What a difference a World Cup makes

Apparently the new football season starts in 2-3 weeks...anyone else finding it hard motivating yourself for it?

The ‘World Cup Hangover’ is still lingering. Personally, I still don’t think the disappointment has quite set in as yet. At this time of the summer in years gone by, I literally can’t wait for the season to get started – new signings, new managers, new kits create a huge buzz in the countdown to the start of each season. It is still happening – I’m distinctively lacking the football ‘bug’ all of a sudden, and personally I blame the World Cup.

I think we can all safely say it was a World Cup that failed to excite or entertain, especially if you are English. As much as I hope this doesn’t happen, I believe it has a knock-on effect for domestic football this season. I genuinely believe people are fed-up and the enthusiasm has dwindled slightly.

I suppose we’ll see.

Sorting the men from the boys

It may well be one of the biggest clichés in sport, but…

….what a difference a week can make.

In Perth last week, England played as badly as I or anyone else watching has seen them under the management of Martin Johnson.

They were almost as bad as England in Cape Town on Friday night, but that is pushing it a little.

After feeling deflated, disappointed and totally disillusioned by the England’s performance against Algeria, Saturday morning totally revived my weekend. The way England beat Australia in Sydney for the first time since they won the World Cup in 2003 was unbelievable. Yes the performance was improved. Yes the rugby played was worlds apart from the week before. Yes the changes made a big difference on the field. But for me, the spirit and the heart shown was remarkable.

In all honesty, a video of the game should be shown to our boys in South Africa – that is the level of performance needed to win. That is the attitude to have.

It was like watching a different team. From the opening minutes there was this confidence that many argued was nowhere to be seen. All week, both the English and Australian media hammered home this idea that there was no ‘togetherness’ within the squad. The series of phases England built upon was vastly improved – the second try scored by Chris Ashton was truly memorable. Phase upon phase, patience and organisation led to an opening and Ashton helped himself. The first try was a moment of individual mastery by Ben Youngs. Will Genia is said to be the best scrum-half on the planet, yet Youngs glided past him and made Drew Mitchell look like a plodding front row forward. If he isn’t England’s first choice for years to come, Johnson is surely missing a trick.

And then enter the master himself and the man who came back to haunt the Wallabies yet again on the same ground where his drop goal won the World Cup, Jonny Wilkinson. His second kick at goal echoed the inconsistency his performances showed in the 6 Nations, but the first sealed the game for England.

Fate some would say.

Like the title of this post describes, I believe England's win in Oz demonstrated the difference in passion, belief and the drive to be successful that the rugby team showed. I love my football. I can't get enough of it. But you simply can't match what rugby players show on the field.

For all those who didn’t watch the rugby, I encourage you to do so. The team evoked a real sense of pride in me on Saturday, something that was missing Friday.

Chance to spill Wallaby blood missed

It may have been totally overshadowed by the World Cup in South Africa, but England’s rugby team have managed to cause just as much debate and disappointment as their football counterparts after their first test against Australia in Perth on Saturday.

Australia were well and truly there for the taking. England let them off scot-free.

The 27-17 score fails to tell the whole story.

England dominated the scrum, with two penalty tries their reward for maintaining extreme pressure on the Wallaby pack. The site of the Aussie front row popping out shouldn't be seen on an international stage - just ask Al Baxter and Matt Dunning. Australia must have been having flashbacks to the 2003 World Cup when Andrew Sheridan took the Aussie scrum to the cleaners and secured a semi-final against France. On that day, England built on their forwards dominance. They taught them a lesson at scrum-time and gave their backline the platform to shine.

So what exactly went wrong on Saturday?

From my point of view and in particular looking at the first half – ‘shoe-lace’ rugby is exactly what went wrong. Time and time again, the magnificent Mike Tindall broke the Wallaby defence and made it close to the try line. Time and time again, England panicked. Time and time again they failed to execute and punish the Aussies with points on the board. Speaking from experience, as a rugby team you focus on the visits you make to your opposing team’s 22-metre line and as a team you make sure you come away with points, be it 3 or 7.

As soon as England made it near to the try line with numbers out wide, a forward would turn quick ball slow and make Australia’s job of defending a whole lot easier. I hate to say this again, but from experience, defending against a team that is simply trudging one metre at a time at the base of the breakdown is easy to deal with – most back row thrive on it and when it’s slow and lacking of numbers, turnover time beckons. I counted 4 or 5 occasions when this happened, leaving a frustrated Chris Ashton or Mark Cueto screaming for the ball in vain.

‘Shoe-lace’ rugby – the reason England will never be quite at the level of Southern Hemisphere rugby teams. The ability to revert to a slow and predictable passage of play, ignoring any attacking options. From an early age, Kiwi schools teach young players to express themselves and keep the game quick and alive. When I think about what we were taught at school, it was tackle bags and rucking drills and if you did throw the ball around a bit, it was discouraged. In the end, we wonder why England is producing team after team that fails to develop, improve and compete with the New Zealands of this world.

The pressure continues to mount of Johnson. If only some of the current squad showed the leadership and commitment he did on the field, England would be winning these types of games.

Here we go again...

So that time is here again.

You know.

That sense of anticipation and excitement that is mixed with the dread of yet another disappointing World Cup exit. The underlying feeling that despite the optimism, you know you are going to end up heartbroken come early July. Yep. It’s back.

Seems like only last week that England’s football establishment was brought to its knees on a soaking wet night at Wembley against Croatia, washing away our European Championship hopes alongside Steve McLaren’s management reputation. Two years can make a big difference. Both England and McLaren have rebuilt, albeit the latter on foreign shores. The World Cup has arrived and after an almost exemplary qualifying campaign, the expectation of success has the English fans buzzing once more.

So, the selection. We are down to 23 and no Walcott. I saw him towards the end of last season at St Andrews and he was poor. Liam Ridgewell is an out and out centre half who has played left back all season for Blues and for me was there for the taking. Walcott made no attempt to take him on, stretch him or use his pace against him, making an ordinary Premier League defender look like a seasoned full-back.

What puzzled me was how can you justify Heskey and not Walcott. Heskey has hardly played in the second half of the season meaning he was selected based on previous performances for his country – if that is the case, Walcott’s single-handed destruction of Croatia in qualifying should have seen him make the cut.

However, for me the biggest selection headache is at left-back. ‘Cashley’ Cole has made it his own and does so with aplomb. What worries me is if he takes a knock or bumps into the wrecking ball that ended Rio Ferdinand’s World Cup, Emile Heskey. As Wayne Bridge ponders what could possibly turn out to be the worst decision of his playing career, Steven Warnock would fill the potential void left by Cole. That is where that sinking feeling returns to me. He is another I saw closely away at Villa Park towards the end of April and believe me, he is a million miles away from Ashley Cole. The USA, Slovenia and Algeria of this world may not strike fear into the hearts of Englishman across the land. When names such as Messi, Ronaldo and Ribery do, having an inexperienced and unproven defender within your ranks will guarantee a few nail-less fans by July.

Roll on the start of crossed fingers and tears. World Cup season is upon us.

Absolute digrace

Now, believe me, I don’t want this blog to turn into my own little opportunity at harking on about Birmingham City Football Club every week – I think I did that enough in my last entry. However, the decision to award Aston Villa a penalty in the 83rd minute of an already explosive derby game has left me as well as the other 3000 Blues fans at Villa Park feeling completely disorientated with refereeing in England. The decision wasn’t just bad – it was disgraceful.

I won’t go on too much but for those of you didn’t managed to watch the game, apart from 2 great saves from Joe Hart in the first half, we had Villa hanging on to their Champions League aspirations – Brad Friedel was quite magnificent. We didn’t deserve that yesterday. We deserved to leave with at the very least a point. Villa deserved nothing, yet given everything.

I will leave it up to Roger Johnson to sum up: “Certainly during the first half, I thought he was poor. He was listening to the crowd when giving decisions. Of course it’s going to be a feisty game, it’s a derby. I don’t know what experience he’s had in derbies but you’ve got to put your best refs in and he clearly wasn’t, he’s ruined the game. For me, he shouldn’t be doing these sort of games.”

Enough said.

Great Expectations

I’ve been a season ticket holder at Birmingham City Football Club for around 5-6 years. Being a London-based Blues fan has its problems – 110 miles each week for just a home fixture makes for interesting reading on my brother’s miles on the clock at the end of each season, but for me it is so worth it. If they were 210 miles away I’d still be there each week without fail.

I was there when they came up after winning the play-off final in 2002/03. I was there when we stayed there for three seasons before being relegated in 2005/06. I was there when they were promoted again the following year. I was there when they were relegated again and the Blues ‘faithful’ tore the goalposts apart after the game. I was there for the whole of last season where I witnessed some of the worst football I have seen and somehow we were promoted once again. I’ve been there since the start of this season, and what a season it has turned out to be.

Life isn’t exactly easy supporting a so-called ‘yo-yo’ club as you can see from above. As mad as it may sound, Birmingham winning or losing can have a huge impact on the rest of my week – thankfully the majority of weeks this season I’ve been ecstatic and the dog hasn’t been kicked quite as much as in previous years.

Taking points off Chelsea, Liverpool, Arsenal, Manchester United, Tottenham and mega-rich Manchester City at St Andrews has been quite sensational. The unbeaten run from October through to February which saw a period of 15 games without defeat elevated a team which took less than £10 million to put together into the top ten of the Premier League, and in the process making every sports journalist and pundit across the land eat their proverbial hats.

However, success brings its own problems – expectation.

As I sat last weekend watching Birmingham v Hull, you could have been forgiven for thinking it was a pre-season friendly. It was boring, unimaginative and lacked any sort of ambition from both sides. Unbeaten since September at home, teams outside the top five or six as it has become this season are now expected to leave Birmingham with nothing. A scoreless draw was played out in front of 26,000, a point that further cemented Birmingham’s target for their best ever league finish.

And what happened when that final whistle blew?

Boos.

Don’t get me wrong, the performance was truly awful and by far the worst game I had witnessed all season. The battling qualities and ‘character’ of the team was there, but without an ounce of quality. But boos? I wasn’t just shocked, I was pretty disgusted. No doubt the small section of the Blues fan who did happen to boo the team off were probably the same group who spent the first half of the season sitting at home leaving the stadium embarrassingly half-full each week.

The team has punched well above their weight all season in the most unforgiving league in the world. Stephen Carr was retired at the start of last season and yet has turned out to be one of the best bits of business Alex McLeish will ever do. Scott Dann and Roger Johnson have created a formidable partnership with one of the meanest home defenses in the league and neither had played in the top flight before this season. Lee Bowyer and Barry Ferguson have been simply sensational in midfield, with Bowyer showing the maturity he arguably lacked in his early days and Ferguson providing the class that we so desperately needed.

Sadly, this is a sign of the times.

Next season will be even harder than the one about to pass. Whether Mr Yeung spends his millions remains to be seen. I will be at Villa Park on Sunday for my first away derby game. If they win 3-0, I will be ectastic. If they lose 5-1 like two years ago, I certainly won’t be booing. This season, they have made me proud to be a Birmingham City fan. I just wish all supporters shared the same ideas.

A question of loyalty

The old cliché ‘there is no loyalty in football’ would often be used in media circles when discussing a change of manager at a club, the transfer of a player to a close rival or the notorious greed of some footballers moving for financial gain. However, the latest media storm involving a Premiership footballer has changed that notion for good. The tabloid revelations about Chelsea and England captain John Terry and his alleged affair with the girlfriend of former Chelsea team-mate Wayne Bridge has caused widespread outrage in Britain and across football.

Some would say Terry had it all. The Chelsea and England captain was the man to lead England into the World Cup in South Africa in the summer and be the first captain of his country to lift the trophy since Bobby Moore in 1966. In his personal life, Terry was married to his childhood sweetheart and was the proud father of twin girls.

How the mighty do fall.

The demise of Terry’s image is well underway after the ‘super-injunction’ he attempted to use to prevent the damaging story from being released was thrown out by the judge – an act that will be reverberating across the land of celebrity for a while yet. The attempt by Terry to cover up the revelations summed up the desperation of a man trying to save his ‘goldenboy’ image, and will almost definitely of harmed his image even more. No wonder then as to why crisis PR expert Phil Hall has been called into Camp Terry to try and save the reputation of a man who is under increasing pressure in both the media and football community to give up the England captaincy.

What will happen in the coming days is very much a mystery. It has been reported that Fabio Capello will soon be travelling to meet with Terry to discuss his tenure as captain. Other reports suggest Terry is Dubai-bound to rescue his marriage.

All I do know is that people won’t forget this in a hurry. The cheating Premier League footballer is no new phenomena – just read the News of the World each Sunday and you can read about the latest antics of some of the most highly paid individuals on the planet. However, an unwritten rule has been broken between friends and that for most will be the pill most hard to swallow.

The calls for Terry to resign as captain will rage on. Capello I’m sure will not be drawn into a domestic dispute by any means. He was made England manager and his sole target was to win a major tournament, not to act as a marriage counsellor for his philandering captain. A decision will be made and that will be purely a footballing one – if that is the case Terry will retain the captaincy. Whether morally acceptable or not, England have a World Cup to win.

It does make you wonder though what goes on in some of these footballer’s heads. Many are young men who are thrust into the limelight, paid ridiculous amounts of money per week and worshipped by thousands. I believe many lose touch with reality, living in a bubble of ignorance and totally unaware of the role models they become and the impact they have on people’s lives, especially children.

As for Terry, it now seems that his priorities have somewhat changed. Suddenly, winning the Premier League title and lifting the World Cup in June pale by comparison to facing the end of his marriage. Let it be a lesson to the others in the future, but I fear it won’t.