Friday, June 18, 2010

More playing, less talking

I’m a bit reluctant to blog about the World Cup ‘cos it’s everywhere at the moment (in case you hadn’t noticed!) but, with my blogging mojo flagging a little, the advice is to force yourself to write. So I’m writing about football, double challenge!

I’m not a fan of football but that’s not to say I hate it either. I don’t support a team but cheer for Aston Villa sometimes (the Slingsbys are firm supporters) and go to the odd Reading game with my beloved ‘cos that’s his team. And I’ll watch the England games if they’re on but wouldn’t slit my wrists if I didn’t. So I can take it or leave it, basically.

What I can’t stand though is all the bloomin’ talking about it, the analysis and the moaning. Do guys really have to sit around in suits after the game and take it to pieces? “Well, it was a game of two halves really. And, at the end of the day, if we’d scored more goals than the other team we’d have won.” No. Shit. Sherlock.

Honestly, it’s utter blather. My own analysis goes as far as to say the team played well and deserved to win, they were rubbish and that’s why they lost or it was a close game. All the rest washes over me. I’m the same with netball, I can’t bear talking tactics. There are the obvious things which make a team play well (and I wouldn’t dare bore you with them here) but you can’t have an exact plan of action because it all depends what the other team is doing. And whether we win or lose the game, we just go home afterwards. What’s the point of poring over it for hours? It serves no purpose taking the game apart to analyse what went wrong, and if the girls ever suggested it I’d have to hand over my bib and to leave them to it.

And it’s not just the professionals either, it’s everyone. A family Sunday lunch was taken over by World Cup talk and it slipped back into the conversation several times and they (the men, mostly) just kept repeating the same things. Yes, we know Heskey’s probably better suited to the rugby field ‘cos he keeps falling over and yes, Robert Green needs to replace his butter fingers. But repeating it over and over won’t change things.

So, I like sport, I play sport and I’m happy to watch sport, football included. But I don’t want to talk about it all day long. And the vuvzellas didn’t bother me either… until everyone started talking about them. Every other BBC story is about the vuvuzella! As if the noise isn’t bad enough, do we really have to bang on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and one about it?