SportingSpeak Review of the Week

09.03.15

Top Four

• James Ward once again produced Davis Cup heroics, staging a fabulous comeback to beat John Isner is a mammoth 5 setter in Glasgow and, along with Andy Murray, set Team GB up for a 3-1 victory and a place in the quarter finals
• KJT: we just can’t get enough of Britain’s brightest athletics talent, who on Friday won Pentathlon gold at the European Indoors, breaking the British record in the process and coming within a whisker of a world record too
• 60m sprint: gold for Richard Kilty and a silver for Dina Asher-Smith at the European Indoors – Asher-Smith was the first British woman to win a medal in this event for 30 years
• Triathlon is back as the ITU World Triathlon Series kicked off in Dubai over the weekend – although Alistair Brownlee, Helen Jenkins and Non Stanford were notable absentees.

In the relegation zone

• The KP saga. Will he or won’t he? We’re bored of all the discussion about whether Pietersen will play for England again. Let’s look at what’s actually happening on the pitch. (And for the record, our money says he won’t).
• Stewarding: ineffectual at Villa Park as fans flooded the pitch not only after, but also shortly before, the final whistle in Aston Villa’s victory over local rivals West Brom is the FA Cup quarter final
• Spitting will earn you a ban from football, as Pappis Cisse and Jonny Evans have found out.

SportingSpeak Review of the Week

24.02.15

Top Four

• Big Money Boxing – Floyd Mayweather v Manny Pacquiao has finally been confirmed, and is expected to generate as much as £162m.
• Mo Farah is now a world record holder, after running two miles in 08:03.40 at the Birmingham Grand Prix.
• A second consecutive mention for Katarina Johnson-Thompson after she breaks her second British record in a week, jumping 6.93m in the long jump in Birmingham.
• November, as it is announced that the Qatar World Cup 2022 will, unusually, kick off towards the end of the year.

In the relegation zone

• Winning streaks, as Rafael Nadal’s defeat to Fabio Fognini in the Rio Open ended a 52 match winning streak in semi-finals on clay.
• England’s CWC chances took another blow, slipping to a record defeat against New Zealand – but they did manage a win over Scotland in their third match.
• British domination in cycling looks to be coming to an end after a disappointing performance at the World Championships.

SportingSpeak Review of the Week

16.02.2015

Top Four

• Premier League TV rights: worth a staggering £5.1 billion, apparently.
• Everyone’s talking about Jonathan Joseph after his two scintillating tries during England’s 47-17 Six Nations win over Italy at Twickenham. He’s not the new Jeremy Guscott, though…
• Katarina Johnson-Thompson: back from injury and breaking records already. With Morgan Lake also excelling, the future of British heptathlon looks bright.
• Tattoos. Zalatan Ibrahimovic received a yellow card for his shirtless goal celebration, showing off his (temporarily) tattooed torso, but apparently it’s all about world hunger.

In the relegation zone

•  Premature finishes – England’s 10^th wicket at the Cricket World Cup was a run-out from a dead ball, denying James Taylor a century, and then it was game over for Scotland vs Wales at Murrayfield in spite of the clock suggesting there was time for a restart.
• England at the Cricket World Cup. Already. After slumping to a 111 run defeat vs Australia in their opening match, things aren’t looking too rosy for our home hope down under. Ireland, on the other hand, got off to a fantastic start defeating the West Indies in their opening match.
• 246.5m – no longer the ski jump world record, after it was broken twice in two days. If you haven’t seen it already, the record breaking jump is well worth a watch.

SportingSpeak Review of the Week

24.11.14

Top four

• RFeds: led Switzerland to Davis Cup victory over the weekend, and in the process added yet another trophy to the cabinet http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2014/nov/23/roger-federer-switzerland-davis-cup-france
• Autumn Internationals: continuing to keep Saturday afternoons interesting. http://www.rugbyworld.com/countries/australia-countries/autumn-internationals-week-three-report/
• Charlotte Dujardin: Named Sportswoman of the Year this week. http://www1.skysports.com/watch/tv-shows/sportswomen/news/9570520/charlotte-dujardin-named-sunday-timessky-sports-sportswoman-of-the-year
• Formula 1. Controversial points allocations aside, the final GP of the season proved a fitting end to a dominant season for Lewis Hamilton. http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/formula1/30176379

In the relegation zone

• Football inequality: Historic crowds turned out to watch England’s women play Germany at Wembley. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/teams/england/11248943/England-0-Germany-3-Rain-and-result-fails-to-dampen-historic-day-for-womens-football-at-Wembley.html
• Mascots. The Rio 2016 mascots have been unveiled. They’re “all of the animals” and “all of the trees” in mascot form. Apparently. http://time.com/3601945/rio-unveils-2016-olympic-mascots/
• Boycotts. Doha were awarded the 2019 World Athletics Championships, and Greg Rutherford has suggested he’d support a boycott. http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/athletics/30148322

American college sports stars are being exploited. The NCAA must make changes to protect them.

College sport in America is big business. An estimated 50 million Americans bet on basketball’s March Madness tournament earlier this year. 5 football teams’ average attendance surpassed 100,000 per game during the 2010-11 season, and 22 football teams have a higher average attendance than the NFL. NFL and NBA players must serve 1 – 3 years as an “amateur” on a college team before turning professional and drafting for a major league team, creating a system where college sport is the incubator for the stars of the future.  

To an outsider the current system looks a fair and sensible way to operate. Star high school players hone their craft at college, alongside studying for a degree. They benefit from expert coaching, excellent facilities, and a college education. They have their fees paid for them, and board and lodgings covered. They do their time in college, before earning a ticket to the big time, and big earnings, in the NBA or NFL.

All very fair so far. Or is it?

The Premier League should have the best pundits – and here is how we will get them

Oscar Howie launches the #utternonsense campaign against mediocre punditry

There is a contemporary school of thought that suggests blogging and its fashionable nephew micro-blogging have reached the point in their media maturity where they begin to influence rather than merely reflect the course of world events. That may very well be true. It seems implausible that Sina Weibo’s 500 million users do not exert some non-trivial pressure upon the Chinese Communist Party.

The purpose of this blog is more modest than all that. The volatile and unpredictable course of Premier League events will be entirely unaltered by this blog or by the deluge of tweets that will begin on Saturday. But it might just be possible to alter the way that we consume these events.

Law changes in football are required to ensure that concussions are properly managed

It’s a scene we saw all too often at the World Cup: a dazed and disorientated player remaining on the pitch after taking a heavy knock to the head. Christoph Kramer was not removed from play after a blow to the head in the early stages of the World Cup final until 15 minutes after the incident, and subsequently admitted that he could not remember the first half of the game. This was not an isolated incident: on separate occasions, Argentina’s Mascherano and Uruguay’s Pereira were also allowed to play on after heavy blows to the head (in Pereira’s case, he remained on the pitch after an argument with the team physician). Back in March, I blogged about the need for sport’s governing bodies to ensure that their players are properly informed of the risks surrounding head injuries in contact sports; namely, NFL and Rugby Union. Over the course of the World Cup, though, it became increasingly apparent that a disregard for the safety of players when it comes to head injuries pervades football, stretching well beyond a lack of education among the players, into flagrantly dangerous decisions and practices on the pitch.

Greg Dyke’s FA Commission was a success: it has re-framed the debate about player development

Since the establishment of the Premier League, the declining number of English players playing top flight football has been the subject of great debate. It is widely recognised that it is difficult for talented young English footballers to break into the Premier League, and that it is difficult for the national team to excel when it is selecting from a relatively small group of elite players. The FA Commission assigned with the task of identifying the causes of this problem and its potential solutions released its findings earlier this month. The report does an excellent job of illustrating an important barrier to player progression: a lack of competitive football between the ages of 18 and 21. By doing so it has re-framed the debate about player development. This is a meaningful achievement.