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Week of sporting horrors!

This week has possibly been the worst week for British sport ever, firstly on Wednesday the English football team were beaten by Russia; already covered previously on the ‘blog. Then the English rugby team got beaten by South Africa for the second time in the world cup. And finally Lewis Hamilton title dreams slipped through his fingers due to technical issues.

Some might say that England were unlucky to be beaten in the final because of a try was disallowed on dubious grounds after seeing the replays. Mark Cueto was judged to have his legs out of play when he placed the ball down over the try line. But replays seem to suggest that the ball was down before his feet crossed the touchline. It was a game of kicking between Jonny Wilkinson and Percy Montgomery; no tries were scored. That has been England’s downfall in this world cup, they have relied too much on Wilkinson to win the game with penalty kicks and drop goals. England have a big enough pack to push forward and play for tries instead of kicking every time. But that said, the Springboks were the better team on the day and deserved the win, but its frustrating for the English to have come so far since the group stages to be beaten in the final. But I think the tactics were flawed really; relying on one player to score all the points is a bad tactic, England needed to run at the Springboks more; test their defence, probe for holes instead of passing the ball to Wilkinson to kick for drop goals which fell well short of the goal! But I have to praise the English players for turning it around after the group stages and they never gave up even with only a couple of minutes left on the clock, at least we beat the Aussies; so that’s a nice bonus!

Today was biggest disappointment, Lewis Hamilton having the world drivers title snatched away at the last moment. The Briton looked set to clinch the title after qualifying second for the race alongside Ferrari’s Felipe Massa with title rivals Kimi Raikkonen and Fernando Alonso starting from third and fourth respectively. But things really didn’t work out from the start, Hamilton was too cautious through the first few corners and was passed by his two title rivals. Then he made a lunge past Alonso a few corners later and ran wide losing another couple of places suddenly finding himself back in 8th. Then on lap 8; Hamilton slowed down, cruising around half a lap dropping to the very back of the field and losing 40 seconds while he struggled with gearbox gremlins. Lewis managed to fight his way up to 7th, which is two place behind where he needed to be to win the title. Felipe Massa did what any good team mate would do and backed off the pace a little to allow Raikkonen to pass him in the pit stops. Don’t believe for a minute that Raikkonen was faster, all this would have been planned before the race should Ferrari find themselves in the position they were leading the race 1 – 2 with Hamilton struggling. No complaints from me; that’s motor racing, it’s illogical to allow Massa to win when he doesn’t have a shout of the championship. I’m just glad that Raikkonen won the title and not Alonso, Raikkonen was gone about his business quietly and professionally, got the job done without all the histrionics of Alonso. Just shows how quickly things can change in F1, a poor tactical decision cost Hamilton in Shanghai and pure bad luck undone the Englishman today. All season long Hamilton’s McLaren has been bulletproof; and today when it really counted it let him down. But what a fantastic rookie season for Hamilton, definitely a bright prospect for the future; maybe next year will be Hamilton’s year to take the title for McLaren and Englishmen everywhere.

At least in domestic sport it was better news, both Plymouth Argyle and Liverpool won their games in the league. Plymouth beat Coventry City at Home Park yesterday afternoon. On loan Manchester United winger Lee Martin scored the only goal of the match on his home debut meeting Ebanks-Blake’s low cross into the box to sweep the ball past Coventry keeper Andy Marshall from six yards. Martin also was denied twice by Marshall, a spectacular start for the youngster, shame he is only on loan for three months, with a little bit of luck Argyle can get an extension until the end of the season! Suddenly Plymouth find themselves in a play off spot and only one win away from second in the league. But I am not getting my hopes up; I’ll wait to see where we are after 23 games before I’ll start thinking of promotion, I’ve been disappointed too much in the past! Liverpool beat local rivals Everton at Goodison Park; the home team were sunk by two Dirk Kuyt penalties for Liverpool and having two players sent off, Tony Hibbert for hauling down Gerrard when clear on goal and Phil Neville for handling Leiva Lucas goal-bound shot. But Liverpool went behind in the 37th minute when Sami Hyypia mistimed his clearance slicing the ball past Pepe Reina. The Reds are still in fourth in the league six points off Arsenal at the top of the league, Arsenal, Manchester United and Manchester City all won their ties this weekend, Liverpool still have one game in hand over City and United, but the Reds need to stop dropping points if they want to keep their title aspirations alive this season. Next weekend Liverpool host league leaders Arsenal at Anfield; let’s hope that we don’t suffer the same fate as last season in both domestic cup competitions being hammered both times by Arsenal!

Everyone is a sound engineer! The amount of times I get annoyed by Deep Blue Sound students on any given night telling me how to do my job is astonishing! Let’s think about it; these people have been on a course three weeks and suddenly they think they know everything. I’ve been sound engineering on and off for four years and have been working as a full time engineer for the past 12 months engineering up to five gigs every week! The sort of things that was said to me is beyond stupidity, telling me I need to turn the input gain down to make everything clearer when none of the backline was coming through the sound system as it was too loud on stage, if I adjust the input gain it affects the monitor/stage sound as well, Deep Blue teach studio engineering and it simply has no relation to live sound engineering. The basics from a technical point of view are the same, but the way you go about engineering live sound is so incredibly different from working in the studio!

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