Britbillsfan

Um, not many English hooligans over there. They get their passports confiscated for major tournaments so they can't travel. Also the Germans are using English police officers to try to ensure the few idiots that do make it over there do not cause trouble. The Poles/east Germans on the other hand are quite likely to have a few punch ups.

Bud? I think the Germans have a real point. It is just so wrong to do that. Oh the humanity!

Germans looked woeful in defence in the opener, and the Costa Ricans worse. The attacking players on both sides took full advantage of the headless chickens running around at the back (at times it looked like a masterclass in how NOT to defend). Now the last goal - that was a thing of beauty. The new ball they are using at these finals encourages long range shots as it moves in the air and should goalkeepers all kinds of problems. An excellent goal. The others - pah. Like I said the forwards took advantage of pitiable work from the back players. Nice strike on the opener, but what were the Costa Ricans thinking forcing a right footed player on the left flank inside???? Football 101 - you don't do it! Second game - again neither team looked special. The Poles were far from great in getting to the World Cup, but fell asleep for most of the game and deserved to be beaten by the South Americans. Their lack of pace and movement made their attacking play pretty predictable and inneffective. Plus the Ecuadorians put in some great challenges to preserve their lead at the end. Mind you I prefer watching bad defences rather than bad attacking players, at least you can get to see some goals after some nice attacking play. Now to England - can Sven 'can I hold back my group of talented players any more with my tactics' manage to screw up the group games?' Eriksson be able to prevent England winning? Or will the England midifeld be able to carve their way through Paraguay? Mind you when your striker of the moment is about a foot taller than the defenders he is up against their could just be a goal or few in this for England.

The worst problems re: nazis are in the former Eastern bloc countries, especially East Germany and Poland. Both have pretty virulent hooligan elements and because the way 'Uncle Joe' and his descendents decided to teach the locals that Nazism/Facism was a capitalist disease and nothing to do with the 'workers' was never crushed the way it was in West Germany. Recent history elsewhere with poorly thought out immigration policies tied with scaremongering elements & Islamic tensions have fanned the flames of racism pretty much accross Europe, sadly. Truth be told there is racism of some sort to some degree just about everywhere. I am painfully aware of the attitudes of some of my more moronic countrymen, but I have seen it to varying degrees in Canada, the US, Oz & New Zealand, and I am well aware of its existance elsewhere. Fact is there are morons everywhere, although its emergence in continental Europe amongst soccer fans is painful to most supporters.

I thought the ref made quite a few mistakes. The sending off (too quick to blow his whistle - the goal should have stood and Lehman should have had a yellow). The free kick Arsenal scored from was dubious. First Barca goal looked offside to me. The Henry yellow was horrid. etc

Now that was a disgraceful result. So bad it was laughable. I actually felt sorry for Italy after that game (despite hating their 'style' of football), and really felt bad for their fans - not the way to go out. I really hope that such rubbish disguised as a football match does not raise its head again in the finals this time around.

In Serie A it is easy to play a tactical game when you have paid the ref! Far prefer the attacking skillful game to the negative tactical style of Italy.

Yes, first four games one season a couple of years before the start of he Superbowl era.

I could have gone for a FFS/Pyrite Gal length exercise on this, but thought that I would spare everyone here that.

And on a similar vein. Blonde guy comes home from work and hears noises upstairs. Going up he discovers his wife having sex with another man. Seeing this he rushes over to where he keeps his gun and points it at his own head. Horrified his wife yells out "Don't do it! I'm sorry!" To which he replies - "Shut up, B word! You're next!"

Well Labour came third in the local elections in terms of numbers of votes, whilst the Conservatives led by a large margin. A large part of the voting patterns was due to a series of mistakes made by cabinet ministers just prior to the local elections. The Deputy PM got caught playing away (he had previously held a holier than thou attitude to the sexual wanderings of opposition MPs/ministers), the Home Secretary presided over a debacle where convicted foreign felons were let out of prisons without being deported and then failed to let his boss know the full situation, and one or two other misfires elsewhere in the cabinet. Safe to say the two named were stripped of a lot of responsibilities/sacked respectively. Also there was a fair bit of political manoevering on the part of the PM to keep his faction of the party in the ascendant. Blair himself will not be around much longer in his role as PM, he has stated that he will step down before the next election (and he probably will need to in order for his party to do (relatively) well). Iraq does not help much either (most of those who back the war are not Blair/Labour supporters anyway).

6 weeks to heal. Might get to play a bit in the knockout stages, but his fitness will be down (so might only appear as a sub or for a half or something). The other main striker, Owen, is also carrying a knock. Happened at the last WC too. We're DOOMED! DOOMED I tell ya!

AAAAARGH. Broken foot. Will miss some (or all) of the finals. England are probably stuffed now, and the tournament will be poorer without him. Obviously the gods of football hate England. (We were missing/carrying a lot of injured players the last World Cup, and Rooney had his foot broken during the last European Cup finals (which left England in a real pickle and subsequently exited the tournament sharpish)).

I am sure William Hill will be happy to take your money.

I like the second line that was recently added after a certain football match..... 2 world wars and one world cup One-Nil down and then five-one up!

In Swindon, one of the key towns of the Industrial Revolution and pretty close to the Stonehenge and Avebury Neolithic sites. Apart from that (and maybe the company I work for) it is a real dump. And to keep this vaguely on topic the local football team < RJ.

No 1 teams are generally the current World Cup holders. For everyone else FIFA world rankings are based on wins/draws/defeats with very little in the way of compensation for the quality of opponents. The USA benefits hugely by playing a pretty weak set of teams in its regional division (Jamaica, Costa Rica, Honduras, etc, etc) with only Mexico producing half decent teams now and again. Not the Us's fault, just the way things are. European/S American clubs are largely hamstrung when it somes to rankings as there a lot of good quality teams that are played against all the time, especially the friendlies (which are also taken into account, despite the fact that often it can be almost a second team that is put out on the field on occassion). A European/S American team at or near the top of the rankings will be very good as they will have to beat a lot of good teams to be there. The World Cup seedings are based upon how well teams performed in previous World Cup tournaments, which is why it is more difficult to get a good ranking with this formula, you actually will need to have played well against much better calibre teams. Whilst the US are a good, solid team #4 is pushing credibility a tad. They are very much a wild card when it comes to teams as there is no real way to know how good they really are (the only time they get to play good teams in top level competition is in the World Cup Finals). (As a note as to seedings it is like having preseason count (friendlies) in making the post season in the NFL AND an having a division III school in college football be ranked at the top of the nation if it had a perfect record when Division I teams might only lose one game. Not that I am accusing the US of being a division III team, just using this as an illustration as to why the FIFA rankings are screwed).

Whilst there is club rivalry between Livepool/Everton and Man Utd/City those clubs these days have such a wide support base that religious bigotry is not really an issue with them. There is intense rivalry between those teams but the red/blue split is no longer really on religious grounds. Rangers/Celtic on the other hand have many fans who consider the religious bigotry to be an essential part of their sporting experience. Nuts.

You are not used to the word as it usually follows the term 'Bloody Pom .......'. It is possible the term 'Whinging Pom' is the most common descriptive phrase in Oz.

The NFL apologised over the awful calls the zebras made that day. The Bills scored the points to win, the officials took them away. Hardly a game where the Bills were embarrassed.

Well I was unaware of the exact stats on US Vaccine provision, I guess we are going to be a tad better prepared if this goes poor. As for the effective nature of the vaccine - well who knows? It might prove EXTREMELY effective, if it is not effective at all then a lot of bodies are going to need to be buried. Better to be prepared as much as possible, though, rather than ignore the problem.

Back to the bird flu - as it is, it is not much of a threat. It can cross to people and if it then becomes contagious there will be a big heap of dead people. Last time that happened with a bird flu strain there were 50 million dead bodies. Stocks of anti-virals held by various nations has been rising quite significantly in the last couple of years since this thing first started to show itself.

You have insider knowledge? So that's whyt TD has not resigned Nate, already has the replacement on the team.......

Heh heh heh heh heh. Great week already! First getting the Olympics, now the Ashes, not a bad summer for sport.

With so many people displaced you are going to get a few turds that float to the surface, and there plenty of those pretty much everywhere you go.