When everything goes well

Most football fans will be able to tell when their team was doing well hadn't lost at home for months and played some struggling team in a league game and then came crashing down to earth with a bang, beaten by 1 goal to nil and against 10 men too! And it was the only live TV game from their ground in the last 2 seasons - what an advert to the nation (DOH!). These memories hurt and they give rise to that greatest of all sportsfans ailments, pessimism.

To the law of pessimism; QPR pushed to the bottom of the championship following Sheffield Wednesdays win at Norwich yesteday were nailed on certainties to frustrate a West Brom team who had not conceded a home goal in the league since Wednesday (incoincidentally) won at the Hawthorns in April. With the match Live to the Nation on Sky Sports 1 this was a certainty - surely.

However there are some matches when everything goes well and the same team that would have got one over on you on one of 'those' days comes and gets a hiding. This is what most fans hope for more often than they dare to expect it. West Brom won 5-1 and dispatched QPR with some ease and something to spare. On top of that they played some attractive football and entertained those that had paid just £10 to get in as well as those in TV land. The attendance of 24,000 was also proof that by lowering the price (to encourage the paying fan to get to the game rather than watch at home or in the pub) they had done good business and also created a great atmosphere in the ground. If there is a club with a just cause to dare to dream, then it must be the team that once clawed back 11 points in two months on rivals Wolves to win promotion and also achieved the great escape from the premiership basement at Christmas to stay up. Despite the Wembley play off defeat in May I'm there is renewed optimism around the Hawthorns again.
It's amazing what a good win can do!

ROCKTOBER in Colorado

When I went to the US in 1999 I was stuck in a house where the TV was on all the time and being a sports fan I watched more than a few hours of baseball. I loved America and the only way I could convince myself that I could be content on a sporting level to leave England's green and pleasant land with its Premiership, Football League, FA Cup and Cricket would be that I could follow the baseball season from April to October. After all, MLS is not really at a standard worthy of comparing with the English game and I've never understood why 'butch' men need pads and infinate commercial breaks to play what is in essence a game of rugby league where forward passing is allowed. Being vertically challenged myself , though I see the excitement in basketball I could never reach a level of interest.
Tonight I have had freeview on NASN on my satellite network and I have watched the Colorado Rockies win their 13th game in the last 14 to qaulify for a one off game at Coors Field with San Jose Pardre's for the right to play in the post season for only the second or third time in their history. Now in any sport a run like that is fantastic. When you consider the number of games in the regular baseball season and how frequent they are then that makes this an extra special achivement. I've not really nailed my colours to the mast of a particular baseball team but I do have some favourites. Truely as a neutral I find this sport really engaging and the stats appeal to my geekyness the same verve that allows me to lose myself in the cricket stats and football tables for a couple of hours with no effort at all. Good luck and well done to the Colorado Rockies.

Welsh Irish Failure is World Cup Success

Ok. I'm not Welsh or Irish and I will not pretend to hide behind some Home Nations unity and come out in sympathy for these great rugby nations going out of the World Cup Rugby in France this weekend. Bad news for them especially for the Welsh Coach Jenkins who was today sacked. I am not particularly a partizan rugby fan - I love my country - England; and want them to do well but it is not the end of my day when they lose. However one of the critisisms of tornaments like this one is that only 20 or so countries across the globe can truely say they have a National team worthy of any level of competition. Why bother with a world cup where 20 of these teams compete when only 3 or possibly 4 of them really stand a chance of winning ? Fiji , Argentina, Italy and Tonga have all turned up expecting very little but a token win over other 'also rans' in their group but they have challenged England, Wales, Ireland, France and Scotland to either knock them out or give them a real battle. The fact that Wales and Ireland wont be running out to play quarter finals is great news for the game in the fact that it will encourage and promote the development of the game in other countries as well as those at this world cup. The US rugby team also gave a good account of themselves against the reigning world champions. There is hope that emerging nations can now move on and spread the game still further. The tornament is therefore already a success for the game and fans. And in a world where sport at the highest level is increasingly predicatable it makes a refreshing change to see the underdogs making a real go of it.

Indian Summer.

What a difference a week in sport can make. Take India's ailing one day cricket team. World Cup failures in the West indies in the Summer, and then beaten by New Zealand in the first Twenty20 of their Super8 group. England could have been forgiven for having them in their pockets until Yuvraj Singh stepped up to knock those 6x6s in Stuart Broad's most infamous over.
Twenty four hours later they destroy South African hopes by not just beating them but dumping them out of their own tournament by outclassing them. I have a colleague at work who is Indian and after this win today I phoned him to congratulate him but he had not been following it at all and he is a big cricket fan - such is the level of their expectations - I think initially he thought I was having a joke with him!
I'm left awaiting a similar England turn around. We can but hope.

Special One Gone

Jose has gone. Were we really that surprised? I mean come on; 3 poor (by Chelsea standards) results and festering differences between owner and manager which had finally got to the stage where it could no longer be plausible to continue. The thing that did surprise me when I heard was my own sense of surprise. This was always going to be the case when Abramovich ploughed his millions into Chelsea. Lest we forget the tinkering Ranieri who despite showing signs of gradually improving the squad and its fortunes to the tune of a Champions League Semi final defeat by Monaco, also got shown the door.

Jose has done well - Two titles, one FA Cup and a couple of league cups to add to an already impressive CV. He lasted 3 years which given Chelsea's obsession with the Champions league and failure to win it seems very good going. Good Luck to Jose. He has such a high self belief that if he ever wants to work again I'm sure he will succeed.

Abramovich needs to learn that you can not just buy the Champions League Trophy - it is a competition that you need to win by competing and as often in the nature of these things you do get beat. If he cant handle getting beat then I suggest he either does what David Gold of Birmingham City did http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4568251.stm or he shows some patience like Manchester United did with Sir Alex Ferguson.

Avram has a thankless task ahead of him. If you achieve what Jose has anywhere else in these fair Isles then you would have the freedom of the town, but at Chelski it's frankly not good enough. Add to that the inevitable rumours about Gus Hiddink and others waiting in the wings and the pressure mounts.