Thank You Girl

Today in the U.S. of A. they are celebrating thanskgiving. You're meant to eat a fine dinner, say what you're thankful for (the founding fathers, God, Guantanamo Bay, etc.) and then watch the nfl matches. Seeing as after the summer I am an honourary yank, I'm going to follow suit. I just ate a fine dinner (thanks ma!), watched Green Bay pummel Detroit, and now I'm going to declare my thanks for last night. Did I spend it with a special lady? No. Did I win the lotto? Nope. Did I watch one of the best football matches ever, a match that showed up all the hubris and arrogance of a nation and a team so beautifully? I sure did.
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Croatia play a great brand of football; strong in defence, tireless in midfield, and skillful in attack. They don't have a single weak player, and yet they were a 7/1 shot to win. The BBC panel unamimously said beforehand that they fancied their boys to win comfortably. Eight minutes in and they were losing after Scott Carson took out his bucket and spade and let the ball be a mere distraction in his day at the seaside. Shortly after, they were two down. England huffed and puffed, with "world class" Stevie G misplacing his brain for an extended period while running around aimlessly to show his "passion". England were hilariously awful, Croatia were attractive and effective. How were they a 7/1 shot?!
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When Petric smashed in the winner, me, my Da, and two of my brothers went crazy. We were all wearing Croatia shirts and I wanted them to win so badly. It was a victory for style, passion, substance, skill, and brains over lunacy, arrogance, and stone-aged football.

Thank you
Thank you
Thank you!

Lady Maradona (She's Leaving Home)

I have written before on this page about the psychological and socialogical reasons why people are fanatical about sport, with particular reference to football. The central point has usually been that sport offers faith without religion and rules. There are no ten commandments, and you know that these gods (Tony Yeboah/Shay Given) and devils (Kevin Nicholls/Steven Ireland) actually exist. It is an opportunity for you to shout abuse at people who are far better at their job than you will ever be. Allow me to develop these points further.
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Every religion has its type of place of worhsip, and every parish (or the equal of a parish) has its own church that is in some way unique. The community will gather once a week in the place of worship and sing, swear allegiance, and talk about their lives. After church, people gather and gossip and generally become a communty. When someone is a regular part of one congregation and is thrust into a situation where he has to visit another religion, another church, or another community, it feels weird and impersonal. There is sometimes genuine fear or animosity for those that pray elsewhere with different words, songs, buildings, and accents. This difference gives the lost church-goer a false sense that his usual practices are somehow better than his temporary visit to the dark side. It's all the same though, because everyone in every religion is striving towards the same thing. They want to have that feeling of community and faith, but more importantly they want to turn around on the day of reckoning and tell all the non-believers and wrong-believers 'I told you so! Na-na-na-na-na!'
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The parallel between the church-goer and the ground-going football fan continues if we look at the idea of a day of reckoning. Christians believe, apparently, that Jesus will come back and save all the believers and that there will be judgment and heaven and hell and all that jazz, and so the church-goer continues to go to church even though there is no evidence for this. Wouldn't it be the ultimate Murphy's law moment if you stopped going to church one week and Jesus comes back the next and you're screwed? 'Sorry man, you turned your back last week. Maybe go to purgatory for a stint and I'll see if a spot in heaven becomes available', 'Ah but Jesus, I wore your t-shirt for years. I loved you man! And why the f*ck did you wait over two thousand years to come back?!', 'Ah, I just wanted to see how far I could push the whole resurection thing'.
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I don't believe that Jesus will return and all the good people will be saved, and neither do most Christians if you really ask them. The evidence is lacking or exceptionally weak. So it looks like hell for me (bring it on!). But wait! I'm just as bad as a Christian who keeps going to church even though they know it's not going to save them. I believe that Leeds United will one day be great again, will win the premier league, and will make all of this penance worthwhile. I also believe that Ireland can qualify for the next world cup, that Robbie Keane is a world-class centre-forward, and that the San Diego chargers can still win this season's superbowl. The evidence for this actually points to the opposite, so in a way I'm much worse than the church-goer! Oops.
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Every parish needs a congregation, and every congregation needs a church. You can re-arrange the words 'parish', 'congregation', and 'church' in that last sentence and it would still be the case in every instance. They are inter-dependant. Being a Leeds fan in Ireland, I don't get to attend as many games as I would like, so I suppose my church is Lansdowne Road. Sorry, my church was and will be Lansdowne Road. It was a fairly terrible ground - windswept and out of shape, dirty and aesthetically disgusting. But I loved it. Some of the best moments of my life occured in there, and some of the saddest. Diego Maradona made his international debut in there. Jason McAteer scored that goal against Holland in there. English thugs ripped up seats and threw them to the lower tier at a frightened eight year-old boy called Hugo in there. Just like the corner shop that I used to buy the milk in that shut down, I only appreciate that this toilet of a sports stadium is actually a place of emotions and human interaction when I can't go there anymore. Being in Croke Park for international football is like a Protestant vicar telling his congregation that the church is going to be rebuilt, so for a few years they would have to meet in the Catholic Church up the road. Wow it's bigger! Wow it's nicer! But I'm so far away from the pitch and I don't see the same people in the same places. I want to go home, but home is gone.

Happiness is a warm gun

It's time to get serious. Italian football is a notoriously dangerous and male-orientated world of corruption, politics, violence, and death. Last weekend saw the death of 26 year-old Lazio fan Gabriele Sandri, who was shot twice inside a car when a policeman from a patrol stationed nearby opened fire to stop nearby clashes between fans. He was travelling north for a match between Lazio of Rome and Internazionale of Milan, when his party met a group of Juventus fans by a petrol station in Tuscany (why were there Juve fans there?). Italy police chief Vincenzo Giacobbe has been quoted as saying the death "...was a tragic error". It is far too easy, however, to merely say that this was an error and that life can go on as before. This must be the turning point.
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To understand why Italian football has a history of this sort of thing, one must start at trying to understand Italy as a whole. Italy, as a geographic area, is quite an easily recognisable entity, with a large 'boot' penninsula strethching from the Alps in the north right down into the centre of the Mediterranean sea. This land, however, was only brought together as a state in the latter part of the nineteenth century, and it is not a 'nation' as such. Everything in Italy is complex and not easily definable. It is a land of many languages (Italian is not really a language, it is more a simplified version of various provincial and city dialects, some of which are not much like each other), many political parties, points of view, and ways of life.
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This polarity translates into football in a way that other countries can't fathom. This polarity is there every week and in every match. Inter vs Napoli is not a battle for three Serie A points, it is a battle between right-wing vs left-wing, north vs south, rich vs poor. The real match is played out between the two sets of fans, who will roll out banners in front of the stand with highly offensive remarks and slogans written across them. They will rout out the travelling supporters hours before kick-off and attack them. They will find out some distant historical fact or myth between the two towns and use that as an excuse for war.
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On the other hand, we have an occasion such as yesterday's 0-0 bore draw between Bolton and Middlesbrough in the Premiership. It's a nothing match between two nothing clubs who represent two nothing towns. If such a fixture were between two Italian clubs, say Bologna and Fiorentina, it would become a tense and epic battle between left and right, two sets of fans who loathe each other. In Italy, the match itself is quite often of inferior importance.
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The Italian male lives a life that is very different to the northern European male. The former will often live at home with Mama will into his thirties and middle age. It is rare for a man to move out before he is married. Most football 'ultras' (the name given to fans who regularly attend away games, make banners, etc.) are between 20 and 35, and their ferocity of fanaticism can be loosely attributed to their meek and uninteresting domestic lives. While most English men move out for university or for work much earlier, and as a result they are less fanatical about the upcoming game because they go out to clubs, go on holidays with their mates, and generally live more promiscuous and fast-paced lives. The domesticated Italian uses the football stadium and its environs as a release from his mundane life. The away match is the substitute for the lads' trip to Ibiza. Sadly for Gabriele Sandri, he will never have the chance to leave home, leave this life, and live as men are meant to live.

Come and get it

I love sport, all shapes and sizes. My morning ritual goes like this; get up, shower, and before I've dressed or put on the kettle, I check the news to see who Northampton have taken on loan from Portsmouth or how England are doing in their test match against Sri Lanka. I need to know these things, and my aid is my television and my computer. I love these devices. I have realised something, however, and it is that most people seem to think that sport exists solely on screens. Sure, I like seeing a slow-mo replay of a great tackle or goal, or being in a position to know whether the wicket-keeper dislodged the bails before the batsman grounded his toe (bizarrely, this has JUST happened this minute in a 20-20 match in front of me between Bangladesh and Pakistan). Yes, television is handy for these things, but the armchair fan is missing out on so much.
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The original purpose of sport was to entertain people, whether they are playing or spectating, in the brief time off they had between shifts in the mine or on the farm. Time was special, so they would invent games. If you look at more 'upper class' games such as golf or cricket, you can see how and why they came about - you can only play golf if you have a few acres of land handy, and you can only play cricket if you can afford to take a few days off. The sports that are recognised for their 'fan' culture are those that are shorter, faster, and centralised in one small-ish area (football and rugby for example), where thousands of locals can turn up and shout for their town or city. This has been eroded by modern SkyTV culture, who have taken the man out of the ground and on to the couch. I don't blame Sky at all, however, and this is not an anti-Sky rant. My beef is mainly with the "fan" who doesn't ever even consider actually going to see some live sport.
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"But it's too expensive"
- Possibly. But entry to a league of Ireland match is about ten euros. Season tickets offer great value to any sporting club too. Infact, the powers that be at clubs are figuring out that their prices are too expensive, and are offering deals that suit better.
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"But the coverage is so good on TV"
- Unless you're watching Bill, Giles, Eamon, and Chippy Brady, you are grossly incorrect. Jamie Redknapp is a knob, Andy Gray is a loud twat, and those Sky Rugby lads Dewi Morris and yer man Barnes are possibly the two most annoying and unknowledgeable men ever. They should be shot. Watching analysis on telly is nothing compared to being in with a witty and passionate bunch of fans.
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"I don't have the time"
- You should. All work and no play makes so-and-so a dull boy.
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"I don't like sport"
- You have not yet lived.
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The following extract is from Tim Parks' 'A season with Verona' and shows my point beatifully. The background is that a bunch of about 45 Hellas Verona fans have travelled 550 miles through the night to see their team play Bari on the opening day of the season. Sent into the ground over an hour before kick off by the police, they have passed the time by chanting horrible insults to the early Bari fans...
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'Then finally there's a moment of wild comedy, a moment that unmasks the mad theatre of it all. They've been at it a good twenty minutes, Pista and Glass-eye, leaning over the parapet, shrieking insult after insult at the sparse huddles of Bari fans all around, when a particularly strong gust of wind carries off Glass-eyes cap, his Verona-champions-of-Italy 1985 cap. It soars up in the air, sails beautifully across the high fence at the side of the segment, crosses the gap between segments and lands gently on an empty section of terraces defended by a line of policemen who have evidently been positioned to prevent any Bari fans from running up to the fence and throwing things at us.
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'I've lost my hat, give me my hat back!' Then rather surprisingly Glass-eye adds, 'Per favore, please!' And then: 'Dio Boia, give me back my hat!'
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The police won't budge. They have their blue riot helmets and gas canisters. There must be three hundred police to about forty-five of us.
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'My hat, Dio boia, my old hat.' It wouldn't be easy to get hold of a genuine 1985 Verona champions of Italy hat. 'I was ten years old, Dio can!' Verona are not likely to be champions again. Faced with such a grievous loss, Glass-eye suddenly seems to be acting like the most normal of people. 'Ragazzi', he shouts to the Bari fans beyond the police. 'Abbiate pietá!' Have mercy. His voice is hoarse with yelling. 'Please, can you get me my old hat!'
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The Bari fans all have red and white scarves. A couple of youngsters move up to the police line, but the police turn them back. The wind is howling. The litter is shifting back and forth and the hat twitches and rolls on the terraces. The Verona fans begin to shriek at the police: 'He only wants his fucking hat. What's wrong with you? Aren't you human. Animals! Our taxes pay for you.'
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The stand-off drags on for about five minutes. The police are impassive. Their orders are to keep the opposing fans apart at all costs. They look at the Veronese as if they came from another planet, some of them occasionally grinning at each other, the way one grins at the antics of a monkey at the zoo. Then at last two brave Bari fans rush through the police line and make a dash to the hat. A few policemen follow, but half-heartedly. They're not going to get rough with the locals. The fans pounce on the hat'.
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My first thought then was that the Bari boys were going to make off with the hat, as a punishment for all the insults they'd been hearing. Perhaps they would burn it, and chant Verona Verona vafanculo, staple cry of opposing fans. But in the event the tallest boy comes up to the fence, perhaps three yards from Glass-eys, and, waiting for a lull of the wind, concentrating so as to make sure the hat will go over the high fence and then cross the frightening gap in the cement floor, he tosses the precious thing into the air and it comes spinning down on our side.
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Immediately, the Verona fans are roaring approval. 'Ba-ri! Ba-ri!' the applauded. The Bari fans behind the police strike up a cry of 'Lecce Lecce vafanculo', Lecce being their nearest and so most-hated rivals. Taking the prompt, the brigate join in. 'Lecce Lecce vafanculo'. In the silence that follows, Glass-eye yells, 'Ok, enough of that, insults in the other direction', and, turning away from the fans to the left, who recovered his hat, he and Pista walk to the other side of the enclosure and start to insult the fans to the right.
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So, a situation has been created where the simple gesture of recovering a hat takes on huge significance in the teeth of concentration camp conditions. That Bari boy will go home proud to have faced the police and picked up that Verona Campioni d'Italia cap. How could he have experienced emotions if he'd watched the match on TV?

I should have known better

Before I embark on quest number 62 to find the meaning of life, I must apologise for not writing on this page for the past few weeks. You see, I was having the time of my life in America and I stopped thinking for a while. Completely, and utterly. My time in San Diego allowed me to bring another bunch of overpaid wastes into my heart, namely the San Diego Chargers. And now, as the song goes, my heart is full. The door is shut. I swear I won't squeeze in another bobsleigh team or pole-vaulting superstar. Nuh-uh. No sir-ee. Talk to the hand baby, my heart is now full.
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So, the chargers. Won 14 and lost 2 last season, winning AFC west and reaching the play-offs. Linebacker Shawne Merriman leading the league in sacks and LaDainian Tomlinson scoring a remarkable 28 TD's. Respected analyists tip them for the superbowl this year. Last Sunday night I stayed up on my own until half 4 in the morning to watch them lose, and lose badly, to New England. The name says it all, NEW ENGLAND. As a general rule, I've always disliked England sports teams. Now that I've got a new sport to follow, I've literally got a New England team to hate. Whoever named these places must have done so with the intention of making my life easier. I don't have to look around for a team to dislike, I have one there waiting for me - new sport, new England... They even openly cheat like their european namesakes!
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The chargers looked lathargic and horribly disinterested at times on Sunday, and it made me think - why the f**k did the powers that be hire Norv Turner as head coach? Old Norvy has been coaching since 1994, with just one play-off appearance and one 10 game winning season. I hate to kick a man before he's even gotten up, but... piss off Norv. New England (boooooo) scored a touchdown on their first drive - the magic Tom Brady releasing a pass that even I or a certain Chilean could have given, the receiver had more space to move into than Hitler during his policy of Lebensraum.
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The chargers join a select band of beasts that have won a place in my heart (or sneaked in the backdoor without me noticing). I feel as though I'm a Mormon or an Arab with a full court of wives, or just a plain bigamist. If I'm charged with bigamy, I may have to feign devotion to Allah or Joseph Smith. How do I keep all of my wives happy?
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The legend that is Hugh Hefner has numerous girlfriends, how does he do it? Well, he has his favourite, Holly, and so do I. Holly is the woman that he sees the most and sleeps with the most. He wears her on his arm in public. Like Holly, Leeds United is blonde and older than my other wives. She used to be pretty but is now much uglier than the rest, trying to patch-up her appearance every few months with botox (Ken Bates) and lipstick (Dennis Wise). I'll never abandon her though, and I have no choice but to sleep with her 46 times this year.
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With such a collection of wives, I'm quite lucky that I was only entered into one arranged marriage agreement, and that arrangement was made by my father for me. Ireland. I had no choice! Oh lord won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz, my friends all drive Porshes - I must make amends! When the arrangement was made when I was four years old, Ireland wasn't pretty, but she had the results and gave birth to some wonderful children (Bonner, McGrath, Keano, the other Keano, etc). We used to be great in bed together, but then one day her accent changed from Geordie to Barnsley and she became prettier but more frustrating. We used to make love and it would seem like she was about to arrive at an ecstatic orgasm, only for her to do a big fart at the last minute instead.
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One of my wives seduced me through writing. I read a book ('A season with Verona' by Tim Parks) about an Englishman living in Verona following the mighty Hellas Verona through an arduous season. Beautiful Verona, when she first spoke to me in 2001, had special foreign eyes which she called Adrian Mutu and Mauro Camoranesi, a long slender neck called Martin Laursen and various other parts of her body that she called Gilardino, Oddo, Frey, and Cassetti. She ran into trouble, however, and had to sell her prize assetts to supermodels called Milan, Juventus, Inter, Chelsea, and Parma who needed to give themselves their annual makeover. Now, poor Verona is as ugly as sin and sitting at the foot of Serie C with one point from 3 games.
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Forza Hellas! Forza la brigate! Vicenza vafanculo!
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My most recent wife seduced me from a faraway land earlier this year. The land was in the west and made up of islands - the caribbean. A group of kids, aussies, protestants, and a springbok all called themselves Ireland and grabbed some bats and balls and played cricket. And won.
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WHAT'S THIS? We're good at cricket? Get out of here! Are you SERIOUS? Jeepers, I better join the ride!
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When I saw my new wife from afar, she looked great. She danced when things went her way and for an Irish woman, she was strangely exotic. She sent me pictures and videos for 6 weeks and when she returned to her native Isle, I took it upon me to visit her in person. She was hideous. She was all out for 63 and didn't have clue what to do when it came to love-making. I married her though, and that's a marriage for life.
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And now my heart is full, I should have known better.

If I Fell

I am going to present a simple hypothetical situation, and at the end of it I want YOU to leave a comment showing which position you would go for and why...
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Ok, let's pretend that this scenario is real, and that a thrid option of 'turn away' or 'nigs' is not available. Imagine that there is a cliff infront of you, and on top of this cliff is a bounty of money (say £10,000) or something very desirable (a car, a women, a man, a realisation, an antique , etc.) that you would rather have than not have. It is entirely possible, infact probable, that you may reach the top of the cliff while climbing and claim the prize. There is, however, a 10% chance that you will fall while climbing and either die or be seriously injured. You have the option, however, of having a safety net placed below you, so that If you fell from the cliff-face you would be saved from almost certain hardship and probable death. This service is not entirely free though, and you would have to sacrifice, say, 25% of the potential bounty in order for it to be set up. So, guaranteed life and safety and the potential to gain a prize, at the expense of a meta-personal body/party being responsible for your safety. Remember, the option of 'I wont climb the cliff '(there are no harnesses and such by the way, the safety net is all) is, for whatever reason, not available. Which would you choose? Would you go for a full prize with a 10% chance of almost certain death? Or would you go for 3/4 of the prize with your safety intact? If you chose the latter, you might feel agrieved that you have just given away £2,500 for something that ended up being entirely useless, as you may have just climbed the cliff without falling. If you chose the former and risked life and limb for the full prize, you might feel stupid... no actually you wouldn't feel stupid at all, because you may be six feet under after falling!
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At this point, I won't tell you which option I would go for, but let's change the scenario somewhat. Imagine that there is a cliff of the same difficulty (ie. that you have a 10% chance of falling from) but this cliff is very long, allowing 1 million people to attempt its ascent simultaneously. Once again, there is a £10,000 bounty available for EVERY person should they succesfully climb the cliff, and once again there is the 10% chance of an individual falling and facing the awful consequences. With a million people involved, there is an almost definite chance of thousands of people falling. The option of the safety net is available, but it is a giant safety net and not one that can be chosen for the individual and not for the other individual. The net costs about 25% of the prize, but the decision to apply the net rests on a vote, with each vote carrying equal weight and a 500,001 quota needed to reach a decision one way or the other. If the vote were to end with the safety net being strung below the cliff, one might feel agrieved that they had voted against the measure and reached the top of the cliff only to receive 3/4 of the prize. But for most, the satisfaction of having saved numerous lives and given people the opportunity to attempt the cliff-face again (with the safety net there, one may attempt the cliff any number of times that they can until they die) would assuage their initial grievances. Which is the correct option? A million people attempt the cliff with no safety net and a full prize available, most reaching the top and living well but thousands dying? Or, a million people attempt the cliff with a 3/4 bounty available and nobidy dying of anything but natural disease and old age?
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If you think that there should be no safety net, you have agreed with the principle of non-state intervention free-market low-tax capitalism.
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If you think that the safety net is a wise,good, and just option, congratulations, you have just agreed with the principle of democratic socialism!

Why don't we do it in the road?

In 1968, Paul McCartney recorded a song that can be found on the beatles' white album with the above title. It's a pretty short, simple song - it only has two lines and three chords and is 1m42s long- but it raised a thought in me that I can't quite answer. Why don't we actually do it in the road? Needless to say, most people would answer that they don't wish to see that sort of thing all around them, but why is this the case? Why are humans the only species that deem it necessary to have sexual morals of this kind? A corollary of this question is; why do people wear clothes on roasting hot days? Well, of course I do because to not do so would result in arrest and humiliation, so it's wise for me to wear clothes even if it's boiling outside. I asked somebody these two related questions recently and they answered with the adam and eve and forbidden fruit and all that lark. I asked them if they truly believed it and they said that they believed it as an allegory or something...
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Would ya feck off! There ought to be a place where people like this can be rounded up and they can preach to their own converted with their miraculous lazy bullshit. Oh wait there is! Church!
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Anyway, back to my point; what reason can you give to say that everyone should wear clothes on very hot days other than to not do so would be weird and unappealing to the eye? Think about it. We have been indoctrinated through the ages with a code of ethics that are almost universally accepted that are merely self-serving and self-preserving, they owe none of their existence to any pragmatic and/or hygenic reason. I'm not urging you to go out naked tomorrow, as you can be sure that I'll be well covered up. What I do urge is that you question why you appear as you appear and do as you do. In ethical issues, there is rarely sanity in numbers.