IPL Missives

Hey, just thought I should post up a link to this blog about the IPL currently going on South Africa. Apparently it's been making some headlines in India and has been mentioned on the Cricinfo site and the Guardian. If it's real (there's debate about whether it's actually a player or a just a journalist stirring things up) then quite simply, wow! It's remarkably open and searing in its character assassinations of bona fide idols of Indian cricket. Definitely worth a quick look.

A week is a long time in football

From 8th to 13th April was a truly remarkable week for Cardiff City. Easter weekend is a crucial period if it falls during this time of the season. Much like the Christmas period can shake up a league, the Easter weekend in the lower leagues can provide a final quick sequence of results to redefine the league before the final straight sprint to the finish in the league. As such it’s always necessary to pick up a decent haul of points, though for a side to be picking up max points and a whole load of momentum is rare. You just have to look at how the other teams at the top end of the Championship fared to see what I mean.

From looking over our shoulder a touch after a 3-0 loss to Sheffield Utd, City have launched on a good run of form that has resulted in us all but guaranteed a playoff place and eyeing up a shot at automatic promotion. Obviously our brilliant results (4-1 home, 2-0 away, 3-1 home) have helped, but games going our way elsewhere and Reading’s spectacular implosion as a football team have all contributed. A further bright spark is the brilliant form of Ross McCormack, and the growing stature of Jay Bothroyd as a genuinely good leader of the line who can bring strikers and midfielders into plays.

This makes a marked difference from the previous few seasons, where City have been in or abouts the mix for the playoffs only to succumb to a Charlton-esque late-season slump. Inevitably this has seen us finish comfortably mid-table but way out from the playoffs. This season promises to be very different...

Staring at the rude boys...

After conversations about Sunday’s match and the coin-throwing incident with mates and in work, my thoughts have turned recently to hooliganism. There’s a really good article in the Guardian today about the ‘literary’ genre glorifying football violence, aka ‘Hoolie Porn’. An example of this relevant to City is Soul Crew, a book detailing the activities of the hooligan ‘firm’ (what’s the correct collective word for a group of twunts?) that was associated with Cardiff City. I’ve not read it, as I have no desire to give money to the scum who glorify this kind of behaviour, but from what I’ve heard it’s of dubious literary merit at best. Anyway, I thought the author of the article today came up with a pretty good description of why hooliganism still exists:

“Hooliganism will be around as long as men like wearing nice clobber and battering the crap out of each other and there will always be an audience for a blueprint [for books] comprised of label fetishism, rucks and battle stories”

That’s about right isn’t it?

I mean there are genuine sociological arguments around hooliganism and associated forms of violence to do with masculinity, identity and class politics, tribes and neo-tribes which I won’t go into detail about here. But for me it boils down to old guys who should know better and grown out of this trying to organise a load of kids (generally 15-19 year olds) who think that because they are City fans then they should be hooligans, because that’s what being a City fan is all about. When quite obviously it’s not.

Swearing at Alan Tate

Big game yesterday, Luton hoping to restore some glamour to their season in the Johnstone Paints… hang on, let’s start again.

Yesterday I had one of my finest moments captured on camera. Nathan Dyer had just scored for the jacks, and the Swansea players were celebrating in front of us. Alan Tate (1) was celebrating particularly vehemently while pointing at the City fans and kissing his badge. Understandably, this sort of behaviour did not sit well with the majority of City fans, myself included. The result being you can could quite clearly see me shouting ‘f**k you’ at him on the TV. So that’s two incredibly classy moments of mine that have now been captured on film. The other being at the Blues vs. Calvisano match in January, where I was making fun of the Italian announcer by miming along with him while making extravagant hand gestures. Stay classy San Diego!

On a side note, as it seems to be overshadowing the game itself, the coin throwing incident. Make no mistake, nearly every Cardiff City fan condemns that particular act of f*cknuttery. What adds to the annoyance for me is that the ref had just handled a potentially difficult situation with Chopra and Diving-Jordi-Gomez with calmness and some impressive diplomacy. Mike Read, I can only apologise for the actions of a moron.


(1) A man who endeared himself to Cardiff fans by holding up a banner depicting a man in a jack shirt taking a leak on a Cardiff shirt, along with the inestimable Lee Trundle. That’s Lee Trundle, who appears to have been born to fulfil the role of annoying Cardiff City fans and waddling around thinking he’s great at football when he’s actually fat, slow and nowhere near any good.

Cheating Darren Sammy

First things first, I'm not a big fan of Darren Sammy anyway. No idea why, I mean he's not even that great a player, and symbolic to a certain extent of the malaise that has hung over West Indies cricket for too long but appears to be shifting. He just has an annoying face (see right). I offer no evidential or rational explanation, apart from he has an annoying face.

However, I now have a reason to dislike him. Because he blatantly cheated in the final ODI between the Windies and England last night. Just as England are ticking along nicely through the middle overs, Sammy dives to his left to take a low catch. My first instinct was 'that's a decent catch'. Then I thought 'hang on, that's got to be the luckiest catch in the world ever as I'm sure it bounced out his hands'. Lo and behold, a quick replay clearly shows that the ball bounced out of his hands, onto his shoulder, onto the ground before Sammy scooped it up and claimed the catch. With a big grin on his stupid face. How a player can seriously claim a catch like that is beyond me.

So, Darren Sammy, the Giraffe Farmer deems you a cheat.