Sport

Rugby – Down to the Wire

~ Cheryl ~ 7 Comments

The first couple of weeks of the Rugby World Cup are a bit dull for the casual fan, especially from the nations with better teams. Basically the group stage is all about letting teams like the USA, Japan and Russia get games against top flight opposition, and giving the likes of Scotland, Italy and Argentina a chance to prove that they are not so poor as people might think. There’s generally space for one of them at the top table, and Argentina bagged it again.

There is also the question of automatic qualification for next time. Tonga, Scotland, Italy and Samoa picked up those slots.

For everyone left in the tournament, however, things have got serious. Here’s how the quarter-finals line up:

Wales v Ireland
England v France
South Africa v Australia
New Zealand v Argentina

The final game is the easy one to call. New Zealand are the hosts and favorites; Argentina are gutsy but not in the same league. But there’s one big wild card. The All Blacks have lost their talismanic fly half, Dan Carter, to injury. Fly half is the rugby equivalent of a quarterback, so think of how the Colts have imploded without Peyton Manning. His backups are less than stellar. Colin Slade was given an outing in an earlier game and looked terrified. I like Aaron Cruden a bit better, but he’s inexperienced. The question that everyone in the UK is asking is, “what the heck is Nick Evans doing still in England?” If New Zealand fail to win this tournament it will probably be because of Carter’s injury and their rule of not picking anyone who doesn’t play his club rugby for a home-based side.

Defending champions, South Africa, have had a very poor year by their usual high standards. They got some almighty drubbings in the Tri-Nations, but that was mainly because their head coach, Peter de Villiers, was keeping his best players under wraps for the World Cup. Australia won the Tri-Nations, but have been disappointing at the tournament. They also have a lot of good players out with injury. Fond as I am of the Wallabies, I’m pretty sure that the Bokke will grind their way into the semi-finals.

The England-France game is a battle of two disaster zones. England’s play thus far has been very poor, and their head coach, Martin Johnson, seems to have been spending more time defending his players for their drunken antics off-field, and in disciplinary hearings for serious foul play and breaches of the kit sponsorship rules, than he has getting them to improve their form. England have conceded more penalties than any other team. France, meanwhile, have been terrible, culminating in an embarrassing loss to Tonga. The papers are full of stories of how Marc Lievremont has lost the confidence of his players and has no idea who to pick. The good news for French supporters, however, is that their team is famously mercurial. They can pull a brilliant performance out at any time. England teams, in contrast, tend to take a long time to turn around.

The game to watch is undoubtedly Ireland v Wales. The Irish are in fine form, coming off a famous win over Australia. In O’Driscoll and O’Gara they have masses of experience, and in O’Brien and Heaslip two of the best loose forwards in the tournament. Wales are equally on a charge. They missed beating the Bokke by just 1 point, and have scored the second highest number of points after the All Blacks. They have a young team that looks to be fitter than anyone and brimming with confidence. This one should be a cracker. See you on Twitter, Irish pals.

Religious Holidays

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

The Rugby World Cup kicks off in New Zealand tomorrow (well, today their time). You can expect me to be spending a lot of time on front of the TV getting very depressed as Wales embarrass themselves against Samoa and Fiji. Still, as long as the English don’t win, we don’t care.

Those of you in the UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand will already know your teams’ schedules and where to find coverage. I’m not sure what you’ll get in the US and Canada, but you can see the match schedule here. ITV are showing the matches online so TunnelBear may allow you to watch them. For Kevin’s benefit, the USA matches (in California time, assuming no clock changes) are as follows:

  • Ireland: Sat. 10th, 11:00pm
  • Russia: Thurs. 15th, 12:30am
  • Australia: Fri. 23rd, 1:30am
  • Italy: Mon. 26th, 11:30pm

Sadly the Russians appear to be rather good. I expect the Eagles to finish bottom of their pool. Wales should at least manage to beat Namibia. It looks like the Wallabies have an easy draw all the way to the semi-finals, which gives them plenty of time to play themselves into form.

Private IDAHO?

~ Cheryl ~ 5 Comments

Today is IDAHO, the International Day Against HOmophobia and transphobia. Those of you versed in queer politics can doubtless already see where I am going with this. A day that should be spent fighting for human rights for all sorts of people is, to a large extent, being spent instead on arguments between various parts of the Queer community as to who is actually included and whether they should have a letter in the acronym. There should be a T, because otherwise transphobia is not properly covered. There should be a B, because otherwise bisexuals are being made invisible. There should be an I, because intersex people resent being included under the trans umbrella. And so on. Sometimes I think that if we expended half as much energy on fighting external bigotry that we expended on fighting each other then there would be no need for things like IDAHO.

Still, as we have a day to celebrate, here are a few things to note.

Firstly ILGA Europe has produced a Rainbow Europe Index that shows how different European countries are doing in passing LGBT-friendly legislation. The good news is that the UK comes out top of the heap, with 12.5 out of 17 points, and it loses 2 for not having a constitution, which I suspect some people will see as unfair.

Digging deeper, however, I discover that the UK was awarded 2 points for having legislation about supply of goods & services discrimination on the grounds of gender identity. Well it does. It has legislation that specifically makes is legal to discriminate on the grounds of gender identity. That’s the infamous “Equality” Act, of course, which human rights lawyers are itching for an opportunity to challenge as it may well be contradicting other UK legislation such as the Gender Recognition Act. I’m not sure that the 2 points is warranted here.

And that half point? Hate crimes legislation for gender identity protection — a half point because it is Scotland only.

Unfortunately, while the UK is leading Europe in LGBT protection, it is setting a very bad example elsewhere. There is this thing called the Commonwealth (the political institution formerly known as the British Empire), and it is a festering bastion of homophobia and transphobia. Over at The Guardian, Peter Tatchell explains all. You would think that an organization headed by someone called “The Queen” could do better in this regard.

And finally, I am delighted to report that my beloved World Champion San Francisco Giants are to become the first sports team to record an “It Gets Better” video. Details from the San Francisco Chronicle.

Banned From The Olympics for Being Ugly?

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Yes, it is gender in sport time again. In the wake of the Caster Semenya scandal the IOC wants to test all women athletes for testosterone. They vaguely understand that there are a variety of intersex conditions that can result in people being otherwise biologically female to have elevated testosterone levels, and that not all of these people can actually process that testosterone in a way likely to enhance performance, but despite the uncertainty they argue that Something Must Be Done.

Over at Nature they take a look at some of the science involved and interview some scientists who work on this stuff, including an endocrinologist who advises the IOC. The conclusion the article is pretty stark: they don’t know whether the people banned under these tests would have any competitive advantage or not. They do, however, note that any athlete who fails the test would not be allowed to compete as a man either.

The real issue, however, is very clear. As the IOC adviser puts it: “It ought to at least eliminate the stigmatization of certain women who people feel ‘don’t look quite right'”. Unfortunately he doesn’t say how it will eliminate this stigmatization. Why is it that I suspect it will be by stopping them competing so they never come to the media’s attention. Because surely there will be complaints about “ugly” women being “really men”. There always are.

Given the lack of actual evidence to go on, I’m pretty sure this is more of a spin operation than an attempt to be fair to intersex athletes.

Hero

~ Cheryl ~ 3 Comments

OK, enough of the cricket already. But I couldn’t resist posting this lovely picture of Tendulkar with the trophy.

Tendulkar

The photo is © Associated Press and appears in this article on Cricinfo in which Tendulkar says he has no intention of retiring just yet. Hopefully that means that his much-anticipated 100th international century will be scored at Lords during the July 21-15 test match. (I understand that tickets are already sold out.)

Congratulations, India!

~ Cheryl ~ 3 Comments

Just in case you hadn’t noticed, the cricket World Cup Final was played today in Mumbai. India beat Sri Lanka in a fairly close match that featured magnificent performances by players on both sides. I very much enjoyed it, and am delighted that the great Sachin Tendulkar has finally added a World Cup winner’s medal to his trophy cabinet.

Sporting Insanity

~ Cheryl

I have not been blogging about the cricket because I haven’t got a clue what to say. This England team has achieved the remarkable feat of being more unpredictable than the Pakistanis. They have also produced some heart-stoppingly exciting games.

I should apologize to all of my readers in the West Indies and Bangladesh. There is no way that England should have won today’s game, given how badly they played for much of it. In fact, aside from beating The Netherlands, I don’t think any of their results in this tournament went the way they should have done. I have no idea what is going to happen next. Bangaldesh to beat South Africa, I guess. Nothing else would be sufficiently bizarre.

Me: In Hebrew

~ Cheryl

Today I have ding production on Salon Futura #6 and watching rugby. The former you’ll see on Monday, I hope. The latter, well laughing at the Scottish rugby team isn’t really fair. But I did want to pop in briefly to say how pleased I am that some kind people in Israel have translated one of my articles from Salon Futura #5 into Hebrew. You can find it here. Thanks Ehud!

Cultural Difference (Stereotyping)

~ Cheryl

The Adelaide Oval cricket ground has built some large new stands recently. When the test match took place there last year the English commentators on Sky and the BBC were in full flow whingeing about how the look of the ground had been ruined by hideous modern architecture. There’s a one-day international taking place there today, and Nasser Hussain just asked Greg Blewett whether there had been any complaints by the locals. “There were some complaints during the test match…” replied Blewie, “…because one of the new bars ran out of beer.”

The IPL Auction

~ Cheryl

I haven’t been saying much about cricket recently because the performance for the Australian side in The Ashes has been so awful it rather killed the series as a contest. However, today there’s something new to think about.

As I reported last year, in order to screw more money out of the franchises, the IPL has forced them to relinquish all of their players and bid to buy them back. The first round of the auction took place this morning. As I had expected, both the Rajasthan Royals and Kings XI Punjab are back in the tournament, which is good news for Shilpa and Preity.

A couple of teams: Chennai and Mumbai, made a determined effort to hang on to the core of their past teams. Chennai have re-signed MS Dhoni, Suresh Raina, Murali Vijay, Mike Hussey and Albie Morkel. Mumbai have resigned Sachin Tendulkar, Harbhajan Singh, Kieron Pollard and Lasith Malinga. Delhi has retained Virender Sehwag but lost Gautam Gambhir to Kolkata for the top bid of the day, $2.4 million.

Despite having Shilpa on board, my boys are noted for being short on cash compared to some of the teams from bigger cities. However, I’m pleased to see that we kept our two Aussie stars: Warne and Watson. We lost Graeme Smith to new boys, Pune Warriors, but we picked up Rahul Dravid, Ross Taylor and Paul Collingwood. The Royals also paid big bucks for Johan Botha, a South African offspinner who also captains his country’s T20 side. A few eyebrows were raised at the amount of money we paid, but if Warnie says a spinner is worth having then he has to be good.

There’s more action to come, so it is a bit early to say which sides look the best, but I’ve been quite impressed with Kolkata’s batting line-up. With Gambhir being joined by Yusuf Pathan, Jacques Kallis, Brad Haddin and Eoin Morgan they should whack the ball around a bit, but they seem short on bowling. The new team from Kochi has picked up Muralitharan and has added Sreesanth, RP Singh and Ramesh Powar to back him up. They could be worth watching.

A Melbourne Mystery

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

The Ashes resumed today in one of the world’s great sporting events: the Boxing Day Test at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. Tens of thousands of holidaying Aussies had packed into the famous ground to see the old enemy ground into the dust. They were sadly disappointed, and no one seemed to know why.

England won the toss and elected to field, but although there was a certain amount of help for their bowlers there did not seen to be too many terrors in the pitch. After a few minutes of play, Sir Geoffrey Boycott, commenting for the BBC, said he could see no way that England were going to win. The pitch was too friendly. The game, he confidently predicted, would be a draw.

Four hours later, Australia were all out for 98, a performance that racked up so many “lowest” and “worst” records that I have lost track of them all.

Cricket pitches do get a bit better during the day, but not by orders of magnitude. The fact that England’s openers cruised to 157 without getting out in the evening session suggested that Sir Geoffrey’s assessment of the wicket was correct. So what happened?

“Australia are batting without any care and attention,” Lord Gower noted on Sky. And he should know, as batting without a care in the world was something he was rather good at during his career. Such behavior, however, is not normally expected of the fiercely competitive Australians. Had they partaken of too much Christmas cheer, or was some other factor to blame?

“It was as if their brains had gone out of the window,” commented a bemused Sir Geoffrey at the end of the day. Missing brains? Well, that could explain a lot. And I happen to know that this person is a keen cricket fan.

Fluff Cthulhu

Irresponsible Journalists Cause National Disaster!

~ Cheryl ~ 10 Comments

It is terrible what these journalist people do, you know. There was England all set to host the soccer World Cup in 2018, and suddenly they get knocked out in the first round of voting. It is all, apparently, the fault of the BBC. You would have thought that the fact that FIFA executives were openly taking bribes would be in the public interest, but no, not when national pride and a high profile sporting event is at stake. It won’t be long before right wing politicians and tabloid newspapers are calling for Clive Edwards to be executed for treason, mark my words.

Tsk! Surely other countries have more respect for free speech and journalistic integrity, don’t they?

World Series, Baby!

~ Cheryl ~ 3 Comments

2010 World Series official logoIt appears I have a bunch of new readers thanks to a tweet by Cat Valente. Now I’m probably going to lose a bunch of them again by making a sports post.

You know, I really shouldn’t be watching the World Series (and I’m not watching it live as it is on in the middle of the night). Pictures of that beautiful City by the Bay inevitably make me sad, and I can’t listen to that Tony Bennett song these days without crying. But how can I not watch, when Kevin and I have spent so many happy evenings in that ballpark? (Not to mention so many happy evenings freezing our butts off in Candlestick Park before they built the new stadium at Emperor Norton Field.) We lived through the disaster of 2002 together. I can’t desert the Giants now.

I should add, also, that there’s a curse to be laid. English cricket has three major tournaments in the year, not just one. Somerset finished second in all three. It can’t happen to the Giants as well, can it?

And, like all great sporting events, there’s a story to this World Series. The Giants have come through a pretty bad period since 2002. For much of the last few years they have been held together by one guy: Bengie Molina. The catcher is always the heart of a baseball team, and up until recently Molina was also one of the few men that the Giants could rely upon to deliver runs. As a veteran catcher, he played a key role in developing two young players: Tim Lincecum, the ace pitcher who has won two Cy Young awards, and Buster Posey, the kid being groomed as Molina’s replacement.

In June this year the Giants’ management decided that it was finally time for Posey to take his place in the starting lineup, and Molina was traded to the Texas Rangers. One of the idiosyncrasies about baseball is that teams in the National League and American League very rarely play each other, and so rarely develop rivalries. Despite the Rangers having once been part-owned by George W. Bush, the Giants and the Rangers seem to have maintained friendly relations down the years. Will Clark, who helped take the Giants to the 1989 World Series (the one interrupted by the Loma Prieta earthquake), was also traded to the Rangers. Molina has apparently remained on good terms with his former teammates, even helping coach Lincecum through a bad patch earlier in the season.

Bengie is also, of course, in the unenviable position of going into the World Series knowing that he will be credited with being part of the winning side, no matter who wins. Though, like any professional sportsman, he’ll be trying his utmost to help the Rangers triumph.

Good sporting events also spring surprises. Last night’s matchup between Lincecum and Cliff Lee was billed as the pitching duel of the year, Lee also being a former Cy Young winner. Instead the Giants, a team that could not hit its way out of a paper bag at times this season, piled on the runs on the way to an 11-8 victory. Goodness only knows what will happen tonight. Maybe the Giants will actually score some runs behind Matt Cain for once. I hope so.

How Not To Run A League

~ Cheryl

The Indian Premier League has been one of the biggest sporting success stories of recent years. International stars from all over the world have come to play for Indian club sides. The matches have frequently been nail-biters, and league championships hard fought. The league even survived having to play in South Africa one year due to security concerns in India. Now, however, the whole edifice threatens to fall apart thanks to a degree of high-handed autocracy of a type we are used to seeing from the Pakistan Cricket Board.

The IPL does have some fairly high profile concerns about the legitimacy of business operations. Lalit Modi, the marketing genius who spearheaded the league for its first three years, is now under investigation by Interpol for alleged money laundering. It is not entirely clear, however, whether Modi has really done anything particularly wrong, or whether he is being singled out for special attention because he has offended important people in the Indian government.

The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has taken firm control of the IPL with a view to cleaning it up. But in doing so they seem to have lost sight of what a sporting league is all about: teams and players. A successful sporting business has many elements. Quality players, exciting games, TV revenue, quality marketing: these are all important components. But the key components that sporting leagues need to have are teams: groups of players who acquire reputations and supporters. If teams are not allowed to establish themselves, they don’t grow their support bases, and they have difficulty making money.

You see this sort of thing occasionally in the USA, for example when franchises move from one city to another. Loyal San José Earthquakes fans, for example, were furious when Major League Soccer took away our hugely successful team and forced them to play in Houston instead. Finding enthusiasm for the replacement Earthquakes team, with a very different squad of players, that we were given a few years later was difficult.

The BCCI has lost sight of the importance of teams in a number of ways. For example, this year they have required the teams to relinquish most of their players and rebuild their squads almost from scratch in a new auction. A certain amount of control over team composition is useful, otherwise you get a few rich teams dominating the league, as happens in European soccer. The draft systems used in US sports, and transfer regulations, are methods that sporting authorities use to counteract this.

Destroying every team in the league, however, is a very different matter. It was very obvious at the end of this year’s Champions’ League that the players of the victorious Chennai Super Kings were upset that they would never get to play together again. Supporters of all IPL clubs have little idea who will be playing for their teams next year. The BCCI, it seems, does not care as long as it can make lots of money out of a big player auction.

Today the BCCI dropped a bombshell. Citing financial and contract irregularities, they have wound up two of the IPL franchises, including the Rajasthan Royals, who won the inaugural league back in 2008. The owners of the affected teams have expressed shock and surprise, and owners of other teams are clearly worried.

It may well be that some of the charges laid against the Rajasthan and Punjab franchises are indeed justified. Given the allegations being thrown around, it would not surprise me if other teams had also done things for which punishments might be handed out. But you can deal with such things using fines and handicapping of teams. The severity of the BCCI’s action suggests that they have no concern for the many cricket fans who follow the league, and raises suspicions that they have ulterior motives.

You see, the BCCI has recently allowed two new teams into the IPL. The suspicion has to be that the BCCI, having pocketed fat buy-in fees from the new teams, and faced with the need to organize a new season with the expanded league, decided to find an excuse to kick out two of the existing teams. It has not escaped my notice that the two teams that have been chosen as scapegoats are both owned by high-profile Bollywood actresses: Preity Zinta and Shilpa Shetty.

If experience with the PCB is anything to go by, what will happen now is that legal threats will be liberally bandied around, “negotiations” will take place, and suddenly the two miscreant teams will be forgiven and allowed back into the competition. This will do nothing to allay fears of corruption in the IPL. It will do quite the opposite.

Another Long Day

~ Cheryl

It has been another very long day in front of the keyboard. This time I have been working on the Wizard’s Tower Press website and on Salon Futura #2. I think I have everything sorted now, but I am very disappointed with the quality of ecommerce plugins available for WordPress. It looks like I will have to sign up with one of the stand-alone ecommerce solutions, which will further add to my monthly expenses.

Still, I did need to be up late anyway. The San Francisco Giants are now just 2 innings away from a place in postseason play. This is little short of a miracle. Excuse me while I stop looking at computers and stare at the TV instead.

Lions by a Whisker

~ Cheryl

Well, that was a lot closer than it had any right to be. The Wellington Lions lived up to the reputation of their namesakes in the first half — they spent most of the time laying around yawning. As a result, Northland had a healthy 15 point lead at the half. Thankfully the home side decided to pay attention towards the end of the game and, one has to say, came roaring back.

After a spectacular try for which the Lions ran almost the length of the field, we got back to a one-point ball game. Northland then got a penalty to stretch their lead back to 4. There followed a long period where the Lions were camped on the Northland try line, and eventually they got over for a score, giving them a 3 point lead with just under 3 minutes to play. Northland attacked, and won a penalty well inside the Wellington half, but their kicker missed and Wellington managed to close out the game winners, despite having been ahead for only a few minutes.

I guess I did say I thought it would be a close game.

In other news, my two panels today went well, and the con appears to be buzzing. There are over 200 people here, which for a New Zealand Natcon is enormous.

Rugby Expedition at #AuContraire

~ Cheryl ~ 4 Comments

One of the things I have never done on my visits to New Zealand is attend a rugby match. It so happens that the Wellington Lions are playing a home game on the Saturday of Au Contraire. Kick off is at 5:30, and I’m on a panel from 4:00 – 5:00, but Wellington isn’t that big a city so getting to the game sounds feasible. It does mean missing Sean Williams’ GoH speech, but I think if I buy him enough chocolate he’ll still speak to me.

FYI, the Lions are the local Wellington side, not the Super Rugby franchise Hurricanes. The squad does boast a number of Hurricanes players, but the top stars such as Cory Jane, Ma’a Nonu, Conrad Smith and Piri Weepu are all on duty with the All Blacks and unlikely to play. On the other hand, Rodney So’oialo and Hosea Gear didn’t make the All Blacks squad, and in Julian Savea the Lions have one of the most exciting young players in world rugby. The Lions’s opponents, Northland, are having a good season and are scoring very heavily, so it should be a cracking game.

Because this is a Lions game and not the Hurricanes tickets for the Cake Tin stadium are easy to get and reasonably priced at between NZ$20 and NZ$35.

Anyone up for an expedition?

Car Football – The Semi Finals

~ Cheryl

With the action winding down in South Africa I’m sure you have all been wondering what has been happening on YouTube at the Hyundai car football championships. Well, here are the semi-finals.

Brazil v Italy

England v Spain

Well, there’s a surprise, England beaten again. But Spain v Brazil in the final. That should be entertaining. Give what the Dutch have been saying about their plans for Johannesburg, it might provide the best entertainment tomorrow.