The clock ticks towards escape. The sun shines. The Prem kicks off. The beer will be cold, the pizza hot. The day will be slack, stealing stationary and smirking at those left behind. Lots of staring off into the distance, wondering why RadioActive has such a fondness for tracks with ‘Alf’ samples.
“Well my name is Alf and I’m stuck on Earth,
I can’t get back to my place of birth.
I’m making the best of a bad situation,
Think of it as an extended vacation.”
About as confusing as Inspector Ichabod’s ranting when he came stumbling into the Booth of Comments having just gone to make his NPC picks. Imagine his bewilderment and terror when he discovered that he now had to pick the Heartland Comp results as well. Counties vs Northland is hard enough without having to worry about the likes of Wanganui hosting Thames Valley. This is apparently standard tipping practice each year, but it was very unexpected for the Comments Team. And we don’t likes it neither.
Effectively, this makes it a lottery. How the hell can you pick games with any confidence between teams you never see play? Or even really get the chance to read about? Particularly for the overseas tipping contingent, this is tough. But get over it is the answer.
NPC this weekend has three clashes that look pretty good, or at least even, including the aforementioned Counties match. Can Northland break their losing streak of something like thirty games? They have to be a chance, but Counties were terrible last week, so will probably be fantastic this time round. Otago host Waikato and Harbour receive the Lions in what are the two most significant games of the round with all four teams yet to suffer a loss. All Blacks are largely gone, so these matches are all pretty open, but we like Waikato and of course the mighty Lions to take out tough encounters. Unfortunately for Welly, Luke ‘Don’t kick it, pass it’ Mcallister has been called up to the ABs, so they wont be able to rely on a steady stream of possession from wasteful kicking. This, friends and Readers, is not a player we like. He’s a low-rate C-grade Carlos Spencer wannabe, and who would want to be Carlos Spencer? Freaking Dorklanders.
7 hours and 38 minutes
The real big news though is the kickoff the Premier League this weekend, finally. Here’s how the first round of fixtures lines up:
Saturday, 19 August 2006
Arsenal v Aston Villa, 15:00
Bolton v Tottenham, 17:15
Everton v Watford, 15:00
Newcastle v Wigan, 15:00
Portsmouth v Blackburn, 15:00
Reading v Middlesbrough, 15:00
Sheff Utd v Liverpool, 12:45
West Ham v Charlton, 15:00
Sunday, 20 August 2006
Chelsea v Man City, 16:00
Man Utd v Fulham, 13:30
Predictions? Goodness knows really. You’d probably have to back Arsenal, Liverpool, Chelsea and Man U, but that’s hardly the work of a brain surgeon. What’s awesome is that there are a host of new players to watch, three new teams, several new managers, one brilliant new stadium, and even a couple of Kiwis to follow. And the second round of games starts as early as Wednesday. Bring it on, bring it on.
Short and Sharp
The Tall Blacks kick off their World Champs campaign against Spain on Saturday, so good luck to them. The Warriors will be needing a huge amount of luck when they travel to Old Melbournetown to take on a rampant Storm outfit, and the Saints face a similarly tough away trip to Perth to play Fremantle. And lets hope our talking up of young Toeava doesn’t blow up in our faces on Saturday.
That’s about it folks, we’ve got office supplies to pilfer. The Comments will be in a state of some upheaval for the next little while, so bear with us, and come beer with Roby at Bodega from 5ish this eve. Congrats to Captain Dan Hunt: there’s a lovely symbiosis about a pilot marrying a hostess, it gives a sense of a world in equilibrium.
Lets leave it to Homer to have the last word on crappy jobs:
“Lisa, if you don’t like your job, you don’t strike. You just go in every day and do it really half-assed. That’s the American way.”
Have a top weekend.
--Supercoach
2006-08-18 00:14:53 GMT
Author:Anonymous
Tumultuous
Even as the Comments Team attempts to relax after a weekend of befuddling sporting contests by watching a meaningless pre-season NFL game, we still find ourselves hopelessly drawn into the action. Along with the 49ers, the New Orleans Saints are our favourite franchise, so even on a Tuesday evening, accompanied by a delicious and medicinal Coopers Sparkling to soothe and calm the spirit, we yell, mutter, condemn and condone. Which points to many, many issues of mental duress: how did the Warriors win; why is Daryl Hair such a tool; is the Hurricanes franchise totally screwed; is Hair from Queensland or maybe Tasmania; will anyone score a better goal than Ivan Campo all season; is Daryl Hair ignorant, racist, short-sighted or stupid; Paul Auster vs a close All Black Test match: who will win?
So lets try and assemble our wits and start with the worst: the cancelled Test match. If this could have been handled worse, an inspired combination of Alistair Campbell, Mel Gibson and Cletus the Slack-jawed Yokel would have been required to take over. First, have a neutral umpire start up a war of words with a team whose games he is set to officiate. Second, make this umpire a pleasant fellow, as wide of girth as he is of prejudice to all things Un-Australian. Then, have this same amiable pie-friendly chap accuse a team, whose conduct he has previously criticised, of cheating. Then submit a humiliating penalty of docking them five runs in full view of the watching public.
It all sounds reasonably inconspicuous, but the damage done to cricket, and unfortunately Test cricket in particular, could be pretty hideous. The repercussions are just starting to unfold, but the main issue here will arise from the schism that already exists in world cricket but is continually glossed over.
The ‘subcontinent’ as it is known in cricketing terms, is the rising economic force crucial to the future success of the sport, comprising of Pakistan, India and Sri Lanka. They are constantly in conflict with the traditional ‘Western’ colonial cricketing nations. If Pakistan boycotts games officiated by Daryl Hair, the International Cricket Council (ICC) will have two choices: quietly assign him to other games, or take a stance against either Hair or Pakistan. If they back Hair, as they have more-or-less done so far, there is every chance that another serious dispute will arise between the old Colonial sides and the Subcontinent teams. Cricket is already an international sport participated in seriously by only ten of the two hundred nations of the world: if these ten splinter and squabble, the consequences will be devastating. Stupid, stupid, attention-grabbing, biased Ocker umpires with a vastly inflated sense of self-importance should think much, much more carefully before accusing teams of the most heinous of crimes. And please keep this in mind: any substantial evidence of ball tampering is yet to be proffered by either the umpires or the ICC. So what the hell is really going on here?
Steps off the left
But lets shimmy away from this awful negativity and not talk about the Lions for a while either. Who, without looking at the stats, having scored only four tries in three games, must be at the very low end of the NPC attacking numbers. Who haven’t really shown anything of promise as yet. Who will not only be without their ABs in the early rounds of next years Super 14, (a decision that we wholeheartedly concur with), but are paired up with the other real struggler so far, the Naki. And who, for reasons that unsettle us even further, we will be paying hard earned cash money to go and watch play against the unbeaten Dorks this Saturday night. Because really, what else are ya gonna do?
Other than the pathetic capitulation- actually, capitulation infers an actual winning effort at some earlier stage of proceedings, so perhaps we’ll go with pathetic non-participation- of the Lions against Harbour, it was otherwise a pretty
--Supercoach
