I Intend To Escape ......................And Come Back

Sky Pilots Return To Old Trafford

At last I can reveal the truth behind Manchester United's win over Barcelona on Tuesday.

Obviously the efforts of Scholes, Ronaldo, Ferdinand, Van der Saar and co pale into insignificance when you have this bloke on your side!

The god-botherers were once a regular feature on Sir Matt Busby Way, certainly up to the early 90s, then they seemed to just leave Old Trafford alone. Perhaps in the Sky era we were no longer considered worth saving.

Now they are back. At this rate we will have the return of the people selling Newsline and the Morning Star!

Who Is That Handsome Guy?

I have had a couple of people ask me if the picture in the right hand corner of this blog is me.

As any fan of Olympic Wrestling knows, it is Chris Taylor, the heaviest man ever to win an Olympic medal (Munich 1972, Freestyle wrestling). Taylor is perhaps best known for the match he lost to West Germany;s Wilfried Dietrich, whose astonishing throw can be seen on the video below:

The Death Of Belfast Celtic

Fifty nine years ago today, Northern Ireland's most successful football team, Belfast Celtic, played their last last competitive match.

If you are not familiar with one of football's saddest tales, Padraig Coyle's history is essential reading.

Looking East

Today Sky Sports has been adding to the pressure on the English cricket authorities to reach some form of accommodation with the Indian Premier League.

I was at the extremely chilly second day of the Surrey v Lancashire match at the Oval yesterday, and Sky rather unsubtly contrasted the packed crowds of Indian cricket arenas with those in the UK. This was done by Sky placing their cameras in the Bedser stand (which was half full, a remarkable attendance given how cold it was) and taking shots of the empty pavilion.

What Sky neglected to inform its viewers of course, is that the pavilion is closed pending demolition of the Surrey Tavern, and renovation. Had spectators been able to enter that area they would.

Given Sky's big rival, Setanta, have the contract for showing the Indian Premier League, Sky must surely have been tempted to mention it as little as possible. Instead, they appear to be pushing its importance - hard.

Clearly Mr Murdoch will be bidding next time round............

Censorship - In Sport!

If there is one area where censorship should be unheard of - it is surely sport.

There is not much reason to censor football, athletics or boxing, as no one really gains from doing so. All the more surprising then to see some of the UCC Mixed Martial Arts fights from Canada on The Fight Network, which are censored!

As soon as any fighter sustains a facial or head injury, close up shots are either avoided, or the fighters face is blanked out by a sort of grey blob.

I have never seen anything like it. It would appear that in Canada it is acceptable to go round clubby seals to death for their coats, but we can't see footage of a man with a nose bleed!

The Fight Network really should tell however is supplying them with this footage to sort their lives out, or stick something else on instead.

Alex Ferguson on the Premiership, Sky TV and the Great Football Rip-Off

All the quotes below are from the 1992 book "Alex Ferguson - Six Years At United" by Alex Ferguson and David Meek.

"The Premier League is a piece of nonsense."

"Its introduction this season has done the reputation of the clubs no good whatsoever and it has in fact alienated a great many supporters."

"It would hardly behove the manager of a leading club to suggest that people both in and out of the game have been conned, but I can well imagine the ordinary fan in the street wondering".

"How the football people negotiating the contract did not have the savvy to know that once the agreement was signed the Sky people would fleece the fans, I will never know."

"The agreement sells supporters right down the river and hits hardest at the most vulnerable part of society, our old people".

"If I were to have a nightmare I'm sure it would feature an Orwellian scene of football being played entirely in some vast television studio without spectators, just people in their armchairs at home listening to canned cheers recorded in the dim and distant past at the Stretford End."

Coming Out Fighting

It seems likely that the two strongest boxing squads in the 2008 Olympics will come from Great Britain, and as usual, from Cuba. This seems a good time to review John Duncan's excellent book on Cuban boxing, which I reviewed in issue 80 of Class War, back in 2000.

In The Red Corner: A Journey Into Cuban Boxing by John Duncan (Yellow Jersey Press, £12)

Duncan took a year off from his work as a Guardian sports journalist, initially to work for the boxing promoter Frank Warren. His aim was to arrange a series of fights between Western and Cuban fighters under both amateur and professional rules. As all professional sport has been banned in Cuba since 1961, all Duncan came away with was a good book, one which serves as a fascinating insight into Cuban boxing (past and present), but more significantly into Cuba itself.

Duncan shows us how the lives of ordinary Cubans can be damaged by the bureaucratic nightmare of the Castro regime (and before any spotty student tries to tell you otherwise it is without question a regime). Saddest of all are the apartheid style rules that keep ordinary Cubans well away from the most expensive tourist resorts. Cuba is once again the play thing of the rich, but this time only the Cuban government is allowed to make any money out of it. Quite why Cuba has traditionally succeeded in boxing is clear. The manager of Cuban boxing, Alcides Sagarra, is on the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba. In 1997 his goal was to plan for the Olympics. The Olympics in mind being those of...2008!

Secondly Cuba has a clear ethos of sport for all - for love not money. This is particularly refreshing to us in the UK surrounded by greedy footballers with their bimbo girlfriends and their grasping agents. Duncan describes the Cuban ethos skilfully, particularly when discussing the Heavyweight Felix Savon who turned down 10 million dollars from Don King to turn professional. Savon comes across as being happier more often in a week than Tyson will be in the whole of the rest of his life.

However, the Cubans may well find time has left them behind. "Amateur" sport has died a death around the world, and the Cubans discovered at the 1999 World Championships that amateur boxing can be just as bent as its professional cousin. Mr Sagarra, rather like Mr Castro, has had his day.

Fear Descends On Manchester

For the second year running............A spectre is hauting Manchester..........

As United continue to progress towards the double, all United fans face the awful choice. Yes beating Liverpool or Chelsea in Moscow to win the Champions League would be one of the club's greatest ever triumphs, but how could we cope with the pain of playing Liverpool, and being victims (as Arsenal were) to a traditional Scouse mugging?

The agony is almost too much to contemplate.

That's Entertainment!

Well, what a days free sport!

Congratulations to the Metropolitan Police, the British Olympic Association, the Chinese authorities and most of all Gordon Brown's government for the superb day of free entertainment they provided in London yesterday. From the comfort of our armchairs we were able to watch running, cycling and in particular wrestling - we even caught occasional sights of the Olympic flame!

Whilst the Chinese athletes involved appeared unflappable, many of the British competitors appeared to be rather flabby, sweaty coppers - something the Olympic Committee may need to look at again when the flame returns to London in 2012!  The weakness of selecting police officers for sporting activities was also emphasised by the Met police cyclists involved yesterday - some appeared to be unable to make up their minds as to whether they should be on their bikes or not!

Best of all this was a sporting event that demanded - and got - full audience participation. No prawn sandwiches were consumed in central London yesterday! In the early days of football in the Middle Ages, whole villages would join in kicking a ball around the countryside in a riotous rampage fulled by drink and a sense of fun that the stuffed shirts of 21st century sporting officaldom would have hated. London recaptured that spirit yesterday, with crowds across the capital getting into the spirit of what should become a highlight of the sporting calendar. And today its the turn of French competitors to see if they can match the English.....

Here's to the Olympic flames return in 2012 - bring it on!

Support The Roma 4

With United playing in Rome again tonight, it is timely to remember that four United fans have still not made it back from the last time we played in Rome.

You can read about the Roma 4 here.