"The **** Had His Arse Out!"

If you happen to be easily offended by bad language then the video below isn't you, but if not then it's hilarious.  Mark Tapper was the leading Kiwi in last week's Rally New Zealand until he was distracted by a fan on the side of the road, and the subsequently crashed out.  Watch the video below, and then laugh.

I'll avoid the obvious jokes about being wary of any man distracted by another fella's arse...

Fantasy Results

So now that the Premier League is well and truly over there's a lot to think about. We know Chelsea won beating Man Utd..... by a single point. Gavin is isn't hugely happy with that especially since I said at the start of this season that Chelsea would win!! Oops sorry Gav! Anyway being the newcomer to this sporting world and in particular to the Premier League I can say I learnt a lot. I can recognize the names now of all these players who prior to this were a mystery to me. I know how exciting a match can really be and how thrilling it is to see your team win. I don't know what the offside rule is so if someone would be willing to explain that better than Gavin did I'd be delighted to hear it!

Anyway the real point of my blog today is the Fantasy league us Almost Daily Sports Bloggers are and were hugely involved in. Since the Premier league is over  it also means that our own fantasy league is over too boo
so the results are in and we have a winner. I'll admit I didn't expect it to be me and needless to say it's not hehehe. Our winner is a very deserving Gareth Penrose with second place going to Stephan Kidney and third place is Shane Kelly. Congrats guys I'm well impressed! As our the blog team the big question is how did we do?? Well some of us are very happy.....I for one  am delighted that I came 6th, impressive for the clueless Hellie that started out last August! Following me was our Gavin Grace in 8th, with Alan Morrissey in 9th, and Ciaran 10th. We're a clever bunch aren't we??

Congrats again to the boys who came in the top 3 Gareth with his amazingly high score of 2209 was just 11 points ahead of Stephan! It was all so close! I mean my score of 2044 is only 165 off the winner hahaha

Boxing At Its Weirdest And Worst

I’ve been looking for the following video for the past few days. It is the highlights of a fight which occurred last Saturday night between Paul Williams and Kermit Cintron. This fight had one of the most bizarre endings of any sporting event I have ever witnessed, but I won’t explain it here. Just press play.

So there you have it, a fight ending after a boxer injures himself by falling out of the ring. Only in boxing would something like this happen. I can remember something similar happening once before, in a fight between Nigel Benn and Gerald McClellan in 1993 or so, but on that occasion Benn got up (with the help of ITV’s ringside reporter Gary Newbon), returned to the ring and indeed on the fight (in tragic circumstances).

This fight, thankfully, didn’t have anything like that impact on the health of either participant but nonetheless, it will hurt the reputation of the sport in a different but nonetheless profound way. Now, accidents happen. They cannot be avoided, despite the many steps taken to do just that. However one such step which was not taken by the organisers of Saturday’s event in California was the standard of the ring. The ropes were not properly tied together. Had this simple measure been applied, then there’s no way that Cintron would have hit the floor.

The big farce however is not the fact that Cintron plunged through the ropes, disappointing as that was, but what happened afterwards. The incident occurred in the fourth round of the fight, and had it occurred anywhere but California then the fight would have been declared a no contest. Indeed (though not shown in the above video) referee Lou Moret initially said that would be the resolution. However, for reasons unclear to this particular writer, this decision was changed and it was decided that the thirty-odd seconds seen above constituted a fourth round, and that the result of the fight would be decided by the ringside judges. Their scoring was farcical. One gave all four rounds to Williams while another also scored the fight 40-36, albeit in favour of Cintron. The other judge gave the fight to Williams in a score of 39-37, but even this seemed wrong. Cintron was denied the win through little fault of his own. TV viewers, writers and indeed those in attendance were given the most unsatisfactory of endings, one that leaves boxing tarnished when it’s really not what the sport needs.

I love boxing, more than any other sport in the world. However, there are occasions such as Saturday in which the sport does little to help itself. For a sport which needs to rehabilitate itself in the eyes of the general public, moments like this are unwanted. It should have been a fight which entertained and enthralled one and all. Instead, it’ll end up on ‘What happened next’ sections of TV quiz shows. On a night when it should have been at its best, boxing has again shot itself in the foot.

Six-all!!!

I was going to write about this last night, but couldn't find the video.  However, Youtube has come to the rescue (as it does) and now, for those of us who missed it (i.e. pretty much everyone since it's Scottish football) we can enjoy the highlights of what will probably be remembered as the game of the season.  It finished Motherwell 6-6 Hibernian.  Gotta love sport.

Rubin 'Hurricane' Carter

Rubin Carter, the man they call the Hurricane, turns 73 today.

Carter has the unusual distinction of being best known for two, if not three things that he himself did not do.  Denzel Washington played him in a film, Bob Dylan wrote a song about him, and perhaps most famously (given that it is the reason for those two artistic acts) he was twice convicted of murders, only for those convictions to be later quashed.

You can read all about his legal escapades at his Wikipedia page (and indeed about aspects of his character which, shall we say, were not the most genial) as that’s not what I’m going to discuss here.  Instead, I’m going to dispel one myth perpetrated by both the aforementioned film and song.  Dylan may say that ‘he could-a been the Champion of the World’ but that isn’t quite true, at least not at the time of his conviction.

Carter was a fine boxer, of that there is no doubt.  He won 27 of 40 fights, while that record was an even more impressive 20-4 when he challenged for the World title held by Joey Giardello.  However, Carter was handily beaten in that fight (despite his claims to the contrary) and he would never get a shot at glory again, as he went on to record seven more losses within the next two years.

Despite this, Carter was a decent banger, particularly early in his career.  For me, his most impressive win came over Emile Griffith, about a year before the fight with Giardello.  Griffith had been welterweight champion at this point (following his memorable and tragic win over Benny Paret) and would later clinch the middleweight crown as well.  However, in December of 1963, a month after the assassination of JFK, Rubin Carter knocked him out in the first round of their fight in Pittsburgh.

Carter was no stranger to short nights’ work – indeed this was his eleventh win within three rounds – and the popularity earned through this explosiveness was in part what would earn him a shot at the title.  Perhaps more importantly however, it also earned him his greatest asset, the nickname of ‘Hurricane’ as he is best known to this day.

Browns Make Cyber Signing

As a fan of American football, I’ve always had a lot of respect for Mike Holmgren.  He seems intelligent, and a nice man, but most of all he’s also a football brain.

Since leaving the Seattle Seahawks, Holmgren has become the President of the Cleveland Browns and while this story may have nothing to do with him directly, it is his organisation that has made a move which, to say the least.

Despite playing only 8 organised games, the Browns have signed Joel Reinders as an offensive lineman.  Will he make the roster for the season?  Probably not.  So why is his signing notable? Well, the Browns made the offer after seeing clips of him on Youtube, and nothing else.

It’s a brave move, but it’s a cheap one so I hope for Reinders’ sake that it’s more than a headline grabbing one.  Savo Milosevic (or Miss-a-lot-evic as he was dubbed) was reportedly signed after Aston Villa manager Brian Little saw a video of him in the mid-nineties, but this is a significantly cheaper move.  Nonetheless it will be worth keeping an eye on what happens Reinder in the coming weeks and months.

Sport - A Right For The Masses?

So as weekends go, this one just gone will rank as a bad one for Irish rugby fans.  On Friday night a valiant Connacht were beaten and dumped out of the Amlin Challenge Cup by Toulon in Galway, while on Saturday and Sunday Leinster and Munster respectively were also beaten, ending their involvement in the Heineken Cup.  France 3-0 Ireland, if you will.

Yet none of these games were seen live on terrestrial television here in Ireland.  Admittedly it’s unlikely that the Challenge Cup would ever end up on RTE or the likes, but the Heineken Cup was a mainstay on our national broadcaster for a number of years before SKY took exclusive Irish rights for the competition in 2006.  Back then, these semi-final fixtures (in my opinion) felt like they were a greater part of the national consciousness, nearing and sometimes surpassing the interest held in Six Nations encounters.  How much more important did the 2006 semi-final clash between Munster and Leinster seem compared to last year's equivalent?  Though we have extensive highlights of the games on RTE now, the lack of live action has simply taken the Heineken Cup away from the television screens of casual sports fans, and is now reserved solely for those willing to pay for the privilege.

That may soon change, however.  Communications Minister Eamon Ryan proposes adding all Heineken Cup games involving an Irish side to a list of events which are deemed of ‘major national importance’ and thus must be made available on free-to-air television.  The list currently includes the likes of the Summer Olympic Games and the World Cup, and along with European rugby’s showpiece Ryan proposes the addition of other events such as All-Ireland semi-finals and provincial finals, the Cheltenham festival and the Six Nations, events already carried by either RTE or TV3.  Ryan, ambitiously, hopes that his plan could become law in time for next season.

However, while opening up the highest echelons of sport to the masses seems like a great idea, Ryan’s proposal could be detrimental for rugby in particular.  A piece in this weekend’s Sunday Independent says that the cost of putting the Heineken Cup onto RTE would be €3million annually, or in real terms the annual running costs of Connacht.  Forget the points made in that piece about the Six Nations – most of that money comes from the UK and France – but €3m is a hefty potential hit for the IRFU.  While some of that revenue could, one imagines, be recouped through increased commercial investment as a result of increased television exposure, money would undoubtedly be lost. 

A similar row has occurred in the UK in recent months, regarding their equivalent, the ‘crown jewels’ list.  Proposals were in place which would have seen the addition of the home Ashes series and the World and European Championship Qualifiers of each of the home nations taken away from pay television.  However, that proposal does now seem dead in the water, as the recommendations were not enacted into law prior to Thursday’s General Election.  However, judging by the discourse that occurred there, when sports’ governing bodies were unwilling to simply accept the proposals from David Davies, I would imagine that the likes of the IRFU will vehemently oppose Ryan’s measures and their potential impact on grassroots sport.

We may love the ideal of free-to-air sport on television, but only time will tell whether the Heineken Cup returns to RTE any time soon.

Snooker Left Reeling From Unwanted Body Blow

Disappointment does not sum up the feelings held by snooker fans today. Disgust and hurt would be closer to the truth.

John Higgins says that his ‘conscience is 100% clear ‘ despite a video released by the News of the World today which appears to show him accepting a €300,000 bribe in return for throwing selected frames at future matches later this year.

Everyone is innocent until proven guilty, and one hopes that for the sheer integrity of the sport that Higgins’ claim that he accepted the offer in Kiev as he and manager Pat Mooney feared for their safety is true.

However as the newspaper promises further revelations next Sunday, it looks like one of snooker's brightest stars has much to answer for, and that the sport itself has been left reeling on the weekend of it's showpiece event.

Do Pool Fans Need To Kop On?

All I know is that if I was out there and we got a penalty in the 89th minute to make it 1-1, there’s only one place it’s going. Right in the top corner – of the Kop!

- John Aldridge

John Aldridge is a Liverpool legend, and in the above quote he has expressed the sentiment of many a Liverpool fan ahead of tomorrow’s clash with Chelsea. Many – not all – fans of The Reds would rather watch their team lose at Anfield  then see them win, and as a likely result, likely see Manchester United win the Premier Division title.

Manchester United are seeking their 19th title, which would overtake the record currently shard with and previously held by Liverpool. The Scousers’ place in football’s record books, a place of which their fans have told me they are extremely proud, would be erased making the Chelsea clash so critical. Nonetheless, surely it is sad at best and disgraceful at worst that Liverpool fans, and former players such as Aldo, are looking for their own team to lose when they are still in the hunt for a fourth place finish and a Champions League spot.

If the roles were reversed, I’m not saying that I would always cheer on my own team when the consequences of a win would be so undesirable. However, it is a shame that Liverpool fans are reduced to this. The real disgrace, simply, is that the ‘Pool find themselves in a position where they’re consigned to cheering for the other team, and not getting a chance (yet again) to see their side aim for the title. That is the product of several years of mismanagement at Anfield, with Rafa Benitez as the main culprit.

Should those fans root for a Chelsea win tomorrow, then the financial losses incurred by missing the Champions League, and the potential need to sell the likes of Torres and Gerrard will cost this club even more dearly in the years ahead.

I hope those fans realise what they are really cheering for.

The War - 25 Years On

I know things have been quiet around here lately but despite that, I had to break my own silence to share with you the anniversary of one of the greatest sorting occasions of all time.

Today marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the fight between Marvellous Marvin Hagler (as is his legal name) and Thomas Hearns, possibly the greatest boxing match of the 20th century.  It’s not an exaggeration to say that the first round, in particular, of this fight is as close as one is likely to see to an all-out war within a boxing ring but the fight as a whole is fantastic.  Add in the occasion, and the fact that at the time these were two of the best middleweights in the world, and you come to appreciate why this fight at Caesar’s Palace has gone down in boxing folklore.

If you watch one round of boxing ever, make it this round.  And if you have five minutes to spare today, use it wisely and pay homage to these warriors.