This weekend has been a dismal one for sports related stuff; let’s start with the thing that’s closest to my heart; Plymouth Argyle. It was a disappointing result for the Pilgrims being beaten by league struggler’s Leeds United 1 – 2. Leeds had the best possible start to the game when Robbie Blake side footed a cut back from Eddie Lewis past Argyle keeper Luke McCormick. Plymouth came back at the Yorkshire team and equalised five minutes before the half time break when Bojan Djordic got his head on the end of a Tony Capaldi cross to defeat the Leeds keeper. At that point you would have favoured Argyle to take the win but sadly it didn’t happen as creator of the first Leeds goal Eddie Lewis escaped the offside trap to score Leeds second and winning goal. It’s a very dangerous game to play the offside trap all the time, even if the attacking player is offside, the assistant referee can still get it wrong. I’m not saying that’s what happened today as I didn’t personally see the match, but defences shouldn’t rely on the offside trap, instead get in front of the fucking ball and tackle the attacking player, or at least get in his way to make is harder to get a clean shot! Argyle’s home form this season hasn’t been good, far too many draws and losing games that we really should win; the stats speak for themselves, ten games, two wins, five draws and three losses, compared to the away form of nine games, four wins, four draws and one loss. It’s simply not good enough, Plymouth need to win their home games, the chances of a play-off place is slowly slipping away, now 10 points adrift of Cardiff and 12th in the league. Even worse is that arch-enemy Stoke City are ahead of us in the league, three points ahead of six places. It’s so damn frustrating to see Argyle falling down the league like this after looking comfortably on for a play-off place for so long in the early part of the season. I guess no-one could call me a glory hunter supporting Argyle, I have always supported the Pilgrims and nothing will change that, I’m GREEN ’til I die; fingers crossed for a better result on Tuesday!
Second bad result is the first test in the Ashes series in Australia, a game that the Australians dominated, scoring 602 – 9 declared in their first innings, to which England could only manage 159 all out. Australia bizarrely elected to bat again rather than let England follow on and added a further 202 runs for 1 wicket to set England a target of 648 to win, which looked very unlikely given England’s first innings effort. But to their credit England frustrated the Aussies, finishing the fourth day 293-5, but when Kevin Pietersen fell in the first over of the fifth day without adding to his score, it was all but game over. The remaining four England wickets fell for for a measly 77 runs. Verdict on the test, MUST TRY HARDER; first thing to do is get rid of Harmison, he’s done very little with the ball and even less with the bat. They need to bring in Monty Panesar, who was left out because he isn’t very good with the bat, but at least he takes wickets, something that Harmison has failed to do, taking only one wicket in the game, even the Sky TV commentary team couldn’t understand why Panesar was left out of the team as he is England’s in-form bowler at the moment! The only plus point was the England fightback yesterday to frustrate the Australians, but it was all in vain as Pietersen was the keystone to the effort to claim a draw, and he got caught out by the new ball, then it was a forgone conclusion of what the outcome would be; in the end Australia beat England by 277 runs, in reality England didn’t match Australia’s first innings score in their two innings. I seriously hope that this was a blip on the radar like the first match of the Ashes series in 2005 in England, but I think Australia are far too strong for England to take the series, I would say England would be lucky to get away without being whitewashed; as a patriotic Englishman I hope that doesn’t happen!
The only plus point to my weekend was that my ‘second’ football team Liverpool claimed a 1 – 0 win over Manchester City at Anfield. Liverpool skipper Steven Gerrard sealed the win for the Scousers with one of his trademark stinging rockets from 20 yards outs after Dirk Kyut intercepted a Joey Barton pass and quickly passed the ball to Gerrard to fire home in the 67th minute. Hopefully this means that Steven Gerrard is back to his best after his almost identical goal during Liverpool’s champions league match against PSV Eindhoven midweek. I think that Gerrard is the key to a Liverpool resurgence to at least claim a champions league spot for next year, realistically Liverpool are looking at third place at best with Manchester United and Chelsea being on such good form. Liverpool occupy 9th in the league; 14 points adrift on Manchester United, and 11 points adrift of Chelsea!
Even with all the sporting disappointments, it’s been a good weekend generally, worked at Voodoo Lounge at the sound desk, although I did wander over the do lights as well since the sound was spot on and didn’t need to change anything. Since it was a metal night, a bit of strobe action was needed as the dancefloor was packed, 167 people in, 900+ pounds taken at the bar, a successful night all round, more of the same would be nice. But band of the night for me were debutee’s Castor Troy who rocked (maybe that should be metalled) the house, almost Killswitch Engage style, shame we couldn’t get the smoke machine working to add to the atmosphere capturing the lighting rig more, but a great night all round!
