Last September I wrote this piece (“Sports Channels and Smoking, an Analogy”) about cancelling all my sports subscriptions in the summer. I had already watched a few football matches in pubs but had spent less money on beer than I would have spent subscribing to the relevant channels. And I had saved plenty of time.… Continue reading Leeds United: One Match, 13 Nationalities
Just over a year ago I wrote this piece, “33 months of 5-a-side”, reporting that I had continued to play football at least once a month for nearly three years. For a while, in the spring of 2022, I was playing twice a week. By last summer I was only playing once a month. As… Continue reading Word of the week: Symbolic
Earlier this summer, for many reasons, I cancelled my subscriptions to all the sports channels. The most important of these many reasons was time: I didn’t want to spend untold hours watching live cricket in daylight hours or baseball late into the night just because I could. Our main justification for subscribing to sports channels… Continue reading Sports Channels and Smoking, an Analogy
Here’s a question from a pub quiz I hosted last week. “Since the Premier League started in 1992 how many teams have won the competition only once?” Even if you know nothing about football you could guess a number. If you have been following football for the last 33 years you might have worked out… Continue reading The Fibonacci Sequence and Premier League winners
I have been researching managers of Premier League, initially to find out how many English managers there are in the top flight of English football. The answer to that one, currently, is three: Eddie Howe (Newcastle United), Sean Dyche (Everton) and Gary O’Neil (Wolves). I have looked into this idea before, most recently in this… Continue reading “It’s a young man’s game”
At the end of 2022, in this piece, I wrote about playing football again with people my own age. I had just completed a years’ worth of games, usually playing 5-a-side (or similar) once or twice a week. I continue to play regularly, though not as frequently as before. Last week’s Wednesday night game meant… Continue reading 33 months of 5-a-side
Gaelic Games (hurling and Gaelic football) are mentioned most years somewhere on this Blog. These words are drafted in West London but they relate to sport in Ireland. Last July, in this piece, I wrote about Kilkenny’s defeat to Limerick in the All-Ireland hurling final. Kilkenny, my father’s county, has been the most successful hurling… Continue reading A Strange Gaelic Season (July 2024)
I return to the subject of money and football. I outlined some milestones in this piece from 2022. It was mainly about Kylian Mbappé, a player you will probably have heard of even if you do not follow football closely. He won the World Cup with France in 2018 and is about to join Real… Continue reading £40m for 48 minutes of football
If you follow tennis at all you will know that Carlos Alcaraz is a 21-year-old professional tennis player from Spain. You might have seen him win the French Open yesterday, beating Alexander Zverev over five sets to become the first player to win his first three Grand Slam tournaments on different surfaces. The French Open… Continue reading Word of the week: Alcaraz
Next Sunday, 26 May 2024, Leeds United will play at Wembley for the first time in 16 years, in the play-off final for the EFL Championship. The opponents will be Southampton. Whoever wins will be promoted to the Premier League, the top tier of English football, as you probably know. As I have mentioned over… Continue reading Word of the week: Wembley
The Compartments 