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Artur Boruc, a Polish goalkeeper playing for with Celtic, has received a police caution for “a breach of the peace” after he made the sign of the cross during a game. I can only marvel at how Muslims can march through London carrying signs threatening death against people who do not share their beliefs can get a police escort, whereas a devout Christian making the sign of the cross in public can get a police caution. The Polish player was not making rude gestures at a hostile crowd [see update & link below – perhaps he was] or trying to threaten anyone, he was just making a personal gesture indicating a set of beliefs.
I may be a godless rationalist myself but I sincerely hope Artur Boruc not just ignores the police caution but robustly reject it and continues to demonstrate his beliefs as he sees fit. If some Rangers fans cannot stand that and become violent, then perhaps that is where the police’s attention should be more properly focused. Moreover I hope his club supports him regarding this matter and if it does not then I hope he takes his talents elsewhere.
However I am rather bemused that the dismal Ruth Kelly is ‘surprised’ at this development seeing as how she is a leading member of the political class which put the legal infrastructure in place so that exactly this can happen.
Britain has nothing even vaguely resembling the First Amendment or the US Bill of Rights generally, instead relying on common law that springs from a highly imperfect cultural tradition of liberty. As this culture has been in effect ‘nationalised’ and largely replaced by fifty years of highly malleable legislation, there are now few legal tools left to secure individual rights against the state in the UK. Consequently we are left with just hoping for the state to act in a restrained manner as there so now so many laws that can be used to suppress freedom of expression (including not just social but also political speech) that the state can prohibit almost any action it wishes if it really wants to. Moreover public bodies have now been given so much discretion to exercise power ‘in the public interest’ that almost any petty-fogging official can seriously mess with your life if he or she is so inclined. And we can thank the likes of Ruth Kelly in both of the main political parties for this.
 Update: Although I stand by my general contention regarding the state of the law and freedom of expression in the UK, there may be a bit more to this specific story than the Telegraph article suggested.
Right, I am taking a break from scribbling about the iniquities of inheritance tax, dumb airline security and so forth to link to this terrific article by Ed Brayton about golfing phenomenon and American icon, Tiger Woods. Even if you do not give a two-foot putt about the game, this article is a fine study of the sheer force of will that has propelled a man to become the master of his sporting world:
I have to admit to being absolutely fascinated by Tiger Woods. I’ve followed his career closely, despite doubting him initially. I remember watching the press conference when he announced that he was leaving Stanford and turning pro. I particularly remember watching Phil Knight, CEO of Nike, talk about the $40 million contract they had signed with Woods, and I remember laughing out loud and ridiculing Knight when he said that Tiger Woods would transcend the game of golf the way Michael Jordan and Muhammad Ali transcended their sports.
No way, I said; not a chance. No matter how good he is, no matter how much he dominates the sport, golf will never be anywhere near as popular as basketball or boxing and that will limit his fame and his standing in relation to the rest of the sports world. Golf is too much an exclusive sport, too tied in with the rich and the well born to have the kind of universal appeal that other sports have. And it’s solitary, one man by himself, with no defense to be played and no one on one competition to fuel rivalries. Yeah, I’m glad I didn’t put any money on that prediction.
Brayton’s blog, Despatches from the Culture Wars, is definitely worth a regular visit, too.
I am listening to the test match cricket commentary, and I can tell you that cricket is about to become extremely big news, of the front page variety.
England are playing Pakistan, at the Oval cricket ground in London. England are two up, but Pakistan are looking favourites to win the final game, despite a good England batting fight back.
Or, they were. Because now something far more serious has happened. A while before the tea interval, Pakistan were punished by the umpires, for ball tampering. (Ball tampering in this case means deliberately and excessively scuffing up one side of the ball, to make it swing more.) The umpires changed the allegedly tampered ball, allowing the England batsmen out on the pitch to choose the replacement ball, and England were awarded five penalty runs. The Pakistanis were found guilty of cheating, in other words. There appears to be no evidence one way or the other to back up or disprove this judgement. (Where are those cameramen when you want them? They were all over it when Cook was given not out when he looked to have hit it, earlier in the day.) The Pakistanis carried on with the game at that point, but now the Pakistan side are refusing to take the field after tea.
“Under law 21,” one of the commentators is saying, “if a side refuses to come out, the umpires shall award the match to the other side.” This has never happened before in international cricket.
The umpire at the centre of this row is Darrell Hair, and he has a history of battles with Pakistan. → Continue reading: Darrell Hair versus the Pakistanis
In order to get ‘into’ a sport, it usually helps to have grown up with it. I grew up with shooting, sailing and rugby in so far as those where the things I took to during my (mostly) English school days. Although I also served time doing part of my education in the USA, American Football, Baseball and Basketball never really appealed… not that I really have anything against those games, I just do not ‘relate’ to them myself. Strangely, the only times I have ever played soccer was in the USA as that seemed a more understandable sport to me, perhaps for the simple reason that although it was never a school sport in my neck of the woods in the UK, the ambient presence of ‘footie’ is hard to escape in England.
I do enjoy watching soccer and although the prospect of the World Cup did to some extent sweep me up, but the more matches I watched this time, the more this strange sinking feeling came over me. No doubt it is just me but there just seems to be something desperately unheroic about the game these days, at least at an international level. Perhaps the fact that every time I watched Italy, the eventual winners, play, they seemed to be taking more dives that Jacques Cousteau. I for one find athletes rolling around on the ground play-acting terrible injury when someone so much as brushes up against them such a pathetic and unmanly spectacle that perhaps the Italian team should replace their national flag by flying a petticoat from the nearest flagpole. Although Italy seem to be the worst offender in this regard, it does seem to be an increasingly widespread tactic (that said, anyone playing against Croatia need engage in no injury play-acting given that team’s ‘robust’ approach to the game).
Overall, I cannot help but feel that the whole thing was rather unedifying.
A few hours ago (but still today – it now being the small hours of Monday morning) I finished watching the soccer World Cup Final, and a right old bore it was, I thought. Thank goodness my kitchen contains so many other amusements. I have to admit that the complaints of Americans who say that there is not enough scoring in soccer, and a deal too much despicable play acting, now strike me as thoroughly persuasive.
The more fraught and important the occasion, the duller soccer games now seem to be. It was very noticeable how much more entertaining the group games were in this tournament than the later games, when the seriously effective sides were the only ones left, and when all those exotic Africans and Americans and whatnot, with their “brought a breath of fresh air to the tournament” unpredictability, had all gone home. The more important the games got and the higher the stakes got, the more boring they became for the increasing numbers of disappointed neutrals. It did not help that the semi-finalists in this World Cup all came from European countries within a day’s drive of each other. As the end of the tournament neared, all the players still in it knew each other’s way of playing inside out, because all of them play for the same handful of big European clubs.
The television commentators did their best to explain that the Italians showed colossal resolve and determination and great defensive skill, and that they were “worthy winners”, blah blah blah. But the commentators could not disguise the mediocrity of the occasion, which ended, inevitably, with a penalty shoot-out. During this, one French bloke made a mistake, no Italian did, and that was that.
When I was a teenager at school, I used to play squash. If you are only as good as I am at squash, then squash is a great game. With a racket slightly smaller than a tennis racket, and a small black rubber ball, which you take it in turns to smack, against a wall with a net painted on it, so to speak, squash maximises the exercise you take, while making ball boys entirely superfluous, what with the ball always bouncing back towards you for you to pick it up and resume smacking it.
But squash has one huge drawback. The better you are at it, the duller it gets. The room-stroke-court in which it is played is made the right size to suit players like me. In it I can just about reach the ball much of the time, but am also quite often unable to reach it. For a player like me, against an opponent of a similar standard, it is possible for us both to play genuinely winning shots and to have a really good game, at the end of which the loser is able to say in all sincerity: well played mate.
But at the upper reaches of the game of squash, things are different. If you are a really good squash player, you can always reach the ball, no matter where your opponent hits it. At the supreme pinnacle of the game of squash, where the two best squash players in the world are to be observed through transparent walls bashing that little black rubber ball against one of the transparent walls, the idiots who assemble to watch this absurd spectacle might as well be watching paint dry for all the excitement that it involves. Each point, to be settled, demands a mistake by one or other of the players, and each point means sitting there and waiting for one of the two squash players in the world who are least likely to make a mistake, to make a mistake. And the loser of this hideously prolonged contest, when he does finally emerge, leaves it with the feeling that it was his failures, rather than the other chap’s excellence, which defeated him. Squash did appear briefly on British television, a few years ago. Not surprisingly, it soon departed.
Might soccer be heading that way too? → Continue reading: Is soccer the new squash?
I feel that the referee handled the Rooney thing badly – failing to whistle at all during the long physical assault on Rooney by three Portuguese players, then applying the law to what might have been an accidental stamp in the most draconian way. He’d also failed to give England a cast-iron penalty – but otherwise, I felt he had as good a night as might be expected in such a difficult match.
– James Hamilton proving, by being just a tiny bit too rational and even-handed about it all, that he is not entirely English
Football, whether you love it or loathe it, is now a huge global business. It stands to reason, then, that the temptations on the part of some folk to bend the rules to make themselves rich are considerable. There are currently extremely serious allegations surrounding a number of big-name Italian clubs, including AC Milan and Juventus, to the effect that officials and others collaborated to fix games. And all this while the game’s main showcase, the World Cup, is going on.
And then there is this story today:
Juventus team manager and former defender Gianluca Pessotto has been seriously injured after falling from a building at the club’s headquarters.
“Gianluca suffered multiple fractures, but his life is not in danger,” said Juventus spokesman Marco Girotto. It is unclear where exactly the 35-year-old fell from – early reports suggested he had fallen out of a second-floor window, but now it seems he may have fallen from the roof of the building. Club officials said they were unable to give details and were looking into all possibilities.
Oh I bet they are. Consider the final paragraph of the story:
Juventus are currently facing charges relating to the massive match-fixing scandal rocking Italy. The scandal began last month with the publication of intecepted telephone conversations between former Juventus general manager Luciano Moggi and Italian Football Federation officials discussing refereeing appointments.
Italian clubs are now a major part of the corporate structure of that country. Questions about the trustworthiness of Italian corporate leaders have already been stirred by the scandal of collapsed food group Parmalat, a scandal that was a European equivalent of Enron or the Fannie Mae debacles.
Football needs trust to survive. The antics of players who writhe in fake agony after being tackled in a bid to get an opposing player sent off, or who fall over in the penalty area to get a goal (Italy arguably did this in the match yesterday against Australia) are part of a cancer eating at the game. I can put up with the antics of footballers off the pitch and I do not get upset at their huge salaries – they operate in a market after all – but without trust, without a sense that the players concerned are giving their all to win, then the game is in grave danger. Similar scandals have besmirched cricket and remain a shadow over horse racing. I hope the Italian authorities prosecute any guilty folk severely. If found guilty, some of the clubs could be relegated from the top-flight league and forced to sell some of their star players, presumably at a loss (I wonder if Ipswich Town can afford any of them?).
What a mess.
Last night, at my own personal blog, I found myself getting really quite exercised about this utterly banal and ignorable headline…
…which I snapped yesterday afternoon. And in a very Samizdata-ish manner, a style that has been eluding me somewhat, of late. So, here is a link to my rant from Samizdata.
I got up at 6 am yesterday, which would be early for most people, and is about the day before yesterday for me, and I spent all of the morning and half the afternoon working extremely hard. Now it is 6 am today. I am up again, and face a similar day. So maybe my rant resistance is, just now, lower than usual. Maybe now, unlike usually, I am angry.
But it was not all rant. I also found myself weaving in my favourite cock-up of the World Cup so far, which was committed last night by an English referee, during the game which saw the Aussies going through to the last sixteen of the competition.
Best joke of the World Cup so far. Italy versus Ghana. An Italian gets an early yellow card for a nasty tackle, treading on the guy’s ankle. As Ghana’s Essien hobbles to his feet and we are shown the replay, John Motson says:
Yes, that’s the one FIFA want stamped out.
Not to say cracked down on.
It is now nearing half time, and although there have been no goals, it has been what they call end to end stuff. Ghana could well surprise. What have I said? Italy score! Someone called Perlo. Sorry, Pirlo. Earlier Toni nearly scored for Italy, and deserved to, slamming it against the underside of the bar with the Ghana goalie well beaten. Half time: 1-0 Italy. More goals to come surely, unless everyone gets heat exhaustion.
Earlier in the day, the first really crazy game. Japan 1-0 up over Australia with hardly any time to go, and I have to go out on an errand. Fine by me. You do not want to be sitting next to a computer (i.e. a fan heater) all day in this weather. And it must be far too hot out there in Germany for anything much to happen before the whistle. Out and about, only moments later, I hear yelling in a pub, look in, and find the Anglosphere celebrating Australia’s third goal.
What will Michael say?
Next up for the Aussies: Brazil. No worries.
After a few months of rather dodgy weather, summer has at last arrived in London. The evenings are long, the weather is warm, and the mood is good. It is a lovely time to be outside in the beer garden of a nice pub, with a pint of Kölsh lager or something similar. It would be nice to perhaps spend some of the weekend following up on this: sitting in a pub, watching a little sport perhaps on a TV in a quiet civilized audience somewhere.
Unfortunately, it is a slow weekend from a sporting point of view. International cricket has been going for a month or so. England have already played a three test series against Sri Lanka in which the cricket was rather variable, both sides playing well at some points and quite badly at others. (The eventual 1-1 drawn series was a fair result). There are some one day internationals coming up, but the international season doesn’t get back into full swing until England’s test series with Pakistan commences on July 13. In English domestic cricket, Australia’s cricketing genius on the field and A class idiot off it Shane Warne is playing brilliantly as captain of Hampshire, clearly determined to improve on the second place in the County Championship that the county achieved last season when Warne was largely absent due to being off playing for Australia.
And of course, the peace of the true sporting fan is going to be horribly distracted by the fact that the soccer World Cup is being played for the next month.
In the first few weeks of my first stay in England in 1991, I found that English people would utter the words “Nineteen Sixty Six” into all kinds of conversations, usually spoken in hushed tones remniscent of some sort of religious rapture. I found this deeply peculiar, and after it happened four or five times I finally asked one of these people what had happened in 1966, because the English kept bringing it up in this odd way. The response I got was initially disbelief that I was asking this question (the same sort of disbelief that I would get later when I revealed that I was not intimitely familiar with British politics or minor British television personalities of the early 1970s), and when it was figured out that I was serious it was explained to me that Britain had won the World Cup in 1966, and they were still getting joy out of this. I found this kind of sad, but I let them keep it up. I had had some idea that the English (and indeed other Europeans) had some sort of affection for this game.
Then, as now, I could not treat any of this with even the remotest seriousness. As to why Europe and many other parts of the world are so preoccupied with this stupid game that is disdained by all real men, I have no idea. People kick around a round ball and seldom score goals, but spend an awful lot of time falling over and pretending to be injured. Meanwhile, spectators fight out three thousand years of European ethnic disagreements in the stadium. I am unable to even regard it as a sport. I cannot take it seriously enough even for that.
And the lead up to a major tournament like the World Cup is so ridiculous. Rather than declaring themselves to be chavs by wearing a backwards Burberry baseball cap plus three gold chains and an iPod shuffle outside their shirts as they would in normal circumstances, people declare themselves to be chavs by attaching four England flags to the outside of their cars. It is really awful. The newspapers are full of nothing but the tournament. Conversation is about nothing else. The pubs become full of rowdy people who get aggressive when England (inevitably) lose. I just want to sit outside and drink my pint in the sun, but I cannot.
The most I can hope is that it will be over fast. For that reason I hope that England loses every game 10-0, in order that they are eliminated as quickly as possible and my summer can get back to normal. For the sake of God Almighty do not let England win the stupid tournament. The prospect of them being obnoxious about it for the next 40 years is so horrible that I would have to leave the country. If Sven-Goran Ericsson could also conclude his career as England manager by getting into a bizarre sex scandal with Wayne Rooney, that would be an added bonus. While on that, I would also like to see the Italians eliminated quickly, and hopefully in some really embarassing fashion. When they were elimiated by South Korea in the 2002 tournament they went on to demonstrate that they were the worst losers in all of human history, and I would like to see this again.
As for the event in total, I hope that the United States win it, ideally by beating France in the final. That would be the best possible outcome, as the Americans wouldn’t actually care, the French and the English would, and we would be spared any nation at all from being obnoxious about it for the next three decades, as would be the case in the event of any other winner.
Sadly, my own nation seems to have lost the kind of civilized attitude held by the Americans. Australia have qualified for the World Cup for the first time in 32 years. On the previous occasion when Australia qualified (in 1974), they were given a parade down the main street of Sydney before heading off to Germany for the tournament. On that occasion the team was heckled and whistled at by bystanders for playing a girls’ game, but sadly that sort of attitude is now gone. Australians are watching the tournament with interest, although they wouldn’t pay much or any attention to soccer on any other occasion. Somehow they think that since much of the rest of the world cares about this idiotic event, they should too. I can’t imagine that things in Australia are as bad as here – for one thing I don’t think our bogans will be attaching multiple Australian flags to their white Ford Falcon utes, which is something. However, people are, sadly, watching. I don’t really care one way or another if Australia do well, although in truth they are in quality so far from the decent soccer sides that if will be a good result if they score a goal in the tournament. That said, I rather wish the Australian media left the event in the obscurity it deserves.
For Australians’ mind should be focused, and they should be thinking about something much more important than this trivia. There is an actual sporting event taking place at the end of the year, and this one does matter. The shame of Edgbaston must be expunged. The Ashes must be regained.
Most Americans it seems do not give a hoot about the World Cup starting in Germany next weekend. That is a shame, because they have a good team and a chance of making it through to the second round. They may not be the most talented team in the world but they are very good at making the most of what they have got.
That is in stark contrast to Australia, where it seems that despite not knowing much at all about soccer, the country is going over the top with enthusiasm with an over-inflated idea of the national team’s chances. Team USA has a hard group, but with Italy in turmoil, the way is open for an American ambush. They have the ability and nous to do so.
Much of the credit for that can be credited to their manager, Bruce Arena. The New York Times has done a interesting feature on him, and his team. You’ll have to be quick to read the full story given how quickly the NY Times shoves things behind its firewall, but here’s a taster… → Continue reading: Bruce Arena’s views on Truth, Justice and the American way of playing soccer
Tickets for the Ashes series of cricket Test matches in the Australian summer went on sale yesterday to unprecedented levels of demand. Interest in cricket contests between England and Australia, which have a long history (the first series of Test matches was in 1877) is at an all time high in the wake of England’s winning the 2005 series. The return contest in the Australian summer of 2006/07 has been eagerly awaited ever since.
The demand for tickets was expected to be strong, but Cricket Australia’s ticketing system was overwhelmed by the public’s response. I was not surprised by that.
As is now traditional, the travelling English support is likely to be tremendous. Even when English sporting teams have been uncompetitive, their travelling supporters have stuck by them; in 2006 England’s football and cricket teams are doing quite well and naturally England’s supporters want to be there for the good times. Thanks to the Internet and air travel, now they can be, and in greater numbers then ever.
This is not exactly welcomed by Australia’s cricket administrators. They fondly imagined that they could sell out their stadia to domestic audiences, rake in the cash, and wave the patriotic flag and all the usual sentimental blather. They forget that, for all its history, cricket is an entertainment, and a business. Cricket administrators sell entertainment in the form of television rights and seats at stadia.
And of course when you mismanage your pricing, one of two things happen. Either you don’t sell your tickets at all, or they become so valuable that profits can be made by reselling them. The latter is happening in this case. And Cricket Australia CEO is not happy about it:
Scalpers have also cashed in by immediately placing their buys on EBay for prices thousands of dollars more than their retail value. “Scalpers using EBay are a disgraceful insult to normal, loyal cricket fans who should have access to these tickets at face value,” James Sutherland, Cricket Australia’s CEO, said. Organisers have told people purchasing black market tickets to beware and say they have asked experts about tracking the passes.
Scalping on this scale indicates that there’s a severe underestimation of the financial value of the tickets. It’s a bit rich, also, to see an implied threat against purchasers of EBay tickets as well. Once Cricket Australia has sold the tickets, they are the property of whoever owns them, and the owner has the natural right to use them, sell them on EBay, or use them as Christmas decorations if they so wish.
It is disappointing, but not entirely surprising, that the CEO of a private commercial organisation such as Cricket Australia does not know, or understand, the basics of property rights.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
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