05.11.09

Shame there's not much in my fridge...
I have an exam tomorrow (wish me luck!) which I’ve actually studied reasonably hard for over the past few days (these are the final assessments of my degree after all) and although today has largely been spent perfecting the art of procrastination (see above comic strip) I would have felt incredibly guilty had I spent an hour or so of it thinking deeply and writing in depth about football rather than The Great Gatsby, Allen Ginsberg and the Beats and other stalwarts of American Literature.
As such, there’ll be no post today and it doesn’t look good for tomorrow either. I’ll write my predictions on Saturday morning as usual but next week may be a total write off as I have exams on Wednesday and Friday as well as an interview for a postgrad journalism course to prepare for on Wednesday – busy times. I will try and get something written, but I’m not making any promises: consider it a ‘winter break’. Still, do check back every now and then, and I’ll be back before you know it.
All the best everyone. Now, back to that study…
1 Comment |
General Site Stuff | Tagged: Allen Ginsberg, American Literature, Beat Poetry, Exams, Jack Kerouac, Raymond Carver, The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien, Victoria University, Zora Neale Hurston |
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Posted by A. Howard
30.10.09

There is little more discouraging than those terrible, awful people who seek to make money from football. There are many examples of these villains in the modern game; not least those foreign investors who buy clubs and run them into the ground for personal profit, or the agents who act as malicious middle men providing minimal service at maximal profit, or even those who run the game these days, treating it less as a sport and more as a business, sacrificing the games’ integrity to further fill their pockets.
Of course such acts of greed are commonplace in today’s materialistic society. But these footballing crimes are worst because they take advantage of the sheer obsession of football fans. We are the life and blood of the game, and without us it could not function, nevermind make them money. And they rely on that, safe in the knowledge that we cannot pull away, that we are an easy source of income, that they can rip us off again and again and we cannot, no matter how hard we try, sever our ties with out club, our game.
Below even these executive types of modern football though, are the touts. The ticket scalpers. They buy up tickets for the big games and flog them at an enormous profit, depriving real fans the chance of seeing the game that means so much to them, or at least making them pay far over the odds to do so. It sickens me because these are people like us, fellow fans who are content to take advantage of their peers for their own personal profit. And at present, there are hundreds of them in New Zealand, denying me the chance to see New Zealand’s World Cup Qualifier against Bahrain.
Click through for the full article…
3 Comments |
NZ Football, World Football | Tagged: All Whites, Bahrain, Football, New Zealand, Scalpers, Soccer, Sold Out, Tickets, Touts |
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Posted by A. Howard
28.10.09

I woke up early this morning to attempt to buy a couple of tickets for the All White’s playoff match against Bahrain in November, but the 500 temporary seating tickets that went on sale today somehow disappeared in the 3 seconds after clicking “Buy Now” at precisely 9am that it took the next page to load. That seems implausible to me, but I know next to nothing about the workings of Ticketek, and so I move on.
The distinctive smell of conspiracy and controversy is far more pungent around FIFA’s strange decision to alter the usual enforcement of the away goals rule for the same fixture, which means that away goals will continue to decide the tie after extra time – giving the away side Bahrain an extra 30 minutes to score a crucial away goal. What could have driven such a strange and apparently obviously unfair rule change? Why, FIFA’s never-ending greed of course!
Click through for the full conspiracy theory at WDKF.co.uk…
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NZ Football, World Football | Tagged: Asia, Away Goals, Bahrain, FIFA, New Zealand, Oceania, Playoff, Sepp Blatter, South Africa, World Cup |
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Posted by A. Howard
27.10.09

Beckham flourished during his last stint in Milan, will he do so again?
So AC Milan chief executive Adriano Galliani has assured the world that the loan deal to take David Beckham back to the red half of the San Siro in January is “100% done” and “The only thing missing is the signatures” which simultaneously confirms that he’s lying (let’s face it, unless it’s signed and sealed, it isn’t 100% done) and that David Beckham will almost certainly be part of England’s World Cup squad in South Africa next year.
He’s proven popular as a squad member during Fabio Capello’s time in charge of the three lions but because of the Italian’s reluctance to take a player plying his trade in the sub-European standard MLS to a World Cup there was still a chance that Beckham could miss out. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that a move to Milan was the only way that Beckham could give himself a really good chance of being included – a much talked about Premier League return could actually have harmed his chances.
Click through to find out why…
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English Football, European Football, Internationals, World Football | Tagged: 2010, AC Milan, David Beckham, England, Fabio Capello, LA Galaxy, South Africa, World Cup |
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Posted by A. Howard