Tag: football

Vinicius Junior

6,359 words

You might not have heard, but Spain is currently undergoing its own version of a George Floyd moment. Scaled down, of course — nothing can really match American production value — but nonetheless, there is a storm brewing, one resembling what much of American sociopolitics has been reduced to: racism and victimhood grifting.

A storm — although in actual fact, it’s more like a tempest in a teacup, as is often the case with these sort of black grievances. It all started last weekend when the Real Madrid Football Club went to Valencia to play that city’s main football (or soccer, if you prefer) team. (more…)

Noddy and the Golliwogs

1,750 words

First they came for the golliwogs . . .

. . . but I was not a golliwog, and said nothing. At first glance this story looks encouraging, as it involves the rare taking into custody of a black gang by the British police, but on closer inspection it is just a repetition of what is happening all over Britain.

I don’t know if the golliwog was ever big in the States, but they are knitted children’s dolls, usually dressed in a smart red-and-yellow outfit, perhaps with a bow tie. But have a look at one and I am sure you will see the problem. Blacks in Britain, as everywhere else, are like Thomas More’s devil: They cannot endure to be mocked. (more…)

The Promise Keepers prayer sessions held in stadiums across the US during the 1990s were the first attempt of evangelicals and American football to team up to try to bridge the racial divide.

1,339 words

The last week of the National Football League (NFL) season witnessed an outpouring of Christian faith. Players have never been shy about expressing their faith. They usually pray before games on the sidelines, triumphant quarterbacks will thank God in the sky after a touchdown, and victorious footballers love to credit God for why they won the game. But Week 18 saw an even more obvious display of faith. (more…)

1,731 words

Advanced robotics

Brassneck was a cartoon robot schoolboy from a popular comic I read as a young lad in the 1960s, The Dandy. Older British readers will also remember this comic’s great rival, The Beano, and Dennis the Menace (which was very different from the American Dennis). (more…)

England’s lily-white Lionesses women’s football team.

2,293 words

Rampant lionesses tamed by BBC

Women’s football — soccer to my American readers — is often scorned but is actually enjoyable to watch, provided you actually like the game and not just the tribal and commercial nonsense that nowadays comes with it. (more…)

Irish hurling

668 words / 2:28:04

Long-time friend of the show Pox Populi was the special guest on the latest broadcast of The Writers’ Bloc with host Nick Jeelvy to discuss the situation with the Dutch farmer protests, as well as answer your questions, and it is now available for download and online listening. (more…)

Vikki Spit and her fiancée. Spit has become the first person in the UK to receive compensation from the government for a death — her fiancée’s — resulting from the Covid-19 vaccine.

1,779 words

Beware the Ides of June

Under British parliamentary rules, a vote of no confidence in a Prime Minister is similar to a recall vote in the United States, but it is the members of the incumbent PM’s parliamentary party — 359 Conservative MPs, in this case — who vote, and not the people. The peons only get to vote in general elections, where their choice is essentially between two brands of the same soap powder. (more…)

British MP Jeremy Hunt, whose surname is as perfect an example of Cockney rhyming slang as you could find.

2,490 words

A bad month for the Iron Lady and the suffragette

There is never a good time to be a statue in England. You are out in all weathers, for a start, and on the rare days the Sun does shine pigeons seize the opportunity to take a dump on your head. But you do usually get to hang around on your pedestal or plinth for a few decades, or even centuries, before you are abused by humans. That, like much in the old country, is changing, and 2020 shall henceforth be known as the year of the great toppling. But the last month has seen attacks on statues of two famous English women, proving equality is alive and well. (more…)

Adam Vinatieri, the kicker who holds the NFL’s all-time scoring record.

2,014 words

A long time ago, in a magical kingdom tucked safely away from the flaming hell we currently inhabit, there used to be this crazy, hate-filled idea that if some groups performed better on average than other groups regarding any given task, it’s highly likely that the main reason for this is that they simply were better than other groups at that task. It was so pure and innocent in its reasoning that someone invariably had to come and fuck it all up. (more…)

J. K. Rowling, who earned praise for getting herself cancelled this year by refusing to back down from her normal views on genitalia and gender.

2,411 words

We can be heroes just for one day. — David Bowie

Hans, are we the baddies? — Mitchell and Webb sketch featuring Nazi soldiers

As European and Commonwealth countries act like faithful servants to the autocratic global coup currently taking place, my own home country of England has fallen into step like a good foot-soldier. The government, nominally Conservative but actually a sort of Green Socialist elite oligarchy, has gone full Bezmenov, contradicting itself on a daily basis about COVID and preventing its people from seeing dying loved ones while it parties maskless indoors. (more…)

Mária Schmidt & Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán

688 words

Following the Hungary-England football match in Budapest on Thursday, September 2, during which racist abuse against the British team was reported, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson posted a tweet in which he expressed that it was “completely unacceptable that England players were racially abused in Hungary.” (more…)

2,285 words

The outlook wasn’t brilliant for the Mudville nine that day;
the score stood four to two, with but one inning more to play.
And then when Cooney died at first, and Barrows did the same,
a sickly silence fell upon the patrons of the game. (more…)