Random Ramblings
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Leagues Apart: The Competing Codes of Rugby
In 2015, Australia and New Zealand locked horns in the Rugby World Cup Final. To that date, both nations had won 2 world cups although they were yet to face-off in a decider. Both countries are rugby crazy and had shown impressive form throughout the tournament. It was a fixture guaranteed to not just hop aboard the hype-train but rather charter its own hype-jumbo-jet to circumnavigate the rugby world before landing at Twickenham. Right? Well, it depends who you ask. Stats for that world cup state that 1 in 7 Australians ‘occasionally or always’ watched the Rugby World Cup. The same was true of 2 out of 5 Kiwis making…
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Tennis: A Sport Apart in a Fractured World
What does the term ‘football’ mean to you? If you hail from much of Ireland it refers to Gaelic Football while to those that call the USA home it denotes ‘American Football’ (the ‘foot’ syllable as redundant as the asinine war-paint the players insist on). Things are just as blurred Down-Under, Rugby League being synonymous with the term in NSW and Queensland while the rest of the country reserve it for the more obviously antipodean Australian Rules Football. Most ubiquitous of all, across vast swathes of the globe it refers to the game known in the relevant vernacular as futbal. Or calcio. Or, of course, soccer. Evidently, while we are…
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The Tyranny of the Wealthy – The USA and the Great Equality Lie
I’ve always said that New York City is my favourite place in the world. It is sensational. Mesmeric and beguiling. Anarchic and unique. No other city feels as sentient, as if the essence of life itself courses up its streets and down its avenues. Citizens and streets alike are instantaneously imbued with an energy that makes the Duracell bunny look like a wet plastic bag. However, regardless of its fantastic criss-cross of cultures and creeds, NYC remains an exceedingly American city. Such a melting pot could not be fostered anywhere else in the world, where market capitalism and open borders have historically allowed people the world over to arrive, strive…
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Turn Left At The Iron Curtain: The 4 Worst Hostels I’ve Stayed In
“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”. Leo Tolstoy The opening line of Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina is one of the most famous in literature. The Russian’s point was that there are myriad qualities that must exist for a family to be happy. And every unhappy family falls short in a different way, each as unique and lachrymose as the next. Two families may be equally despairing, but that despair will be rooted in a different tragedy each and every time. At the risk of contriving this insight to the point of contortion, I believe this wisdom to be equally applicable to the…
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Sad Siro – The 9 Worst Sporting Events I’ve Ever Attended
The future ain’t what it used to be Yogi Berra As Coronavirus marauds the globe, it has become widely accepted that attending sporting events will be among the last things to return to ‘normal’. This is tremendously disappointing for many of us, but we will at least be spared from the depression and boredom that attending sporting events often brings. Below are 9 times they did so for me. 9. Panathinaikos 2 – 0 Larissa – Superleague Greece Leoforos Alexandras Stadium, Athens – 30th April 2017 The creaking home ground of Panathinaikos FC threatens to crumble at any second and is nestled in the north east of the Greek capital.…
