It’s all a matter of opinion....and your’s stinks...

Want an opinion on the state of the nation? Screw all that market research, voter sampling or high street polling, this week’s new approved method is simply ask a Premiership footballer...

Not content with dominating our TV schedules these fine upstanding athletes are now appointing themselves as opinion formers too on issues as diverse as the weather, Brits enjoying themselves and even taxation.

Earlier in the week there was Nemanja Vidić’s shock revelation that there was ‘erm too much rain in Manchester’ and that we Brits didn’t know how to enjoy ourselves. Seriously has he never been out on the piss in Manchester of a Friday night?

Ahem anyway next comes Arsenal’s Emmanuel Adebayor stunning state of the nation address on the tax issue, saying if he were prime minister, "I would try to keep down the tax. In London I would like to change the congestion charge. And there’d be extra tax breaks for any strikers issuing come-and-get-me pleas to Barcelona or Milan.’

Okay maybe we made that last one up but whatever next? Dean Windass fronting a week in politics? John Terry heading a domestic policy forum or Rio Ferdinand becoming Foreign Office spokesman on the Russian-Georgian issue?

We await, as they say, developments.

Better to be lucky than good...

Well there’s plenty of transfer shenanigans on the board today as the window slowly creaks closed, but we’re ignoring the footy and dialling up our gloat gauge to max following England’s absolute thumping of South Africa last night, where we bowled them out for 83 or as it’s known colloquially in Croxley circles ‘a Fox score’*.

A great performance particularly from Stuart Broad who opened the door with a five wicket burst which was then barged wide open by The Fred and The Harminator. Even given the SAFs are looking a bit punch drunk and in danger of going off piste at the end of a long tour, it was still a great performance and a superb result.

England now look a pretty decent one day side, but it helps if you pick a balanced team and play the best man in each position. Selectors you appear to have listened.

Now we have to admit we had our misgivings about KP being named captain, but with three wins on the trot, he certainly seems to have the right stuff.

Nope not inspiring leadership, nor great tactical nouse and nuanced bowling and fielding changes, nor indeed the touchy touchy-feely approach he’s apparently taken to man management.

Nope, what KP has got in spades is luck and as the old saw goes and it’s always better to be lucky than good.

Let’s hope it holds out until around this time next year.


*Named after the lowly totals regularly achieved by the dear old Fox and Hounds, ‘The Worst Team in England’ as the Daily Torygraph once had it.

Value for Money

After the excitement of the Olympics, there’s not much cooking on the spurting front today* and we cast a desultory eye over the weekend’s footy with scarcely a backward glance.

We’re sure that’s a phrase that’ll resonate with Andriy ‘Sheva’ Shevchenko, England’s most expensive player and the Chelsea striker who never was.

Today Sheva’s slunk back to Italy with his tail between his legs completed a move back to his spiritual home at AC Milan for an 'undisclosed sum' after failing to make much of an impression apart from on Chelsea’s treatment couch (which now has it’s own permanent memorial Sheva arse-print).

Why this formerly most lethal of strikers couldn’t translate his finishing skills to the PremierShip remains a mystery. Injuries played a part no doubt, but he cast a forlorn figure under Jose Mourinho and big Phil wouldn’t even grant him an audience with the bench this season.

At £30m quid and just nine goals from 47 Premier League games that works out at around 333k recurring per goal which is not exactly a good return on Roman’s investment.

Still we remember the glory days or Sergei Rebrov (another failure in England) and Shevchenko banging them in for the Ukraine and Dynamo Kiev and we wish him well at the Milan home for retired warhorses.

*We did have a strange anecdote concerning ex-Indian skipper and ‘Prince of Calcutta’ Sourav Ganguly and the Sound of Music to fall back on, but we’ll save that for a rainy day.

Olympics Aftermath: The baton passes….

And so to Monday where we wake with a sense of sadness to find an Olympic size hole in our heart at the conclusion of Beijing 2008.

It’s been a fantastic games like they all are or at least they are all remembered, but for a change we’ll carry away fond memories of ‘spectacular British sporting success’ – and how often do we get to arrange words in that particular order in a sentence?

Nicole Cooke, Chris Hoy, Rebecca Addlington, those three Blondes in a boat and James De Gale, we salute you and lest we forget we must also pay tribute to all those other plucky Brit also-rans who restored a sense of proportion into our Gold-addled sporting brains.

Michael Phelps, Ussain Bolt, the 51 Chinese gold medallists too numerous to mention and weird, unusual and newly discovered gems like the Keirin and Taekwondo, we’re going to miss you all as we return to the now seemingly mundane delights of footy, cricket and F1.

As to the Olympics themselves, well they have been very Chinese in character. It’d probably be totally tasteless to make comparisons with Berlin 1936, but you know us, we go where other blogs fear to tread and while not quite in the same realm as the Games of the XI Olympiad, they've been a bit too adjascent at times for comfort it’s been difficult to escape the sense of state sponsored happiness and understated Chinese triumphalism.

It’d probably be going over the top to call it fully fledged sporting propaganda, but there’s no doubt China wanted to use these games to confirm itself as a major power reborn in the modern world – and possibly it’s churlish to blame them for using the opportunity to do just that. Besides engaging this closely with the wider world may just loosen them up a little and for that, we may all eventually have cause to be thankful.

So with the spectacular closing ceremony now fading into a rash of multi-coloured pixels the BBC’s i-player we have to ask, what will London 2012 do differently?

Well a different emphasis no doubt. There’s no way churlish Brits will lash out 20 billion quid on the games for a start, nor would you coral any right-thinking members of our populace into training up for four years as a bouncing pixel, no matter how spectacular it might look in the opening ceremony.

Nope, we’re aiming for the same impact but naturally on the cheap and we’ll probably do best to concentrate on our traditional strengths, areas where Team GB and GB itself does actually does rule the waves.

Erm, music’s about all we could come up with, so expect a reformed Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and the winner of the X-Factor 2011 all to have a big part to play.

Yet already our team of elite binge drinkers are training extra hard on the double vodkas this bank holiday Monday, the gaffe that will sink the games is just a mere twinkle in Boris’ eye (he’ll probably let the torch go out or something – cripes!) and the queen has put an enormous kettle on as she waits to welcome the world for a nice cup of tea.

London 2012, you can’t come soon enough.

Home advantage

OMG it's double post Friday!

Sneaking a spot of Olympics-watch into our lunchtime, we witness for the first time the delights of Taekwondo or ‘freelance kicking people in ze head’ as it should more properly be known.

A good showing by 17-year-old Brit Aaron Cook is tragically cut short by what can only be described as some highly dubious judging in the bronze medal boot off where the judges should’ve reported for duty at Specsavers rather than for an Olympic play off final.

While we would concede we’re no experts, even we could tell he’d stuck one on the Chinese guy’s bonce in the first round and that should have earned him two points rather than a charge of assault and battery.

Later rounds were no better and the judges were more homer than The Illiad. Young Aaron agreed opining: “I have never seen scoring like it in my life. In any other match I would have won by about five points but the judges were not putting anything up. I knew the crowd would be behind him but I didn't think the scoring would be that bad.”

Gutting for young Aaron no doubt, but don’t worry lad, home advantage should count for something next time. Problem is we’ll probably be too honest to take advantage. It’s a heavy burden to bear.

Home front

With all this Olympic golden glory going on it’s easy to (temporarily) forget just how shite we can be at conventional sport, but as Burt Bacharach observed 'there is always something there to remind me', in the case the English footy team.

A decent call naming John Terry England skipper earlier in the week and to all those surprised Rio didn’t get the nod, well JT’s (whoops that’s banned now under senor Fabio) erm rather Terry’s brand of chest-thumping-lead-from-the-front-never-say-die-bulldog-spirit-three-Lions-tattooed-on-me-soul captaincy is probably just what we need.

However a limpid, some might opine piss-poor display against the Czech's, following some very questionable selections: (Gerrard and Lampard in midfield together again? I thought we’d put that one to bed), make us start to doubt Senor Capello as the true Messiah.

We’ll reserve judgement until Croatia and a proper competitive game when the boys should have at least a modicum of fitness.

Surely it’s too early for the wheels to be falling off already?

Retreat Australia fair...

So it’s a historic games for Team GB and the biggest medal tally since that ancient Olympic games when the Greeks mistakenly allowed competitive drinking, high street fighting and chariot rage into the games and perfidious Albion swept the board.

Still there’s been some talk doing the rounds about how it’s all slightly devalued because GB has dominated in the cycling, sailing and swimming and not the ‘prestige’ athletic events.

Frankly, what a pile of crap. Gold is gold. You look at your talent, target what you’re good at, develop your potental and put your resources where you'll win. Simple as.

Most hilarious has been some classic sniping and snidery from the Aussies, who, five golds off the pace on Wonderful Wednesday, have claimed Britain is only good at ‘sitting down sports’

And the call us the ‘Whingeing Poms?’

Even funnier was Aussie Olympics committee’s John Coates who said GB hadn’t done bad in the swimming ‘for a nation with no pools and not much soap.’

There’s nothing bitter and twisted as an Aussie in second or third place or what is it now? Oh actually fifth place with eight of their eleven golds being won by the Sheilas.

Tell you what Bruce, how’s about we introduce sheep shearing, bestiality and freestyle sister chasing for 2012?

Few guaranteed golds for the Aussies in that trio.

“C’mon Paula – Free Tibet”

Despite our rather incongruous run of unprecedented success it wouldn’t be a British Olympics without some glorious failure and the ever dependable Paula Radcliffe not only delivered on Saturday night, but delivered in spades.

Nothing against ‘plucky’ Paula herself who was clearly struggling to put on her race face after a horrific injury and a vastly reduced training programme, but there was still enough in the performance which made you proud to be British.

Not Paula herself, despite the impressive Union Jack running shoes, but rather the fact that our assembled crew of Olympic watchers were willing to stay up until half three in the morning to watch her trail in a distant 22nd,

Sustained only by shots of ice cold vodka and hits on an apple tobacco bong (a vast lungful accompanied by cry of “Free Tibet!”), there were tears of course, (some of them even on screen), cries of ‘c’mon Paula and it was a true marathon in every sense.

Never mind the athletes, that’s true dedication for you.

Sour grapes

Another awesome morning for Team GB as Chris Hoy and Victoria Pendleton nab another couple of Golds in the Sprint finals for the all-conquering Cyclists.

Imagine when Normo Tebbs told Britain to get on its bike back in our last recession he didn’t exactly have this in mind. Wiggins, Pendleton and especially triple gold medallist and flying Scot Chris Hoy, the Spurt salutes you...

All this Gold medal success has come as a bit of surprise to us normally unassuming Brits but also to insouciant professional Frenchman and occasional Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger, who professes himself surprised at Team GB’s swimming success.

"I didn't know the English were good at swimming, I have been in this country for 12 years and I haven't seen a swimming pool," says Arsene.

Blimey no wonder they’re known colloquially as the smelly French, wonder how long it’ll be before he tracks down a bath or shower? Or checks the medal table? France a lowly 11th as we type.

Anyway those sour grapes shouldn’t disguise Team GB’s real goal of the games.

Forget that 41 medals target, our real goal is to finish ahead of those friggin’ Aussies.

Not only would it get one in before the Ashes, but earning four years worth of bragging rights, now that would be sweet.

They’ll be serving us a lot of drinks between now and then.

Fastest man on Earth

While Team GB filled their Golden boots all over the w/e we're forced to play catchup after a bout of the heebie jeebies catches us unawares.

Away from cheering on the plucky Brits on Saturday, we come onto first major prestige Athletics event, the 100 metre final which traditionally also confers the title of fastest man on earth. That's quite a billing but this is one of the blue ribbon Olympic events that not only manage to live up to the hype but easily out sprint it.

Cast as a thrilling three way between the USA's Tyson Gay, and Jamaicans Asafa Powell and Usain Bolt, the script's rapidly rewritten in the semi when Gay is tragically knocked out, He's not quite fit and in a sport where success is measured in hundredths of a second, 'not quite' is an eternity away.

And then to the final which is a heady ten seconds worth of concentrated adrenaline pure machismo and raw unadulterated speed. There's something powerful and eminently sexy about this race, but like great sex it's all about a sustained lingering build up of tension and then a raw uncontained explosion of passion.

You can see it in the sheer physical presence of the runners as they take their marks, you can hear it in the reverential hush from the crowd before the off and you can feel it in your own heart beat as it speeds that faster in a sympathetic echo of the runners'.

The gun fires and Jamaica's Ussain Bolt destroys the competition, simply annihilates them, leaving the field not so much trailing as floundering in his slipstream. Bolt keeps on going, almost defying comprehension by easing up 15 metres before the end, but still cruising home in a new world record of 9.69 seconds.

Bolt paraded his golden boots for the cameras (and his sponsors) but Hermes winged sandals would have been even more appropriate.

The Olympics: Undiscovered Gems - Keirin

It's World of Spurt live at the Olympics, well live in front of the telly at the Olympics anyway.

That curse of the wasted classes, work, has kept us from fully enjoying the Olympics from the correct perspective this week ie. loafing on a sofa for 12 hours at a time with only a crate of beer for company.

But with Mrs Spurt off on her travels again, we're free to laze around on Saturday and enjoy a bumper quota of Olympic sport.

It's been dubbed Golden Saturday in the UK, ie, the first weekend when we might cop a few, but amid some early rowing and swimming glory, we discover a splendid new offering in the velodrom in the form of Keirin

Now there's been a bit of muttering and snidery about the inclusion of Keiron, which was apparently mysteriously slotted in at the last minute to appease the lucrative betting markets, but seriously, what's not to like?

For those of you yet to experience its delights, Keirin involves a pack of cyclists racing to the line on an indoor track. Nothing new there then, but the twist? Well for the first few laps they follow around a bloke on a moped who gradually increases the pace until he zips off a couple of laps towards the end. From then on in its a straight sprint to the line,

Doesn't sound outstanding but its enthralling to watch, Keirin means 'fight' for starters even though they've apparently toned it down for the Olympics by removing the headbutting. A heady mix of strategy for the first few laps and then brute power and aggression for the last, with the occasional chance of crunching multi-bike stack it's our new favourite undiscovered sport.

In our view if they could just move it a shade closer to Rollerball, it would be absolutely perfect. But let's reinstate the headbutting for a start.

Doesn't hurt when Chris Hoy takes Gold and Ross Edgar Silver for Team GB either. Wonder if it's available on a satellite channel anywhere?

A new field of spurting endeavour that really gets your heart pumping and shouting yourself hoarse as you cheer your country over the line, now that is one of the true joys of the Olympics.

The genius of the Olympics Part 1: Womens' Beach Volleyball

Okay so not much time for an update today but if we had any lingering doubts before about the glorious games, now you can colour us convinced.

Three short words: Womens'. Beach. Volleyball.

This is a ‘sport’ in no doubt about its greatest assets, as a random sample of the commentary reveals.

“A great pair.” We were forced to agree.

“They’re in great shape” Again no dissenting voices from this corner.

Any sport which has maximum costume sizes and fit lasses writhing about in the sand for your viewing pleasure has to be applauded.

What’s that you say? A ball? There’s a ball? What ball?

*

And now one in what might possibly be a very short series:

Olympic word of the day: 'Winningest'

As in “Michael Phelps is the Winningest Athlete in Olympic history.”

Jesus you give these people a language and see what they do with it. Dictionary for American Network NBC someone….

Setanta Ranter

Today your super soaraway World of Spurt is proud to welcome guest columnist and Spurs fan (though we’ll try not to hold that against him) the redoubtable Stevie B for an impassioned plea on where your sporting subscription should or possibly shouldn't go this year

The football season hasn’t even started yet, but already a great black cloud of doom and despondency hangs over it. Which first appeared when the “official curtain-raiser” allegedly took place last weekend: the gloriously meaningless Community Shield (or whatever it’s called this year). Ordinarily, I’d watch that game eagerly, but there was no chance of that this year – it was televised by Setanta Sports, the TV equivalent of a house of cards. And having endured the misfortune of being a Setanta Sports victim, er customer, last year, there was no way I was going to make the same mistake twice. You, too, might be interested to hear of my aggravation at the hands of the most inept Irishmen since the last time the wrong drive got tarmacked.

As a Tottenham fan, I spotted one month, early last season, when Setanta was televising two Spurs games. Thinking I was being clever, I negotiated the Setanta automated phone system, checked the option for billing by post, and saw most of the two games (missing the first 15 minutes of the first one while I waited for my subscription to register on my Sky Plus setup). Then I sat back and waited for a bill, which I would pay before terminating my subscription.

Hopeless optimism. Naturally, no bill ever materialised. Equally naturally, £9.99 was removed from my credit card’s account each month. The next three months were spent mostly on the phone trying to get anyone – anyone – to answer my calls to what is carefully guarded as the only of contact with Setanta Sports: its automated phone line. Despite leaving my phone to ring for on occasions, two hours, it was never answered. The message was clear: once you subscribe to Setanta Sports it is impossible to unsubscribe. Physically impossible, that is.
I went on the website and found an email address for an alleged PR person. Copious emails, of course, went unanswered. I considered contacting Watchdog: clearly this was the sort of scam normally perpetrated by Nigerians claiming to have relatives in their country’s Government. Every few days, I’d try the hotline, to no avail (it goes without saying that the automated system has no option to cancel your subscription).

During this period, there may well have been Premiership games on Setanta Sports, but the astonishing ineptness of their punters and presenters (Steve McManaman: I ask you!) rendered the joys of Derby trying to scrape a nil-nil draw even less attractive than usual. And what else do you get on Setanta Sports? Well, just think of the least interesting sports in the world, enacted by the most bumbling practitioners, and you get a pretty accurate picture.

Eventually, my credit card went over its limit, so a payment failed to go through. Guess what? I received a call from a deliciously obnoxious woman. At last, I could cancel my ill-starred subscription. Or so I thought. Clearly conversant with the works of Joseph Heller, the joyless harpy came up with a stunning Catch-22, which sealed my rapidly growing conviction that Setanta Sports was indeed some sort of giant scam. I was told that I couldn’t cancel my subscription without paying the extra £9.99. I retorted that I had been trying to cancel my subscription for three months, but had been unable due to what seemed like wilful evasion on Setanta Sports’ part, and as far as I was concerned, I was two lots of £9.99 back. Computer says no.

I demanded to speak to computer says no’s boss. Another shrieking harpy, spouting that dread phrase “Terms and Conditions” at me – grounds enough, in itself, for having nothing to do with a company when that happens. The only way I could cancel that subscription, she reiterated, was for me to pay the £9.99. I ranted, somewhat cathartically (although it did scare the dog) and slammed the phone down.

By now, the injustice of the situation was affecting my mental state – have consumers’ rights been superseded by automated phone systems and Terms and Conditions? In so many ways, the digital age has returned us to the Dark Ages, but I’d never come across any organisation so keen to revel in that fact and, indeed, rub my nose in it. At least, not since the days when BT had its infamous monopoly after being privatised, and promptly posted a £2.8 billion profit.

Eventually calming down, I relented, and this time, it only took three or four twenty-minute efforts before I managed to get a human voice over the hotline. Now things took a turn for the surreal. I couldn’t pay the £9.99 because my credit card was no longer operational (thanks to those Setanta Sports payments that I never wanted to make, but couldn’t stop because Setanta Sports refused to answer my phone-calls). Could I pay via my debit card? Of course not. Why not? We don’t take debit card payments. My subsequent outburst sent the dog beneath the sofa.

Eventually, I had to send a cheque for £9.99 to Setanta Sports – registered post, of course, as they would surely have denied receiving it otherwise. The moment I handed it to the woman at the Post Office counter, I felt happier than I had done for three months. Indeed, I felt positively carefree until I heard that they had ramped up their football coverage this year, even taking in FA Cup matches at the BBC’s expense. This is the worst thing to happen to football since Sepp Blatter’s appointment.

Do yourselves a favour: don’t be taken in by Setanta Sports. Currently, a theory is doing the rounds which suggests they spent all that money on those rights in the hope that someone – generally held to be ESPN – will buy them up. A plan generally acknowledged to have been scuppered by the credit crunch. Further illustration of what muppets Setanta Sports are. Actually, that last statement may well have been libellous had Jim Henson still been alive.

If we refuse to subscribe, then even those money-grabbers at the Premier League and FA might realise what a crock the Setanta Sports deal is. Apparently they need 1.5 million subscribers to break even – I beg you not to let that happen. I know that pubs are no longer enticing places in which to hang out following the smoking ban, which is why so many of them are going bust. But we could make the best of two intolerable situations by making a point of going to the pub to watch football games televised Setanta Sports. Even if the sort of pubs that have Setanta Sports are inevitably populated by toothless, paralytic Irishmen. Isn’t the 21st century great?


By Stevie B

T’Olympics

So now all our cricketing bile has been expended we can turn our attention to Beijing and the quadrennial festival of Sports You Never Gave a Toss About Before and are Unlikely To Do So Again before 2012.

Now we’ve always been more of Winter Olympics enthusiasts ourselves, loving the snowboarding, gritting our teeth through the skiing and even extending our bi-curiousity to the curling on occasion, but we have to admit Beijing’s been a bit of a belter.

Now we’re quite traditional in our views and don’t normally experiment with spurt outside of the approved holy trinity of cricket, footy and F1, but perhaps we’re mellowing with age (or perhaps getting more feeble minded) because we find ourselves engaged by the many and varied delights of swimming (wtf?), weightlifting canoeing - Jesus we even sat through some showjumping the other night.

Nor has Beijing been without the requisite controversies: state run athletic programmes breeding success (as if that was anything new); accusations of Chinese judges being ‘homers’ (again quelle surprise) and a palpable lack of drugs cheats (though there’s still plenty of cycling to come, so all is not lost).

Perhaps worst of all to western eye is that poor Chinese diving lass who’s not been allowed any dinner for years.

Great stuff: Further, higher faster?

We could definitely help with the ‘higher’ part.

More Olympics coverage soon.

England v SAF series round up...

So it ended with a reasonably convincing England win at the Oval yesterday, but South Africa took the 2-1 series victory.

It’s been a difficult series to assess overall, particularly given we missed the decisive third test but we suspect it’s probably just about the right result and now the SAFs take over the mantle of the ‘side most likely to stuff the Aussies’.

It’s going to be a corker this winter, but where did it all go wrong for England? Well one word, ‘selection’. You’ve got to get the right team on the field for a start and virtually from the off, we simply didn’t do so.

From the confused selection of Pattinson, to the stubborn refusal to ice Ambrose, to just realising that you need a balanced side, to myriad other clangers, their were more howlers than a convocation of werewolves.

They say a series can hang on the smallest of details – but if you get the big ones wrong you simply don’t have a chance.

Perhaps most damage has been done with the resignation of Michael Vaughan, who though going through a bad trot, was still the best captain of recent years. Vaughan was a highly skilled all-rounder being both captain and batsman and the obvious solution to just drop down to the middle order simply didn’t happen.

But it’s done now and there’s no going back. As for KP? Well he’s certainly got the cojones, no doubt, already bullishly saying “Bring on the Aussies” but can he develop the all-round captaincy skills we’ll need to make a decent fist of it? We’ll see I guess.

In the meantime we’ve consoled ourselves with watching YouTube footage of amazing new Sri Lankan ‘mystery’ spinner Ajantha Mendis who’s an off-leg spinner with a mean doosra all in one...

As if Murali wasn’t enough, where on earth do Sri Lanka find them? And more importantly are you watching Monty?

We fear there’s trouble ahead...

Ooh we’ve just noticed there’s btw 100th post – a century all of our own! At last!

Dear ol’ Blighty

And 3-2-1 we’re back! Just like that. Did you miss us? Well didja? Yup if a week’s is a long time in politics it’s an eternity in the spurting world and our two week sojourn in France, while much needed, left us positively salivating for some decent spurt to get our teeth into.

En France the only competitive spurting action we managed was watching the searing white heat of the local Boule competition, the savage nobility of Chèvre racing and of course, the dangerous delights of competitive fromage consumption.

But in our absence? So much to cover our head’s almost swimming. Lewis’s puncture, the continuing mad giddy whirl of the transfer merry go around and the advent of the annual quadrennial festival of sports you didn’t know you cared about – or the Olympics as it’s more popularly known.

But it’s the resignation of England skipper Michael Vaughan which has been the big story as far as we’re concerned. It’s a shame, a shock, to see him go when he’s undoubtedly been the best and most successful captain England have had in recent years. Okay he wasn’t scoring runs right now, but he was still the man to lead us against the Aussies next summer, wasn’t he?

And KP as the new skipper? Now that’s a big call. This one will need some careful consideration.

Still we're just warming up, so we'll be back with some more considered thoughts tomorrow.