| So we’re taking the Bledisloe to Hong Kong. Again. Taking rugby to Asia sounds like it’d be cool, kind of like Indiana Jones getting on the razz in a Nepalese bar, but is more likely to involve a bloke called Charles Barrington-Unpleasant-Rolls boring your tits off with tales of the ‘barmy’ ‘army’ in a corporate box before vomiting on your shoes. |
| Getting a disinterested world interested in our interesting game is a challenge – Sportreview.net.nz Sporting Consultancy’s proposal involved Clive Woodward being driven through the world’s great cities on the back of a lorry, being repeatedly kicked in the nuts. Let me paint you a picture of the good people of Berlin, Chicago and Mumbai cheering the sickening thud of shoe leather on bollock and the yelping of a knight of the realm. They didn’t buy it. |
| In the meantime, we can all but dream of a world in the thrall of rugby – a World In Union: |
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The people of Iceland celebrate Sonny Bill Williams considering his All Black options with a traditional fireworks display. |
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Afghanistanis unhappy with the latest designs coming out of Canterbury New Zealand. |
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A Mexican rugby fan clambers to get into Yarrow stadium. |
| In other news, All Whites captain Ryan Nelson has been touring the country telling us how excited he is about the World Cup – but could he be MORE excited? |
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| All the elements are there – his eyes are clear, not glassy or cloudy, legs crossed casually, and David Bellamy-like talking with his hands. Unfortunately for Ryan, the one audience member we can see is listing to one side, sleeping, or deep in thought, wondering if he left his copy of adult equestrian magazine ‘Horses For Courses’ out in the lounge where his flatmates might see it. With a few small tweaks, Ryan could be THIS excited: |
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| This kind of energy would really lift New Zealand’s Football Fever™ (bought to you in association with Andrew Saville) to another level, and be handy for the All Whites if their matches go into extra time. Prepare the industrial sized tins of Sunny D, for the nation’s sake. |
Category: football
Links on Friday
This rally driver was doing great until he drives past some guy unable to keep his arse in his jeans. Features NSFW language in a badass Kiwi accent.
Footballers, learn from the great Totti – if you’re bothering to shave, get dressed and drive the Lambo to the ground, and if you want to foul someone, REALLY foul them. Don’t muck around.
The affectionate nickname for Marmite at the sportreview castle is ‘black death’. It’s horrible, team.
Are you a horse? It’s very motivating.
Championes (league), Championes (league), ole, ole, ole
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| We are fourth. It seems all those old Spurs records like never finishing top four, never beating Chelsea, never beating Arsenal, records that usually go “the last time Tottenham did X, Gary Linneker was playing…” are starting to tumble. Finally. |
This run of nine wins in eleven games, including taking three points off Arsenal, Chelsea and Man City in the last month to seal fourth and the Champions League spot is totally unexpected. After 2006’s Lasagne, I thought we’d never make it, and spend eternity battling Villa and Everton for sixth spot in a not-quite-good-enough Premier League purgatory, changing managers every 18 months in a sadistic, perpetual false-dawn cycle of rebuilding, then being shit.
And honestly, Harry Redknapp was not my ideal managerial candidate. A right Del-Boy wide boy that swooped for half a dozen eastern Europeans every time the transfer window, before selling all his decent players to, well, us, I wasn’t holding out much hope. I was wrong, he has achieved more than any Tottenham manager in years, actually DOING SOMETHING IN THE LEAGUE is the true test of a club, not just nicking a League Cup every decade. I haven’t been as happy as a Tottenham fan as seeing us not just go one nil up, but keep on attacking City in the final minutes. That’s my Tottenham. This means a lot. I may have gone a bit mad on the Twitter.
It will be quite a summer, with a World Cup on, and Harry with a bulging checkbook. God only knows who we’ll get in, we have a very strong side, with Modric, Bale, Huddlestone and Dawson the stand outs for me. Maybe we could use one more big centre half, and one striker of true international class. And some shirts that haven’t been vomited on. Anyway – come on you Spurs.
Links on Friday
These sin-binned-hockey-player-taunting green men made me laugh a lot, especially when one pretends to cry (via @cam_mcmillan)
Poor Wayne Rooney, can’t even have a pint in peace
In alternate reality comes to life news, Maradonna tuns out for Tottenham. He’s no Steffan Freund.
Casual! Casual! Casual! He’ll regret that quite spectacular own goal, and that haircut
Danny Rose’s volley
Shamefully, I texted a colleague today to acertain if the office Gooner was hurting more, less, or the same as when they lost to Barcelona. Every Tottenham fan gets funnier on days we beat Arsenal.
As Fergie says, it’s squeaky bum time, and even though our own squeaky bum involves finishing fourth, not first, I’ll take the win, especially if it’s kicked off with a strike like this. Not bad for Rose’s first premiership start.
VIDEO: The embedded goal video keeps getting taken down – you’re going to have to go search youtube yourself.
Links on Friday
Formula One is very, very boring indeed – the only way to make it exciting is by ‘bad-ass’ ‘shredding’ on an ‘axe’
Be like Tiger without all that messy indiscriminate sleeping around and media attention with the Tiger Woods soundboard
This guy takes the ‘goal-keepers are crazy’ saying and upgrades to insane
NZers, you can see Paris-Roubaix, the hell of the north, on Sky Sport 3 on Monday at 9am. Take the day off work, tell your boss some guy on the internet said it was OK
Reading list
Sehwag is simply a primal talent. He swatted one of Yusuf Pathan’s lightweight off-breaks for an enormous six over mid-wicket. He uppercut violently over cover. Sehwag does this kind of thing anyway. He doesn’t need cheerleaders or a man shouting things into a microphone.
– Harry Pearson on wingers that look like True Blood extras. And KD Laing:
Take a peek at film of George Best back in the day when he looked like the fifth Beatle rather than some chubby geezer who played session marimbas on the second Eagles album… all of them lads who guarded their mercurial image and seemed to live for the day they provoked the rampantly romantic Barry Davies to squawk ecstatically: “Oh, my word, and you have to admire the sheer impudence of the boy!”
Either a genius or a madman
From the Guardian’s ‘Joy of six – dinks lobs and chips‘ feature – Panenka’s European Championship winning penalty.
Links on Friday: Spurs songs
Because Spurs Are On Their Way To Wembley, we feature Super Tottenham’s greatest musical moments eva.
Ossie’s Dream features a bewildered Argentinian trying to say Tottenham and failing at 1’55”
Glen n Chris channel Crockett n Tubbs. Badly.
Paul Gasgoine puts on the world’s dodgiest shell suit, rides about on a boat and winds up in the Bigg Market. All to sing a truely appalling song. These guys must be gutted.
Bonus – Gazza gives the best post match interview ever, not long after he did this.
Reading list
“I did get on the field in front of Bay 13 at the MCG. I can remember having an exchange with a hostile crowd down there. I did give some back – which was stupid. “Ah, look, we’ve got a young goose here, there’s only 35 shoplifting days to Christmas, Cornery,” they shouted. Then they started to throw marbles and they were pinking me on the back of my jersey. There must have been a hundred marbles around me and I thought I was going to roll an ankle. Then they started throwing pies when they ran out of marbles. And that attracted the birds. I had undulating ground underfoot and above, flying wildly around me, were birds swooping to attack these bits of meat. It was a disaster. And it was from that day on that I was solely a slip fielder.”
– Gideon Haigh’s sweet tribute to England’s Chris Tavere:
“As an ersatz opening batsman, Tavaré did not so much score runs as smuggle them out by stealth.”
– How A $500 Craigslist Car Beat $400K Rally Racers:
“I once asked Bill why he insisted on going through every spectator section crossed up and with the engine banging off the limiter. “Dude,” he said, “I don’t care if it costs me a couple of tenths. It makes the fans go nuts.”
– The top ten Roy Keane battles:
“The two had been grappling for an hour or so before McAteer responded to a Keane foul by miming writing motions, mere days after the midfielder had said he’d rather buy his son a Bob The Builder CD than Keane’s autobiography. Soon afterwards, they chased for a loose ball, Keane elbowed McAteer in the head, and off he trudged.”