Skip to main content

World's worst sports fan

 

I have never been a great sports attender. Yes, as a secondary schoolboy, I don't believe I missed a single International Rugby Match at Lansdowne Road between 1970 and 1973. And I was a very keen tennis player.

Other than that, I attended the 1988 Challenge Cup between Wigan and Halifax at Wembley where Wigan won the match 32–12. I had not the slightest clue what was going on. I also went to watch an international cricket match that summer at Headingly, and had even less of a clue as to what was going on. 
 
It appeared to be grown men dressed in white, starting to run miles away while scratching their nether regions with a ball, and then prior to collapsing with exhaustion from their 3-mile run into the stadium, throwing the ball at someone holding a cricket racquet. 
 
My final foray was for Leeds versus Reading at Elland Road on the occasion when they were trying to move up a division, a match they lost. Some chap kept screaming at the Leeds team while running from side to side in the stand behind us while dragging his knuckles along the stand floor. And no one told me that clapping politely when Reading scored was not the thing to do.
 
However, having been to the town of Leigh a couple of times in the past month, the town is naturally enough somewhat over the moon at their team's appearance in the Rugby League final at Wembley. And the atmosphere in the town is quite ecstatic. So I have been watching a few of the highlight matches between the likes of Leigh, Wigan, Hull, Leeds Rhinos and Warrington. 
 
I can just about manage these 15-minute match "summaries" and actually find them somewhat entertaining. More so, these shortened versions don't allow time for the perfunctory idiotic, English-language-mangling experts standing around in a semi-circle talking absolute bollox. 
 
This means I can leave the commentary on and thus gain a little insight as to what is actually going on.
 
I believe the current terminology to be used is "Go on Leigh".

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Airport amusement

There is no doubt that airports can be quite amusing places. That is apart from being told by a burly security supervisor at the x-ray gate that thanks to the only contribution Yasser Arafat ever made to society, I had to remove my belt, shoes, watch and place my AK-47 in the tray provided. Watching people going around their travel ‘business’ in airports and on board the aircraft is hilarious. There are those who are plainly not very good at it, continually checking all manner of minutiae with the other members of the party. “Do we go to the gate?”, “Have we time for a beer?”, “I MUST get a pizza”. There are those who have plainly not done it much before and like their fellow travellers to be made fully aware of the exact opposite, as they point and gesture to the monitor shouting out their destination and boarding gate at every passing opportunity to one and all around them. There are those who think they are something special – despite the fact they are travelling via bu...

Are Camelot dim, dysfunctional, liars or just plain greedy?

There can be no denying that UK lottery operators Camelot are on to a good thing. Especially the overpaid management. They have been reaping the benefits of the franchise for years now - a franchise that in essence, has been licenced by the government to print money. However, I can't quite make up my mind whether the management of the Lotto are dim, dysfunctional, liars or just plain greedy, although the cynic in me answers the question when I consider the chief Executive of Camelot was complaining last year that the annual bonus on her not inconsiderable 7-figure salary had been reduced (conveniently forgetting her 18 year sojourn to date at Camelot has produced a pension we mere mortals can only dream about. How about the poor soldiers, CEO Dianne Thompson, who come back from the far-east minus a leg and have to legally fight for compensation that doesn't even touch what you earn less than a month? And they don't receive CBE's for their troubles either !). Irres...

A Season for all men

Well, we’re used to hearing about the Camping Season , which for Scouts runs from approximately 31st March to 31st October each year, although Graham Norton’s camping season lasts all year. Then there’s the Caravan Season , where Jeremy Clarkson spends six months with extremely high blood pressure as he tries to overtake them on the A38 in an excruciatingly expensive and completely unnecessary car. The Japanese have their Scientific Season, which was a series of sporadic weeks where they slaughtered endangered whales for scientific research, the results of which seem to be a closely guarded world-secret. This season now looks set, thanks to a group of spineless, land-locked countries threatened by the Land of the Rising Scientific Research with paying more for their Nintendos and PlayStations, to last until the final whale is wiped off the face of the oceans. I have written to the Japanese Embassy four times now seeking details of this research (email address info@l...