I was on the NASN website earlier today, around 5 o’clock, just checking out the subscription price which rather sensibly is back at £9.99 pm for the Setanta Sports Pack although, as per previous posts, I would have been happy to pay that sort of money for NASN alone but not £13.99 for the whole Sports Pack. But whilst I was on there I noticed that they were showing a freeview of the NHL Season Opener from the O2 Arena in London. I had completely forgotten about that even though I was considering getting tickets when it was announced. So I dashed through to watch and when I got there it got even better as it was the Hockey Night in Canada offering, well not the full works but still an excellent production. And the game was pretty good too, I’ve seen games well into the season that have been far more fragmented and pedestrian. The Kings were good value for the win and got great goal tending from Bernier, the Ducks were good enough that, with a little polish, their defence of the Stanley Cup should be better than the absence of Niedermayer and Selanne might have suggested.

Looks like the second game, tomorrow at 5 o’clock, is also going to be a freebie so time to pile in!

Been away recently taking care of some sad family business for the last two and a half weeks. Unsurprisingly a lot has occurred in that time, some of which I’ve noticed, plenty of which I may have missed. Very saddened by the loss of Colin McRae, a huge talent on four wheels and on two I believe. I don’t follow WRC as closely as I used to when McRae was competing but he was far and away the most exciting driver I saw at that time. I have no idea whether his balls to the wall approach was the only way he could drive or he just instinctively understood that he was in the entertainment industry and always went out there to put on a show but he always appeared to me to be on it at ten tenths every metre of the way and whilst I am very happy that he was rewarded with the WRC title in 1995 I would have though no less of him had he not done so because he was just so very, very good to watch.

Michael Owen took no time at all to re-establish himself as England’s premier striker, and only slightly more time to re-establish himself as our premier crock. I have no doubt that Newcastle Utd will be getting the very best treatment for Owen but if there is any suggestion that Newcastle are getting a little pikey about paying for the treatment then I’m sure a quick phone call to Steve Minardi would see him reaching for his credit card faster than he could say ‘give us a job’.

And just to show that every silver cloud has a nasty little shitty brown lining the Rick Ankiel story I posted about a few weeks ago acquired that very hue when it was revealed that he had used HGH in 2003/4 and if proof were needed, which I don’t think it is, it goes to show what a confused era we are living through in baseball. I get the podcast of ATH and listened to all the sackcloth and ashes about the way the story was now a steaming pile of poo following this revelation, I can’t go that far. As I understand it HGH only became illegal in baseball after Ankiel stopped using it although it was banned in many sports long before. So whilst I naively cling to the wreckage of this story I have to ask myself if I shouldn’t review my opinion of Barry Bonds bearing in mind that Ankiel, I believe, has admitted the use of HGH, or at least not denied it, and the evidence against Bonds is far more insubstantial, at least in the public domain. So if I’m to give a pass to Ankiel should I not do the same for Bonds? Well, no because he’s a surly, self aggrandising, odious little tick. And now he has not had his contract renewed by the Gnats, and will hopefully retire, the interregnum before A-Rod shreds his HR(*) record will be that much shorter.

It would be churlish to carp on a day like today, so that’s what I’ll be. Far and away the best performance was by the ODI team, with a very good performance all round, but both India and England remain too inconsistent to be favourites for the Twenty 20 World Cup and today India had an off day and England were on it in every aspect of the game to take 4 of 7. It’s a relatively thin line but I would have had a much more positive outlook if we had come away 5:2, which is what we should have done. The Twenty 20 Cup is coming a little too soon, Collingwood has justified his selection as captain, but is still a work in progress and there remain lineup issues to be resolved. Talking of which, Steve Minardi plugged in some pieces today and got a very creditable performance, no more than expected but no less either, got to give him props for that, but can he manage the team that’s viewed by most as the strongest eleven? A team that needs to accommodate Rooney, Hargreaves maybe Lampard, Carrick, King and Beckham, the evidence to date shows he cannot and it might not be such a bad thing if he has to start the same 11 on Wednesday, hopefully get a performance and a result which will give him the confidence to either stick with the likes of Barry or get improved performances out of Lampard and Carrick to prove they should be first choice. The atmosphere at Wembley came across on the TV better than I’ve heard before but it was disappointing to see so many leaving before the end of the game. If only because it deprived them of the opportunity to give Bentley the bird. McLaren watch remains 180 mins.

And so onto the Rugby Union World Cup. A win is a win, is a win, is bollocks. A win is a dismantling such as that NZ handed out to Italy, a far better team than the USA let it be noted and Australia to Japan. At 28-3 after 48 minutes it was a so-so performance and, whilst not the ideal way of taking care of business, the expectation was that fitness would favour England in the last 32 minutes, yet we failed to score again and conceded a try to team with little discernable attacking ability. All the yap about a semi-final spot is looking pretty hollow right now and, as with the ODI World Cup earlier in the year, the rankings are looking an entirely credible assessment of England’s likely progess.

Recently had a potentially scary situation arise with the above company. My bike insurance renewal came through at the beginning of the month, was happy enough with premium and so I left it to be renewed automatically and I assumed this had taken place on 29th August. It transpires that it had not! Now I have to admit a certain degree of culpability here as the funds were not available on the account which they had recorded as the one to which the premium should be drawn from, this is not a good idea. However, I only found out that they had not renewed my policy on receipt of a letter dated 30th August, received 5th September, so potentially I could have been riding uninsured for 6 days. I decided it would be good to discuss this situation with them and they claim that they left a message on Callminder, upon further discussion it turns out that the Callminder message was left on a number that was 4 years old. Now I only took up a policy most recently with Bennetts since I moved to my new address, with a new phone number, but was with them previously at the old address and on the old number and it would appear that whilst the policy reflected the new address, their records for me still had the old phone number. I did ask whether it might not be prudent to go to a little more effort to contact the policy holder than a single message when leaving someone in a great deal of potential shit, email address and mobile number would have been held, I also wondered out loud if a first class stamp on the letter might not have been called for? Needless to say, they didn’t give a toss and equally obviously I haven’t renewed my policy with them. Got a £45 cheaper, admittedly ‘no frills’, policy with Insure via confused.com. Fuck you very much Bennetts and goodnight.

Well it wasn’t, it wasn’t even Elmlea. What is was, was three old men having a wank for the paying public’s delectation at the Albert Hall on a nightly basis between 2nd -6th May 2005. And I have the DVD to prove it, in fact I’ve had it since Christmas and not really sure why I hadn’t played it until last night, maybe I had looked at the set they recorded, a set lacking ‘I Feel Free’, ‘Strange Brew’ and ‘S.W.L.A.B.R.’. I confess, if that’s what I should do, that I’m a mainstream Cream fan, love the three tracks above, ‘Crossroads’, ‘Sunshine of Your Love’, ‘White Room’ etc. and not someone who has delved into the album tracks and ‘B’ sides, and after viewing the DVD any inclination I had has evaporated. Totally. The concert appears to be a far more visual than aural experience, with the three of them making no more than a cursory nod towards the melodic fundamentals of the original recordings. OK, that’s their prerogative and thirty years on I wouldn’t expect a straight up reproduction of the originals but c’mon, ‘Badge’ was all but unrecognisable and the other tracks I was familiar with barely made an appearance amongst the twaddle which was there to demonstrate that the three of them still ‘have it’, which they clearly do. While much water has passed under the bridge since Cream broke up, all seem to have gravitated away from the rock basis of the most popular of Cream’s output, Bruce and Baker probably have ‘Jazz Musician’ on their passports and Clapton’s blues predilection is well known, though Baker wants to claim him for the Jazz community, so maybe I should have known what to expect but, nevertheless,I found the whole 4 hours+ a huge disappointment.