Ertblog

I love my Garmin Edge 800

I had a wonderful Christmas surprise: a Garmin Edge 800 GPS device for my bike. Karen has always been very generous! It's been a revelation. 

Years ago, I couldn't see the point of satnav for cyclists. But I realised I was wrong late last year. The Garmin is so much more than a navigation device. It captures an enormous amount of information about your ride, from the usual bike info (speed, average speed, time spent), to heart rate info (heart rate, average heart rate, time in various heart zones) and plots all this and more online so you can share your ride - and download details of other people's routes. Even more fun, you can race against your earlier rides - and your target performance. 

This screenshot shows details of my ride today, uploaded to Garmin Connect. You'll gather that I set no speed records, although I knocked a modest four minutes of the time I took to ride the route on 28 December - my first Garmin ride. (Not as impressive as the four hours I cut from my Bucks century time in summer 2005!) I wish I'd had this remarkable gadget on my Land's End to John O'Groats ride in 2002...

The Garmin has given a real spur to my new year resolution to get back to cycling. And to lose a few pounds!

Ireland were robbed by hand of Henry - but football's the loser

The cheats have won. France will be taking part in the FIFA football word cup in South Africa next summer after Thierry Henry stole Ireland's place with a blatant hand ball to grab a late goal. 

The referee's decision may be final, but it's hard to disagree with the countless commentators who demand that FIFA introduce videos to decide such controversial decisions on the night. It works well in rugby. And in answer to those who say it slows the game, so what? Isn't the right decision better than a quick one? 

All the same, I can't get too excited about talk of football's integrity being impugned. Football has very little integrity left. It's a billionaire's game now. Managers such as Alex Ferguson routinely abuse referee's decisions regardless of whether they have a genuine grievance. Millionaire players fall to the ground to try to win penalties even when opposing defenders were feet away from making contact. Fans are charged crazy money to see their teams play. 

In short, there are far greater injustices in the world than Ireland's failure to reach the 2010 world cup finals. 

Why I'm delighted Newcastle United have been relegated

I sent a tweet (a short post on the microblogging site www.twitter.com for the uninitiated) on Sunday saying I was delighted Newcastle United had been relegated from the English Premier League. I should have known it would cause a mild stir so I've decided to follow up with a more detailed post here.

Alison chided me on Facebook for my scant regard for the many loyal and disappointed fans in Newcastle. I can imagine how they feel - I remember my anguish as an 11 year old when Cardiff City were relegated to the third tier of English football for the first time since 1947. And I have a soft spot for Newcastle: I was thrilled when Kevin Keegan took them to the brink of the Premier League title in 1996. But there comes a time when the fans' loyalty becomes a curse rather than a spur to success: appalling owners like Mike Ashley can mismanage the club to their hearts' content without fear of plummeting gate receipts.

The 2008/09 season was a classic example of how not to run a football club. After Kevin Keegan was forced out of his second spell as manager, three other managers led the Magpies to relegation. It's hard to blame Alan Shearer, who only took over at the beginning of April, for the club's fate. But Ashley has no excuses. Just weeks after appointed Keegan as manager in January 2008, Ashley destroyed the so-called messiah'sauthority by appointing Dennis Wise as director of football. Keegan's departure after eight months was marked by fans' protests, but Ashley's bizarre performance continued with the hiring of Joe Kinnear. 

Can Shearer follow Keegan's original success with Newcastle in the years after 1992? We simply don't know if he has what it takes to be a great manager. But one thing is certain: change is desperately needed in the boardroom at St James' Park. I'd love to see the club owned by the fans. That way, all that passion could be directed at bringing the club its first trophy for 40 years.

PS: why do football managers keep referring to 'the football club' in interviews? (As in 'it's a massive blow to the football club' after they've led their team to relegation.) It sounds as if they're disassociating themselves from their team and club. 

It's just not cricket: a test match in May

Confirmation that the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) has lost its grip on reality came this week as England started a test match against Pakistan on 6 May - the earliest ever played in England.

What possessed them? The season is just weeks old, placing the home side at a distinct disadvantage. It's hard to avoid the conclusion that ECB is more concerned about the scheduling demands of satellite broadcaster Sky than the interests of the game. We shouldn't be surprised: ECB's decision to remove test cricket from terrestrial television after 2005 was similarly motivated by hard cash. Viewing figures for the 2009 Ashes series will take a tumble compared with those for England's triumphant win four years ago, broadcast by Channel 4 and graced by Richie Benaud's last commentary in England. 

Once upon a time, Australia had sole billing in an Ashes year, adding to the anticipation. This year, the Aussies share the stage with the West Indies and a tedious proliferation of one day internationals. Change is inevitable - once upon a time, test matches took a rest day on a Sunday - but it's a shame that the cricket authorities are such poor guardians of our summer game.

PS: ironically, the one reason not to hold a test match in early May is the weather. The fickle British climate can make a mockery of any schedule. Back in June 1975, cricket matches were abandoned because of snow - just weeks before the highest ever temperature recorded at a home test match, 34C...

Goodbye to Ninian Park

Cardiff City have played their last regular league game at Ninian Park, the club's home for almost a century.

Ninian Park is hardly the most impressive ground in British football - and was looking shabby even 26 years ago (above) when I watched Wales draw 1-1 against mighty Brazil in a friendly. But many like me will have a stack of memories of the old place.

I went to my first ever football game at Ninian Park at when I was 10, on 3 November 1973. Dad took me to see Cardiff City against West Bromwich Albion, standing on the Bob Bank. It was a dreadful game, and we went to leave just before the end as a 0-0 draw looked inevitable. Suddenly, as we passed under the Grange End, we heard a roar from the away fans as West Brom scored a winner.

That game was forgettable. But as I became a regular, I learned to love Ninian Park, especially at night games under the floodlights. But the greatest night of all for me, unlikely as it will sound, was a game in the old third division. City were relegated in 1975 from the second division for the first time since the second world war. I was horrified: how could such a fate befall a club that snatched the FA Cup from England and come within a whisker of winning the league in 1924? But glory was the last thing on our minds in 1975 as we welcomed the likes of Halifax and Bury. At first, City struggled, but as 1976 arrived we were strong promotion candidates. One warm April night, Cardiff beat eventual champions Hereford United in front of a crowd of 35,000. As Max Boyce would say, I was there! My mother later got the autographs of most of the City players at a special celebratory dinner held by the county council.

I've seen just two competitive international games at City's ground, The first was Wales's narrow defeat to England in the 1976 British home internationals. (I got Lawrie McMenemie's autograph after the game: he managed Southampton team to a shock victory against Manchester United in the FA Cup Final just weeks earlier.) Soon after, I was disappointed to see Wales lose on aggregate to Yugoslavia in the second leg of the quarter finals of the European championships, in a game marred by crowd violence.

Ninian Park has featured a few times in this blog. Last year, I wrote nostalgically in Ertblog about City's wonderful FA Cup victories at the ground in 1977. I also wrote about my experiences as a Ninian Park programme seller the night Jock Stein died just minutes after his Scotland team secured a place at the 1986 World Cup finals at Wales's expense. And finally, an early  post told how Wales nearly beat Brazil in that 1983 friendly.

I could talk about City's famous victory against Real Madrid, or the European Cup Winners Cup semi final against Hamburg - or even the Pope's visit to Ninian Park in 1982. (My friend Anthony was there!) But I couldn't claim to have been there on those special days!

Back in 1977, I took schoolboy pride in being able to name every Football League club's ground. Derby County? The Baseball Ground. Sunderland? Roker Park? Those grounds, like Ninian Park, were part of the furniture of the sport for half a century or more. Over 30 years on, dozens of clubs have moved home. Cardiff City are just the latest but it does feel more personal when your own club packs its bags. 

Remembering Hillsborough - football's darkest hour

For British football, the 1970s and 1980s were bitter-sweet days. English clubs dominated European football, winning the European Cup seven years out of eight from 1977. But the game was blighted by hooliganism, slum stadiums and a series of tragedies. The darkest day came 20 years ago today with the shocking Hillsborough disaster, in which 96 Liverpool FC fans were crushed to death at an FA Cup semi-final.

That Liverpool should be involved was a terrible irony. Four years before, the club's supporters had run riot at the European Cup final at the Heysel stadium in Brussels, killing dozens of Juventus fans. That shameful event led to a ban on English clubs playing in European competitions for five years. It surely also contributed to the initial assumption - swiftly disproved - that Liverpool's fans were on the rampage at Hillsborough, rather than trying to escape a horrible death.

This morning, I was moved by BBC sports reporter Alan Green's account of the tragedy on Radio 4's Today programme. Green was a junior reporter at the time, assisting the BBC's veteran commentator Peter Jones. Jones and Green had gone to Sheffield in 1989 to commentate on a football match. Instead, they provided a vivid account as the scale of the disaster unfolded. Green's experience as a news reporter in Belfast proved a grimly appropriate apprenticeship for that afternoon's work for BBC Radio 2's sports programme. (These were the days before Radio 5 Live.)

Like many others, I heard the news back in 1989 from Jones and Green's reports. I was spending the weekend in Looe in Cornwall, where my parents had rented a bungalow for the week. The Friday was a beautiful spring day, but the Saturday was wet and gloomy. Dad and I went for a drive along the coast to Seaton (Cornwall), where we had spent many happy hours back in the hot summer of 1976. That wet April Saturday, we found a bleak scene at Seaton: the pool where I had paddled had gone, and the rain swept across the beach. It seemed an appropriate backdrop to hear the appalling news from Sheffield.

Later that day, the BBC's Match of the Day became an inquest, as presenter Jimmy Hill and his guests debated how football could recover. The Taylor report recommended all seater stadiums - ending the tradition of standing on terraces such as Ninian Park's Bob Bank. The proposal wasn't universally supported, but after Hillsborough no one was in a mood to argue. The high fences - designed to keep in hooligans but lethal at Hillsborough - were torn down. Within just a few years, football had entered a new era of popularity and commercial success. Many feel uncomfortable at the enormous amount footballers now earn, and the way Sky TV has bought the soul of the game. But it's surely better than that awful era when people lost their lives in the simple act of going to watch the football in Sheffield, Brussels, Bradford and Glasgow.

Chelsea's firing of Scolari underlines the bankruptcy of football's czars

Scolari has gone after just seven months. Chelsea's regime has shown its ruthlessness and its impotence.

Avram Grant got the Blues within an inch of the European Cup - something the fabled Jose Mourinho couldn't achieve. Yet that wafer-thin failure supposedly demanded Grant's removal. Chelsea are fast sliding into self appointed chaos. Mere money cannot buy success. Scolari may not have been the answer, but Abramovich's lethal mix of boredom and impatience will doom Chelsea to oblivion unless he finds a miracle worker.

This assumption of a divine right to success is disastrous. Newcastle fired Sir Bobby Robson four years ago yet have never come close to the success he achieved. Similarly, Tottenham sacked Martin Jol early in the 2007/08 season but have struggled to come anywhere near Jol's achievements. When will football owners demonstrate an understanding that things can get a lot worse, not better, if they replace their manager?

In praise of Great Britain

Team Great Britain's triumph at the Beijing Olympics has cheered the country. For me, the fact that we're competing as Great Britain is part of the pleasure. 'Great Britain' has a certain ring to it that warms the heart in the way that 'United Kingdom' never does. (It helps that even the abbreviated 'GB' sounds nicer than 'Youkay'...) And, as a Welshman, I have to say that Beijing shows that we're stronger united than alone.

Olympics: Beijing triumph must not mean open cheque for London 2012

The Beijing Olympics has been a triumph for Team GB. The whole country has felt good about day after day of sporting triumph. Our cyclists have been phenomenal, while swimmers like Rebecca Adlington have mixed athletic endeavour with personal modesty that grossly overpaid Premier League footballers could never match.

Yet Britain's Beijing glory must not be used to justify giving London's 2012 Olympic Games an open cheque. The budget for the event has already soared to grotesque levels. Failed politicians like Colin Moynihan, chairman of the British Olympic Association, have called on the Government to make up for any shortfall in funding for London 2012. Olympics minister (a bizarre concept in itself) Tessa Jowell and London mayor Boris Johnson have rightly rejected the idea. Beijing has put on a spectacular display. But unlike China, Britain has to listen to the people. Voters in Cardiff, Cumbernauld and Coventry would not thank a government that wasted even more money on a 16 day circus - no matter how many gold medals Team GB wins at its home games.

It's game over for Shoot magazine

I was saddened by Ian MacMillan's report in today's Guardian that IPC was axing Shoot, the children's football magazine.

I was an avid Shoot reader when I was growing up in the 1970s. I remember vividly reading Shoot's story about Bill Shankly's resignation as Liverpool manager in 1974 under the heading 'Thanks, Shanks!'. That same issue had a free 'league ladder', with cardboard tags for every English league club. Readers could move the tabs to reflect the clubs' fortunes in the new season. In the early days of that season, I duly placed the tab representing Carlisle United at the pinnacle of English football before reality intervened and the border club were relegated from division one.

My other favourite magazines were Look In, Look and Learn and Cricket & Co. The latter was a lavishly produced magazine with a more literary approach, with poems and short stories. Sadly it succumbed after just a few months. Its fate seemed to set a pattern - too many of my favourite magazines have disappeared, including more recently On Your Bike, Cycling Today and Digital Video Techniques!