Month: October 2006

Norm flags up Glenn McGrath’s comments about Monty Panesar’s sessions with sports psychologist Steve Bull, which are intended to help Panesar cope with barracking from Aussie crowds: “If he`s seeing a psychologist already, then I think it`s a bit premature and a bit ridiculous. “When we go to England, we cop a hard time, we…

They used to say that in Newcastle, long ago. These days, we’d be shouting into an American knee clinic. It was a pub discussion, of course – (The Polar Bear in Hampstead if you must know) – and the subject: is it time for a middle class takeover of English football? Well, it was in…

Herbert Chapman (d. 1934): In an idle moment I set down this team of old players to amuse myself in comparing them with the chief players of today. ‘Sam Hardy, Bob Crompton, Jesse Pennington, Ben Warren, Charlie Roberts, Ernest Needham, Jockie Simpson, Steve Bloomer, Albert Shepherd, George Holley, Fred Spiksley. ‘It goes a long way…

In comments, I referred to Dr. Ken Bray’s book, How To Score: Science and the Beautiful Game. Warmly recommended – even the relatively weak chapter on psychology, which at least gets beyond the English obsession with “motivation” and “inspiration”, and gives you a good idea of what it was Erickson was trying to achieve and…

Congratulations to Scotland, who are developing into a team capable of rising above themselves. Tommy Burns payed tribute to Bertie Vogts’ role in the building of the team Walter Smith is achieving some success with, and I think that’s fair – it’s Vogts’ youngsters who, with more experience alongside them, are doing all the good…

I must confess that my first reaction was anger. Quite justified anger. After all, everyone had got what they wanted, hadn’t they? An English manager who understood the importance of passion and commitment – Terry Venables back on board – an old-fashioned vocal captain in John Terry – Beckham dropped – Gerrard and Lampard no…

This, from a Daily Telegraph interview with Gary Neville: Whether Bill Beswick, the sports psychologist Steve McClaren has taken from Middlesbrough to the FA, can bridge the often tiny gap that divides international success and failure is a question Neville is happy to ponder. It might be expected that someone who abhors cant would steer…

It’s curious reading the BBC website’s headline of “England with no injury worries”: that may be so, but it’s certainly not an England without injuries. Owen’s absence until next season is extremely frustrating – when fit, he can reasonably lay claim to being the best pure attacking player in the world, and not just because…

Pretty ropey colour – and there’s not much of it, but here anyway. The film is by Sam Hanna, who also filmed United playing Villa in the 1957 FA Cup Final (I haven’t been able to find any of that online). The clip is a whole 44 seconds long, 20 of which are spent in…

In the second part of this series, we looked at a couple of examples of the way a film director can make choices about the presentation of a scene in order to elicit predictable emotional responses from a film’s audience. That these responses are actually predictable tells us something about how the human mind applies…