The passage of time in Wellington and elsewhere
A nervous finish. A win and a move onto the next round. A much better game but there are some players who do not inspire confidence. They really should have scored more, and a concern that they did not. Against better teams they will need to take their chances.
The Germans are lurking!
Off to bed.
Yes up nice and early to suffer for the cause. An improvement on the last performance but I am not getting carried away. Need to improve on this if other teams to show any concern.
Today is one day after the shortest day-the seasons are moving in the right direction.
The above are my crop of satsumas from the “orchard”, picked today. Have to admit they are not the largest I have seen, but they do taste of the real thing.
If Wayne Rooney thinks it is tough, then he should consider what it is like for the millions(?) like me. It is hard to remember a game I have had to watch that was so poor. There must be thousands of Sunday pub team players gripping their mobile phones awaiting the inevitable call up from Fabio. Where does the manager go from here? Is it his fault? A change of style, personnel and tactics are surely needed but what of the players? How can they be so bad, so disinterested and apparently unfamiliar with each other? Can they pull themselves out of this huge rut?
One can try to look on the positive side. We have been here before in 1990 and 1986 when the team was turned around after similar appalling starts. Linekar 3 Poland nil etc. This situation looks desperate. Who is in charge ion the field? Who is meant to control the ball and direct operations? No one it seems as judged by Rooney coming to the half way line looking for the ball and Terry’s awful back pass because he did not have the confidence to go forward.
Maybe one just needs to accept that this is the way it is meant to be. Like Catholics England supporters are meant to endure suffering in order to understand life and appreciate the value of the longer term goals.
Maybe old age and memory loss cannot come quickly enough so that the pain of watching England play football is gone within the flicker of a neurone.
Anyway, the super whites are about to conquer the world after a tremendous 1-1 draw. Now sing along with me to a 1996 tune-” Three ferns on my shirt…….”
This weekend has been intense. It has required planning and stamina in order to make the most of the sporting contests available.
Friday offered the rugby league as ever.
Saturday evening started with the All Blacks-Ireland game in New Plymouth. As a contest it was ruined when Ireland had a player sent off after 15 minutes. My TAB bet on Ireland to win quickly went up in smoke at that point. The game turned out to be better than I thought, and just showed how it could have been if ‘rush of blood’ to ‘brain’ had not occurred.
Immediately following that game was Australia -England from Perth. England were shite. I do not know what came over me to think that they would be any better. Given that they were shite in the Six Nations, and that they were flattered by their placing, I should have known exactly how things would have panned out. Australia were fast, skillful and enterprising. england were ponderous, error prone and bereft of ideas. when will I learn?
Then it was up early (6-30) for England’s first game in the World Cup. It is hard to know from here how well they have actually played recently, and also difficult to keep tabs on the individuals in the team. Watching England is all about heartache, and so it turned out.
A dream start followed by the same limitations I have observed all my football watching life. An inabilty to control and hold onto the ball, route 1 attacks and nervous jitters at the back. The goalkeeping bloomers are a relatively recent addition to the scope of events. But what a classic.
Trying to be positive; I have seen worse at the start (and middle, and end) of major tournaments. If Italy can play crap at the beginning of tournaments and go onto win, then maybe so can the three lions.
Time to watch more football, read more news about the teams so that I can lose some more money at the TAB-as an expert.
I have been saddened to note that there has been insufficient recognition of the role of Brentford FC in the development of NZ’s new classy defender-Tommy Smith.
Come on you whites.
Apparently it rained 26 days in May in Wellington. I am not shocked.
I cycled to work on Tuesday -6C into a southerly gale-with effective temperature of 0C.
Not so good.
Queen’s birthday-so it is raining.
This last week has been a series of events for Joe’s school. It is St. Pats 125th anniversary. There are not too many out there that have been around for that long, so something of an event.
Proceeedings started on Monday evening with “Jubilation” at the Michael Fowler centre. It was a celebration of the school’s cultural achievements, and was great to watch. The performers included current and past pupils, with Maori and Pacific events, barber shop singing groups and the school choir. One performance was ballet dance by a current pupil. This lad is obviuosly good, but I thought it was positive that he was on the bill-not the sort of thing all boys schools celebrate typically.
There were plenty of old boys who came back to perform-a testament in itself. They produced beautiful singing, the pick being the professional opera singer.
The rest of the celebration has involved cocktail event (rammed), all day sport on Saturday at the school, and a dinner on Saturday for a few hundred. Hundreds of old boys have turned up, so I suppose the place must have done something right along the way. Our friend’s brother came from Bermuda with his own sons for the weekend.
The sport on Saturday was predominantly against the brother school -St. Pats Silcverstream. We went to watch the 1st XV game. A fast aggresive and skilful game-just likeGunnersbury used to play?
The opera experts continue to buff. We were back the track of the popular pieces.
We continued our annual outing to the hallowed halls of St. James theatre
(great photo by the way).
Farce with music would be my basic interpretation. The sets were very well done, consistent good singers and quality costumes. The sound quality was a little disappointing as we were in the stalls, but under the balcony. The performance was a little longer than anticipated, with 3 hours of action.
So, we have seen so many operas now, we are such experts. that we will have to start seeing them for the second time around!