A miraculous story from SportsPickle:

Moments after a slide tackle dropped him to the ground and left him writhing in pain with what seemed to be a broken femur or some other serious injury, Paraguayan midfielder Christian Riveros popped up and continued playing after referee Hans Kimmel failed to produce a yellow card.
“It’s amazing. I see it all the time in matches,” said Kimmel, a longtime referee. “I seem to have the power to heal serious injuries simply by deciding if the felled player was taken down legally or illegally. I can’t explain it, but I guess you could call me a miracle worker.”

I'm glad they got tough on this stuff a few years ago. The diving and whining and whinging is mostly absent from the English league but still happens in every Central and South American match I watch.

(What? Yeah, I'm American. You want me to watch Asian golf tournaments, 9-ball pool, and 90lb weightclass boxing all day? Of course I watch soccer. And rugby. And cricket. Want to make something of it?)

Posted by: cbjohnson at 04:01 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 191 words, total size 1 kb.

England has been invaded. No, not by rampaging hordes of All Qaeda 'martyrs' (though they are probably here as well) but by England flags.

They are everywhere. Hanging from office buildings, shops, homes, fluttering from (not very well secured) antenna on cars and trucks. Even painted on people's faces.

Its World Cup time and England at least is looking as confident and patriotic as it always is just below the surface. Of course I feel sorry for my poor Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish brethren, whoÂ’s teams didn't make it to the finals (ha ha!) but at least my non-English fellow Britons seem to be taking this football* inspired burst of Englishness with good humour.

Not everyone is of course. The usual suspects are complaining that the flags which you now cannot now avoid are 'racsist' and 'intimidating'. Can you guess who those usual suspects are?

That's right, some of those who voluntarily came to this country to escape their own homeland's despotic regimes and their defender's in the 'we hate ourselves' liberal so-called elite.

Of course, what they really object to isn't the flag itself but the confidence in the country, it's dominant culture and political freedoms that it is indicative of. The bullishness it inspires amongst Englishmen and women of all colours and creeds.

The Islamofascists and their allies have successfully undermined large sections of the media and the establishment but the disconnect between those sell-out sections of our society and the majority of the population they supposedly represent is as comfortingly wide as it has been for decades.

As with any war, the real key to victory is confidence in the cause and the values it protects. Confidence is abundant, no matter what anyone might tell you.

(*Even for my guest slot here I'm refusing to use that hideous 's' word, just as I'm refusing to spell humour incorrectly).

Posted by: Sheward at 03:37 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
Post contains 314 words, total size 2 kb.