BOSTON IRISH: May 2011

Thursday, May 26, 2011

Anthony Stokes is 'too tired' to play a bit of soccer

As frequent readers of this column will know, it has served as an unashamed vehicle for the promotion of the ‘Anthony Stokes for Ireland’ campaign. This column has time and again been an agitator to have the young, stylish, swashbuckling striker wear the green jersey. The basis for the argument was that Stokes deserved at very least a chance, having been banging in veritable truck loads of goals over the last couple of seasons for Celtic and Hibernian.

Well, this week Ireland came calling, and Stokes basically insulted everyone who has ever stuck up for him in this long running discussion by thumbing his nose up at his country.

The bare facts. Ireland played their Northern counterparts on Tuesday night in the ‘Carling Nations Cup’, obliterating them 5-0 in a game that could have finished anywhere between 7-0 and 10-0 without too much hyperbole. Stokes was picked for the squad and forthcoming matches, including a genuine, bona-fide European Qualification game against Macedonia. Stokes refused the call-up. His explanation?

He was tired.

Stokes held every single card in this argument right up to this lazy decision. Irish management was under pressure from many angles to get him involved. Fans and fellow professionals alike all clamoured for the free-scoring striker to get his chance. Sadly, it would appear Stokes’s bluff was called. The excuse he rolled out is in itself ‘tired’, and makes little sense, as anyone with a cursory knowledge of Celtic know that Stokes has taken a back-seat lately to other Celtic strikers. Time and again lately Stokes ‘rode the pine’ for the big games, watching as Georgio Samaras amongst others played instead of him (When Samaras is playing ahead of you, you need to look yourself in the mirror and ask yourself some serious questions).

His rather pathetic decision was further blown apart last night during the somewhat unexpectedly enjoyable Scotland v Wales encounter. To digress for a second, Irish soccer fans should also be feeling a little red faced this morning. Scotland managed to fill an entire end of the Lansdowne stadium last night, travelling across the water in droves to see their heroes. Lansdowne was almost empty by comparison on Tuesday night. A healthy tip of the cap to those incredibly loyal Scottish fans.

Back on point, their team responded to their loyalty in kind, going behind 0-1 (to an admittedly desperate Welsh side) before storming back to win 3-1. Central to the comeback was the work of Charlie Adam. Yes, the same Adam who spent a grueling last few weeks trying to keep his club Blackpool up in the Premiership, unsuccessfully sadly. Adam played his heart out and when his country called, in a tournament that Stokes has seemingly deemed below him, Adams answered the bell and played 80 minutes. I watched the game and I can tell you, Adam literally ran his socks off.

Stokes could learn a lot from the mercurial Blackpool midfielder.

The tragedy of it is, Stokes is absolutely chock full of pure, raw talent, as evidenced by goals like the above. There is nothing Stokes can't do on the football field. He simply has to find some focus, some dependability and, sadly, some loyalty.

The latter sound a bit strong? So it should. When your country comes calling, you answer that call. Tired or not.

Linkage

Comments
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Monday, May 23, 2011

Ray Lewis: Preacher man.

The most talented and imaginative screen writer couldn't make this stuff up. Baltimore Raven Ray Lewis warning the rest of the World that an NFL lockout would result in an increase in crime figures. Beautiful. The bare faced audacity of the man is admirable. Much more admirable, for example, than his waning skills on the football field, although Ray Lewis does remain the fastest second man in on the tackle in the NFL.

What’s next? A-Rod preaching to us about the dangers of steroids? Kobe Bryant telling us we should all respect women just a little bit more? (You can practically see the televised advertising campaign, no? A smug looking Kobe sneering out of the corner of his mouth ‘’Hey kids, we should all respect women a bit more, if they say no, they mean no, and that’s a smooth groove Kobe can dig!’’ No doubt Spike Lee is already lined up to direct, the only caveat being he will have to remove his nose from Kobe’s backside in time to start the cameras rolling)

Back when he was bitter, angry and funny, Dennis Leary had a great sketch where he laughed at Rolling Stone Keith Richards fronting a drugs awareness campaign. And I quote, ‘Keith, we can’t do any drugs, you took them all!’. Well Ray Lewis lecturing us on crime rates is right along the same lines as Keith Richards telling people to put the hash pipe down.

Through s$me mag$c trick$ry Ray Lewis has managed to distance himself from that whole, you know, ‘murder’ thing he was embroiled in a few years ago, however you would imagine he might keep a low profile, at least when discussing crime figures, in its aftermath. Apparently not. Lewis seems to almost be taunting those of us who aren’t blindly emptying our wallets, bank accounts and piggy banks into the coffers of whatever church is promising the next concurrent Rapture into looking up for a second and yelping ‘Wait a second, isn’t Ray Lewis the guy who paid off a stack of people to tip toe out of a murder rap?’

Ray, you can fool some of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time, even if you are Ray Lewis, the fastest second man into an NFL tackle on planet earth. Pre and Post Rapture.

Linkage

Thursday, May 19, 2011

The Premiere League is about to eat itself

With the English Premiere League about to come to another sanctimonious, self congratulatory and vain glorious end (Have you tried watching games on Sky lately? Even with Andy Gray gone they are still bludgeoning us to death verbally insisting the EPL is the best league in the world) the financial books are now open, and let’s just say the picture isn’t exactly rosy.

Last year English Premiere League (EPL) clubs lost close to a shocking £550 million. Sixteen of the twenty clubs posted a loss for the year. The picture painted by these financial reports is one of top heavy clubs being propped up by disgusting amounts of money provided by rich benefactors

The worst offender is no doubt Manchester City, practically a brand new club, built on a ridiculous £450 cash injection from its oil rich Middle Eastern owner Sheikh Mansour. To digress for a second, I suppose it is good to see the oil money that so many American and British lives are lost defending has actually been pumped back into British sports. What goes around, comes around, in a way.

Protecting our freedoms. And Manchester City's ability to spend money in the transfer market.

We are standing on the brink of that moment, that point in time where, in a decade when people are analysing what went wrong in the collapse of English club soccer, they will point at this juncture in time and say, ‘That’s when action should have been taken.’’

Hovering on the horizon, like Imperial Walkers lurching intimidatingly towards the Rebel base on Hoth, UEFA will be allegedly enforcing its new ‘Financial fair play’ law in the coming seasons. We say ‘allegedly’ as it will be very interesting to see if UEFA actually denies entry into European Competition to clubs as powerful as Manchester City, Manchester United and Chelsea, amongst many, many others. That’s exactly what they are talking about doing.

Here comes the UEFA Financial Fair Play Initiative..

Clubs will be allowed losses of only £45 m or less combined over the course of three seasons from 2011 – 2014. If they do not meet these financial constraints, UEFA will not ‘sanction’ their involvement in its competitions.

The EPL clubs answer appears to be, raise ticket prices. Arsenal were first to do this, and this week Liverpool have announced a 6.5% ticket raise. Their argument will no doubt be, in order to fund the wages of the expensive players they have to bring in to compete, they have to raise ticket prices.

This of course is absolute nonsense. A creative, thoughtful approach with sweeping changes across the board is necessary. Clubs needs to look at new, creative ways of bringing in income, not merely hiking up ticket prices. Clubs need to find new ways to bring up their own players, or at the very least to bring in quality and yet reasonably priced players.

First and foremost, clubs have to cease immediately with this incredibly stupid ‘arms race’ purchase of expensive players, and agreeing to insane wage demands eliciting from dubious agents and their greedy players.

The Premiere league itself has plenty of responsibility here too. They primarily need to look very closely at the role of those football agents in the current explosion of Premiere League player’s wages. Out-of-the-box thinking, with creative answers to the questions being asked of the Premiere League are required, something more creative than ‘’Let’s spend £50 million on a striker that will subsequently score two goals in thirty games’’.

Epic fail

If there isn’t a complete reversal of the current trend of over spending, the Premiere League is going to completely eat itself to death.

It’s not like it has to look far for an example of the fall out of un-regulated over-spending without any sort of sensible underwriting. The entire Western world economy hangs in the balance thanks to the pretty much the exact same set of reckless financial circumstances.

The Premiere League has, very much, been warned.

Linkage

Monday, May 16, 2011

Break out the brooms, Sox sweep away Yanks

Red Sox weekend sweep of Yankees a hint of drama to come for the Bronx Bombers

The Boston Red Sox reached .500 for the first time this season last night, and did so in style, coming back to beat the Yankees and complete a dominant, impressive three game sweep in the House That Ageing Expensive Free Agents Built. The Red Sox can now relax and ‘kick away’ into the middle portion of the MLB season, released from the turmoil of that ugly early season start. The Yankees? They may still be slightly ahead of Boston in the standings, for now, but ironically it is the Bronx Bombers that are the team surrounded by question marks.

They are a team in an alarming slide, losers of 9 of their last 12 games. They can’t hit with runners in scoring position. Their pitchers are getting beaten around the park and their bullpen, apart from their magnificent closer, is a complete mess. Perhaps most worryingly of all for Yankee fans, they are a team full of ageing free agent ‘Superstars’ whose enormous contracts are going to soon be hanging around the Yankees necks like massive, heavy but ultimately useless concrete blocks.

Consider the Jorge Posada dilemma first. Posada is in the final year of a $53 million deal that sees him paid $13 million this season. Posada can barely get the ball out of the infield at this stage, and has simply not taken to his new roll as designated hitter. Posada withdrew himself from the lineup on Saturday night, and has caused a massive stir in New York with his selfish, immature actions. Compare that with Red Sox veteran catcher Jason Varitek. The Red Sox captain is facing similar hitting issues to Posada, has his playing time butchered to a few games here and there, and yet is approaching the situation completely differently. Varitek is mentoring the player that has taken his playing time and is being an absolute ‘team first’ player.

The Red Sox are also paying him $8 million less than Posada.

Posada is really only the tip of the iceberg. New York has been stocking up on thirty-something free agents to surround their stable of ageing veterans with for several seasons now. The next couple of seasons are going to be a constant day time TV drama in the Bronx, as several players go into decline, and yet still pull in enormous contracts annually. This will be exacerbated by the situation in Boston, where the Red Sox are a team with the potential to have its entire core either playing at or approaching their peak for the next five years.

Looking at the Yankees first, how about their team ace, CC Sabathia, who has been pitching like anything but lately. Sabathia is a talented pitcher, with the heart of a lion, but honestly, if you were a MLB GM would you be happy to be stuck to the portly left hander for $23 million a year to 2015?

You can buy a heck of a lot of Cheeseburgers for $23 mil

Should we even get into the short stop situation in New York? ‘By the diving Jeter…’ used to be a funny comment, now it’s kind of depressing and a bit of a cheap shot, along the lines of shooting fish in a barrel. What does New York do if Jeter continues to be a light bat in the order, and a sloth in the infield?

Then there is A-Rod, the player soon to be the poster child for the slow dying death of the current Yankee Empire. A-Rod is under contract for $24 million a year until he is 42 years old. His $275 million contract is going to be literally suffocating the Yankees and their ability to bring in any new, fresh players for years to come. As other fans in the AL East get to enjoy the All Star caliber defence and offence of Evan Longoria and Kevin Youkilis over the coming years, Yankee fans will more frequently face situations like last night, where their ageing third baseman let a ball roll through his legs, a tired mental mistake that let the Sox take the lead in the 7th inning.

A-Rod firing on all cylinders is barely worth that suffocating, restrictive contract. A-Rod aged 42, dropping the baseball and striking out on 91 mph ‘fastballs’ while earning $24 million? Painful. To say the least.

While the Yankees face these questions born of having such an ageing squad of highly paid players, their most bitter of rivals are flourishing in that department. The high priced free agents Boston brought in are relatively young and approaching their peak (Crawford and Gonzalez). Boston’s rotation will be anchored by the immensely talented and very young Lester and Bucholz for years to come, and Josh Beckett, who is showing serious signs of a revival after a down year, is only 31. As Mariano Rivera continues his retirement tour, Boston has 100mph inferno-baller Daniel Bard being groomed to close Sox wins for years to come. Pedroia, Lowry, Ellsbury and now Iglesias, Boston has a young squad the Yankees can only dream about.

Way too much fuss was made of Boston’s poor start to the season. As they look to kick on from .500, maybe attention will now turn to the much more deeply embedded and potentially damaging issues in New York.

Linkage

Thursday, May 12, 2011

Boston Celtics 20 Miami Heat 38

The NBA is a tough league to win in. Just ask the veteran Spurs, or the talented Lakers. It is particularly tough when you are playing five against eight, as the Boston Celtics had to last night. The Celtics had to contend with not only the ‘Big Three’ of Wade, LeBr$n and Chris Bosh, but also the referees, who either had bucket loads of cash-money on the Heat, or a directive from above as to how the NBA wanted this series to play out.

Strong words?

Consider Paul Pierce charging to the rim with the game tied, getting slapped on the arm and face, missing the shot and not getting a call. Consider Jeff Green, moments later, charging through the lane, going for a layup and being basically mugged. That’s the best term for it. Mugged. And the call? You guessed it. No call.

You know what, you can paint last night’s game whatever way you want to, you can laud LeBr$n for going crazy in the last four minutes after an anonymous first forty four. You can praise Wade for playing as if he were the real Superman. However, if you applied the Alien test, you have to admit something was up.

The alien test? Imagine Zengaboon, the Alien, just landed on earth last night, grabbed a bucket of popcorn and decided to catch a little Earth culture with a game of hoops. Imagine the game coming to a close, and Zengaboon turning to you and saying, ‘I don’t get it, why do they only call these ‘fouls’ you were telling me about against the team in green?’

Look, facetious joking aside, if you really didn’t see anything amiss with last nights game, go ahead and check out the statistics. You probably aren’t going to read about a disparity anywhere. The Boston papers have too much class. NBA.com sure isn’t going to bring its own product into question.

ESPN?

Don’t make me laugh. LeBr$n has ESPN in his big pockets. Remember, this is the ‘news’ entity that took down a story by one of their journalists just hours after it went live, because LeBr$n’s people were angry at the unflattering slant it took (in case you missed it, check the story out here in full). So ESPN sure as hell isn’t going to go down that road again, saying anything bad about its meal ticket.

Your eyes don’t lie though, so if you watched last nights game, you saw Pierce time and time again getting slapped, hit, jostled and bullied in the paint, with no call. You saw Jeff Green treated like a piñata with no call forthcoming.

Most of all, you saw the numbers.

20-38.

20 free throws for Boston. 38 for the Miami Heat.

You know what, watching that game, watching the farcical way it was being ‘officiated’, you wouldn’t have been too stunned if LeBr$n had grabbed a fold up chair and smashed Delonte West in the back with it. It wouldn’t have been too startling if LeBr$n had then been handed a microphone from the sideline, and launched into a loud rant over the prone body of West – ‘Miami!! I have waited for this moment!! That’s what you get for sleeping with my Momma, Delonte, that’s what you get!!’’

Sounds like a bad, corny, choreographed wrestling moment, right? And that’s what the NBA has become. Poorly acted, poorly played out and cheesily choreographed wrestling.

20-38.

Just look at those numbers, and try telling me that doesn’t stink like a diaper filled with five day old Indian food.

Linkage

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

The story of the Premiership Star and the evil Super Injunction

For weeks now England has been caught up in the great mystery of exactly which English Premiership champion elect was playing offside with noted socialite Imogen Thomas. Who exactly is Imogen, and what purpose does she serve on this Earth? That’s not entirely clear, she would appear to be famous because she has had sexual intercourse with other, more genuinely famous people. Fame by proxy, therefore.

If you have a Twitter account, a passing knowledge of the most basic English Premiership online forums and/or a brain, you of course already have some idea exactly who was caught in Thomas’s honey-trap. Let’s just say, the Welsh are none too happy with one of their prodigal sons.

The most mind numbingly stupid part of this is that the woman at the center of the affair is furious she can’t ‘tell her story’. The injunction placed on the British media by the British legal system is basically stopping Imogen Thomas from gettin’ paid. You can imagine the poor flower’s frustration. She goes to the bother of laying a classic honey trap, bedding the Premiership Superstar, assumedly putting all the physical effort in, and now what, nothing! She has absolutely nothing to show for it! The poor woman! Your heart can only bleed for her. There is just no justice in this world, is there?

Hilariously, her team has now started releasing stories of Imogen wandering the streets of Good Ol' Blighty fashionably dressed with sunglasses on, hiding crocodile tears. They are comically trying to create a new slant where Imogen is distraught the story has come out at all, and that she wishes she could afford the costly injunction. Note to Imogen and her crack team of PR Chimpanzees; probably best not to agree to interviews where Imogen says 'The truth will eventually come out' before changing tactics mid game.

Poor Imogen. She only wants to be loved. And then subsequently to be paid.

Say what you want about the flying winger at the center of all this, we don’t know the full story, and thanks to this injunction, probably never will. What is completely 100% clear is, some woman had an affair with a football player, and then tried to sell her sordid story to the media.

Oh those crazy soccer stars..

Really, is there a lower, more base form of disgusting money grubbing out there? There are complicated Nigerian wire transfer frauds with more class than Imogen Thomas.

Let's call a spade a spade here, like the brilliant movie 'Traffic', 'no one gets away clean', everyone comes out dirty at the end of this sordid little affair. The woman, the Premiership champion player and also the English tabloids. The latter play their part by gleefully providing the cash-money to these salacious women who think dignity is a new perfume by Victoria Beckham, and nothing else. The public are no saints either, because they buy the papers that print this sort of trash. They enable this whole filthy little process.

How about the Spanish newspaper that is set to 'release' the players name on the day of a forthcoming big competition final? That's pretty low, to say the least. Kinda funny, but, a low blow, none the less. Sadly, the left sided midfielder can't really complain too loudly about this. First of all, he spent £50k trying to shut this story up, that's how much the injunction cost. Secondly, it's not as if he tripped and fell clumsily into Imogen Thomas's open arms, is it now?

Just how stupid are these Premiership players? Seriously, how do they keep falling for this? It’s not like the warning signs aren’t there, there in glaring, shocking neon lights practically.

As with any debate, everyone is free to pick sides. However, someone is going to have to convince me how, when all is said and done, Imogen Thomas isn't the dirtiest of this particular cast. It was she who had a consensual affair with the hairy chested, fleet footed veteran (hey, if you still can’t figure it out, ‘A’ don’t ever become a detective and ‘B’ go read some Spanish soccer papers/websites, they aren’t afraid of the injunction!) and it was she who then thought to herself ‘You know what, now that I have had sexual intercourse with the Welsh Wonder, what better way to show my affection for him, and the pride and dignity I have in myself, by selling the story of said sexual adventure to a newspaper. Shouldn’t everybody be privy to what goes on in my bedchamber?!’ or, words to that effect.

There are no winners in this ugly little affair, only losers, and then losers who look even more sordid than the other losers.

Linkage

Friday, May 06, 2011

The John Lackey experience

So, anyway, missed the start of the Red Sox game last night. Got caught up in a few chores and didn’t tune in to the early innings. It was on my mind, however. There was genuine hope that John Lackey, the Sox starter with the Ray Romano voice and the John Wasdin fastball, would come out all fierce and get the Sox back on track.

Heck, the Sox needed a strong, confident showing from their man after the gut wrenching extra innings loss the night before, right?

Right around the time one could reasonably assume the Red Sox were in the fourth or fifth inning, just before I fired up the old laptop and logged in to MLB TV, my cell phone beeped once. Picking it up I saw a text message from good friend and enormous Red Sox fan, Garrett.

Right there and then, I knew.

I just knew it. Before I even opened the message up I knew what to expect. Lackey was getting beaten around Fenway Park like an Eastside hopper who wandered too close to the Westside.

For context and for your reading pleasure, the textual back and forth regarding the afore mentioned Red Sox 'hurler'

G: ''When Lackey sucks, he really sucks''
Me: ''I knew exactly what that text was before I read it''
G: ''I could have sent it this morning. I knew he was due a stinker''

How much of a stinker was it? Lackey went four innings. He gave up 8 earned runs on 10 hits, walked 3 and managed to strike out 1 Angels batter. It took him 97 pitches to create this masterpiece. For the season, this young, fresh, new season, Lackey is 2-4 with a 7.16 ERA. Lackey is 32 years young, which means by the time his 5 year contract runs out he will be 36 years old (he signed it when he was a relative spring chick at 31).

Buckle up Sox fans, Lackey is here for good. Did you wake up thinking, ‘Maybe the Sox can trade him?’ well if so, forget about it. His salary of almost $17 million a year is so restrictive that no other team would touch him with a barge pole. John lackey’s massive contract, in terms of length and dollars, is about as attractive as Lady Ga Ga in a meat-suit. So, forget the escape of a trade. Get used to John Lackey.

There’s no escaping it, the Sox are going to be paying Lackey $17 million a year until he is 36.

You know what, you want a guy to succeed, if you are a positive thinking person, you want the guy to do well. However, there’s no escaping the fact, 3,000 miles away from Fenway last night, a couple of Red Sox fans in Ireland were joking over text message as to how badly John Lackey has been pitching.

Not entirely sure what that says, but, it can’t be good, right?

Linkage