Monday 5 July 2010

Team Edward



I am referring to the Twilight Movies of course. When the films came out I sent a text to the Simon Mayo show saying that they were something I had feared for a time. A phenomena which, to me, seems to spring from nowhere has a huge young following and I don't know the first thing about it.

Two years on I borrowed the DVDs from a friend and sat back to watch them and...they're very good. I can absolutely see why they are so big with teen girls but there was plenty there to amuse and entertain. The humour is particularly good. I laughed out loud several times. Looking forward to Eclipse now.


The Easiest Job In The World


One of the main themes of this world cup, until the weekend, has been the form of South American teams. They were represented in all four of the quarter finals. Yards of column space were devoted to why it is that South American teams were succeeding at the expense of their European counterparts. Was it the greater hunger, the fact that European children play more on their X-boxes than on the streets etc. etc. Two days and four games later the theme has changed. Only one of the South American teams came through and they only got through after some dubious goalkeeping by their centre forward.

All of a sudden the theme has changed. Now the column inches are being devoted to the reason European teams have succeeded. It is like the scene in 1984 where the mob suddenly switches from hating Eurasia to Eastasia. And this happens all the time. And we are not supposed to notice how consistently they get things 100% wrong or do massive u-turns.

This would not be so bad were it not for how hysterical they as journalists get when a player or coach states something with the merest whiff of inconsistency. When Fabio Capello hemmed and hawed a little after we had been thumped about whether he would still be in a job they chased him down like a hunted rabbit. And these were people, many of them I am sure, who were predicting an England win 48 hours earlier.

Sports Journalism ? Easiest job in the world.

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