Boast: soon to be come sportreview official apparal.

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.

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

Watch for the DeLorean driving weirdly past the team at the start of this video – which reminds me of *this* video.

The photo is nicked from Cycling Tips, as he says, maybe Brad Wiggins’ choice of white speed suit wasn’t the best in the wet.

I’ve created a new twitter account for this here blog – @sportreviewnz. You’ll get all sportreview.net.nz posts at this account, as well as any sport-related ranting and / or raving.

If you want to know what I had for breakfast, or at what’s annoying me at any stage, you can still follow my personal account, @richirvine.

Harry Nilsson, of the great songs, magnificent voice and the going on the piss with John Lennon a lot in the 70s is a big fav here at sportreview.

Later in his career, he attempted to write a stadium chant (along the lines of creepy Gary Glitter’s Rock and Roll (Part Two)) for the LA Dodgers, who, like Harry, were originally from Brooklyn.

01 Yo Dodger Blue (L.A. Loves You) – Harry Nilsson (MP3, 6MB)

via For The Love Of Harrry

Fans of Bill Simmons, the man mostly likely to say ‘You know, that play is sorta like John Belushi spraying banana out his mouth’,  should enjoy his podcasts on ESPN.com. Guests include Metal‘s Chuck Klosterman, and other writer-types if you find the sports discussed a bit baffling.