Well, that’s it for another year, or four. Earlier today the Wimbledon Tennis Championships came to an end, on schedule thanks to this year’s heatwave. The Football World Cup was all over by 6pm UK time, France beating Croatia 4-2 in the Final. And in their All-Ireland Hurling Quarter-Final Kilkenny lost to Limerick, so my… Continue reading The summer of sport comes to an end, mostly
My school career lasted exactly 40 terms. There were 6 years (or 18 terms) of primary education, then 7 years (21 terms) of secondary, and a final term after A-Levels for Oxbridge exams. I missed plenty of school days through minor illnesses, at least a few days per term with colds or even the odd… Continue reading The full extent of my truant behaviour: three lessons
Today is Day 4 of the Wimbledon Tennis Championships here in London. The following 1200 words reflect on the tournament’s popularity, and offer a few Trivia Challenges regarding the sport. These Challenges are marked with bold headings in case you want to scroll through to them directly, skipping past the other reflections and explanations. The… Continue reading Wimbledon 2018, and Tennis Trivia
This week’s word covers Irish sport and geography (provinces and counties), from the starting point of Leinster. If you live in Ireland, or have spent enough time there, or follow the Irish sporting calendar, there might not be much new information here for you, but that still leaves at least 7 billion people who might… Continue reading Word of the week: Leinster
Unless you actively avoid all mention of sport, in newspapers, on TV and radio, and otherwise going about your daily life, you will have heard of Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi. These two footballers are generally regarded as the best of their generation. They play for rival teams in La Liga (the top league in… Continue reading Lionel Messi and me
Monday night’s World Cup game between Spain and Morocco was more dramatic than we expected. (We’re dealing here with the Football World Cup, currently taking place in Russia, in case you’re not following it too closely.) Morocco took the lead, twice, and Spain equalized in the final minute to make it 2-2. At one point… Continue reading World Cup viewing, with distractions
Umbro is a company that manufactures sportswear. I occasionally wear their products: short-sleeved shirts, sweatshirts and hoodies. As noted in this piece, I am not committed to any single sportswear brand, though I am rather partial to a bit of Adidas. All of the Umbro clothing in what we can laughingly call my wardrobe was… Continue reading Word of the week: Umbro
Last week, for the final time, my wife and I attended a primary school sports day for one of our children. Our 11-year-old daughter starts senior school in September, so this was the last time that we will cheer her and her classmates on while they throw bean-bags and compete in obstacle races. More than… Continue reading Boys and girls, a 2018 sports day story
At the end of April, as the English football season was coming to an end, I wrote this piece (“Blue is the colour, five years in a row”) about trophy-winning teams and the colours that they wear. At the time we already knew that Manchester City were Premier League Champions. They had also won the… Continue reading More about teams in blue and teams in red
Last summer, in this piece, I compared “The New Trivia Season” with the start of the English football season. New series of the following three quiz shows began in July, all screened on BBC2: “University Challenge”, “Only Connect” and “Mastermind”. They all reached their series finales in March and April this year. First was “Mastermind”… Continue reading The Trivia Season comes to an end
The Compartments 