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Paul Cole has spoken of Strategic Prince being a possible Cup horse, but I think it may be a bit of bull. I think he’lll win the 2000 Guineas and Derby. He looked a monster to me.
It’s brilliant when you see a horse start sprinting at the finish of a race, when the rest of the field are tying up – like Poor old Horatio did in his penultimate race, when he came second to Sir Percy, after being baulked at the crucial time. At Group I level, I think it’s the mark of a champion.
But what about a horse that, at first, looks as if it’s starting to sprint towards the finish but is actually only lengthening, but at its normal cruising speed, after sort of ambling, sauntering along, beforehand? That’s what it looked like SP did in his penultimate, admittedly inferior race. I didn’t see his win today. But in that previous race, he cut them down so effortlessly he reminded me of Secretariat. It’s been said that he sprinted for 12 furlongs. But he was evidently just cruising.
This is all probably a load of guff, because it’s just a personal impression. I wish I could spare just a fiver to bet on him at 20s in the Guineas. All my returns from today, such as they are, are with Betdaq. Reinvested for tomorrow.
Normally, the very word, "clinical", suggests precisely the opposite to "imagination", yet those two goals demonstrated both sublimely. What a cutback!
Another glaring example of the British journalists’  cliche mentality this evening, Cormack.
I think it was the journalist TV commentator, Mottie’s old side-kick/rival, who started blethering on about – I kid you not – how there were fewer fouls, because the referee wasn’t penalising the players, in order to allow the game to flow. Immediately he said that, the ref took out his first yellow card to a player!
It’s surely obvious to most people who don’t just mindlessly parrot the received "wisdom" of football’s chattering classes,  that the closer teams get to the final, the more anxious they become to avoid being carded. The ref simply avoided carding players until they fouled in a cynical and at least potentially injurious way.  Not rocket science is it.  (Though you’d think it was rocket science to our judges, who don’t seem to take much account of the degree of malice involved in crimes).
I was reminded of those two early fouls against Ronaldinho and Ronaldo, respectively, in an earlier match, when our half-witted friend said something about a player – can’t remember the precise expression -stamping his authority on his opponent. Not as explicit as that, but that was the sense! Like the Republican chickenhawks in America. They talk a tough battle. The game’s hard enough even on the bodies of the athletes they are, without their being hacked down by lesser players.
The headline of some mutt in a paper today bawled that McCallister must do such and such! MUST! Oh, is that sooo….?
I had to laugh at the end of this match, thinking of the extra motivation so kindly granted to the Italians by a German tabloid, which called them mummy’s boys. What a curse on countries the tabloids are.
Divide and rule. As long as the working class are busy attacking each other, their uppity brethren who’ve moved up the economic ladder so brilliantly, they won’t be worrying too much about the shenanigens of many of the rest of the monied people and their bizarre rates of remuneration. That’s your newspaper owners for you.
Sure, the ref had a great match, but a significant part of it was down to the players’ protecting their own best interests.
it would be nice to think that the European Championships will be as well refereed as today’s match, at least in the later stages, but after the refs’ disgustingly cynical tolerance of Greece’s  hacking game, I’m not too hopeful. The players in cynical teams take it in turns to get yellow-carded for hacking down their star opponents.
And by the way, prophetic words of yours the other day:
"Big Phil will have their measure again as he knows that, while England have a few genuinely fantastic players, if he shuts them down by flooding the midfield and sticking a couple of men around Rooney then he’ll be well on his way to ensuring that the England WAGS will be able to return to the much more pressing matter of planning their charity evenings and OK magazine photo shoots without the added distraction of having their men stuck out in the middle of the continent playing in a stupid football tournament. "
<br>(Edited by Grimes at 11:21 pm on July 4, 2006)<br>
(Edited by Grimes at 11:24 pm on July 4, 2006)
I think a large part of the responsibility for the pressure on the players in the England football team can be safely laid at the feet of the British press.
It is scarcely necessary to comment on the character of the far-right wing owners of our redtop newspapers, (blacktops for that matter), their having long been a by-word for, at best, a desperate shabbiness and cynicism, but of course, the journalists they employ are little more than mouth-pieces for their prejudices. It would be nice to think that sports might have been left unsullied by this influence. Alas, it is, if anything, all the more starkly revealed. ÂÂÂ
Between World Cups and European Championships, an extraordinary number of column inches seem to be devoted to pillorying our professional footballers for their high salaries, though precisely why the law of supply and demand that the far right so keenly champion in connection with other occupations, not least entertainment and journalism, should by any manner or means apply to football players at the top levels, I’m sure can only be attributed to two factors: 1) It is has traditionally been a working-class sport; and 2) it’s a handy source of winding readers up. I’m sure, they consider that stirring up their readers, exciting their emotions in any way at all helps sell their product. And doubtless they are right.
It happens that the English public at large, of largely Anglo-Saxon extraction, is by nature among the least worldly-wise, (although correspondingly naturally spiritual people), so that the combination of this whirligig of exultant glorification and despicable vilification by the press, on top of the already historic class divisiveness of English social culture, is scarcely likely to anchor the players caught up in this mad maelstrom in any kind of a stable sense of entitlement; a self- assurance which even the most villainous professional circles (of which there is no lack among the more monied and “respectableâ€ÂÂ
If Rooney could have seen some of the humour in what those blokes were doing trying to wind him up, it would have helped him and deflated them a bit. I mean if he’d said something like, "Nice tries, lads.  I’d do the same myself in your shoes". Difficult with our national mania for football success, but if they could at least try to lighten up (not at the expense of concentration), I think it would be a great help. The weight of expectation is too much.
I’m not talking about vicious kicking, flailing arms and elbows, etc, but in fact, I think the whole team should be<br>reminded that all the players on both sides are bound to try the less dangerous or injurious ways of impeding an opponent, ON IMPULSE, so, for instance, when the Portuguese lad on the ground tried to tangle up Rooney’s legs, he should have shrugged it off with a laugh – particularly when a free kick is given.
When it came to the penalty shoot-out, the players need to psyche themselves up very rationally, by reminding themselves that penalties mean they’re in the box seat. If the goalie looks super-confident, even the Portuguese lad, it will be an act – and all the more effective the less they remind themselves. Penalties are expressly set up to give the kicker a major advantage over the goalie.
The harder the kick, the better. Really, there is no place for less than maximum power. Non-strikers are probably best advised to keep the ball on the ground, reducing the parameters for error. Then the only thing that all the kickers have to aim for is to hit the ball as hard as possible and avoid the goalie’s trunk and legs. But really remind yourself who’s in the box seat, as Ronaldo seemed to. With Gerrard’s kick, he should have tried to break the netting. But his mind wasn’t right. Of course, tired legs would affect some players’ penalties, but I’m inclined to doubt it with Gerrard, rightly or wrongly.
In fact, I think losing was a blessing in disguise. National megalomania would have reared its ugly head in no time, had we won (still a lingering legacy of empire), aided and abetted by the press, of course.
It’s an escape, and the people of this country mustn’t be allowed to escape from applying their minds to what an utter madhouse Blair has made of this country, by protecting the wallets of the very rich and Big Business.  <br>If I were the manager, I’d tell the players, "Beggar the fans! Don’t let them put you under pressure, for crying out loud. Like Churchill said of Hitler and the Nazis, they’re either at your feet or at your throat. One minute, your’e God, the next they’ll be barracking you every time you get the ball. And that’s your own fans!"
One day, when this country comes to its senses, with the far right in terminal disgrace, this country will produce a team that can win the World Cup.
The press think in cliches. Private Eye try to satirise them, but it’s not possible. And before long genuine experts get sucked in -like the pundits, the ex-players on the box, spouting rubbish about Ronaldo being too fat, past it, etc. Mostly it seems on the basis of his failure to connect properly with a bouncing ball right in front of goal. It was a difficult ball, but the ex-players should have pointed that out instead of joining in the press chorus.
Same with Sven. I suspect he was too unemotional for England’s purposes, but I can’t help laughing at the journalists who think on tram-lines, whose very stock-in-trade is thinking in cliches and either following or misleading the mob. Erikson was prepared to sometimes think outside the square, and for that he was pilloried. In the next breath, for some cockameeny reason, the mutts who reviled him for being courageously imaginative, would call him a coward.
An odd thought, but if instant video replays had been introduced, Argentina, instead of Germany, would have been in the final, as they should have had a penalty. Video replays would thereby contribute to counter the natural sympathy of refs for the team of the host country. I don’t believe, at all, that winning is everything, but I do think the score should be decided as correctly as possible, and that it’s more important than satisfying adrenaline junkies, who are only interested in the next shot of adrenaline, and beggar the rights and wrongs that eventually produce the score.
<br>(Edited by Grimes at 12:25 am on July 2, 2006)<br>
(Edited by Grimes at 10:37 am on July 2, 2006)
If money HAD been the over-riding consideration, they certainly wouldn’t have let him run.
He was probably worth a fortune at stud then, but his potential was awesome. His Dewhurst run marked him out as a champion-in-waiting, imo. Only champions really take off like a bat out of hell, when terrific horses are tiring at the end of a Group I.
What Travis, cormack15’s son said, Mrs "Daylight"; I couldn’t put it any better, and it’s meant no less personally.
I think Fallon and O’Brien are going to feel really cut up, if Kieran’s words about Horatio to Clare Balding are any guide.
I got the impression he was a wee horse with a very big heart, who always just wanted to do the right thing by his handlers.
But I’ll never forget in the Dewhurst, the way he started sprinting, when he finally got a clear run, and the other horses seemed to be coming to the end of their tether . <br>
Rightly or wrongly, the recent plunge on Horatio has bolstered my impression that he is a monster.
I thought his finish against Sir Percy, after being baulked, had to be seen to be believed, particularly in view of the time returned. And it didn’t seem to me that Sir Percy was idling in front or "always holding" him. I thought he was catching him.
His times have always been quicker than any of the others, bar Sir Percy in that race, though Visindar has always won easily.
More egg on face, I suppose, but them’s my thoughts.
Also, I don’t think for one moment that Nelson was expected in the 2000 gns. Aidan virtually said as much beforehand, and that he was very pleased with his run after it.
For what it’s worth, I agree, Racing. Though I would add that I actually think he may be as good as Visindar.
According to the RP speed figure, Sir Percy beat him in a very fast time; but when I saw how much ground HN had to make up to really threaten him, it took my breath away. I mean, to do so at the end of a fast-run group race suggests to me Aidan has another monster. Nick Mordin always raved about the times he returned last year, but he seems to stay, too.
(Edited by Grimes at 11:02 pm on May 19, 2006)
Prophetic words, EC. I strongly suspect that Aidan O’Brien was trying to do punters a favour by mentioning that Horatio was backward – though most of us, I suspect had backed him A.P.
He knew he had a world-beater in GW and preferred to save Horatio for another bigee. Why have him race his guts out trying to match his nibs? It should have been read as a tip, particularly in the light of EC’s stated rumour that Aidan thought he was the best he’d trained. Maybe if I’d been more financial, I’d have had a saver on him, but at that price I couldn’t have rustled up enough to make it worthwhile hazarding.
I remember newspaper reports before El Gran Senor’s Derby about the time he’d returned in a previous race, and the belief by some that the filming was out of synch, giving a false reading.
And don’t forget Hawk Wing’s breaking of the all-age record of 6, I think, at the Curragh, when he was only a 2-year old.
<br>
He does have a touch of class, Scotia. I think he’s won more recently, but there’s likely to be more to come from him this year, I should think.
I tend to edit out of my consideration such things as I consider unimportant in a given context, David.
Sorry if it offends your sensibilities, old chap. Sometimes I have many other things on my mind, which mean I will be prone to only give minimal attention to details relating to lesser matters before me.
It is unfortunate in a way, and I can see that. But I’d be happy if that took high rank high among my worst failings.  Anyway, all’s well that ends well. You’re not a bad dog, I know that. Sorry, can’t help making the occasional jest, however puerile..!
(Edited by Grimes at 5:52 pm on April 21, 2006)
