Sport

Didn’t Scotland do well? And Italy…..and I would imagine some of the old English war horses are seeing that pasture, being put out to, coming closer.

I don’t watch the matches these days. Not excited enough to then work out how to use the modern TV and get access.

But, an impression of a change from 20, 30 years back. The biggest change – to me – is that the second and third rank teams now have people who can kick. As that’s worth a considerable number of points – penalties, conversions – this matters hugely. Think back to when we wondered at Bergamasco trying – and the surprise when he managed it. Now that second line of teams all have perfectly competent kickers.

My assumption is that it’s the professional game, possibly most important being the French leagues. 30 years back the fly half (or fullback, whatever) of Italy, or Romania, Georgia, would be playing their club rugby at about our standard of second or even third division. Now they’re in that French first and hugely, wholly, competitive league. Along with kicking coaches and all the rest.

Not a theory I’m wholly wedded to but one I’m willing to put forward. The modern game has allowed many more international teams access to a decent kicker.

So, this 10,000 steps a day thing (no, I’m not thinking of doing it. Rather, just seen it again and pondering it).

So, average human footstep is 2.5 feet, 30 inches (for men at least). 10,000 steps is thus 25,000 feet, which is 14 miles, isn’t it?

Ah, yes, Timmy and numbers. It’s 1720 (-ish) yards, not feet, to the mile. So, 14/3, = 5 miles a day.

Hmm, OK, reasonable enough as a bit of exercise I guess……

His father, who managed a salt factory and owned a petrol station and a small hotel, was only a modest club cricketer and the hand-eye co-ordination with which Wazir and all his brothers were blessed was inherited from their mother, a champion badminton player.
…
Yet no cricketing family has ever rivalled the quartet of Wazir Mohammad and his three brothers, all of whom played for Pakistan, notching up 173 Test appearances between them. They might have been a quintet too but Raees Mohammad — the second of the five brothers and rated by Wazir as the most stylish — had to make do with being the 12th man against India in 1955.

The oldest of the five,

Yes, yes, newly emergent nation, small middle class playing an amateur game and all that. And yet still, one in the eye for the blank slate enthusiasts…..

Of course, the moment I say that I’m reasonably fit is the moment that heart attack is going to leap out at me. Or my liver explode, whatever.

But I am, sorta, a bit, reasonably fit. There’s a 28 km bike ride just by me (from the km posts) and it’s pretty flat and I do that in 65, 70 mins without really pushing. Happily do 50km if I know I’m going to be doing that much – ie, not pressing up hills along the way etc. Which, by the standards of cyclists, is pretty much nothing but for a mid-60s smoker and drinker isn’t horrendous. I can swim a mile and do, regularly (two/three times a week regularly) and the last time I did 150 metres was butterfly because all crawl is too boring.

But I just found out that I cannot run. Tried a couple of days back. Just 1 km up to the next km post on the road, then back to the bike. And I couldn’t get up above a shuffle.

It was me legs. My walking pace seems to be longer than I can manage as a running pace which is v silly indeed.

Is this a thing? Don’t run for decades and muscles, tendons, just don’t stretch to be able to do it? As I say, I can propel myself with my legs – bike, walking, swimming – but just not running.

If anyone knows the answer to that then the next one. Is this just a matter of slowly working up to being able to do it again? Not that I want to enter a marathon or anything but being able to run 5 km now and again would be fun*.

*Yes, I know, different definitions of fun, utility, but there we are.

Money. The one subject the US Ryder Cup team would rather is not discussed this week and the theme that Europe are more than happy to promote. As soon as it was confirmed the US team members would be paid $500,000 a head to play at Bethpage – $300,000 must be given to charity, the rest is a stipend – half of Luke Donald’s team talk was written. Europe play for their cause, their tour, their big picture. The US? Now quite easily portrayed as obsessed with dollar signs. Twelve players, $2.4m, zero caveats.

Noble Europeans doing it for love, ghastly Septics being paid!

Just out of interest, where does the money not paid to the golfers actually go?

“The test to confirm biological sex is a very important step in ensuring this is the case. We are saying, at elite level, for you to compete in the female category, you have to be biologically female. It was always very clear to me and the World Athletics Council that gender cannot trump biology.”

They’ll be telling us the 5 ft 2 flyweight judo girlie cannot take out the heavyewight boxer next, you mark my words. Where will Hollywood plots be next?

Manchester City have sacked a bar worker who served drinks at the Manchester derby on Sunday wearing a United shirt.

A City supporter contacted the club’s fan support page to raise the issue, attaching a picture of the United fan behind one of the bars on the concourse. He was wearing a dark United away shirt from the 2018-19 season.

Well done that man.

A foundation set up in memory of Diogo Jota is facing questions after it emerged it had no connection to his family or Liverpool.

The Diogo Jota Foundation has been soliciting donations via a website, diogojotafoundation.org – created three days after the striker’s tragic death – which says it has raised $64,250 (£47,715).

Would have expected a scam like this to raise much, much, more than that.

Obviously slightly difficult. If you’re running a scam you don’t want too much publicity, as the scam will be revealed. But you’d like some so that you get cash….

Rugby player banned for telling female referee to ‘get your baps out’
Official shocked by verbal tirade from ‘intoxicated’ individual while her parents who were in the crowd were ‘heartbroken and angry’

A player, yes, but not a player in that actual match but a spectator.

Yes, this makes a difference to the level of referee abuse this was. Other than that, good. The whole point of rugby is that it’s a game for thugs not played by thugs.

US hunter gored to death by buffalo he was tracking in South Africa

One where the winner is not preordained…..

Apparently this is news these days.

A video showing England fans singing “Ten German Bombers” in front of a young boy has been posted to a Facebook group run by the Football Association.

The 22-second clip was uploaded to the official page of the England Supporters Travel Club (ESTC) a little under two hours before Thomas Tuchel’s first away game as national team manager.

The footage shows a number of fans singing the illicit chant in a bar,

So it’s not actually the FA posting it, etc. Bit “illicit”? Impolitic perhaps but actually claiming that it’s illegal?

That’s about where we tell the people doing the defining to fuck off isn’t it? And if they have declared it to be illegal then we definitely tell ’em to fuck off.

As the nation’s finest thoroughbreds prepare to thunder around Aintree for the Grand National, it appears that a not insignificant number of men think they could give them a run for their money.

A poll has revealed that one in 50 believe they could beat a horse in a 100-metre sprint.

The odds would be against them: the fastest horse on record managed a speed of over 40mph while Usain Bolt, the fastest man on Earth, topped out at just over 27mph.

At shorter distances, 25 yards, maybe up to 50 even, the human would normally win. From a standing start at least. Because it’s not speed that matters there it’s acceleration. Getting tons of horseflesh up to speed takes time and effort.

It’s also true that at very long distances – beyond 26 miles of a marathon – the human will also normally win. Well, OK, the athlete who can do that distance then – but we’re also not talking of ponies either. That’s a matter of endurance rather than speed again.

Sure, a horse can go faster than a human. Easy. But whether they complete a distance faster than a human or not does indeed depend upon what distance.

There is potentially a future Premier League in which there are no financial controls – without any limit on spending, without any regulation of the size of commercial deals negotiated with entities under the same ownership – and the demolition of the current system by Manchester City’s legal challenges is certainly doing its best to hasten us there.

Go for it.

Because here’s the nasty little secret. All restrictions upon player salaries, budgets, sources of funds and all the rest, work to the advantage of the other owners in the league/system. Because that’s how cartels do work, in favour of the capitalists. Open, free, laissez faire, markets work in favour of the players.

So, open, free, laissez faire markets it is then. Right?

These restrictions are just the maximum wage imposed again. This time around it’s maximum wages, not wage, but the aim, intention and outcome is the same.

Sorry to return to this, but the behind-the-scenes, anonymous leaking and power-playing has to stop. Last week I suggested that Simon Halliday make his case if he was the person being lined up to replace Bill Sweeney as the Rugby Football Union’s chief executive. As Simon has now made his case, I presume my claim was correct.

Seeing people you were at school with (OK, couple of years different) snarlinmg and shrieking as they try to conquer the top levels of society. Scale those commanding heights….

Arundell nearly joined Bath as a teenager, when he attended Beechen Cliff School, but then joined London Irish instead when he moved to Harrow School.

So, if I ever meet him we’ll have spomething in common – we’ll both know the same Co Op. There’s a conversation starter, right?

‘Creating our own utopias’: the Black cycling revolution sweeping the globe
I speak to a former elite racer about my love of cycling and the grassroots groups breaking cultural barriers to entry

Economic rather than cultural barriers I would have thought.

But actually discussing this would lead to thinking that certain gene sets – associated with skin colour, yes, but only associated – lead to an outperformance at certain tasks. Which would never do now, would it, for we’re all blank slates.

Cycling is expensive. Not so much the kit itself. Rather, the surface upon which to do it. Lossa nicely paved roads seems to be a useful precursor. That means being in a rich country.

There are cultural issues as well. I’ve heard – somewhere or other – that Eritrea hsa a significant road racing scene as a result of the Italian colonial influence.

But still – a useful starting point is that it’s necessary to have 100 miles of paved road before it’s possible to have a 100 mile road race.

Then there’s that physical issue. Now this is just me gobbing off, not speaking from any position of knowledge. But it’s certainly possible that the gene sets which make West Africans bad swimmers and excellent short distance sprinters could have an influence on certain types of cycling. Dunno, kirin maybe, or track sprints, or that one where they start really slow on opposite sides of the track etc. Similarly, we might think that East African (and altitude upbringing) gene sets which lead to long distance running success might be usefully applied to 100 mile road races. It’s even possible to go one step further into real speculation and think that Indios raised at 12 and 14 thousand feet might do well in sprinting up Alps. You know, speculation.

To be crude about it, as the black world gets rich it’s entirely possible to think that those – varied, as above associated with but not actually determined by skin colours – gene sets might lead to conwuering cycling. As has happened with sprinting and long distance running of course. Though I do think that the real irruption in mountains is going to come when the Incas discover the wheel.

Anyway, such speculation aside. I don;t think that it’s cultural issues at all. It’s money. Cycling is just one of those things that – for the sport, not the replacement for Shank’s Pony – thrives in a rich society. Because, d’ye see, roads?

Golfers defy 17 million-to-one odds with back-to-back holes in one

Not really.

Two golfing friends have defied odds of 17 million to one by achieving the sport’s holy grail of a hole in one in consecutive shots.

Steve Wilmshurst, who is 58, and his 70-year-old playing partner Liam Nairn achieved the extraordinary feat on Monday while playing the 16th hole at the Studley Wood Golf Club in Oxfordshire.

Wilmshurst and Nairn were playing as part of a foursome and the National Hole-In-One Registry quotes the odds of two players achieving that feat on the same hole as 17 million to 1. An individual player is quoted at 12,000 to one to make a hole in one.

The odds, at the start, of two consecutive shots being a hole in one would be 12,000×12,000. One in 144 million.

But, well, some holes might get a hole in one, others definitely won’t. So, conditional one the first one going in the second is more likely – it’s possible to do a hole in one on this hole that is.

17 million to one sounds weird though.

And of course, once the first one went in then the odds of the second doing so are one in 12,000.

If only we still had that yacht floating around to explain this to us…..

“Our findings suggest that there is something about playing sport, even though a person may experience concussion, that may be beneficial for long-term cognitive outcomes,” Dr Matt Lennon, a researcher at the University of New South Wales, said. “While it may be that those who play sports have had access to better education and more resources, we controlled for these factors in the analysis, so that doesn’t explain the result. We hypothesise that there may be physical, social and long-term behavioural effects of sport that may make for healthier adults in late life.”

This is headed by the weird line:

Oxford and Harvard study finds no link between amateur concussions and long-term cognitive decline

Which isn’t what they found at all. The suggestion is that having played sport competitively, if amateurlyly, provides a long term health benefit to cognition greater than whatever damage might be done by a few low-end head knocks.

Which is not all that amazin’ a findin’. Interestin’, but not wholly amazin’.

A Scotland-born transgender golfer has come through qualifying to stand only two steps from becoming a member of the LPGA Tour, a scenario that one former professional on the women’s biggest circuit has labelled “unfair”.

That is, have we already institutionalised the pohysical sex differences into the rules of the game?