Back to the soccer

Just following up on my earlier post about the football. Ireland lost their World cup dreams in South Africa when Thierry Henry double hand balled and then the French scored. This made them victorious. Television replay after replay showed this to be true. The French player admitted it after the game.
The Irish football association demanded a rematch which was the only fair thing to do. This was denied by FIFA.
I have lived through similar incidents before albeit in another sport and country.
You can bet your bottom dollar that if it had been Ireland as the culprit and not France. The rematch would have been allowed.
I do hope FIFA get their act together and the World cup next year in South Africa, is not won by cheating because a referee was unsighted. Those times have changed.

The football fiasco

Hear we go again, another hand of God incident. The referee is always right. Now that's rich and I include umpires in this as well. The truth is, sometimes they are and sometimes they're not. I'm a lifelong lover of sport and the incidents I have experienced of this are legendary. In a football (or is that soccer?) game, I'm a largely disinterested spectator. However, now and again I like a look see especially if my country is involved. So we had another farce.

The thing about refs and umpires, they are always right, because if one did not have this, then any game would resort to chaos. Even with them, they often still do.

In the old days and especially in amateur sport is where they are always right came from. All evidence and human nature and bias to the contrary notwithstanding. Moreover times change and technology changes. Rugby, cricket, tennis, at the professional level, are just a few examples. Here the referee is no longer always right and players have a referral system to question dubious decisions. They use modern technology and third umpires. Whatever happened to football (soccer?)

Done and Dusted

Apologies as have been away for a while with a lot of family things.

Returning to my last post about awesome Springboks. Well it is done and dusted and they are now the Tri-Nations champions having lost only one game in the tournament, and that was to Australia. Played New Zealand three times and won all three games.

Apart from being the current World Cup holders, they also beat the best of the Northern Hemisphere when they comprehensively beat the the British and Irish lions.

So let's just put this to bed. There is no better side in the World, and if you don't believe me, just look at the statistics.

Congratulations Springbok's, a pleasure to watch.

Awesome Springboks

I grew up in Zimbabwe which is the first country on the Northern South African border. Consequently I have always been a fan of South African sport, be this golf, tennis, cricket or rugby and many other sports besides.

It often amazes me that no matter how well they do, they are not quite considered as the best. The classic example is with the rugby team known as the Springboks. They have won the world cup twice and are the current holders, which should speak volumes. But no, the New Zealand, All Blacks are the better team, irrespective of whether they win the world cup or not. Well, well, well, in the current Tri-Nations series, the All Blacks have currently lost twice to the Springboks. Yet the perception still entails that they are the better side.

I can't make peace with this and am the first to say that All Black rugby teams are great sides. No question in my mind about that. However, fair is fair and this Springbok rugby side is in my opinion, in a class of it's own.

Next up they take on Australia and I cannot see them getting the upper hand and believe great things are yet to come from this Springbok side provided they do not have a spate of injuries. As I said earlier, fair is fair so let's put this to rest. The Springboks are the better side. Just look at the scores.

What is truth?

Ever since Pontius Pilate first uttered these words, it is a question which has been haunting mankind, and it is still true today. About 25 years ago I read a book by Ayn Rand and towards the end there is a quote from Aristotle, a great mind. I was so impressed by this and used to know it word by word. But I'm getting on in life and can only now remember.

" For a principle which every one must have, who understands, anything that is. Is not a hypothesis. Evidently then, such a principle, is the most certain of all. Which principle this is, let us proceed to say. It is, that the same attribute, cannot at the same time belong and not belong to the same subject in the same respect."

For some reason this always made immediate sense to me and still does.

So, what is truth?

In the defence of the Eel

For the last year and a half I have fallen on hard times. I lost my job and because of the recession, my age, my disability, it became almost impossible to find work. So being some what at a loose end I began playing around with the computer to pass the time and give me something to do apart from the housework.

Somewhere in amongst all this I came across a site called Squidoo owned by a world renown author and computer marketing expert and I started writing short stories about some of my life experiences.

It's a wonderful, sharing, helpful community and in the process have made many friends, albeit only online. One of these people has been unfailingly kind and helpful to many people here. By all accounts she has not had the easiest of lives and has personal problems, not least being an inability to talk to people. Now I am not exactly sure about this but I think she has what is known as Aspergers Syndrome.

Be that as it may, she writes beautifully and is very talented, her pseudonym here is Eelkat. Apart from having her home burnt down and living in a tent, recently she penned a story about this. This has fallen foul of her leaders in her church who are harassing her and threatening excommunication.

That such things can happen today in a first world country and to a lovely, vulnerable girl, is quite beyond my capacity to understand. So this is just a small post for you and to let people know, that you have more friends than perhaps they realise and they had better thread warily.

Postcript on the Golf and cricket

Following up on my last post and two things are done and dusted. Firstly England won the second test and deservedly so. It's certainly going to liven up the series.

Then of course the British Open Golf. Who would have believed it possible that a 59 year 10 month old man who had a hip replacement recently would lead for four days. It went to the wire and he played one bad shot in all that time, which was his second to the green on the eighteenth. All he had to do was make par and the tournament was his. Astonishing.

As it turns out he bogeyed it and had to play a form of sudden death which he lost. As far as I'm concerned he never lost. Rules, rules, rules. But how I like to look at it is, in racing terms. One doesn't re-run a hundred metre dash when one cannot separate the winners or worse still have a re-run between the two winners of lets just say 20 metres. No sir, it's a dead heat and both won.

If I was Tom Watson, that's how I would be consoling myself. If I was Stewart Cink Iwould be thinking. I made a birdie putt on the eighteenth under huge pressure, so I also deserved to win.

Anyway congratulations to Stewart Cink on being a worthy British Open golf champion. To Tom Watson, thank you for giving me four of the best days of my life. What an inspiration.