Happy New Yizzle

Here's hoping you all have a rum old New Year's Eve and feel remotely adequate the next day.

The honeymoon is well and truly over: WBA 2 - 0 Tottenham

Clearly Spurs have decided that flirting with relegation earlier in the season wasn't enough, and have decided to finally pluck up the courage and ask it out for dinner.

Meanwhile, the turning point of the game seems to have been the red card for Benoit Assou-Ekotto after just over half an hour. Possibly the first time in Premier League history that a player has been dismissed on account of his ridiculous barnet. Expect to see Everton's Marouane Fellaini given his long-overdue marching orders sometime in the near future.

Boxing Day down the Orient

My presence at professional sporting contests represents, to my mind, a curse upon the fortunes of whichever team or individual I would rather see victorious. My first time at White Hart Lane some years ago saw the home side defeated 1-0 to a rather freakish Steve Stone goal for Nottingham Forest and most recently I watched a pretty hopeless San Diego Padres team succumb to a visiting Cleveland Reds side on an otherwise perfect trip to southern California.

The sole victory that I have witnessed in the flesh was in the first leg of the UEFA Cup qualifying round, as Spurs left Prague with a valuable 1-0 win against Sparta. I put this anomaly down to the fact that it took place some thousand or so kilometres away from home and as such my powers were greatly diminished.

But in keeping with the festive season, I made my way with my season ticket-holding uncle to Brisbane Road this afternoon to watch Leyton Orient take on fellow League One relegation fanciers Swindon Town with a spring in my step and no thought of my previous form as a sporting spectator.

Things did not start well. The game was barely 30 seconds old when the Orient defence – possibly still half-cut from the previous day’s festivities – let the ball bobble around their penalty box long enough for Peacock to latch on to it and send it net-wards. ‘Goal’, I thought to myself shortly before the away fans went into raptures, and a goal it was.

Now fully awake, the O’s looked far more lively going forward until half time yet their reluctance to fire so much as a single shot on target was baffling to say the least. The 15 minutes after the interval proceeding much the same, until around the hour mark when a Swindon player committed as clear a handball as would have been seen at any football ground around the country.

The linesman on the near side then rose his flag, without hesitation, and awarded a penalty, before the roof of the stadium actually lifted an inch or two off its supports as around 7,000 people screamed the word “WHAT?!” in perfect unison.

Penalty safely tucked away, the visiting supports were delirious and the home fans incensed and perplexed in equal measure. Over the next ten minutes the offending official was submitted to as vehement a selection of abuse as I have ever heard.

My personal favourite nugget of vitriol was “Oi, silly bollocks!!”. Much of what was said was in this vein – the occasional attempt at a fully-formed sentence or even a rhetorical question tended to trail off before the end as the individual concerned lost interest.

With around ten minutes left on the clock, Orient’s steadily-building pressure paid off and they managed to pull one back, but not before missing a hatful of chances.

In all, I had a fantastic afternoon and would happily spend many more afternoons at Brisbane Road. My curse, I feel confident, will one day be broken.

See the club’s official match report here.

Season's greetings

Eggnog in hand and pheasant readied for the oven, I bid ye all a very Merry Christmas.

Twas the afternoon before Christmas, and everyone was out. Jimmy sat and thought to himself: "Ooh I fancy a stout"

It seems like only yesterday that I sat in my apartment in Whistler and wrote my last Christmas message to my literally three or four readers. Suffice it to say that this last 364 days has absolutely hooned by.

When will I stop bleating on about Whistler and how much I miss it? No time soon, I can assure you.

Just thought I'd share with you something I found online. More room for presents, evidently.

Bad times on Blackcomb mountain

I was taken right back to the base of the mountains today when I read that Tower 3 on the Excalibur gondola from Whistler village up onto Blackcomb had collapsed, leaving more than 50 people stranded for up to several hours.

The local Whistler newsmagazine reported it thus, while the BBC has posted its TV report online here.

Bad times indeed.

Quote of the day...week...maybe month, we'll see

"While kissing is normally very safe, doctors advise people to proceed with caution"

Sage words from the China Daily newspaper, on the news that a 20-year-old Chinese woman lost the hearing in her left ear following a particularly passionate kiss with her boyfriend.

Something I noticed... (Spurs 2 - 0 West Ham)

As I write I'm still basking in the afterglow of watching a hard-fought but thoroughly well-deserved Tottenham victory over the Hammers at a local pub. Fortunately, I'm abstaining from alcohol this week, otherwise I might have missed a little piece of history in the making. For tonight I witnessed what I believe is the first example of a 'common sense substitution'.

Until the 54th minute of tonight's match the rationale behind a substitution had consisted of a fairly well-defined set of reasons. A player might be substituted if he is injured, for example. A player might be in danger of picking up a second booking, and might therefore be replaced in order to avoid being sent off, particularly if he earns a bit more than everyone else and there’s a bit game coming up. Indeed, the player may be having a bit of a shocker, or tired, or being used as a makeweight for a tactical substitution so that his team might change their approach to the game.

A player might be having a blinder, have scored a hat-trick or just contributed a particularly exceptional performance that has put the game beyond doubt, and their removal from the field of play is just an excuse for them to be allowed their own special round of applause from the gathered and grateful.

Then there’s the ‘Juande Ramos special’ substitution, which consists of replacing a perfectly good player simply because you’re at 1-1, there’s 20 minutes left, your strikers couldn’t hit a barn door and you don’t know what else to do. Or the ‘Sven Goran Eriksson', which is bringing on Owen Hargreaves on the right of midfield when you’re 2-1 down with ten minutes to go.

Tonight, Tottenham Hotspur’s Russian striker Roman Pavlyuchenko was, to my mind, a participant in the first ‘common-sense substitution’. The 50-odd minutes he spent on the pitch weren’t particularly lacklustre, nor were they spectacularly good. He didn’t seem particularly fatigued or injured, nor did man who replaced him – Darren Bent – offer a great deal different in the tactical department. Mssrs Ramos and Eriksson were nowhere to be seen.

His departure was greeted, certainly in the pub in which I was sat, with a pause and then a collective reflection of: “Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense”. Ladies and gentlemen: a common-sense substitution.