My Sporting Weekend 18-20 February 2011:
Warm-Up's:
Super League (Rugby League):
Hull FC V Leeds Rhinos, before the game started the Hull crowd sang 'Old Faithful ' in tribute of David Kirkwood, the club president who died during the off season. Personally I think that a sing-song or a round of applause is a far better tribute than a moments silence at a sporting event, and one of the benefits is that it drowns out any inconsiderate arsehole that feels to need to boo, or be disrespectful in any other way. Hull played the same way they played in Cardiff pretty poorly, the game was played in quite good conditions, for a Friday night in February anyway, but Hull didn't create many chances and their kicking game was pretty non-existent. Individually they had a few good performances, with Tom Briscoe looking dangerous on the few occasions he got the ball, Will Sharp got his 2nd try in 2 games for his new club and Richard Whiting who made a try saving tackle in the first half. In the first half Leeds opened the scoring with a try from Brent Webb, after a good run and off load by Keith Senior. Mark O'Meley then brought Hull level with a try before scores from Ryan Hall, Rob Burrow, and a fantastic 70 metre try from Ben Jones-Bishop extended their lead. Chris Clarkson opened the scoring in the second half for Leeds, and then Hull responded straight away, winning the ball back from the kick-off, with Mark O'Meley going over for his 2nd try of the game. Weller Hauraki got a try on his debut for Leeds, before Will Sharp got the final try of the game, for Hull. Towards the end of the second half Leeds started to tire as they ran out of interchanges and fit players, and the game petered out, as Hull couldn't get hold of the ball and Leeds had numerous drop-goal attempts, to a 32-18 win to Leeds.
La Liga (Football):
Real Madrid V Levante, an easy win for Real, Levante allowed Real to attack them by dropping deep and playing with a back 5 and 2 defensive midfielders. But as Real play with only one forward and don't commit that many players forward, as say Barcelona, there was always spare defenders crowding the final 3rd of the pitch, this may be a tactic to help track attacking runners more easily, but it just allowed Real to keep possession around the center of the pitch. If Levante were more attacking and moved the full backs further up the pitch they would have a better chance of holding on to the ball and creating better attacking play. Levante did go forward a bit more in the second half but at 2-0 down they were never going to get back into the game, and the match finished with a final score of 2-0.
NASCAR Sprint Cup Series (Stock Car Racing):
Daytona 500, the biggest race of the year also kicks off the season with a trip to the spiritual home of NASCAR, the Daytona Speedway. The newly repaved surface led 2 car drafts easily outrunning large packs, leaving the spotters running around to find partners for their drivers to draft with. The big one happened on lap 29 with about half the field involved after Michael Waltrip took out team mate David Reutimann, during the incident 3 of Hendrick Motor Sports cars sustaining damage, Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson and Mark Martin. During lap 107 Juan Pablo Montoya spun his car coming off turn 3, but made a great save to keep control of the car and not to go a lap down, he then crashed again on lap 143 after a coming together with Greg Biffle, but didn't lose a lap. Overall the race was a bit tedious with the amount of caution flags, a record 16, and the shortness of the green flag runs, with the longest being only 19 laps. But the last green flag run, before the Green-White-Checker finishes, produced some exciting racing with several lead changes and a group of, up to, 14 cars battling for track position up front, until an accident on lap 197. After a crash on the first attempt of the Green-White-Checker finish pre-race favourite Dale Earnhart Jn was left wrecked and the race was completed on the 2nd attempt of the G-W-C with Trevor Bayne taking the win on his Daytona 500 debut and only his 2nd Sprint Cup race. JP Montoya finished 6th.
Main Event:
FA Cup 5th Round (Football):
The FA Cup, one of my favorite competition's in sport, it gives the opportunity for tiny clubs to play huge clubs on a field behind the local sports center, or in a modern day amphitheaters of sport. Some people say that it has lost of the glamour of days past, but I disagree, anyway the time of the year has come around again when the it is belittled and various suggestions are made to jazz it up by the media and the FA, mainly to earn them even higher profits out of football. The only change that I think could benefit the tournament would be to scrap replays and for games to be completed on the day, just like the semi-finals and final. And the only reason for this would help with fixture congestion at all levels of the pyramid, as clubs in the qualifying rounds regularly lose money by having to travel, further than normal, to play mid-week games in front of small crowds. Obviously there wouldn't be results like Leyton Orient drawing with Arsenal or Notts County drawing with Manchester City to force replays, but how many of these lucrative ties crop up in a season, 2 or 3 at most. But I think that the main issue that should be looked at with the FA Cup now is the selection of games for TV, Manchester United have had all their 3 ties broadcast by ITV up to now and their next game is virtually guaranteed to be on against Arsenal or Leyton Orient, these games should be shared out, with more teams being on in a season. Also a 4th round replay shouldn't take the place of a 5th round match, especially when the original match was on that channel as well.Birmingham City V Sheffield Wednesday, I started to watch this as Obafemi Martins put the ball into the back of the net, on 17 minutes, for Birmingham's second goal, leaving Wednesday a huge task to get anything out of the game. The game was then pretty even up to half time with each team creating a few chances each. In the second half David Murphy's goal on the 52nd minute, for Birmingham, all but ended the game as they then cruised to the final whistle with a 3-0 win. Their was very little fightback from Wednesday as they found it hard to pass to team mates and to go forward with any attacking flair whatsoever, the Wednesday supporters, about 5,000 of them, gave a better account of themselves by travelling well and singing and chanting non-stop throughout the game.
Manchester United V Crawley Town, this had been billed as a proper FA cup tie, but is it. In some ways it was, with a non-league team, Crawley, taking the opportunity to go to a big team and try to get a result with a large support following them and enough of the gate receipts to keep them running for a few years. And in some ways it was not, with Man U fielded a second string team (yes all of the players would walk into top tier teams all around Europe and some are regular internationals), showing that their upcoming tie in the Champions League is obviously more important and the fact that Crawley are not your normal perceived non-league team. With a full-time squad and backing from rich owners (for that level anyway) the non-league team actually playing football and just didn't try to hold out for a draw and a lucrative replay.
Crawley played well, and kept Man U scoreless until Wes Brown scored on the 27th minute, and even had some good attacking play of their own, and even at 1-0 down at halftime they were still in the game. During the second half Man U didn't really gel as a team and they allowed Crawley to have the ball and attack, while not really creating very many good opportunity's to score themselves. The game finished 1-0 but Crawley seemed to shrink the 4 division gap between two the teams with a excellent team performance with lots of good attacking play.
Cool-Down's:
Wakefield Trinity Wildcats finally sealed a deal with new owners and came out of administration, but after losing some key players, and signing a couple of good loan players, they went down to Perpignan and hammered the Catalan's 38-14. This was a great result for Wakefield, but Catalan's could be in trouble this season, even after the last season was meant to be the one of transition.
Sheffield Eagles suffered a very heavy defeat to Leigh losing by 62 points, but a win against Hunslet next week should be enough to book a place in the quarter finals. The 3 results this season do seem pretty worrying, only beating Gateshead by 12 when they got hammering's in their other 2 games, Drawing with Whitehaven, who have lost to Workington twice, and now taking a hammering in Leigh. If they want to have a good finishing in the league, and a good run in the playoffs they need to improve fast, maybe not playing any pre-season friendly backfired, and more playing time is required before the team is up to scratch.
Recent Results:
Evo-Stik League South Division (Football): Spalding United 3 Sheffield FC 2
Northern Rail Cup (Rugby League): Leigh Centurions 68 Sheffield Eagles 6
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