Last Commented Sports Blogs (166)

NFL fans who boycott the games because of the National Anthem protests by some players are the losers in the debate.
I have been watching NFL football since I was 6 or 7 years old. Every Sunday I looked forward to watching my home town team the Detroit Lions with my Mom and Dad. My Mom who was born in England also was a fan of the Lions and sometimes she would scream louder than my Dad at the TV screen.

I have fond memories of watching the Lions for 60 plus years and I am not going to let some 2 or 3 hundred protesting players ruin the game I love.

My opinion of the players is two fold. It is their first amendment right to protest anything they want. It is also my right to voice my opinion of them and my opinion of them is I consider the protesting players to be over paid America trashing wealthy ungrateful ingrates who I call 'A$$holes'

People can boycott all they want, but I consider it their loss. I refuse to turn off the game that I love all because of a few hundred 'A$$holes'.

That's my take on the NFL National Anthem protests.

This morning I was to coach & play for an all-star team I put together to win the New Jersey State Championship.
The team I played on last year won it all and I put together a much better team this year.

It took lots of planning over the last 2 months and many phone calls and emails to make it come to fruition.
After some cancellations (i.e. death in the family, etc..) and some notifications,
that some players could only make the early games and other players could only make the later games,
I spent a lot of time making various final line-ups for different games late last night.

So, early this morning I get a call from the tournament commissioner, that the fields took a hit last night from heavy rains and that the first game would be delayed an hour from the scheduled start time.
But, he would update us after he got to the fields.

So, I contacted all the players immediately to update them, as some players are traveling quite a distance.

Then, I get a call, that the fields are unplayable today and that the tournament is postponed until tomorrow
morning.
So, I re-contacted all my teammates to relay that message.

Thus, this morning there was a whole lot of guys all dressed up in uniforms with no place to go.

Hopefully, the same thing won't happen tomorrow morning.

Look, I can do this without you.
You are just slowing me down.
I know how to do this and win.
Just watch me.



Apparently, it's not all that uncommon.
It happened recently at Belmont.
But, that's not on Youtube yet.

Best of luck to the Irish Hockey team in an hours time in the World Cup Final.

It's been over 150 years since we've appeared in a final, so many of that squad have since retired, but we're back with a new batch of green killa's.

Will our long wait finally come to an end this afternoon. Dare we dream.

(admittedly the wait wasn't particularly arduous for me, as I only found out we had a team in this morning's paper. )


Go on Ireland

I can see why people find playing a sport attractive; it’s fun and the component of trying to beat an opponent gives it an extra edge, particularly for competitive types. There was a time when it was quite common for a firm to have a works football team, playing in a league consisting of other works teams. Apart from the personal challenge there was also the pride of your place of work to uphold. Other -non participating- employees could also take a legitimate interest in these matches and share in the glory or disappointment of the outcome. There were also inter village cricket matches with a similar reason for taking place. This all seems reasonable and it isn’t difficult to find purpose in it.

What I don’t understand is how sport became professional. Paying people to play a game seems quite odd to me. Being a completely non productive activity it more properly belongs to the category of hobby or pastime than profession. Regardless of how expertly someone can manipulate a ball with his foot, is it logical that the financial reward for showing that off is often far grater than that received for being a highly skilled tradesman, who actually produces something useful?

It could be said that there is entertainment value in sport, but why? It only becomes interesting if you have an interest in the outcome but why on Earth does anybody care about the outcome? It’s not like any of us has a real connection to the people we are cheering on and willing to win. It just doesn’t make any sense, the only good reason for sport is for its own sake, the involvement of money makes it completely senseless.

The World Cup should be abandoned immediately and I should get the £2 I invested in the works sweep stake back. And I’m not just saying that because I drew Senegal.

Today is the 144th running of The Kentucky Derby. It dates back to 1875. The winner of that race was Aristides and the jockey was Oliver Lewis. The most wins by a jockey is 5 with Eddie Arcaro and Bill Hartack each achieving that feat. I went to the race in 1997 and saw Silver Charm win the run for the roses.

I will leave you with a 100 year old whimsical song about horses.

Well done South Africa, you won the whole thing fair and square because we cheated. Even if we bowl you all out in one go, it will be a hollow victory and mean nothing. No doubt, now when we beat Bangladesh as expected, there will also be a question hanging over us.

I think the crowd has behaved very badly, bringing the guys wife's s*xual history up as a sledge is not fair. I think the bowler shouldering the guy was a bit immature and gratuitous. But mucking around with the ball like that destroys the credibility of the whole thing.

We should admit defeat, pack up and go home, Permanently ban all those involved, and start a new team from scratch. Otherwise we have to accept it when others cheat.

Philadelphia Eagles - 41
New England Patriots - 33

Congratulations, Philly!

In South Africa there were 22 000 tickets on public sale for the Test between the resurgent Springboks and All Blacks at the 52 000-capacity Newlands stadium. They took less than 60 minutes to be snapped up by eager fans.


Jamie Roberts, the 93-Test Wales centre and former Lion, said the All Blacks sellout reflected the pulling power of the international game's No 1 side.

"When the All Blacks come to town it's one of the greatest challenges in rugby ... probably the greatest challenge," Roberts said in a WRU media release.

"They are ruthless for 80 minutes, and the skill set of all their players is pretty special. You know you are in for the toughest game of your career. It's unlike anything you have experienced before and, mentally, it's the most challenging."

So I decided to compare old military rifles from the same time frame to see which one was best. First I compared a Remington Rolling Block carbine from the 1870s to a Sharps .50 carbine from the same time frame.



My conclusion was the Sharps was a superior rifle. This is because A) Remington Rolling Block must be cocked to be loaded which creates a potentially unsafe condition (which historically did cause a few unintentional discharges around the world). B) The ejection of the fired case from the Sharps is very snappy and postitive. The ejection from the Remington is best described as sluggish, and as shown in the video, occasionally problematic.

I next did a comparison of an 1855 Trapdoor Springfield in .50-70 to an English .577 Snider Action. Sadly the video of the Snider didn't survive, but here is the Trapdoor Springfield version of the test.



I found reloading the American Trapdoor to be a little bit faster than was reloading the English Snider rifle. This is because the Trapdoor ejects the fired case automatically as soon as the breech is opened. However in the Snider action one first opens the breech, then manually slides the breech backwards to eject the fired case (with the speed of ejection being proportionate to the force exerted), then manually slides the breech back forwards. This adds a quarter second to the reload time for the Snider action. Otherwise they were about equal. Both are heavy full size rifles that you would not enjoy carrying on a march. Both have bayonets. Both are contermporary Infantry rifles

In a few days I will receive an English Martini Henry of 1871 manufacture (caliber .577-450 of course) carbine. It is a falling block action like the Sharps .50-70 carbine. I look forward to finding out which of the two designs was superior from a user perspective. Best to know which rifle to seek out should you suddenly find yourself stuck in the 19th century. :)