Handling things

The events in Paris last night (for those who've not seen the news this refers to the World Cup qualifying play-off game, involving France and Ireland, in which Thierry Henry performed one of the most blatant handballs ever seen, leading directly to a goal that in the end knocked Ireland out) have lead to the inevitable calls for a rethink over whether we have video referees in football, especially for decisions such as this. I have mixed views on video referees in football. On the one hand I like the fact that in real time during a game controversial refereeing decisions will get made and are allowed to stand, because I think it adds something to the game as a form of entertainment - basically it gives people something to discuss/rant/argue/complain about during and after the game, which a lot of people get enjoyment out of, even if it's a strange perverse masochistic enjoyment when bad decisions go against your team. It would be nice to just discuss a game with regards to the actual football that was played, but to be honest a lot of the time refereeing decisions have far more mileage, especially in often otherwise dull games.

But that said, when refereeing decisions do go against your team it can be really infuriating when you know that a quick replay of the event by the fourth official, and a word in the refs ear, would have easily set things right. You generally have to hope that such decisions even themselves out over the course of a game/season/tournament. Last night's event was slightly different in that it was a one off (over two legs of course) knockout play-off game, so one bad decision against you could be, and was, disastrous. When huge amounts of money are involved in the outcome of a game, or it involves missing out, or not progressing in, a major tournament, I can see that video refereeing may be very welcome.

But, I'm still not entirely swayed back to the arguments for video refereeing. I'd like to see something else first, although it may be far harder to implement than video reffing, and that's trying to make the players more honest! This again is something that's been bandied about in football discussions for quite a while, whether it's been trying to stop player diving, or trying to stop them abusing referees. Often the argument goes "Rugby [or insert your idea of the most honest and respectable sport here] players don't fake injuries (hehe), or abuse the ref, so why can't footballers be more honourable in their conduct?", and I still don't see why this idea of trying to make footballer's less inclined to cheat can't be encouraged more. This has started to some extent, via some disincentivisation, in that footballers who are caught diving after the event can face game bans and fines. But for things like blatant handballs that the referees/linesmen don't spot, how about having the players own up to these infringements straight away, and if they don't, and this is spotted afterwards, then they suffer similar consequence. To get more honesty it might just be a case that refs should start questioning players more when something untoward is noticed by opposition players. For example last night Shay Given was telling the ref that he'd seen a handball, so had the ref asked Henry what happened maybe be would have admitted it (as he did after the game!) - whether a player would admit it is why you'd have sanctions in place for dishonesty. It was interesting to read some of Trapattoni's comments after last night's game, when he said just that

"The referee had time to ask the linesman and then after to ask Henry... It would not have been the first time a player would have asked and it would not have been out of turn."

so maybe the onus should lie more with the referee than the player.

To be clichéd and just go back to the well trod "XXX players are more honest than footballers" argument that I mentioned, I'd just like to say that in some sports (e.g. snooker [some might argue it's not really a sport, and more a game, hobby or past-time, but in my eye's it has balls and they're being hit with something, so it counts as sport!]) players are expected to indicate whether they've committed a foul, and as long as you have mutual honesty from both sides things work out fine. I don't expect football players to now start confessing their every onfield indiscretion to the ref, but for certain things if the ref asks them what happened I'd hope they could be honest about it.

At the start of the post I said that one of my dislikes of video refereeing was that it might makes games less exciting to discuss by taking away the controversy. I think my idea could well make thing's even more dull, but at least it'll be honest! ;)

We urned it!

I'm mainly writing this post so I could use that lovely pun as a title, but well done to the England Cricket team for taking back the Ashes. We just have to try and go over there and win it some time! As ever there ends my expert cricket analysis.

If you want to be a record breaker

[I planned to post this last night, but didn't have an internet connection. It seems today even more medals have been forthcoming!]

I just saw a replay of the mens 100m final and was, along with everyone else I assume, blown away by Usain Bolt's performance. He just made it look so easy and got himself a new world record to boot. As soon as he got his head up from after the start he powered away from the rest of the field and looked so relaxed. He knew he'd won from about 40m into the race. It was an sublime performance to do so well whilst also making it look so natural, reminiscent of how Michael Johnson always seemed when he ran. He's also a relative novice 100m sprinter compared to the rest as this was only his ninth competitive 100m he'd run and he's only 21! Another thing about Bolt is that he seems like a nice guy compared to the general arrogance of most sprinters. Contrasting to Bolt was Asafa Powell who did what he has continually done in major finals, which is choke. He should have been pressing Bolt for the gold, but in the end didn't even medal.

As long as I'm talking Olympics I should mention the British team's excellent performance today. Firstly Rebecca Adlington in the pool has done us proud. Our mens rowing fours has kept up the almost impossibly high expectation that Redgrave and Pinsent have generated in the event by winning gold in an exciting race that required a very strong last few hundred metres to fight back against the Australians. In the velodrome Wiggins and Hoy also kept up the great form to give us a couple of golds. I think this weekend could be a good medal haul for us, but this is unlikely to continue through the week as our general Athletics team is still pretty weak.

A game of four quarters

You may have noticed a lack of posts from me about Euro2008 (other than the initial one from just before the tournament started) and assumed that this was down me being completely disinterested by the whole thing because England aren't in it. Well if you did assume that then you'd be wrong as I've been avidly watching as many games as possible (probably about 85% of games so far.) It's been quite relaxing to not have to worry about when England were going to let me down, so I've been getting quite a lot of enjoyment out of just watching games for the football's sake.

So far the tournament's been pretty good, although the quarter finals have shown how variable in quality the games can be. The Portugal vs. Germany game started off the quarters quite well with an open game, a good number of goals and an exciting finish, but Portugal definitely weren't the team they'd been in the group stages and Germany's full backs were still as motionless and drab as before. The Croatia vs. Turkey games was a dull, uninspiring affair for a good 115 mins of regular and then extra time. It was only saved by the shear craziness and excitement of the last few minutes, with Croatia looking all but through with their late goal and then conceding an equiliser with literally the final kick of the game. This produced the lottery (yeah it's a cliché, but what you gonna do) of a penalty shoot-out, with Turkey coming out victorious. This now lines up what will hopefully be a tasty encounter between Germany and Turkey, which should be rather interesting to watch here in Hannover with its large Turkish community.

In the other half of the draw we started off with an interesting and good watch in the Netherlands vs. Russia game. The Dutch never seemed to really get going into a flowing style and the Russian's just outplayed them with pace and tenacity. I think that the young (he's only 21 you know, as the German commentators were very fond of pointing out) Russian Arshavin (and yes I had the same thoughts about his name as Andrew Collins) will be snapped up by some big side during the summer. In contrast to that game we had a very lacklustre show for Spain vs. Italy. Neither team seemed to want to go at the game and win it, with lots of slow, dull build ups leading to nothing. To be fair Italy hadn't shown signs of wanting to play in the previous games, but I'd expected more from Spain. In the end a penalty shoot-out was probably the best option, as neither team deserved to win from what they'd shown in the previous, tedious, 120 mins, and it at least gave us viewers some tension and excitement.

One major disappointment about the quarter finals is that they've not been kind on my fantasy football team. I had no Russian or Turkish players, as I'd stuck with the more conventional teams. Now I just have to decide whether to go all out crazy and compose my team of players from the two teams that I think are going to win the semis, or have a general selection from the 4 teams left.

The Italian Job

So today we (aka the England football team) had our first outing under the new management of Italian coach Fabio Capello. We won 2-1. It was just a friendly against Switzerland, but it was always going to be a bit more interesting than a regular friendly because of the interest in what the new manager would do. He set out with a 4-5-1 formation with Rooney as the lone striker to start with, and called up the not-so-regulars Jenas and Bentley to start in the midfield. The first half started off at a rather dull and slow pace. There were lots of sloppy passes and neither team showed much in the way of crisp, decisive forward play. Things were fairly even and stable, but boring as fuck - things looked not much better than in the prime of the McClaren era. Why England don't play internationals at the pace of the Premiership I just don't know, but when we did decide to up the tempo in the last 10 minutes of the first half things improved drastically. We got balls into feet, got people in space and enabled the ball to be played into people in their natural attacking positions, which was how we got the first goal - a neat bit of passing into Joe Cole, who was then able to take on a defender one-on-one and slot the ball into Jenas in front of then net. Things didn't keep at such a pace for the second half, but we did show far more flare and cut out a lot of the sloppiness that had dominated the first half. Gerrard, who so often has lacked when it came to England games, did really well taking up a centre-left role and pushing forward. When the England substitutes were made things didn't fall apart, and with Crouch coming on the were some more attacking options. Overall Bentley, Cole and Rooney were most impressive (Rooney's work rate and occasional touch were as good as ever.) I've been rather positive here, but during the match I was still disappointed with the first half attitude. The goal we conceded was fairly undefendable i.e. the Swiss striker hit the ball really early and the defender (Ferdinand) and keeper had no real chance of getting to the ball, so wasn't too disappointing. But I think that the team can show a bit more cohesion and will do from playing together more under their new regime. It's been a reasonable start for the new manager, but I don't want to count my chickens just yet as things could easily have been different if we'd conceded a goal before scoring our first and our head had gone down.

Despite the brief flush of football success the less said about our second half performance in the weekend's rugby the better!

Playing with the big boys

Today the big clubs (in which I of course include Watford) enter the FA Cup fray to do battle with the lower league minnows. There're still three non-league teams in the mix with British Gas Business League Division One team Chasetown currently taking on Championship team Cardiff City (GOAL FLASH: WTF! Chasetown are 1-0 up after an own goal!), and later today Havant & Waterlooville take on League One high fliers Swansea and Cambridge Utd take on Wolves. The big game, in my eyes is, Watford's clash against fellow Championship team Crystal Palace in which we'll have to improve on our recent poor run if we're to get a result. Other people may argue that the biggest game of today is the all Premiership tie of Aston Villa versus Man Utd, but what do they know!

In other sports news today sees the start of the BDO World Darts Championships in Lakeside Leisure Complex, Frimley Green. I think the big match of the first round might be Martin "Wolfie" Adams versus Phil Nixon which is a repeat of last years final! Can I hear a "LETS PLAY DAAAAAARRRRTTTSS!.

[Update: We won 2-0, hurrah!]

The Pitkin of Free Enterprise

A few weeks back I decided that I'd join a university club of some sort, so that I'd have something extra to do of a week. A friend had recently joined the university surfing club, and a water-based sport sounded quite appealing, so I went for the canoe club. The canoe club has sessions in the university swimming pool on Thursday's where you get to practice your paddling skills and learn new techniques and so far I've been along to two of these. Despite the name of the club it's actually kayaking (rather than canoing) that they do, and it's far harder than I'd thought it would be. Last week I think I managed to capsize a record number of times, and when not having my head under the water I was generally going in circles (when I was really wanted to go straight.) The number of capsizes was helped by the fact that my kayak was filling with more and more water and therefore sat far lower in the water. I'm hoping that my ability to stay upright, and go in the direction I want to, will improve when I get more time in a boat. Next weekend I want to get out on one of the clubs trips to a proper river, where I'll get to spend far more time in a boat and can start picking up some proper control.

Despite my current lack of prowess in the kayak-stakes I can probably get up to speed on the drinking side of university sports club life more quickly - although probably should take that a bit slower. How better a way to get to know a new bunch of people than getting unintentionally pissed with them and singing karaoke? I can't think of one!

Finally!

In a major turn-up for the books yesterday's England v Israel Euro2008 qualifier was actually a decent game - for the English team at least. It was always thought that the Israeli team would be very defensive in this game (even more so than in their home leg in Tel Aviv), and in that they didn't disappoint - they only mustered a couple of meaningful attacks in the whole game - but that meant that England would have to keep up tempo and take the game forward. That's not been England's forte recently and things could have carried on in the same vein, but fortunately the team decided to play. There were a couple of interesting decisions in the squad forced by various injuries, like having Emile Heskey (who's not played for England for three years) and Gareth Barry (who's not played for England in over four years) in it, but their inclusions seems to have been one of Steve McClaren's best decisions since becoming England manager. Heskey was very impressive, and strong, in holding up the ball and knocking it on, and there wasn't a sign of his old trick of falling over at the slightest touch - he did however have a chance on goal that he should have done better with. Also very impressive was little Shaun Wright-Phillips who scored the first goal and had so much pace and energy during the game (we really don't need Beckham back down the right, he's just not got the pace or ability to run at and frighten defenders), unfortunately we didn't get to see Ian Wright's reaction to the goal up in the BBC pundits box. Deserving a mention are the performances of Joe Cole, Micah Richards (who scored and is looking like he'll be a regular at right back and probably push Gary Neville out the squad) and Michael Owen who scored one of his best ever England goals. The game was good because we took it to the Israeli's and didn't just sit back. Even when we'd scored a couple of goals we saw the opportunity to score more and kept things going. We should in fact have had more goals as on several occasions some great build up play was let down by poor finishing. Hopefully this will set us up well for Wednesday's game against Russia, although they'll likely be tougher opponents than Israel and will attempt a more attacking game.

After the football I watched the England v USA rugby game (our first game in the Rugby World Cup). Despite England winning (which they were expected to do easily against a team like USA) we played really poorly. It was a really dull performance that didn't show any real passion to win. It's not the most promising of starts given the performances of teams like New Zealand, Australia and South Africa in their opening matches.

Snooker loopy

The BBC Sport internet live text commentaries generally provide some pretty ammusing bits of prose, especially in the cricket, but here's a particlulary good bit from the current frame being played in the Mark Selby versus John Higgins World snooker final:
Denise Higgins is still laughing it up in the player's lounge - does she understand what's happening? YOUR HUSBAND IS GETTING HIS SPIRIT CRUSHED WOMAN!

From bad to worse

I chose not to write anything after England's dismal performance against Israel last Saturday in the Euro 2008 qualifiers. This was partly due to being inadequately able to express my contempt at the team and partly in the hope that we'd show some sort of improvement in form in Wednesdays match against the mighty Andorra. We won this game, but in a thoroughly unconvincing style considering the quality of our opposition. Now to many people a win might be enough and they'd settle for the much needed three points, but not for the England fan (or fans from quite a few other countries I expect). What we really wanted to see was the players give it some - I mean playing with some passion and looking like a team that's working well together - but this sort of spirit was clearly lacking (I only saw of the highlights of the Andorra game, but I did sit through the entire Israel game, and that was pretty depressing). We need the team to show these responses as it generally picks them up and makes them play better, it also gives us fans belief that the team want to win, rather than just turn up and jog around a field for 90 minutes. It's going to be a bit of a struggle, but we'll need to inject some spirit into the players (who constantly say that they're trying their hardest, but it definitely fails to show through in their game) if we're to progress to the finals next year. I should have heart though as Beckham still believes we can make it! I'll leave all the McClaren bashing to others!

A great results for Northern Ireland though, beating Sweden and going to top their group. If they can keep it up there might be a lot of England fans who become Northern Irish for a few weeks next summer!

Wembley, here we come (almost)!

As I was travelling to Italy I missed Watford's FA Cup quarter final tie against Plymouth Argyle, but on checking the results via the internet today I'm very happy to see we progressed. It seems, from the reports, that our success had a lot to do with our excellent keeper, Ben Foster, being on top form. In the semi-final we face the winner of the replay between Manchester United and Middlesbrough - this could see Foster up against the team who actually own him (Man U). We're only one step away from the final at Wembley now, let's hope we can do it. I think the FA Cup would be at least some consolation for the fact that we're going to be relegated.

And then there were 8

After a very fortunate win against Ipswich on Saturday Watford have been drawn against Plymouth Argyle in the quarter final of the FA Cup. They're the only non-Premier League club left in the competition, which should hopefully make things slightly easier for us - although they'll probably be more up for it than some of the Premiership clubs left in, particularly Arsenal and Manchester United who gave lacklustre performances at the weekend and have still got replays to get through. The Cup run will hopefully give us momentum and hope for the league, in which we have a crucial home game against Wigan on Wednesday. If we win it'll pull us up to 18th above West Ham and Charlton, a only be four points behind Wigan.

Away win

We've done what's eluded us so far this season, we've got an away win in the league! Yes, you heard it, the mighty Hornets went to deepest, darkest East London and bested West Ham 1-0. Apparently we were deserved winner, but I'll have to watch the highlights on MOTD this evening. It's the same score line we beat them with to get through to the next round of the FA Cup (in which we're playing Ipswich next Saturday by the way). This bring us to a glorious 18 points (I know we're still bottom of the table), only 7 points behind Wigan in the tantalising 17th spot. I can see us staying up I really can (ok that's just a fevered fantasy, but I'll live it for a few minutes).

[Update: I just watched the match highlights and it game was pretty eventful. There were two penalties: the first one was for us, and in reality was a fairly soft foul, but Henderson slotted it home; the second was for West Ham, and maybe should have earned Gavin Mahon a red card, but the Hammers missed it. Phew! There were a few other near misses from both sides. Mackay cleared/deflected a goal bound Tevez shot, and Foster had to make a great save to keep us ahead. Foster did, however make a bit of a blunder when he dropped the ball in his area whilst Zamora was hassling him, luckily he somehow managed to snatch it back off Zamora before he could get a shot on. I'm just happy we got the win.]

In England rugby news we got a 20-7 win against Italy today. It was however a rather dull game compared to last week's Six Nations opener, so there's not really much to say about it.

One man army

After a year (well a bit more than that actually) of utterly dire play the English rugby team have finally put a smile back on their fans faces. We started off the Six Nations with a 42-20 victory against Scotland at Twickenham. This was thanks in a large part to one man - Jonny Wilkinson. Now there's a lot of hype surrounding Jonny's return to the England set up and it risks being blown out of all proportions, but his performance today was just great - and this is from someone who's been out injured and not played for England in three years, and who's only played 40 mins for his club this season! I think this injury factor makes people feel for Jonny a bit more than other players and adds to the hype. There's also the fact that he was one of our World Cup heros, which means in England fans eyes he's something of a legend. I can imagine it was a fair risk including him at all, but I think he showed why he can be so important to the team. Just talking about Jonny does a disservice to the rest of the team like Harry Ellis, but as I don't follow rugby much except for internationals I don't really know who the majority of the team are, so I can't talk much about them. One match can't tell everything though, so we'll have to wait and see if the team can keep it together and build up to something decent in this World Cup year.

And yes, I know that Jonny's try shouldn't have counted.

Two in a row

"We are in the fifth round. We are in the fifth round. Na naah naah na, na naah naah na!" My singing is due to Watford beating West Ham 1-0 to get through to the fifth round of the FA Cup. This gives us two wins in a row, a feat we've not achieved all season. We're on a roll! The next team to face us must be shaking in their boots ;) Obviously I was sorry today to see Luton Town go out of the competition to Blackburn.

Three points

I got the surprise of my life today when I opened up Mozilla and Footiefox showed a Watford win! We beat Blackburn 2-1. And I didn't even know we were playing last night. That's only our second win of the season and gives us a grand total of 15 points - still 7 points away from the safety of 17th in the league unfortunately!

Masters

The final of the snooker Masters this evening saw a blinding display by Ronnie "The Rocket" O'Sullivan. Ronnie was playing the young, up-and-coming Chinese player Ding Junhui, who's had a great tournament so far. At the start of the match Ding set off very well taking the first two frames. Recently Ronnie has been one of the most unpredictable players around and you never know if he's just going to get frustrated with himself and fall to pieces. However today he was at his very best and was completely unstoppable when he got in the balls. He chalked up high break after high break. Up until today every time I've seen Ding play he's been unflappable and not shown any signs of pressure no matter what the situation. This time with Ronnie completely controlling the game, and an annoyingly vociferous crowd shouting out for Ronnie all the way through, Ding finally broke. With the game at 8 frames to 3 for Ronnie, Ding was completely dejected and walked out at the mid-session interval having to be consoled by the Rocket. Ronnie won it 10-3. Overall it was fantastic to watch Ronnie on his top form and when he plays like that you know that he's the best in the world.

Let's play DARTS!

This evening saw the riveting final of the BDO World Darts Championship between world number 1, Martin "Wolfie" Adams, and rank outsider and house husband, Phil "Nixy" Nixon (not quite as original a nickname there for Phil!) I missed the first half of the match and when I started to watch Wolfie was up 6 sets to nil, requiring only one more set to be crowned Champion of the WORLD. "That's it, the match is over." I, and everyone else, thought, but boy were we wrong. Set after set I watched the dynamic comeback of the man from County Durham (that would be Nixy). His comeback was partly because Adams fell apart on the doubles and missed several opportunities to clinch the match. However it was a really gutsy performance as Nixy managed to pull the game back to 6-6 with the crowd getting more and more behind him. In the final set Adams managed to get back on his game and won the three legs required to take the title - although his anxious wife had had to leave the venue as she couldn't watch. That's it from Lakeside for another year, but I look forward to seeing the likes of the Count, Wolfie, the King, Johnboy, the Viking (get well soon Andy) and of course Bobby George next year.

Into the fourth round

Watford came back from a goal down to put in a 4-1 win over Stockport in the third round of the FA Cup. It nice to see us put in a few goals for once and it's something I'd like to see us reproduce in the league - unfortunately most Premiership teams are a bit harder to score against that teams from the mid-table of League 2. The draw to see who we'll be taking on in the next round is tomorrow. I'm hoping for another lower league team to try and give us a decent cup run as it's pretty much a certainty that we'll be relegated at the end of the season.

Bring out the white paint

The inevitable has finally happened. England have lost the Ashes to Australia in a 5-0 whitewash for the first time since the 1920-21 Ashes. After a very poor start in the first two tests by England, there was about a day of hope garnered from some decent performances in the third test, which England then went on to manage to lose. The fourth test we managed to lose by a whole innings! And the fifth test... well what was the point really! Obviously the Australians deserve a lot of praise and respect as they're bloody good at the game. With some of their oldest, and best, players retiring after this tournament they had a bit of a point to prove. Still I'd have hoped we'd have managed at least one draw! I think the enthusiasm about English cricket generated after the 2005 Ashes win has all but ebbed away now. I very much doubt any of our players will be in line for BBC Sports Personality of the year come December.