So what’s Terry got on Capello, recordings of discussions on tax evasion, video of him spanking Max Mosley, there has to be something because this decision cannot be the product of mature reflection. Is Terry even worth a place in the team? I wouldn’t let him captain a rowing boat with only him in it, I’d rather leave it to one of the barnacles on the hull. The guy is a plodding, whining, pedestrian, work-a-day centre half with negligible distribution skills, slightly better than average tackling and aerial skills and ordinary situational awareness; not a very prepossessing bill of goods.
If Capello imagines he’s getting a Stuart Pearce or Terry Butcher then he’s sadly mistaken.

Well, I think you have to say so far, so good for Team GB and for the entertainment value it’s offered. I have never watched so much sport, day to day, and fully expected to be wearing down but I’m still going strong and looking forward to another week. There is no denying that the success of Team GB has driven things along and the success levels seen this week will probably not continue and I’m not too sure what will be on offer apart from track and field. Another couple of days of cycling and boxing to go, the basketball continues but the stuff that you only see once in a blue moon, outside of the Olympics, are seemingly getting scarcer. I think the badminton and table tennis are about done and I haven’t seen any archery or shooting for the last few days, but that could be down to the BBC scheduling.
The cycling has been exceptional, have we ever sent a better squad, in any event, to an Olympics? Wasn’t sure whether to be excited or alarmed to see Clive Woodward hanging around the velodrome? Clearly there are lessons that can be learned from what has been achieved by them already, how they are funded, how they are coached, how they are managed and how they attract talent to the sport. Is the Clive Woodward who was there the one who kicked England Rugby into the modern world or the one who micro managed The Lions into the ground a few years back and did little more than take up office space at Southampton? Maybe he has already been involved with the cycling leading up to the games, but if not then I hope he’s there to do no more than learn from the people who have created the success and look at a framework that can be used to encourage other squads towards the excellence we’ve seen in the cycling. And there do look to be a few candidates, maybe just a tweak, maybe a radical overhaul, swimming; take out the success of Adlington and it’s been pretty barren, boxing; despite a great deal of expectation and increased funding since Athens, there’s not going to be much of a return and, finally, hockey; both men’s and women’s teams have had notable achievements in the, not too distant, past and it seems that we have failed to build on either.
On the down side there were a couple of glaring examples of why some sports only attract limited exposure outside of the Olympics. Let’s start with hockey, I admit I have a few personal issues with hockey; long ago I played a few games at college for an ad hoc men’s team against the women who played in a league, it was fucking brutal, these women were animals and when it became clear that they were going to lose, became rabid animals. We had a secret weapon, a guy called Chris Shadbolt, he was a student but played a good standard of league hockey for Rotherham, he went up front, scored three goals, he went into defence and shut them out. The games mistress who ran the squad was apoplectic seeing her little darlings rolled over like that But my problems with the game started before the match got going, I asked where all the left handed sticks were? That caused a bit of a laugh. I’m predominantly right handed but play cricket and golf left hand, having been taught by my comprehensively left handed father. So that was not the most auspicious start, disadvantaging at best and discriminating at worst against a significant proportion of the population, why cannot left handers use sticks differentiated by colour so that the officials can still see the back of the stick isn’t being used? And talking of officials, just where do they get the industrial strength peas to go in their whistles? They are at it all the bloody time, there is no flow to the game. Here’s my solution, shorten the game, at least 2 fewer players on the pitch per team, bigger squads available during the game and rolling substitutions. Sorted.
Not sure what you can do with boxing in the Olympics though. It’s an absolute travesty that competitors who put so much into their sport are screwed over by the most consistently incompetent scoring and officiating on the face of the planet. Here’s what you mustn’t be; technically proficient, no point in jabbing, no point in working the body, no reward for punching correctly as your opponents slaps will be scored just as frequently, don’t bother throwing combinations, you’ll only ever get one point no matter how many times you connect within a sustained attack and don’t trouble yourself to listen to a word the referee says as he’ll do nothing about it when you completely ignore him. The referees cannot wait to say ‘break’ and then fail to ensure a clean break is made and cheap shots are thrown, boxers are told not to hold time and time again and, until one occasion I saw today, nothing at all is done about it, warnings are given in the ring about incorrect punching yet at the scoring table points continue to accrue for the most obvious slaps. You only have to watch a few bouts and listen to the commentary; in just about every one you watch you will hear as much comment on the scoring and refereeing as you do about the boxing. The boxers deserve so much better than the tawdry rabble who officiate at Olympic boxing but I really can’t see change on the horizon.

…there is someone with a bit of a profile in baseball journalism who has come out and said it. And it goes something like this, ‘just when is Beane going to deliver on his, so called, genius label?’ Peter Pascarelli does a daily podcast, works ESPN Radio baseball and sometimes appears on ESPN Sunday Night Baseball and he has asked the question in substantially these terms. At the other end of the spectrum is Max Kellerman of ESPN New York who does believe in the genius of Beane. Kellerman prides himself in going by the numbers in his analysis of baseball, and part of the reason I enjoy his commentary is precisely because of this but I think in this instance he is missing the biggest numbers – World Series Championships during Beane's tenure;0, World Series Championship appearences;0, American League Titles;0, American League Championship appearences;0, 2nd round playoff appearences;1. If you took out the 2nd round playoff appearance I could put the rest of those numbers on my resume. From my limited knowledge of baseball finances, and the categorisation of Beane’s tenure has to be informed by financial considerations, he has been a little better than average or a lot worse but I can see nothing that elevates him to the ‘genius’ GM class.
Oakland are defined as a ‘small market team’, I don’t know if there is an official designation of this condition for revenue sharing purposes but it means we’re not in the same salary bracket as the Yankees, Tigers Mets or Red Sox and A’s fans do not have the same expectations nor is Beane being judged against the performance of Minaya, Cashman or Epstein. It’s even more difficult making an objective assessment of GM performance when he is part of the ownership group, he materially benefits from salary cost savings as do the other members of the group and there is little evidence that the ownership group as a whole has the commitment to success that’s demonstrated by John Henry, the Steinbrenners or Wilpons. And I am talking about the commitment, not the success in it’s self. Where does ownership end and the GM function begin for Beane? I certainly can’t answer that and maybe he can’t either and that could be part of the problem. I’ve tried to set this conundrum aside as far as possible and still believe that Beane’s performance is lacking and maybe the most obvious pointer to this is the Draft. In financial terms the drafting of players cost very little, multi-million dollar signing bonuses are not a feature in the MLB draft as they are in the NFL and NBA so as an ‘owner’ Beane has no reason to feel constrained by financial considerations yet the farm system has produced few players that were drafted by the A’s, Kurt Suzuki I believe is the most recent. Yet the A’s need, if we are looking to be successful in terms of long runs into the post-season has been clear for many years, hitting and in particular power bats. The draft is not sexy, if any kudos at all is to be obtained then it is short lived, pulling strings and strokes in deals is what has built Beane’s reputation and he seems unable or unwilling to move outside this comfort zone to draft to needs or take advantage of unexpected opportunities, such as that which presented itself earlier this season. As late as mid-June a run for the Wild Card was not unrealistic, the farm system was already fat with talent, rental bats were going to become available, a playoff rotation of Hardin, Duchscherer, Blanton and either Eveland or Smith backed up by a bullpen that included Street, Gaudin, Embree with the likes of Casilla, Gonzalez and Ziegler not far away in the Minors, a window was there to pursue a degree of success now. Instead Beane went back to his usual shtick of stuffing an already well stocked farm system, with the prospects from the trades of Hardin, Gaudin and Blanton, to the point of excess and the season disappeared down the pan from that point on and in the last few weeks the A’s have been all but unwatchable. There was never any certainty of a post-season place, but there never is, even $200m payrolls don’t purchase certainty in baseball, every now and again you have to go outside the numbers, ‘think’ with your heart and balls and just go for it and even a committed failure would have made the fans more inclined to watch the Oakland Triple A’s that are likely to be trotted out over the next couple of seasons.
Beane is not a genius, he manages to a level of expectation that does not seem to extend to anything more than infrequent and brief appearances in the post-season and there’s not a GM in the league that can’t do that, outside of Kansas City at least.

Well that’s the overblown, overwrought opening ceremony out of the way and now we can get down to the business of the sport, if that’s not too much of an impediment to the nationalistic jerking off that’s epitomised by such ceremonies?
I’m looking forward to these games more than any others I can remember, not because the competition will be any keener or cleaner or because the nebulous ‘Olympic Spirit’ will burn any brighter in the competitors but purely due to the advances in the media. The BBC, bless their little cotton socks, always tried hard to make time for coverage of some of the minor sports on show at previous Olympics but, during the first week whenever someone was thrashing up and down the pool or, during the second week, monotonously pounding around the track, that was it, coverage had to go to the swimming or the athletics and the supposedly lesser sports, no matter what the state of the contest, were ditched and, if you were lucky, you could seek out the conclusion of the event by sitting through an hour or more of the highlights package. This should no longer be the case with the Beeb offering 6 channels via the red button on satellite, hopefully something on the HD channel also, Eurosport with a couple of channels plus HD and various webfeeds finally offering the sort of exposure that the Olympics deserve.
I’ll watch a little of the track and field and the swimming but I’m really looking forward to the coverage of the badminton, table tennis, boxing, shooting, archery, rowing, weightlifting, basketball and, of course, baseball. And some others I haven’t even thought of.
And I’m on holiday for the next two weeks.

Bit of an odd week this week, not gone anywhere in the standings, points are much the same as they were at the end of the week before last. Tried to address a couple of things, which may have moved me up a little in the standings, by trades looking to get a couple of players from different owners. Offered players in an attempt to Willie Taveras, to make a move in STEALS, and Joe Nathan, to make a move in SAVES, the players I offered were not my best offer but I made it clear that I was looking to start a dialogue. That was Saturday morning and I haven’t heard a thing, no counter offer, no acceptance, no rejection, not a thing. One of the teams I’m trying to trade with is in the basement and he/she may well not be paying attention, it would seem that even though the other team is only just below me, he/she may well not be paying too much attention either as he/she has a DL player on the active roster and in the line up, maybe they are on holiday? But between them they have only made 5 roster moves all season?? Where’s the fun in that?