The Importance of Sport (NEW CONCEPTS)

[Mick Harper]

Repairing this national humiliation will require equal pay of course. The English men's team can forget about WAGs for at least one, possibly two, breeding cycles.

[Grant]

I spent ages chatting up a girl once but never getting anywhere over several weeks. Then she told me she was into women's football and played on Saturdays. Later I saw her with another woman who was smoking a pipe. The penny dropped.
Just my explanation as to why women's soccer will never catch on with the majority

[Mick Harper]

I've been stood up by you-know-who because she has to attend her five year-old grand-daughter's sports day. There has to be a parental figure present during the drug testing. Did I ever tell you how I won the obstacle race at our sports day? I was well behind when we reached the last stage, a bun in a paper bag. You had to eat the bun, then blow up and burst the bag to show you'd finished eating the bun. Most ingenious. I won easily by spitting the half-eaten bun back into the bag and bursting it. Most ingenious.

[Mick Harper]

I've got nothing against women playing football. And if they want to use our rules, adapt our playing kit, name their competitions after ours, that's all right too. But a thank you would be nice.

PS Great article in the Guardian by the (I must admit, forgotten but always admired) Julie Welch, about women football fans being patronised before USA vs England. Where've you been, pet?

[Mick Harper]

The Ivory Coast must have a helluva team if Wilfred Zaha can only get on the subs' bench. Mind you, my knowledge of that part of Africa is limited -- I didn't even know Upper Norwood was in the Ivory Coast.

[Grant]

Zaha's treatment by Moyes is one of the scandals of the age. If he had played him whoever was England manager at the time would have given him a proper cap. It's not as though we are bursting with talent in England.

[Mick Harper]

Ironically we weren't then but are now. Is that why Zaha opted for the Ivory Coast? I used to allow Ivorians the run of my flat so they could sell food from my garden at the Notting Hill Carnival. As they were French-trained chefs and the competition were Jamaican dopers they used to make rather a lot of money.

[Grant]

I'll believe you when England actually beat a world class team. In the world cup we played two decent sides and lost both. We also lost in the Nations Cup as soon as we played a team which was seriously trying

[Mick Harper]

I argued the same thing if you recall. Nevertheless if you think back to a time when the world and Wilfred Zaha were young, life was different. Then we were medium scuffers as per normal, now we are medium scuffers with prospects. Imagine, if you will, a world in which David Moyes fulfilled his promise.

[Wile E. Coyote]

Jorge Masvidal knocked out Ben Askren in 5 seconds, of the start of the fight, by a flying knee.

That is by timing, not speed.

[Mick Harper]

In the bollocks? I can't find it on line and I'm damned if I'm paying ppv for five seconds. Is Ben all right, Hatty wants to know.

[Wile E. Coyote]

You just don't get MMA. If someone wins in 5 seconds that is a "Fight of the night" bonus.

The balls are strictly off limits to all sports that the English invented. I can't therefore vouch for MMA, but putting your face in your opponent's crotch and grappling them to the ground is OK, providing it's done in a manly way, and your face doesn't linger in the crotch area. Mr Askren might have been trying to investigate this subtle nuance when interrupted by the knee of Mr Masvidal.

[Mick Harper]

How do you become an MMA fighter, Hatty wants to know.

[Wile E. Coyote]

[Mick Harper]