his mouth, but he [Higgins] had last laugh – he played a snooker tournament the next day and said that when he bent over and farted, they thought he was Jesus.

World Cup online

The internet, eh? What did we do without it? Got shit done, that’s what. Anyway. Here’s your guide to the cup online.

Marca’s impressive calendar keeps you up to date in style

Here’s the The All Whites official site, complete with video and the all important player profiles

Local lot Public Address have set up the speaker page for the tournament, with guest bloggers Peter Darlington and Dan Slevin, along with Hadyn Green

The Guardian as usual have impressive coverage, from the tournament guide to the daily podcast, to the ambitious and all encompassing fans’ network featuring NZ sporterati’s Sportsfreak

Alan Davies is a gooner, but he’s very funny, so he’s OK – he’s hosting the World Cup Armchair podcast every week. I had a listen doing the supermarket shopping Thursday night, its quite a larf

FIFA’s site is actually quite good

Brainy magazine The New Republic have a World Cup blog, with a fairly exhausting output

Twitter sneaked out an impressive World Cup page today, and will tag your country tags with flags (ahem) if you’re on the web page – #sco doesn’t work, I checked

DDyerNZ is a blog about a gaggle of pommy Kiwis traveling to the cup – entertaining stuff , can’t wait to see how they go

I must also mention Giovanni Tiso’s epic and touching post about Brazil v Italy 1982, a tournament dear to most NZers’ hearts