James Hamilton on Sport History and Psychology
It was one of the most exciting endings I’ve seen to a game: brave, desperate defending from the Saints, against ten-man Rangers attacks that seemed certain, certain, time after time, to nail an equalizer that astonishingly never came. 1-0 it remained, however, and then the big screen next to my table in the Standard switched to Everton…
I was here, briefly, in today’s early sunshine. Not for any footballing reasons: I’d ebayed a bike, which refused to fit into the back of my car until I let its tyres down. Recreation Park was just over the road. A friendly face called down from a window. I couldn’t hear; asked him again. “Take the front wheel off!” “No, no. I’ll just give it another push”. (Embarrassed now, and…
I hadn’t known that it had been filmed: the shockingly violent moment when Sam English’s knee caught Celtic goalkeeper John Thomson’s head in a 1931 Old Firm derby. But there the whole terrible incident was, played out in front of a vast Ibrox crowd, and replayed now in commemoration of Thomson’s entry into the Scottish…
I’d no idea at that stage that he was a footballer, only that my family were terribly excited at securing me a shirt with the “George Best” label on the collar. Usually, everything was hand-me-down, but this was new, and I wore it as often as I was allowed. Thinking back on it, I hear…
Another interesting side to the recent wall of foreign money hitting the Premiership – the other side of that wall, if you will – is that it’s called into question the idea that players are only motivated by the prospect of getting their share of the bricks. Dimitar Berbatov might look like the living embodiment…
I caught this one, albeit at an extreme angle to the screen, in a Queens Arms rammed by Open Door weekend. There is a kind of football rudeness when you can see the TV and your interlocutor can’t: your eyes drift upwards all on their own, and your ears switch channels from your real conversation…
Thanks to Gracchi for roping me in on this one. I’m a little late; sorry. The Death of the Princess of Wales (curses on this wretched public computer keyboard): I was in the then-new Clapham Sainsburys shopping for breakfast. I pulled the Sunday Telegraph out from the plastic dispenser, read the headline (“Diana and Dodi…
These Olympics get even better when you consider the medal table from the point of view of the erstwhile British Empire. And not just because you have to shift some medals across to account for Hong Kong: there’s Empire swimming star Michael Phelps and Empire runner Usain Bolt to enjoy too. And our victorious Empire…
Football always comes back like a bull in a china shop, but this year, with those marvellous Olympics still going on, it has returned with all the grace and timing of rubbish thrown over the fence. The news that John Terry has retained the England captaincy only reinforces the hunch that we are going through…
I really, really don’t know what to make of this. What do you think? (ht the Graun, obviously) [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8oN58cyp2c] (Using Dutch syntax in English as part of an attempt to learn Dutch? No easy language, after all…)