As Steve Harmison walked back to his mark following that already infamous first ball of the 2006/07 Ashes series, he was probably wishing he could join his mentally frail kindred spirit Marcus Trescothick on the plane back to Blighty. They could have shared an iPod and listened to a bit of Radiohead:

‘Where do we go from here?
The ball’s are coming out all weird
Where are you now when I need you?
Alone on an aeroplane
Falling asleep against the window pane
My blood will THICKEN’.

If only their blood had thickened. Only to late did the England boys realise the force at and determination with which Australia were going to come at them. Their preparation was insufficient, and no matter what any of Team England say, their preparation has left them off the pace.

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This is the scoop they all wanted. What really goes on behind the closed doors of Team England on an Ashes Tour. With the help of new extra sensory recording equipment we can bring you exclusive footage of Duncan Fletcher’s megalomania, Peter Gregory’s incompetence and the reasons why no one ever truly knows whats going on inside the ‘Team England bubble’!

To download our first foray into the world of cricketing satire with our Ashes Podcast.

Written by Fergie & Performed by AJ

We are all critics and as someone writing on a place of public access I am no better than any other writer or critic. Add to that the fact that I am neither English or a football fan beyond passing interest, and you would be forgiven for dismissing my two penny’s worth out of hand.

It seems to me though that there is one faction with more influence over English football at both a domestic and international level that goes unnoticed in it’s uncandidness: The English Media.

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Man Utd 2 v Liverpool 0

1) The first thing you can say about Liverpool, and in a way defends their poor start to the season, is that they’ve gotten their hardest 4 away fixtures out of the way before the end of October. If they could have written down the four toughest away matches of the season before the fixture lists were released, the names Manchester United, Chelsea, Everton and Bolton would unquestionably have been the ones on the list. By bad luck or interference of those fixture lists (who knows who compiles them or how random they really are?) the quirk is that they have got them all out of the way not even a quarter into the Premiership season. This, if you are being ultra positive, can enable Liverpool to go on long winning runs of form here on in…. Read the rest of this entry »

The events at the Oval last month have fuelled much cricketing debate. Why did it happen? How did it come to the point where the Pakistan side refused to take the field again? Are they a victimised cricketing nation? Is Darrell Hair an officious cold hearted racist or a sole defender of the game’s values?

Well today’s post hearing press conference should have given us a great insight into some truths about what happened and how the ICC intends preventing such farcical scenes soiling crickets good name ever again. Enevitably however, as is with anything co-ordinated by the ICC, it was a pointless exercise and only served to shroud the whole incident in greater mystery and controversy. Not least by the fact that they announced the suspension of Hair’s umpiring duties for the ICC Champions Trophy moments before the man himself took to the hot seat, after they once again bowed to pressure from the new cricketing bully boys, the Board of Control for Cricket in Indian.

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There is a rather large problem permeating the Football Association. Ignoring the fact that they have appointed a man who is publicly known to be their second choice as manager, there is a bigger problem that not only faces this generation of English footballers, the self-anointed “golden generation”, but if the problem isn’t addressed, also the next two or three generations to come. The problem is, that for all the F.A.’s demands that England should be the best in the world, there has been very little of anything to suggest that the F.A. has the ambition to match these statements.

Whilst countries such as Holland, Italy, Brazil, Croatia and even Ireland have taken the bold steps of appointing untested ex-players as national team mangers, England still fall foul of the age old conservativeness that has so long affected the picking of the team.

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With the next World Cup to be held in South Africa, giving Africa one extra qualifier, and probably the best chance for an African side to win the World Cup, what chance has an African side got of winning the ultimate prize? Pele famously said he believed that an African nation would win the World Cup by 2002. Obviously, he has had to revise that theory with every four years that pass, but when South Africa kick-off the 2010 tournament, which African teams will be in the running?

The World Cup in Germany was notable for many things, including the absence of the recognised powers in African football, that being Cameroon, Nigeria, and to a lesser extent, South Africa. Now, on the basis of their performances in Germany, would anyone argue that Togo or Angola are better teams than Nigeria or Cameroon? Egypt, current African Nations champions, did not qualify either, and it isn’t comparable to the non-qualification of Greece, who were shock winners in Portugal, and have never been viewed as a power in European football, whereas Egypt have long been one of the top teams in Africa.
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So lets look ahead prematurely to the Euro 2008 qualifying groups. In Scotland’s group, Group B, they have to contend with three World Cup quarter finalists in France, Italy and the Ukraine for the top two spots. This is ridiculous and compounded by the fact when you take a look at Group C, a group of Greece, Turkey, Norway, Bosnia and Hertzegovina, Hungary, Moldova and Malta. Not only did none of these teams fail to make it to the quarter finals of the World Cup, none of them even made it at all!!!

Surely the way groups are drawn needs to be looked at again sinc we have seen unbalanced groupings in Germany (two groups of deaths C and D and three weak ones A, B and G) and now this

“The decision to overlook key Liverpool players despite our magnificent achievement was frustrating,” Chief Executive Rick Parry told Liverpool’s official magazine.

“What do you have to do to be recognised by the powers-that-be? I don’t want to take anything away from the England cricketers and their wonderful Ashes success against Australia. But the fact that the inspirational efforts of Steven Gerrard and Jamie Carragher in helping us win the Champions League were effectively dismissed is little short of staggering.”

“Of course, we have been here before,” he said. “The achievements of the legendary Bob Paisley, the most successful English club manager of all time and three-times European Cup winner, were never truly recognised. My own bemusement now comes full circle to encompass the failure to recognise the achievements of the Anfield boys of 2005.”

Never a truer word spoken plus the fact that every member of the England Rugby Squad got a MBE including someone who played for 25 minutes against Uruguay and the physio. Paul Collingwood, who scored about 20 runs and took no wickets in the final test got one as did the England bowling coach who is an Australian!!!

Jonno

Add this to the fact that BBC1 (or MUTV2 as it is now known) are showing the Burton replay, meaning they have shown Man U play in 11 consecutive rounds of the FA Cup going back to the 2004 5th round. As well as two nights of George Best programmes (that included a show just on Man U and nothing to do with Best) and a programme on the Munich air crash this week.

Who is England’s most successful football club? I forget.