Tennis isn't a sport, it's a game

Yesterday, the Chairman, having despaired at England's useless bowling attack (Stuart Broad? Is this a joke? The bloke is just terrible. It's an absolute scandal he is playing international cricket) decided to cast his eye over Wimbledon. And Lo! The mighty Nadal was playing.

It was during this game that I saw something I had never seen before, and it got me thinking about how tennis has degenerated into the most frustrating, pampered sport on the planet. Hence I have downgraded it to "game".

And what was it that so caught my attention?

The valiant Michael Russell, Nadal's unfortunate sacrificial lamb, actually thanked a ballboy for holding his towel. All these years of watching tennis, all over the world. Hundreds of different players. Not once, NOT ONCE, has any of these preening ponces had the plain common courtesy to thank a volunteering ballboy for holding his ghastly sweaty towel. Most point nonchelantly, demanding the towel between every point, like they are a fourteenth century monarch.

Tennis is a rubbish sport. Let's start on that frankly offensive joke that is wimmin's tennis. The standard is so lamentably bad it is ludicrous. Clijsters and Henin retired for three years to have babies. They saw how the standard was still so bad, they played a few sunday league games and promptly came back to win majors. This is just ludicrous.

Most "professional" female tennis players are simply out of shape. In fact, while you're there, let's not beat about the bush. Most of them are fat. I was watching the lovely Schiavone play that borderline psychotic wierdo Dokic last night. Dokic was shuffling round the court like a fattie doing some exercise on a Saturday afternoon in SW London. I thought it was a joke. Only Sam Stosur and Schiavone look anything like athletes. It is regrettable Sam is out, again.

How can it be possible for the highest paid female sport to tolerate this? How on EARTH can wimmin justify equal prize money? This isn't just ludicrous (yes, that word again, but this is wimmin's tennis we are talking about), it is downright offensive. Serena Williams, hardly in shape herself, can win a major and drop about 20 games, if that. Wimmin play about a quarter of the game time as the blokes, if not less, but still want equal prize money? Give me some credit.

And what is this having a rest every 2 games? I just cannot believe in 2011, professional athletes, some of the hightes paid on the planet, still want to have a blow after 2 games. No wonder fatty ladies can still succeed. They get to take a blow as soon as they run out of puff. Hahaha, it's just laughable. Tennis is a game, not a sport.

In what other sport do you see wimmin with their entire leg strapped up, like that will make a plain bit of difference? They always have some tredious tiny injury to moan about. Well get in shape then love and stop moaning. Its not just the wimmin. Andy Murray is always using his bogus ankle injury as an excuse. Novak Djokovic has often just given up, blaming some spurious injury if he cant be bothered. They're all at it. Every match someone turns up with a piece of black sellotape on his/her knee, like it makes the blindest bit of difference...

It now takes 5 minutes for most players to serve. They go through a whole tube of balls before they finally find one they deem good enough to hit. This shouldn't be allowed. Its a sport, not a "find the nicest ball" competition.

And why do players need a towel EVERY POINT? What are sweat bands for? Again, all these things have crept in over the past 10 years. It slows the game down. It negates the advantage a fit player has over her opponent. This is precisely why in the women's game, patently unfit players can stil beat those who have bothered to go for a jog. Tennis is not an aerobic test of fitness. It is a game.

Tennis has entirely degenerated into the most absurd game. The quite dismal standard of female tennis is but one problem. It keeps me awake at night wondering how the grotesquely well funded LTA fails year after year to find a British female player of any ability, though I do of course recognise this has as much to do with our bone idle female population in Britain, as it does about the rank incompetence of the sport's governing body. The same goes for the men. Henman, Murray are exceptions to the rule. We are a global laughing stock.

I'm sick of tennis. I even find myself sniggering at the irritating, smug antics of the Wimbledon crowd. I uased to defend the whole englishness of it. Now even this irritates me. Why, for example, when a player sneezes does the entire crowd burst out laughing like they've just seen a peter kay sketch about garlic bread? Why should all those D-list celebs get to go to the Royal Box? Terry Wogan sat there like the cat that got the cream, and he still didnt need to dip into the 10k he got from the BBC for presenting Children in Need did he?

Tennis isnt a sport. It's a game. And until the women's game starts treating the paying public with respect and presenting players that can run 400 metres without collapsing, and until the men stop needing to take a breather every 2 games, while towelling down their entire body or having a 10 minute internal debate about which bloody ball to hit, I shall continue treating it with the contempt it deserves.

The Chairman knows best V

Steele gone.

Well done RFU.

What a total joke that bloke was. But other heads must role. Martyn Thomas is hanging by a thread. He hired that goon Steele. And the last thing the RFU needs is that egghead Woodward. More to follow.

Still, the Chairman knows best.

Rugby on the slippery slope

This comment has been a long time coming. It has been clear for some time that the noble game of rugby is close to the edge. Close to morphing into that hateful, disgraceful shitpile that is football.

No one would every argue professionalism was a bad thing. It improved the game, no question. It was quite right that English players should be given the opportunity to turn professional to compete on a level playing field with arrogant kiwis who were "rugby development officers' or whatever bullshit title the kiwi government decided to give them at the time. Christ, the kiwis were pro 15 years before us Europeans followed suit.

But I am watching the degeneration of rugby, the Chairman's second love, with real sadness. Every day, it moves closer to football.

Let's start with the clubs. The RFU did its best - it implemented a salary cap, it spent months and months negotiating with the clubs for access to England players, providing ample compensation in return. But the clubs have told the RFU to fuck off. They always want more, lead by the arrogant, hateful Mark McCafferty.

Like football, we are seeing an invasion of average foreigners in the league, depriving English talent of game time. Glamour signings which achieve nothing (like football, there are the good eggs - the Phillipe Sellas and Castrogiovannis, but by god there is some shit out there).

Premier clubs pick fights daily with the RFU, and all of it hampers the national side. Like football, where the clubs hold the power and the national game is treated with disdain, the same thing is happening in rugby.

Behaviour: the old rules of respect in rugby are flying out the window. The disgraceful Tuilagi/Ashton incident still grates. This litle yob represents everything which is going wrong with the game. Same goes for that buffoon Cockerill. I am scratchng the surface here, but while Tuilagi and Foden remind me of frankly any premiership footballer, so does Cockerill remind me of aggressive bullys like that ridiculous Scotch shop steward Ferguson.

The game is rotten. Its turning into football.

The clubs think the club game is secondary to the national game. The RFU is now starting to resemble the FA under the ridiculous Steele. God how the RFU is now missing the steady hand of Baron. The players are forgetting their responsibilities. The old guard of Wilko, Moody etc are fading, only to be replaced by fuckwits like "Danny" Cipriani (whose continuing descent into obscurity is most amusing, and utterly inevitable).

Another catalyst for this post was the signing of Henson and "Willie" Mason by Toulon. I note Toulon have decided not to give that bronzed sociopath Henson a contract. Well thank god. Yet they still spends thousands on an old, out of shape ex-league player Mason, whose track record is a long series of shit.

What the hell is Toulon thinking? Do you think Wilko will be pleased about this? If he stays, it will be out pure blind loyalty, but Toulon is a shambles. It didnt even qualify for Eutrope this year. Why? Because they keep buying shit foreign players.

Deeply depressing.

Olympic Flame and that dreaded word "community"

The Chairman has been dreading the olympic games in London since the day it was decided London should bid. Yes, he's applied for some tickets. You have to don't you? I'll watch a bit of rowing and cycling, unless it becomes amply clear the Aussies will win everything, in which case I will make a sharp exit.

But the thought of the equality obsessed politically correct mandarins which dominate anything and everything in our sorry feeble excuse for a nation controlling every aspect of these games fills me with dread.

Just imagine what the opening ceremony is going to be like. Its even worse that we have to follow the truly magical, extraordinary Beijing games (god, who remembers that laughable "London Bus" joke at the closing ceremony by the way?).

The LAST thing these hippy lefties arranging the opening ceremony will want to do is celebrate anything which is geat about Britain. Our glorious history, our empire, our ownership of the seas, global trade, once magnificent armed forces, impact of our tiny nation all over the world.

No. All that will be deemed offensive and racist. We'll be left with a claasic multicultural all-inclusive shambles. Thousands of ethnic minority kids running around the place in a disorganised rabble. Why? Because rehearsals would have been too hard for the poor little kiddies. Gay group floats, Beckham, global warming, ghastly kiddie choirs singing out of tune, but nicely representative of "London's diverse ethnic mix" etc etc etc.

I see the Olympic flame route in Blighty has been set. Well in terms of giving a clue as to what these hopeless games will be like, the "organisers" have decided no athletes will carry the flame. Instead we will get members of that dreaded word "community" carrying it.

We all know what that means.

God, this is going to be a national embarrassment.

Update: The Chairman didnt get any fucking tickets. Fuck.

The Leaping Case of Rio Ferdinand

So Man Utd win the Premiership. Well whoop-di-fucking-do.

I just haven't got the energy to deconstruct the laughable "Premiership". It's a contradiction in terms. A worthless cesspit of shysters on the make, corrupt officials, lazy rapist footballers and foreigners.

Jesus, what the hell was Tevez thinking draping himself in the Argentian flag? Did no one else find that offensive? Imagine if an Englishman had draped himself in a British flag in Argentina? He'd last 5 minutes. We are a weak, thoughtless, self-loathing nation.

But on the the subject of this post.

Why must that wonky-mouthed bed-ridden lout "Rio" Ferdinand jump onto the shoulders of any player that scores?

Am I really the only person to notice this? It's not on the odd occasion is it? It's EVERY time. A Man Utd player scores, he is chased by this lanky, soft buffoon, who promptly jumps on his back and screams obscenities at the crowd.

It drives The Chairman potty. It's like the inevitability of KP giving away 4 overthrows every time he fields. You know its going to happen and yet no one does anything about it.

I would love, just LOVE for our Rio to fall on his precious 150k-a-week arse just the once and wipe that ghastly, ignorant lop-sided grin of his gurning mug.

AFL shows how it is done...

To my noble Brit readership, AFL is of course Aussie Rules Football.

The Chairman loves his "footy" as they call it out here. The fact they call any game with a ball (apart from cricket) "footy" is by the by. I'm talking Aussie Rules.

Aussie Rules is the equivalent of football in England (at least as close an equivalent as it is possible to get). The competition is the widest followed, pays the highest wages etc etc. It is an astonishing game. These players are freakishly fit, brave and hard. They put the puny physiques of our drug addicted football "elite" to shame. They put their bodies on the line every week. The mileage they cover every game is eye watering.

The game is superbly run out here. The Governing Body, despite being run by a sociopath leftist megalomaniac who seems to think it is the AFL's role to be talking about "climate change" is a model governing body. Swift decision-making, massive emphasis on player responsibilty, game development and post career training.

The effort that goes into grass roots in this country is astonshing. It puts our lamentable, hateful football to shame. The last thing anyone in this disgusting code cares about is grass roots. The small clubs, those clubs underneath the fantasy Premiership bubble. They treat the game with contempt. And are praised for it. And yet we still wonder why our supposed leading players in the country can't use both feet and seem knackered after 20 minutes.

Because they are bone idle, hateful, lazy pikeys, who care more about which bimbo they are going to abuse next than they do about representing the club that pays their wages.

But the point of this post is on a ruling The Chairman has only just discovered.

Every AFL registered player HAS to spend one day a week studying or working.

You English read that again. Yes. Even the mega stars (for that is what they are out here), need to study or work one day a week.

I was always amazed at how eloquent so many AFL players were. How interesting game analysis was when players were on the panel. They knew what they were talking about and were able to express themselves. Now I know why.

Jesus wept, these ex players on MOTD are just fucking weak. Idiots to a man. Gary Linekar? Give me strength. The bloke is a midlands pikey. And as for the post game interviews with moron monosyllabic footballers. I mean it's just embarrassing.

Why? Because our ghastly game does NOTHING to educate these yobs. They are not taught to seak, to take responsibilty for their own actions. They are instead lauded, praised, spoilt, treated like royalty. And we wonder why every game we watch we are treated to disgusting behaviour, to violence, to stupidity.

God I hate football.

Why does the spineless FA not fucking do something about it? Why not a one day a week rule in the UK? Let's send these ill-educated vermin back to school. Let's send them to an office a day a week. Learn how real people live. Learn how some people actually do seem to blindly care for the club that pays these grotesque wages and all they get is contempt in return. Yes you Rooney, you fat oik. You, who blackmails a club into vastly increasing your wage, while stuffing your fat face full of over priced pizza while apparently recovering in Dubai.

But they don't. The bastards get away with whatever the fuck they like, mocking us all. They are brainless. Can any of Cole, Rooney, Dyer even speak English properly? They are completely detached from reality, and the FA does nothing about it.

One day a week study or work. Imagine that in the UK. We can but dream.

"Backing up" and the cowardice of our footballers

Last weekend in Australia, those mighty players of the NRL did something extraordinary. At least it looked extraordinary to this Englishman, so used to the endless bleating by our jumped up football managers over the "workload" of their preening players.

You see, on Friday night, there was a league test match between Australia and New Zealand.

At the same time, a trial match for the "State of Origin" series (where players from Queensland and NSW play in a 3-match series of frankly bizarre intensity) was played for the NSW side (called City v Country). The next day - yes, about 14 hours later, nearly every player involved in these 2 high intensity games, then turned out for their clubs.

This is called "backing up" in Oz and it is a symbol of why Australian sportsmen are tough and have that "never say die" attitude we so struggle to replicate in our embarrassing excuse for a country.

Just imagine for a moment, what would be the reaction in Premiershipland if football players were asked to "back up".

Wenger would be crying for weeks, in that ridiculous comedy French accent he refuses to lose after 12 years in our country. We'd be mopping up his tears until Autumn. Ferguson, that hateful Scotch shop steward, would be screaming blue murder at the FA (not through the BBC natch) saying his "poor" players are overworked and simply cannot play twice in a 2 days. The players themselves would bleat about being too tired to play. The whole clamour would be deafening.

Yet NRL is a far harder game. They train harder for longer, play harder, risk horrendous injury every time they set foot on the field earning, lest we forget, less in a year than what Rooney takes home in 3 days. If any sportsman should not back up, its these guys. I note by the way mighty cyclists don't complain about riding 20 days straight in the tour de france do they?

No. What this illustrates is the depths to which football has sunk. These privileged, bone idle, spoilt, cosseted pseudo rapists we call fotoballers are simply pathetic. They would never back up and the cheerleaders in the MSM (yes you, Winter) laud them for it.

Grow a spine you idle, fat, lazy footballers. Stop complaining about your workload and get back on the training paddock. Ashley Cole, how about using some of your spare time to learn to kick with your right foot, you hateful little weasel?

Next time you hear Wenger moaning about having to play a pointless Carling Cup game (which by the way he mocks) on Tues night, with his vast squad of players, who then have to play a league match on Sunday, just think about the league boys in the NRL.