Sporty Sunday (and Saturday)

It's been a good weekend for sport this one ...

Yes - it's still the football season but I for one don't count league football as a sport. It's a con game played by namby-pambys with no integrity or respect whatsoever. But that's enough about so-called "professional" footballers. Their conduct gives the term "sportsman" a bad name.

What's made this a good sporting weekend is :

England cricket on the telly
Start of the Six Nations rugby
Superbowl tonight

England have been playing Pakistan in the neutral venues of Dubai and Abu Dhabi. (They can't play at home because the situation is too unstable). It's been a torture exercise for the fans to be honest, as they've crumbled against the spin. But they're our team, we love 'em and we'll support them through thick and thin.

Especially if they celebrate like Monty Panesar. It's just sheer, unconfined joy when he takes a wicket and he puts my old Aeroplane wing celebrations to shame.

I'll confess though that I've fast forwarded through much of the cricket this weekend as this series has been a bit of an unspectacular grind amidst the clusters of wickets.

Six Nations started this weekend and is always one for the sports fans to look forward to. Rugby's a hard, uncompromising sport played by true hard nut athletes. Like the cricketers, they'll play on with broken bones (if they can) and a little bit of blood is taken as an honour badge (until the ref spots it and tells them to get it sorted). Compare that to footballers who feign injury to get opposition players in trouble.

I'll not watch all the Six Nations games, it'll follow the rules :

Watch all England games - get tortured by knowing they can play better.
Watch all Ireland games - because of the affinity from living there for most of my first 10 years.
Watch games where there's a chance of a good game.
Ignore Scotland and Italy - because both sides are pretty poor (Italy are improving, Scotland are just poor)
Shout for the other team when France are playing - even if it's the Welsh.

Is there anyone I haven't upset yet with the above ? Lol :-) I don't mean any of it outside of match banter.

Mixed feelings about England rugby this year. A new coach has swept a very wide broom through the team. He's been brave, taken his own approach to things and some of it looked ok. There's still some massive holes at key positions though where the players just aren't international class (10 is a lynchpin and Hodgson has never been up to it at international level).

Yesterday's England game lived to those expectations - England were lucky to win a game where they flattered to deceive people into believing they had any real ideas for how to get points. It was one of the least impressive (outside of improved discipline) displays by an England side for quite a while. And Scotland were worse ...

Compare that to the Welsh who have just punched a half chance through the Irish defence to score a try.

Superbowl's tonight - I don't watch much American Football but I usually enjoy it when I do. American sport tends to be much more regimented in its play than European football and NFL is no exception. Short doses work well for NFL and Baseball, so you don't get jaded from seeing season long the same thing over and over again. The Superbowl is usually worth watching though.

The trouble with the Superbowl is that it's on really, really late. I will probably last as long as the half time show before going "zzzzzzz".