Archive for the ‘Sport’ Category

It was an okay weekend. The best game was the Packers at Cardinals. I almost fell asleep during the first game, so I decided not to try and stay up to 5am. Inevitability this resulted in me seeing the score before I could watch it on Monday.

Kansas City at New England

Solid performance by both of these teams. They consistently moved the ball and scored. In the end Brady and the Patriots just kept doing what they have been doing forever. You have to fancy them to get to Super Bowl 50 now, even with the injuries.

Green Bay at Arizona

Good game by both teams. Injuries are mounting up on the Packers’ receivers but they were still making plays. I thought their offensive line had an excellent game in particular. Palmer threw some questionable passes, but probably deserved the win.

Seattle at Carolina

This game was over almost before it began. Carolina got off to a dream start with two touchdowns within minutes. Full credit to Russell Wilson and the Seahawks who just kept playing and made an excellent come-back in the second half. It wasn’t enough though, meaning the Panthers have still only lost one game this season.

Pittsburg at Denver

Both of these times were uninspiring. It was just an endless series of field goals. Neither Roethlisberger nor Manning seemed at their best and so you have to wonder how either one of them would be able to outscore Brady in the championship game. Denver only really got it going when they started to really lean on the run. I don’t fancy their chances next week though.

Predictions

New England to beat Denver and Carolina to beat Arizona.

I want to start this post by complaining about the decencies of Sky Sports. They buy the coverage and black it out on GamePass, so I have to get Now TV. However, Sky has no catch-up facility, so when I miss it on Saturday it is blacked out on Sunday, so despite paying for both GamePass and Sky Sports I can’t watch the game! Sky are way behind BBC on this who have almost all their shows on iPlayer almost immediately.

Anyway…

Kansas City Chiefs at Houston Texans

If these teams play like they did last weekend, neither of them going anywhere. The Texans played an awful game and turned it over four times. That in itself is enough to write them off as a Super Bowl team. However, the fact that the Chiefs managed to convert all of that into only two field goals spells bad things for them too. If you turned the ball over to Tom Brady four times, would you expect to be six points down?

The Chiefs got it together in the second half though and their defence remained strong throughout. If they can play consistently like that, they will have more of a chance.

Pittsburgh Steelers at Cincinnati Bengals

This looked more like two heavy weight play off teams slugging it out. Again, it tooks the Bengals most of the game to get going though. Maybe this wouldn’t have been the case if they had made it to the division round and got Dalton back, but we’ll never know. It’s their own fault. How well with the Steelers do if Ben Roethlisberger is injured though?

Seattle Seahawks at Minnesota Vikings

It felt like a reasonable performance from each team. Two good defences slugging it out against each other. It’s hard to write the Seahawks off given the good form they are in. Déjà vu anyone?

Green Bay Packers at Washington Redskins

The first quarter was not looking good for the Packers. Aaron Rodgers could not get anything going on offence. Their defence put in an excellent performance though and kept them in the game. Rogers got it going in the second quarter suggesting at the high wind may have had a really effect when you are paying into it.

Predictions

Patriots beating the Chiefs is the easiest to call. I am not sure I fancy the the road teams in any of them though. Panthers have had such a good season. Packers over the Cardinals maybe? Depends how quickly Aaron Rodgers can get it going. I suspect not fast enough, but if any road time is going to win, it will be the Packers, second to the Steelers over the Broncos.

We’re only a week into 2016 and there is already reason to celebrate. Earlier this week the world junior championship of ice hockey took place in Helsinki. The winners? Finland! Triumphing 4-3 over Russia in the final. To top all of that off, Sweden lost to the US in the play-off game as well.

Unfortunately ice hockey is not well covered in the UK. BBC Sport do have a section, but only if you go to All Sports, then A to Z, and then find Ice Hockey. Sky Sports require you to go to More Sports, then Filter, then Ice Hockey. Neither even mentioned the junior world champions when I checked. Similarly, to watch the adult world championships we had to buy Premier Sports for a month.

Finland’s victory in the juniors suggests they will continue to field a good team in the coming decade, and hopefully many more world championships to come.

Earlier this month I ran the Abbey Dash for the second time. It was their 30th birthday, making them even older than me. The photo above is me the next day. I did not look like that after the race. I looked more like an shrivelled old man about to have a heart attack.

The weather conditions were not ideal. It rained before the race, leaving us stood around for an hour in the cold and wet. Once the race started (at which point you actually want the rain to cool you down a bit) it backed off.

I was 22 second slower than last year, coming home in 1:07:58. Not brilliant, but I trained harder last year, so to get such a small difference entires de-values all the work I did for the 2014 Dash. It certainly wasn’t the nightmare that my friend Howell had, running a 32:10, over 6% slower than his target time. I’ll give him some tips for next year.

I made the mistake of putting 70 minutes as my expected time which bumped me down to the slowest starting pen. Next year I think I will bump it up as I have never run a 70+.

I am not sure they are quite as well organised as Run For All. There is only one water station and I had to skip that because there was a queue. There was no big banner for the finish line so I did not know when it was time for that very final push until it was almost upon me. I was unable to spot some of the kilometre distance markers either. Finally I did not get my time until more than 24 hours after, whereas Run For All text me in under a minute of finishing (which I was very impressed at, later in the day would have been fine).

July saw Leeds Samurai travel over to Manchester for a conference flag day. Ironically, despite it raining on every game day we have had so far, it was only when we went to Manchester, the place where it never stops raining, to have a dry day.

We lost our games to the Honey Badgers and Manchester Crows, but came up good against the Manchester Titans, taking our second league victory of the year with a last minute interception that secured a one point victory for us.

I really enjoy international women’s football because it punishes countries with high gender inequality more than anything the UN could ever do.

The Ivory Coast’s 10-0 drubbing at the hands of Germany is a classic example.

It is interesting though that whenever I asked anyone whether they had “seen the world cup?” the response was usually “oh the women’s football?”. In fairness, most of them had seen it. And why not? England did brilliantly! We should really look at this as our best opportunity to win a trophy.

We were (as an Englishman, and a supporter, I’m part of the team of course) unlucky to have lost to Japan and could easily have been in the final. That showed with our first ever victory over Germany – 21st time lucky!

April saw the first game day for the 2015 flag season. We played two games, one of which we won and one of which we lost. The win was particularly good as last year, the first year Leeds Samurai existed, the team didn’t quite manage to win any (though many of them were very close), so a great result for the team.

Also, I think I look very “snazzy” in my new jersey.

This was the first competitive game I’ve attended so it was a bit of a shock to the system. It took probably most of the first half for me to get into it and everything to stop moving so fast. It should be better going forward as I and the other new players adjust.

So, it’s happened then. For half a decade of working in sports betting I have gone no more into golf than my every-other-year concession to watching the Ryder Cup. However, I’m currently working with Sky Sports and it it is impossible to ignore not to get caught up in the buzz. This year I actually sat down and watched some of The Masters.

I say sat, I was really lying in bed. However, I managed to get through nearly an hour of it without failing asleep, which I suspect means I am getting old.

Not like Jordan Spieth. 21 years old and now a Master champion. I should point out at this point that he is ageing, he hasn’t found some magic cure for that. However, his fresh young face puts even Sebastian Vettel to shame. He dashed any hopes of Rory McIlroy completing his set of all four major championships (not that McIlroy even managed second), and now aged 25, it’s probably game over for him…

The 2015 Formula One season has arrived. What’s changed?

Team changes

The ten “big teams” remaining the same this year, but there are two changes further down the field. Caterham entered administration at the end of 2014 and never made it out. Their property is currently being auctioned off. Marussia did make it out of administration under the name Manor, but failed to make it in to the Australian Grand Prix.

Driver changes

The following drivers have not returned:

• Kevin Magnussen drops from McLaren’s front line to their test driver slot
• Jean-Eric Vergne leaves Toro Rosso
• Sauber drops both Adrian Sutil and Esteban Gutierrez (who has gone to Ferrari as a test driver)
• Kamui Kobayashi has no team left after Caterham folded
• Max Chilton has not survived Marussia’s change to Manor

Sadly, Marussia’s other driver, Jules Bianchi, remains in a coma following his crash during the Japanese Grand Prix.

Earlier this month saw NFL Super Bowl XLIX take place in Arizona. Normally I would have supported Seattle because they are great organisation, but I was so annoyed that they had knocked out the Green Bay Packers, I was on the side of the Patriots. Of course, now it’s over, you’ll just have to take my word for it.

It was certainly more interesting than last year which finished with a 35 point difference. This one finished with just 4 and when Seattle were driving in the last few minutes, it looks like they would take it. Only a strange decision by the Seahawks to throw, which ended in an interception, saved the Patriots.

That is not to take anything away from the Patriots though. The Belichick Brady team have now won 4 Super Bowl titles making them the most successful coach quarterback combination in NFL history.

Katy Perry’s halftime show was fine.

The crowning glory of the evening was Elina’s Super Bowl cake, featuring a Moomin making a field goal.