A Month In Sporting Torment

Anyone who knows me really well knows I love sport, and especially my teams, but to say the least this month hasn't been the happiest month sports-wise. When I say it hasn't gone well, I mean it has been historically bad. Let's take it team-by-team:

Crystal Palace: Lost every single game, including a 4-1 home defeat to Fulham which included an incredible goal (I refuse to use the term "worldie") by Fulham striker Pajtim Kasami. This culminated in the departure by mutual consent of manager Ian Holloway, who I had only passed and said good morning to a month earlier prior to our home defeat by Swansea City. Really, really not a good day. For reasons I never completely understood Holloway wasn't completely accepted by some members of the Palace support, and although I had seen us play badly under his watch an element of patience, a delivered promotion and a personal belief that he was a good guy (backed up by this link found by my friend Ben after his departure) I felt it was a shame he left. I think we're poorer for his exit, regardless of present form.

Atlanta Braves: It's October, time for more Baseball heartache! At least the Braves managed to win a game in October, and indeed they even won a play-off game in their series to the Dodgers. But a series defeat, culminated by a game four loss snatched from the jaws of victory, stung. The Braves still haven't won a play-off series since 2001. On the bright side, having a work colleague who is a Cleveland Indians fan helped on the basis that you see Postseason Baseball futility isn't solely limited to Georgia's capital city.

Miami Dolphins: Remember the 3-0 start? Remember the 3... and oh, yeah, whatever happened to that? It all went pear-shaped, that's what. Just like Palace, the Fins lost every game in October and now sit with a 3-4 record. There's no sign of coach Joe Philbin leaving though, which I think is a good thing. He's a good coach and a good guy, and hopefully he's here for the long haul. Fixing the offensive line might help though.

Chicago Bulls: The Bulls season began on Tuesday... with a defeat. Which makes perfect sense this month. At least Derrick Rose's surgically repaired knee seems to be better for not playing last season. Now excuse me while I go and find some wood to touch.

Warrington Wolves: Who? Yes, my infrequently mentioned Rugby League team, who I took on board due to my best friend at University. This month saw them play in their second consecutive Grand Final. Of course it finished with a second consecutive defeat. I haven't told my friend Chris about the sporting month I've had. I don't think he'd blame me, but it isn't worth mentioning. Also if I'm honest I know it doesn't mean to me what it meant to Chris. When I'm happy about Warrington results I'm happy for Chris, when they've lost a big game I think about what it means to Chris. Arguably this could be worse for me, let's just move on.

Anaheim Ducks: The Ducks are doing... pretty well actually, winning 10 of their first 13 games this season. Small problem, like the Bulls they're at the start of their season, and to all intents the start of the NHL season is effectively meaningless. In recent years top seeds have come a cropper in the Stanley Cup play-offs, and therefore it seems to be more important to be in the Stanley Cup play-offs instead of just being highly-seeded within those. It seems that all tickets are equally capable of winning the raffle. On a positive note, winning is better than the alternative.

Hopefully one day soon, preferably from a Braves perspective also in October, I'll have a blog post where I can report exactly the opposite from what I'm writing today. For the time being though I'll welcome even a small improvement.

Whatever Happens To The Heroes?

This is not about the pub in Waterlooville which some friends of mine once referred to as "a meat market". Please continue to read, thanks!

The past twelve months has been a weird time from a sporting perspective, but to understand it you have to delve back into the past a bit.

Back in 1991 I had barely supported for Palace for any time at all, but I clearly had a favourite player: Ian Wright. His enthusiasm was infectious, his speed was electrifying and he had a knack of being able to produce something special at any given moment. Unbeknown to 16 year-old me though he would shortly be sold to Arsenal for £2.5M. My first true sporting hero had gone, to a club where he would repeatedly score against us and even on one occasion relegate us. I said I would never become so attached to one player again.

However in the summer of 1997 a newly-promoted Palace side did the unthinkable. They sought and eventually succeeded in obtaining the services of Attilio Lombardo from Juventus. Lombardo then scored on his debut at Everton and shortly afterwards inspired another win at Leeds. He was a remarkably quick thinker, always a step ahead of the game and seeking to improve those around him. Add in his instantly recognisable hairstyle (or lack of it) and a unique take on the "he's got no hair" songs and you had a cult hero.

Even though he became frequently injured and ultimately could not prevent us from being relegated he was a pleasure to watch. As the injuries mounted up I at least took satisfaction in seeing him score with a smart finish at Newcastle. Unexpectedly he stayed with us in our return to the second flight, and on the last occasion that I saw him he ran the whole game against Portsmouth. As the club's finances took a turn for the worse under Mark Goldberg's disastrous spell as owner it became the time to pinch myself, and Lombardo returned to Italy with Lazio. No proper goodbye, and his only return since has been in his role with Manchester City's coaching staff.

Lombardo's time with Palace was somewhat of an aberration, and while other popular players came and went (e.g. Clinton Morrison, Andy Johnson and now Wilfried Zaha) there remained a point where you kept yourself detached. In reality Palace aren't a huge club, and great players will ultimately move onto better things. You remembered that.

However some things go a bit deeper than that. Back in October 1995 I was actually at the game where Dougie Freedman scored his first goal for Palace (I wasn't actually there at that moment, and didn't get there until half-time due to my return to Uni and fun and games with the train network). He scored plenty of goals that season, and although he didn't get as many the following season he still chipped in with a healthy batch of goals including two in the play-off semi-final against Wolves as Palace secured another promotion.

As Lombardo was settling in at Palace, Dougie was heading to Wolves, before moving onto Nottingham Forest and then ultimately back to Palace in 2000. When we needed him most, he came up trumps in the biggest moment, scoring at Stockport to help prevent a further relegation in the dying minutes of the 2000/01 season. More goals followed, including a 100th for the club in a win at Brighton. Even though Dougie wrapped up his playing career with a loan spell at Leeds and a period on the books at Southend, but he was Palace through and through, and we loved him for it.

When Palace went through even more financial difficulty and a further period of administration Dougie was back again, this time as assistant to temporary manager Paul Hart. When Hart left and George Burley took over Dougie remained as number two, and after Burley's brief and unsuccessful spell in charge he took over the manager's position himself. The ship was righted in quick but uninspired fashion, followed the following season by a trip to a League Cup semi-final and the permanent feather-in-the-cap moment of being the first team to win in the league at Brighton's new stadium. Yes, Dougie was one of us. He would take us places, he would stick with us, he would be the person who would be the visible face of the club moving slowly and surely forward.

What we didn't see was Dougie taking the manager's job at Bolton Wanderers. Reasons were speculated on, more money for him personally, more money to spend on players, a bigger club, a more successful recent history. Whatever the reason, fans were outraged.

At the same point that Dougie was leaving in another sport another of my favourites was exiting, only in a different fashion. Having joined the organisation in 1990 and consequently graduated to the Major League team in 1993, Chipper Jones headed into retirement having been with only the Atlanta Braves in all that time. Although the Braves had been similar to Palace when I started to support them, they changed very quickly to a point that players rarely moved for career aspirations or financial reasons. Consequently Chipper could be seen as loyal to the core.

However even then there are things which happen in retirement which I can't claim to be altogether comfortable with. Chipper clearly loves hunting, and he was a bit too comfortable for my liking in regard to a second divorce and how he has moved on from this. Chipper was always candid to the media while he was playing, and consequently it isn't fair to judge him differently now he has retired. Last year I finally succumbed and bought a "Jones/10" jersey to commemorate all he did for the team, and that is what I choose to remember.

Many years ago I had a friend who was a Los Angeles Dodgers fan. I remember on one occasion him telling me about Steve Garvey, about how he was idolised, and how he was believed to be so clean cut that schools were named after him. The only thing was that Steve Garvey was nothing like that, and all the accolades that were showered upon him were premature. You don't know how someone may really be considered until much, much later in life, if indeed during their life at all.

In time all our sports heroes will disappoint us. As time passes the wound of Freedman leaving will ease, but never totally be forgotten. Chipper's on-field deeds will be remembered while he tweets about shooting deer and continuing a new relationship. And as time continues to pass I will continue to ponder the relationship between the teams I support, the players who play for them, and the actions they take in their daily lives. It doesn't really impact me, and yet you can't help but think about it. Yes, they're heroes, but they're also human beings, and consequently as prone to do things that people don't like as anyone else.

Memories Are Made of This

In 1997 for the only time in my life I was in America for Super Bowl Sunday. Hours before the Packers and Patriots clashed in New Orleans I was where I normally would be on a Sunday morning, at Church. I still remember the opening prayer: "Lord, we know you don't care about sports..."

Respectfully, I would disagree. Don't get me wrong, I don't think God cares about teams and scores, but the individuals involved? Oh, I strongly believe that God cares about them. And the fans involved. And for the life changing events that coincide with sporting events? God, in my view at least, definitely cares about those.

Every once in a while someone will ask me about a particular event, and more often than any normal person would do, I'll be able to reel off everything about it and even get down to the date it took place.

Now in all honesty, part of this is because I kept a diary for not far short of a decade (1988-1997), but a lot of this relates to sporting events and when they took place. Obviously most of these are Palace games, as from the time that I first started supporting Palace until my move to Scotland those games were what I planned my leisure activities around. I tended to always know who Palace were playing and on what dates, especially so during the time I was in London at university (1993-1996).

Regardless of where I was during those years, the card sent to me by Palace's box office which provided a handy-sized guide to the season's fixtures wouldn't be far away, and fixture dates didn't change much at that time (Sky and UEFA have a lot to answer for), so I tended to know most fixture dates off the top of my head. I always looked forward to Palace games, so I guess the dates became lodged in my head (which isn't so useful when you can't find things like your mobile phone or your keys, but can remember immediately tell someone who Palace played on a certain date and who scored).

There are certain stretches of games which I remember really well, like in February and March 1996. You'll have to take my word for it that I didn't look this up:

February 17th - Watford (H), won 4-0
February 20th - Tranmere (A), won 3-2
February 24th - Huddersfield (A), lost 3-0
February 27th - Birmingham City (H), won 3-2
March 2nd - Luton Town (A), drew 0-0
March 5th - Grimsby (H), won 5-0
March 9th - WBA (H), won 1-0
March 12th - Tranmere (H), won 2-1
March 16th - Grimsby (A), won 2-0 (the only game in March that I missed in this list)
March 19th - Luton Town (H), won 2-0
March 23rd - Portsmouth (H), drew 0-0
March 30th - Millwall (A), won 4-1

(Okay, I looked this up after typing what I remembered. I got the Tranmere home score wrong, as it was the away game that we beat them 3-2 and I got them mixed up. I also forgot when the game at Tranmere was, because for some reason I thought that took place in January despite hearing the Palace end singing "We're gonna win 3-2!" before the kick-off at Huddersfield. And I forgot the home Luton game, which was an awful game until we scored two late goals. The most memorable part of that game was a Luton striker nearly getting a shot into the Upper Tier of the Holmesdale. But everything else? That was spot on, trust me on this. Not bad for a five-minute task undertaken nearly 16 years after the facts.)

And if it wasn't enough to know fixture dates in advance you'd have the season review videos to confirm them afterwards. You would watch back and think, "Why wasn't I at that game?" and then I would remember where I was instead (not that I had a great inclination to go to Grimsby's Blundell Park, but to give you one example when Palace were winning there I was at home in Hampshire seeing my family and friends for the weekend).

Anyway, I do remember more than just scores, scorers and other obscure events. Here are a few examples of remembering dates in some part due to sporting events:

• I found out I was going to be a Dad for the first time just prior to flying down for the Crystal Palace v Norwich game in 2005 (16th April 2005 - , although I flew down the day before so I actually found out on the 15th).
• On the day that my now wife was first hospitalised with her diabetes after we were together I came home and unwound while not really watching the France v Italy World Cup Quarter Final (3rd July 1998)
• I had my hernia operation on 19th September 1996, which I remember as it was on the Thursday following Palace's 3-1 over Manchester City, which took place on my Dad's birthday. (The game was memorable for a great Palace performance and also for being the only time that I've sat in the Player's Lounge section of Selhurst Park.)
• I attended the Silk Cut Challenge at Arundel on 21st September 1985 and stayed at my Dad's, which is what reminds me that going out for lunch the next day was the last time I saw my half-sister for 25 years (photo from Friday's play - it was also when I had my two-day flirtation with being a vegetarian, but that's another matter).

A lot of these dates are ones which can now be looked up online, as you can tell from the links above. There seem to be databases for everything, from football results, to cricket scorecards, to just simple calendars which help to confirm that a particular date fell on a particular day (without recalling all the fixtures that month I still have a mental block about whether Palace beat Millwall in 1996 on either the 30th or 31st March, a 1996 calendar confirms it was the 30th - this actually doesn't make sense as it was my favourite day of a horrible year for me).

Having been to lots of football matches you do hear people mention dates of events in their own lives, and if (like me) you've been to lots of football matches you can't help but think about what scores took place on or near those dates. Thankfully my friends are gracious with me, and tend to laugh at me kindly instead of brazenly mocking me.

Of course some dates are significant enough to be remembered by themselves (e.g. when I got engaged, got married, my children's birthdays, when I became a Christian, etc.), and others where I remember the sporting dates because of other events (e.g. Palace playing at Charlton on 26th September 1993 because that was the day I started university, or the Cantona incident taking place on 25th January 1995 because of a letter I received the day before).

So without sounding dismissive that is how I tend to remember dates. It is almost certainly a shallow way to do so, and arguably it isn't that important to remember these dates anyway, but I do tend to remember dates and that's the way that I do so.

And that Super Bowl Sunday's date? 26th January 1997, which I happen to remember because I flew into California on Monday the 20th. Even now there are still some things I haven't forgotten.

Sporting Images of a Decade

One of the good things about where I work presently is we're allowed to choose our own desktop wallpaper. Obviously there are some limitations, but that didn't stop me from piecing together some sporting highlights of the last decade, shrinking them into pictures small enough not to annoy anyone and then distort them further by knocking them down in to black and white. The images I chose? The following:

400 while hitting .400. The curtain call Chipper Jones took after his 400th Home Run for the Braves. The one constant for the Braves in the decade, still my favourite player to see playing at Turner Field (more on TV these days, sadly).

Andy says sssh. Last day of the season, 2004/05. Andy Johnson steps up to take a crucial penalty against Charlton Athletic. He buries it in the bottom corner, then runs past a big section of Charlton fans with a finger over his mouth. It still makes me laugh. Pity the end result wasn't better though.

Anaheim Ducks, Stanley Cup Champions. Scott Niedermayer lifts the cup after the Ducks won the 2007 Stanley Cup. Pretty simple, still a great moment for me personally.

Ronnie runs over New England. September 2008. The 0-2 Dolphins head to New England to face the hated Patriots. The Fins were on a run of having lost 20 of their last 21 games. The Patriots hadn't lost a regular season game since losing to the Dolphins in Miami... in 2006. Cue the Wildcat's introduction (or the reintroduction to the single wing, if you prefer), Ronnie Brown running for four touchdowns, throwing for another and barreling over Ellis Hobbs in the process. The South Florida franchise has been on a mostly upward path ever since.

The Bulls draft Derrick Rose. Following a pretty lousy decade (compared to the fabulous 90s) the Bulls struck lucky in 2008, winning the draft lottery and the rights to draft Memphis guard Derrick Rose. He's no Jordan (he's a much different player) but at least he's a better pick than Eddy Curry and he offers a great hope for the future with the right pieces around him.

And in case you're wondering, to the left of those pictures I put a January 2010 calendar, which means this wallpaper is now effectively redundant. Time to start the creative process again!

Clips of the year: Sports

Ladies and gentlemen, the Trinity Tigers (and possibly the best amateur commentator of all time).