Whatever the drawbacks of the Pope’s views about contraception or human sexuality, I was heartened to learn that his judgement remains sound concerning “the things that really matter”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/funny_old_game/3242602.stm . Now if he could just lay on the odd miracle or two …
From the category archives:
Sport
A great game — including a great try to boring boring England — and the right result . Commiserations to Brian (England had to beat Australia at something, one day).
Americans, like everyone else, like to play up sporting rivalries. And tomorrow sees the latest installment of one of the big ones by their parochial standards: Ohio State v Michigan. It’s a bit overshadowed though by the greatest rivalry in world sports: Australia v England. Since this time it’s for the Webb Ellis Trophy, it is a pretty important game in the rivalry too. A bit more important than, say, our guy beating their guy at darts. In recent years, Australia has outgunned the English in just about everything, but I fear that doesn’t provide much ground for confidence about tomorrow’s game. I’m pretty confident that Australia will score more tries than the English, and the English will score more field goals than we do. If this was an Australian Rules grand final Jonny Wilkinson would be flattened within the first five minutes. Twice. And that’s assuming he got through the warmups unscathed. Fortunately the game they play in heaven is a little more civilised, even if English tactics are about as much in keeping with the spirit of the game as Bodyline. I’m so excited about it I can hardly sleep, which is a good thing since the only way I’ll make a 4am start time is if I’m still awake.
I’m not keen on national anthems, but I was struck before the England–France semi-final by the constrast between “God Save the Queen”:http://acronet.net/~robokopp/english/godsaveo.htm and the “Marseillaise”:http://www.acronet.net/~robokopp/french/lamarsei.htm . One a dirge like hymn to hierarchy and submission, the other an upbeat celebration of martial comradeship. There’s no question that
bq. Allons enfants de la Patrie
Le jour de gloire est arrivé
are good lines to be singing before you take the field, even if — as it turned out — it hadn’t.
Chris Brooke has an “eloquent and quite persuasive response”:http://users.ox.ac.uk/~magd1368/weblog/2003_11_01_archive.html#106855492205119024 to my post on whom the English should support at sport. A day of grim faculty meetings has quite robbed me of my wit and ripostefulness, so I can’t dash off a witty riposte to him. But do go read his thoughts.
Who knew such a thing existed? And who would have guessed that if it did exist, it would exist in Belgium?
Quite a sporting weekend for me: I saw Leicester Tigers beat Wasps 32-22 yesterday, then Wales gave England a scare in the Rugby world cup, then Liverpool were denied a deserved point against the S*** at Anfield when referee Graham Poll lacked the courage to award us a cast-iron penalty. Two wins out of three isn’t bad. but when I weight them by how much I care it is still pretty grim.
The only one of these events I attended in person was the Tigers-Wasps encounter which was thoroughly enjoyable and ended a losing streak for Tigers. Bizarrely, the Zurich Premiership continues whilst the leading players are all at the World Cup with the consequence that the strongest teams become the weakest overnight.
All of which is a prelude to brief comment on which teams the English should support at the Rugby World Cup.
That would be the fifth Rugby World Cup of course, which is being played down here in Australia and has, I’ve noticed, generally escaped commentary in the blogosphere. But any game where France walk all over the U.S. can’t expect much love in the strongholds of blogging. Here at CT we have a strong representation from the Six Nations, though I don’t know how many of them (if any) are rugby fans. Here’s an update on what’s happening, including details of how the left-wing solidarity of Crooked Timber might be overwhelmed by the false gods of Nationalism.
Poor IDS. The Tory party conference (like “the Women’s World Cup”:https://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/000637.html ) has been entirely overshadowed in the British media by the ongoing slimefest that is the English Premier League. Following a mass brawl at the end of a recent Arsenal-Manchester United game, we’ve now been treated to two separate sexual assault allegations (one a gang rape involving players from at least two clubs), various petty acts of violence and verbal abuse, and finally, a leading club allowing one of its players to “forget” to take the drug test he was selected for shortly before. The refusal of the Football Association to select the player for England with investigations pending has led to England players (led by the player’s mates from the same team) to threaten to refuse to play against Turkey. Meanwhile, there have been hints that the England manager has abused his position to tout for a club owned by a Russian oligarch.
A soccer world cup championship is down to the finals, but you’d be hard-pressed to know it. I’m not surprised that here in Chicagoland it has not been at the forefront of sports headlines. With all the focus on the Cubs there would not be much coverage even if the US had made it to the finals. Alas, it didn’t. It’s down to Sweden and Germany.
It’s been interesting to watch the rise in the popularity of women’s soccer in the US. There are two things standing in its way: one is that it’s a women’s sport, which tends to be less popular overall (although we are seeing some change in that, but not too much) and it’s soccer, which is not exactly the most popular sport in the United States if you judge by media coverage. But it’s not that simple. Soccer is actually quite popular when it comes to participation and going out to see a game [pdf]. It is also a very popular high school sport in the US and many of those participants are girls. So no, it’s not because soccer is somehow inherently un-American that it has not gained popular appeal. I’m sure the fact that it is hard to break the game up into sections to accomodate commercials has to do with it. But I don’t want to get into too much popsociology here. There is a book on this, Offside, which the reviews on Amazon suggest is a good read on the topic. (The reviews will also give you an idea of the argument of the book. I don’t feel comfortable commenting on that since I haven’t read it myself.)
I was at the 1999 World Cup opening game and it was very exciting. This year, most of the games have been broadcast on ESPN2 or even less mainstream channels in the US limiting the size of audiences. I only happened upon the Canada-Sweden game today by accident. Are the games getting better coverage in other countries? The final will be broadcast on ABC so that should reach more people. How many will be watching is another question. I’m planning on throwing a Women’s World Cup Final brunch party to add to the fun. 
Simon Kuper has been pretty busy this week. Not content with analyzing the Islamic vote, he also provides “a handy compendium of weird animal sports”:http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1059480156751&p=1045677866454 , including elephant polo, goat racing and tortoise racing. Many of these pastimes are products of the British empire it seems. The champion tortoise answers to the name of Rosa Luxemburg.
It’s well known that our intuitive approaches to probabilistic reasoning lead to fairly bizarre beliefs and behaviour in some circumstances. It can also lead to fairly odd attitudes and emotions in the right circumstances. Consider, for example, how it would feel being a fan of the various teams in the American League playoff race.
Anyone who follows football (or “soccer” to some of you people) knows that English club Chelsea have recently been bought by Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich. On top of the price of the club and wiping out its enormous debts, Abramovich’s spending on players has now exceeded £100 million and a club near bankruptcy when the last season ended has become a serious contender for the championship. Naturally, the response of sporting journalists has not been to ask Michael Walzer-like questions about power in one sphere being translated to another, about the corruption of sporting contests (it was bad enough even beforehand) or about where and how this mysterious Russian got his cash (political leverage with the Yeltsin clan). Rather, they’ve fawned uncritically over this rather repulsive character. (I might add that commentary on the subject at Libertarian Samizdata hasn’t exactly focused on Lockean principles of justice in acquisition or anything similar.)
I’m on holiday in Kerry in South West Ireland, where the official history of a local golf club tells us that
bq. [xxxx Golf Club] has a proud history of equality, with Lady Gordon a full Captain in 1921 …