links on friday

sportreview.net.nz had a floppy-fringe-and-cardigan-and-moody-guitar-band- enabled stormer in the 90s. The football was GREAT too, with Tottenham’s ‘famous five’ of Teddy Sheringham, Jurgen Klinsmannn, Darren Anderton etc forever holding a special place in my heart – but was football in general actually *better*? Vice UK investigates. Seriously, this page is worth it just for the Matt Le Tissier goal compilation alone, fantastic stuff.

This guy went to the Tour De France and didn’t enjoy it. Surely the ideal scenario for watching TDF in the flesh would be picking a little mountainside bar, spend the day there drinking cheap red wine and eating bread and cheese and watching it on the telly while bantering with adorable old geezers wearing berets and bags of onions and garlic, pausing only to saunter outside to watch the riders go past? He’s done it all wrong.

If sportreview.net.nz was in the market to get rad / gleam the cube etc, it would opt for a VHS-inspired deck, like so:

Links on Friday

Get behind the scenes with the All Blacks – in the 80s! At the time, The Good, The Bad And The Rugby was a revelation, for presenting ‘All Blacks as people,’ at a time when they usually appeared in our living rooms either smashing Frenchmen in the face or advertising Jockeys. It was a simpler time of mullets n larfs n guitars and a bloody joy to watch.

In-depth analysis of world cup arm-folding better than it sounds. Like a night out with John Terry, there’s a lot that can go wrong.

And if you’re missing the world cup, here’s the New Yorker’s most memorable moments, complete with video. And this is why Germany won.

I’m not entirely sure who Tom Brady is, but the bloke cannot get a high five from, well, anyone. Think he’s like an American Jimmy Cowan.

Links on Friday

Footballers. They’re generally into Page Three models, Essex nightclubs and flash motors. Innit. But, it turns out that plucky title-challengers-Liverpool are sheltering the EPL’s only hipster footballer Daniel Sturridge, the “Kanye West of the Northwest”. It’s a fair call, and Vice asks valid questions about why footballers are so uncool generally (remember when George Benson was every player’s fav musician in Roy Of The Rovers questionnaires?), but I say Sturridge is number two hipster – doesn’t get more street than Andy Carroll off his tits at a festival wearing a flouro vest, does it?

Further ‘Scottish football managers are generally angry’ news:

Baseball fandom get the New York Times data journalism treatment. Interesting, nerdy stuff – but it seems sportreview.net.nz-favoured Oakland Athletics have no fans. Kind of like sportreview. Ahem.

American Football team logos designed as proper football logos. Some of these are awesome.

Ten years of sportreview.net.nz: Links on Friday

This week marks the ten year anniversary of this blog making the internet worse. Cue a series of unprecedented navel gazing posts – thanks for reading, team. Ten years: Banners / NEWSDESK / Cartoons / Links on Friday

This is the 127th post tagged ‘Links on Friday’ – hopefully the extensive yet sporadic coverage of Roy Keane, Kevin Keegan, own goals and Zombies has made your Friday log-on a little more entertaining. Here’s some of the best YouTubeage from over the years.

Links on Friday

The Guardian’s Word Cup: 25 Stunning Moments series is top class, going long on the great tournament’s best / grubbiest bits. Roy Keane walking out in Ireland is my fav so far, ‘cos it has sportreview.net.nz fav Keano lore, with the backstory to one of the great sporting quotes: “You can stick it up your bollocks.” Bonus link: Dry Your Eyes Becks.

ESPN’s Rick Reilly with a long list of truths from his sportswriting career:
I would rather cover athletes than any other anything. They show up early. They are accountable. They suffer fools endlessly and punch a very small percentage of them. They’re forced to explain themselves daily and yet do it without bile. They push themselves places you don’t know exist. Exhausted, they perform feats, under pressure, that never fail to give me chicken skin.

Genre-busting ‘freaky basketball trickshot’ here.

The Who Will Punch Steven Adams in the Face Power Rankings has been doing the rounds on Twitter, and with good reason. Not only has Valerie’s brother made it to some Very Important Basketball Matches (my colleagues assure me), he’s a Jedi master at both ‘niggly elbows’ and ‘all-innocence reaction’ that anyone who’s played social indoor football will be immediately familiar with.

Links on Friday

sportreview.net.nz never really bothered getting to know the cavalcade of mustachioed, grimacing, gum chomping Aussies that tormented the Young Guns through the 80s and 90s. Luckily, Russell has all you need to know about top order tormentor David Boon with The Joy Of Six David Boon moments – it’s a sprawling run through the innings, the songs, the short leg magic, packed with links and clips like the definitive tomb on the 52 cans saga, and the great man doing Talking Heads’ Once in a lifetime, would you believe.

Jon McAfee is best known for designing anti-virus software that ALWAYS needs updating, and going on the run and a bit bat shit crazy in Belize when wanted on a murder charge. Unexpectedly (or expectedly), his interview with a nerdy tech site on the hardware and software he uses to get things done is quotation gold:

“I change phones every two weeks to avoid being tagged by the NSA or some other agency, so I favor hardware systems that allow for quick and easy data transfer between phones.
“I also do my most productive security designs while having extended sex. I apologize if you think I am pulling your legs but, God’s truth, these are the facts.
“My favorite real-time software is the XM153 remote control software that comes standard with the XM153 50 caliber machine gun.”

Long read: It turns out all the credit for the LA Kings being any good and getting Wayne Gretzky and that goes to Alan Thicke. Yes the dad from Growing Pains. He schmoozes, he sings, and winds up best mates with Michael Jordan.

If you Wikipedia ‘celebrated too soon’ and ‘you look like a tool, mate’, you will find this clip. Kind of like a thriller with a telegraphed twist at the end, but fun all the same.

Links on Friday

If obscure curling and hurling stars, scantily-clad models looking tanned and freezing cold, people dressed as fruit and Giovanni Trappattoni are among your interests, you won’t believe your luck when you visit 68 Examples Showcasing The Absolute Ridiculousness Of Irish Sporting Photo Shoots.

Judy Murray’s Twitter account has forced sportreview.net.nz to revise labelling her as ‘bite-yer-leg-ambitious tennis mum’ to ‘actually quite funny and self aware’. And she trolls Yoko Ono for larfs. I think everyone can get behind that.

“Your teeth are offside, your teeth are offside, Luis Suarez, your teeth are offside.” Top ten funniest football chants.

From the ‘kind of useless but kind of cool’ files, here’s MLB’s newest statto-graphics. Sure would like to see this in cricket for something like Trent Boult’s catches.

Links on Friday

So this is the kind-of return of Links on Friday – as long as you don’t expect links *every* Friday it’ll be sweet.

This is magic. Some guy creates one video game American football team that’s awesome and aggressive and puts it up against another video game American football team that’s feeble. Along the way he raises money for charity and makes some hil-ar-ious GIFS – but then something really freaky happens.

Some poor / heroic bugger has taken up the task of going through the fabbo Alternative Commentary Collective archives and compiling some best-ofs. Here’s the first edition, get in there.

The mysterious Inky comes back with an email newsletter after about, oh, five years away. It’s a fabulous ramble through Ted, Steve H and All Black coaching cycles, dark hints about what he wants to say but can’t and somehow Hillary Clinton is mixed in there as well. Get on board.

BMX as conceptual art via kottke.org

Catching up – other stuff

Turns out other stuff has been happening that’s not rugby world cup related. Here’s a quick run down.

Sportsfreak has a petition going to keep domestic cricket on Radio Sport over the summer. It is your duty to support this fine initiative – one day, you’re not going to be able to put off painting that deck any longer. Do YOU want to listen to Des from Whanganui’s stream of conciousness talkback on why we should have lost the RWC while you do it? I farkin’ don’t. Support cricket, sign up.

“But don’t the writers write to the level of the fans? “Sports fans here are pretty well informed. I think they would appreciate a greater sense of journey being brought to describing sports events. They don’t start at two o’clock at kick-off. They start days beforehand.” – Tim Wilson on NZ sport writing via Quote Unquote

Long read from Wired about the new America’s Cup catamarans, and testing them on the Hauraki Gulf. Looks like the next regatta will be the yachting equivalent of playing T20 cricket on crystal meth, inside a Ferrari driven at high speed. Masochistically, I’ll kind of miss the maddeningly-slow tension build up, Dennis Conner and the lawyers.

The Premiership has gone goal crazy, with freak results every weekend – it’s going to be a great year, I look forward to Man City pulling off a Newcastle style collapse and Alex Fergusson finally exploding from stress, they look to be the obvious highlights. Meanwhile, seven Tottenham wins on the trot. I like it.

Shark pool!

Links on Friday (on Thursday)

Some guy takes LSD and tries to recreate Doc Ellis’ rumoured actual-LSD -no-hitter on a video game. Doc Ellis himself explains.

Subbuteo! It’s alive and kicking and is more than life or death to nerds everywhere – watch this guy win the Subbuteo world cup, then go all mental. Stick that up your XBox.

We’re smoking! Go easy to Paris! Wise words from Jens, via the Dropkicks.

Kenny Powers, K-Swiss CEO is farkin’ hilarious and a great example of viral sports-orientated marketing.