As their near neighbours crack on with hosting the Rugby World Cup, having kicked off with a win over another former football World Cup host nation- Russia- the Chinese appear to have taken a leaf out of the Brave Blossoms' book & started to look into the option of naturalising players for Team Dragon...
With England's cricketers having thrown everything into salvaging a draw from the latest Ashes series, has there been a better time to leave the clubhouse & turn the pitch over to football- as Joe Root & his men often do? A recent edition of the Tuffers & Vaughan Cricket Show found the hosts discussing the merits of such a warm up routine, with a number of injuries suffered in the build up to key matches attributed to swapping a smaller red ball for a larger white one.
Before the end of the 2018/19 football season, our Ed. managed to fit in another 'football away day' trip, where he coerces a group of friends to visit a ground that he'd not previously visited, to watch a team that none of us are emotionally invested in! The focus this time was Cheltenham Town, the date April 6th, and the opposition were the promotion-chasing Exeter City. This is how our day at Whaddon Road went.
With the first international break of the new season, the perfect time has come to look at a fallen titan- indeed, one to which I feel a sort of personal connection in that its countrymen & women helped me learn to take my first steps (I should mention that I have cerebral palsy).
In a roundabout manner, Hungary led to football played for both disabled & relatively able teams from my college days to the office kickabout, owing to the great work of the specialists at Budapest's Peto Institute. While I have not yet been able to experience a game in Hungary, if the chance came up I would not hesitate to take it in- the terraces then obviously not the best place for a boy of only two or three years old! Though looking forward now as a man of 32, there are encouraging signs of a mini-resurgence...
In an age in which footballers are often accused of not really trying, where the overpaid prima donna rolls around as if they've been shot ignorant of the fact that at heart the game played with the round ball is as much a contact sport as its oval cousin, a recent trip to the Imperial War Museum sparked curiosity regarding those times when players really could have taken the ultimate one for the team.