HCC 1 SBFC 3

"The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought, with some reason, that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor. But the struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy." - Albert Camus

I often find myself, during games, sliding into a deep trance as Dave's hypnotic hips turn him round and round in ever smaller circles. I get a better vantage point than most, a few yards behind him and about ten to his side, but I'm told wherever you are on the pitch, it's a beautiful sight.

"Look at that!" I think to myself, while I'm probably meant to be doing something useful.

But the joy doesn't last long, because nine times out of ten, Dave's endeavors will have been in vain and then he will scowl. Or swear in Italian, while doing that thing that Italians do where they look like they're holding an imaginary hand puppet up to their chin. Then, I feel guilty for my pleasure, like I've just been applauding an elephant that can walk on its hind legs, only to notice tears in it's eyes.

At moments like these, I remember the legend of King Sisyphus and feel like the sort of fool who applauds each journey up the hill, entirely missing the point that I am witnessing a man condemned to eternal torture. But then tonight I came across that quote from Camus and I thought 'well, at least Dave is consumed by an emotion strong enough to make him feel alive'. This is not a consolation as such, but I suppose I can rest easy knowing that on some level, Dave's soul is at peace.

So yeah, we played football earlier, a cup match against a side from the league below us. It was alright, a good game. We were a bit cocky beforehand, I  heard someone say "Yeah, they're shit, but we're not good at playing shit teams, we might only beat them four nil or something."

So, we were looking pretty stupid when they took the lead early in the first half from a 25 yard speculative half volley. It got worse and we had to ride out a 15 minute period when we were almost totally incapable of making even the simplest passes to each other. We did well to stay in the game and our stand in keeper, Jim, did brilliantly to tip a header over the bar from one of their many corners.

Then, for no particular reason, SBFC remembered that it is easier to score goals if you pass the ball to people on the same team as you. We finished the first half much improved from the first half of the first half because in the second half of the first half we were better than we were in the beginning of the first half which was the beginning of the match when we weren't playing so well.

A constructive half time brought about a slight rejig of the midfield and an agreement to get the ball wider, faster. This strategy of the midfielders passing it to the attackers who then kick the ball into the goal reaped immediate dividends. Something weird happened up there between Colin and Steff which ended up with the ball in the net. It's hard for me to give more details (please feel free to add your comments below), I was quite a long way away.

1-1 became 2-1, mainly because we then scored another goal. Raj Chande ran on to an HCC clearance ten yards inside their half and slid a no-look reverse pass to an unmarked Steff who took one touch and finished with aplomb. It was a lovely goal and would have looked fantastic from the camera that they usually keep just inside the post.

The game then turned a bit scrappy and SBFC probably should have scored another. SBFC defended well, Sam Bebbington made an excellent defensive header with about 20 minutes left. There was a lot of long-ball-back-and-forth nonsense and that's when Dave started getting a bit annoyed, but these things happen Dave. These things happen.

Then came the most important moment of the match. HCC won a corner with one minute left on the clock. The keeper came up. THE KEEPER CAME UP! God it was exciting. It was a damned good corner too, flat and with pace, but Sam Hayhurst rose above the crowd and headed it to the edge of the box to Steff, who headed it on to Sam Greenwood, who then ran the length of pitch just about slowly enough for their keeper to get back to his goal, before sliding the ball into the net.

3-1, SBFC go through to the next round.

The End.

SBFC 3 City South Farm 4

This match report comes a week late for a few reasons, but mainly because every time I remember this game I smash my face against a wall until I pass out.

First things first, City South Farm are good at what they do. They had a plan, they all knew what it was and they played to their strengths. So rigidly did they follow this plan that I spent the vast majority of the time I was on the pitch looking up at the sky as the ball sailed over my head towards their red faced front man.

Indeed, their first goal was an excellent header to a cross brilliantly delivered from the half way line. I'm not sure anyone could have saved that, let alone our makeshift keeper James Carnevale (who did a great job in goal in the first half).

St Bernadette's recovered well though I don't remember much of it now, maybe the repeated self-inflicted concussions to block out the memory of the defeat are to blame for that. But I do remember Colin Clements scoring an excellent goal to make it 2-1 to the good guys before the half time break.

The second half was a load of boring bullshit. City South Farm played one long ball after another and swore a lot. Occasionally, the ball would ricochet into the St Bernadette's goal, but their goals were as much 'goals' as Chris Moyles' autobiography is a 'book'. Sure, all the components of a book are there. Words. Sentences. Pages that turn over to reveal yet more words and sentences. But, if you were in any way responsible for the creation of those pages, you'd have to immediately kill yourself by swallowing a cocktail of broken glass, bleach and shit.

We did score a third, but I was looking the other way so I don't even know what happened really.

Wasn't all bad though. It was a lovely sunny afternoon and I went to play a few games of ping pong and watch Dredd and it was alright I suppose though it's a shame they got locked in the building and that because it was interesting until then but maybe they will do that more in the sequel and also I won at ping pong.

Fin

DKL Athletic 2 SBFC 6

Questions. Questions. SBFC had questions to answer. Not the sort of question that a striker must ask of the keeper in a one-on-one situation. No, different questions to those. After Steffan Cole's controversial resignation following his unfortunate outburst on the disabled, reincarnation and karma, how would his successor Sam Hayhurst cope on his competitive managerial debut? How long would it take for the club's new signings to adapt to SBFC's passing ethos? Why is Bailey always naked?

Today, those questions were answered. Except the last one.

The pitch was not suited to SBFC's sophisticated playing style. Sure, in Sunday League football, the odd divot is to be expected. But this afternoon, the entire pitch was just one big divot, itself made up of thousands of smaller divots. The altitude drop from the touchline to the centre circle was so dramatic that several players complained of their ears popping during the revamped warm up. But warm up they did.

Indeed, the all new warm up (which introduced the revolutionary concept of kicking the ball about a bit before the game actually started) immediately reaped dividends. DKL Athletic could only gawp on like the sort of simpletons who still point at aeroplanes as SBFC pinged the ball round the pitch with precision, enthusiasm and verve. DKL didn't take it lying down though and came up with the master strategy of appealing for "HANDBALL!!!" every 15 seconds.

Surprisingly, the one-dimensional tactic of repeatedly claiming free-kicks failed to repel the SBFC onslaught and some tidy build up play led to Andrew Morris shimmying into the penalty box and squaring for Colin Clements to score SBFC's first goal of the season. Andrew Morris then added a second after some majestic centre-forward play from Ben Wyatt. Perhaps it's lazy for me to exploit Wyatt's obvious physical resemblance to the big Ivorian, but it was a truly Drogba-esque bit of play.

I'm not sure exactly when DKL scored their first half goal (to make it 2-1 or 3-1?), but I'm not really going to talk about it anyway because it was shit. But, I had a lovely view of our third. I'm not quite sure why Colin was running towards me with the ball, but what a sight it was. Colin then dinked a left foot pass 20 yards, between 4 DKL players and into the path of Mike Malay who calmly slotted home. Sure, we all would have preferred it if he'd headed it home, but it was still pretty good.

HT: DKL 1 SBFC 3

The 2nd Half started with something of a spirited fightback from DKL who really upped their intensity. The "HANDBALL!!!" appeals were coming in thick and fast and tempers started to fray after a counterattacking Colin Clements refused to accept that he had run the ball out of play. The game and the human race as a whole was brought into disrepute as Colin petulantly kicked the ball a good 50 yards away.

"I thought you whistled to say I should play on ref." smiled Colin.

"He didn't think that. He's a fucking liar." said their slightly dimwitted number 9.

DKL then nicked another and in fairness, they deserved it. SBFC need to find a way to cope with that kind of pressure, we just can't allow teams to keep appealing for "HANDBALL!!!" like that. As SBFC resumed the game, Raj Chande did what he does best and shouted some non-specific encouragement about 'concentration' and 'work-rates'. By golly did SBFC listen. No sooner had DKL pulled the game back to 3-2 than SBFC had restored the 2 goal margin which they had had previously in the half and also in the 1st half when they had been winning 2-0 which was what was happening earlier before this bit.

And what a goal it was. Birthday boy David Amesbury and his perfectly square torso collected the ball deep into the DKL half, turned round and round in semi-circles before burying a left foot shot into the bottom right hand corner. DKL heads went down. DKL went quiet. DKL thought 'fuck this'.

Then some other stuff happened but this is already quite long so I'm going to start winding it down. James Carnevale marked his debut with a goal, which is the only appropriate way to mark a debut really. Andrew Morris scored another goal from distance which isn't worth discussing in great detail because from where I was standing it looked like the keeper caught in and threw it into the goal.

I haven't yet mentioned the Man of the Match, Ellis Jones, who started the game at Left Back, moved to Right Back and then ended up at Right Wing. He was bloody brilliant everywhere, composed on the ball and hard working without it. Ellis Jones is an example to us all and I am going to name all of my children Ellis Jones, regardless of their gender or how many I have and how confusing it gets.

Later in the dressing room, Bailey was naked and there was some banter and everyone laughed and we all said 'well played' to each other and it was nice and then I went home and ate some chicken and some rice and some broccoli.

RC

Footballers are amoral scum

So I'm watching the Olympics and reveling in its unbridled positivity and marveling at what a cracking bloke Sir Chris Hoy appears to be even with all his success and I'm thinking "God, aren't footballers a bunch of twats?"

But then I thought about it a bit longer and I figured that Hoy doesn't complain to the ref because, well, there isn't one. Not one that influences what's happening during the sprint anyway. Then I thought, "Hoy doesn't dive either", but then it occurred to me that's because there wouldn't be any point.

I'm not sure how everyone will react to the uglier side of football once the season resumes, I guess gobbing off at the ref will (briefly) be tolerated less than it was before the Olympics. That is of course absolutely a good thing. But I always find myself getting defensive on behalf of footballers themselves. I don't think these guys were born without the capacity to act morally and there are plenty of players who, generally speaking, compete pretty fairly.

Pretty much all athletes, in any sport, are gaining an advantage any way they can. Some of them don't know when to stop and go too far. But cheating takes many forms, it's just that footballers cheat in an ugly way.

Pretending to be hurt, pressuring officials, these are unpleasant ways to behave and many point to rugby as a shining example of sportsmanship. But, rugby is a sport where it appears perfectly acceptable to punch your opponent in the face or gouge their eyeballs, as long as you shake hands afterwards. It doesn't seem so much that football's critics have a problem with cheating, but rather that they just prefer the cheating takes some 'manly' form.

I hate diving in football, though I hate two footed lunging tackles even more. I can't stand it that players aren't penalized for swearing at the refs and I think kids should be set a better example. But I also don't think that there is something wrong with footballers as a species, largely because they aren't a species. Most of them are responding to the incentives laid out in front of them. Those who still act honorably should be noted for doing so, much as clean Olympians are lauded for resisting the temptation of doping.

Football has problems, but endemic drug problems and on field violence don't seem to be an issue. Maybe instead of talking about footballers, rugby players and athletes as different species, we should consider them all as human beings who succumb to temptation in different, but perhaps not so morally distinguishable ways.

If You Can't Lose, You Can't Win

Last night I watched a surprisingly brilliant documentary on Victoria Pendleton, reigning Olympic and World Sprint Cycling Champion. I say 'surprisingly brilliant' because I was expecting a tedious montage (which I still would have watched) of talking heads jabbering on about how driven Pendleton was as a little girl and how proud she was to win gold in Beijing and blah blah blah.

But this really wasn't that. Within the first few minutes Pendleton despairs at being 'trapped in her own success' and says she's only ever competed to make other people happy. When she wins, all she feels is 'relief' at not having let them down. Not an obviously heartwarming start.

Stupid and Boring

Elite athletes often sound stupid and boring, but only because the journalists that interview them are, well, stupid and boring. This excuse cannot explain why Alan Shearer is so stupid and boring, as he appears to be stupid and boring regardless of context. If Alan Shearer were alone in the woods and there was nobody there to hear him, he would still be stupid and boring.

But this documentary was immediately compelling. There was very little of the usual 'It was hard, but I'm delighted to have won' guff that sports fans are usually forced to endure. Instead, we were given an insight into just how psychologically draining it is to be an Olympic athlete. 


Pendleton could tell the viewers she rides 300 miles a week and leg presses 400kg every day and it would mean almost nothing to the rest of us. Those things sound difficult, but the vast majority of us have no conception of what those numbers actually mean. But when we're allowed to see that she's just a person, like us, who is terrified of failure and yet she still puts herself out there, year after year, even when winning doesn't make her happy (at least not in a way that we immediately understand)... then our jaws drop in admiration. Well, mine did anyway.


 To me, this is the essence of sport. With time and practice, most people can muster some sort of competence at most physical skills. But to truly compete requires an all-consuming commitment that leaves the person as emotionally vulnerable as they are physically formidable. That's the bravery in what elite athletes do. The goal must be pursued with a deranged urgency, even though sporting achievement is ultimately as arbitrary as anything else. Commitment is scary, it's much easier to hold something back so you can pretend that if you fail, you never wanted that success in the first place. Elite athletes do not have this luxury.

Take a look at this picture of Amir Khan from his possibly career-ending defeat last weekend. Yes, he was bruised and battered, but so what? Boxers look like that even after fights that they win. It's his bewildered expression rather than the blood on his face that makes me wonder what the hell I'm doing with my life.

I don't think physical pain really registers that much with viewers anymore. Most people have no clue just how much effort it takes to break away from the peloton on an Alpine climb, or how hard it is for an injury-addled footballer to play through pain. 


But I think most of us 'get' psychological pain. Most of us know what it's like to want something (or someone), to try to achieve it but still to come up short. Likewise, many of us also know how frustrating it can be to achieve what you've worked so hard for, only to find that you feel absolutely nothing when you hold it in your hands.

When that documentary finished last night, I thought about how pointless most fictional narratives seem in comparison, especially if they are sports related. Sport needs a dramatized fictional narrative like the sun needs tinsel to 'brighten it up a bit'.

All models are wrong, but some are useful.

Economists are often mocked for the assumptions we make in our models. People accuse of us surging ahead with elegant computations, forgetting that our entire analysis rests on some wholly implausible assumptions. Well, yes, these assumptions are often totally ridiculous. And yes, given their general contribution to the financial crisis, the macroeconomists of the last 20 years have got a hell of a lot to answer for. But, a good model, humbly deployed, can still be useful despite it's implausible assumptions.


A model is just a system of hypothetical propositions. A model is to Economics what the word 'if' is to Philosophy. Imagine if every time a philosopher said 'if' they were shouted down by everyone else because their 'if' simply wasn't true. 'If' is a bloody useful concept. "All models are wrong, but some are useful", said the statistician George Box. We know the assumptions we make are frequently implausible, but that doesn't make the results of our models useless. The tedious stereotype implies we economists believe these assumptions to be true, or will assume anything to reach some predetermined conclusion. I would suggest the opposite, that economists deliberately propose false assumptions in order to try and prove their theories to be false.


Take the following statement:


"Grammar schools and selection on ability only benefits the children of the wealthiest families because ability is so highly correlated with SES (socioeconomic status)."


You might agree or disagree with this statement and God knows plenty of people have a view. But to actually know whether this is true requires the analysis of several phenomena at once. Grammar schools likely increase the access to quality schooling for high ability children in poor neighbourhoods. They also probably harm the children remaining in those poor neighbourhoods as their more able peers leave them behind. Then again, schools in poorer neighbourhoods might be able to better target their teaching at their remaining students, so this segregation by ability could help the less able and so on.


Proper, objective analysis of this issue becomes very complicated very quickly using language alone (or as an economist would say, both the first and second derivatives of complexity with respect to language used are positive). Each of the statements I made in the previous paragraph can be articulated more precisely with algebra. You can sit in the pub all day long and argue about which of the above effects is the strongest, but persuasive anecdotes skilfully delivered with elegant rhetoric can't deal with internal theoretical inconsistencies in the way maths can. For this reason, the evolutionary biologist J. B. S. Haldane said "an ounce of algebra is worth a ton of verbal argument". Words can paint a picture and give you the perspective of the artist, maths can build a 3D (or more) model that can be manipulated and examined from any angle we like.


With this example, a mathematical model could articulate the conditions that would have to be true for selection on ability to benefit children from poorer families. Say we assumed, for the sake of computational simplicity, that all parents were aware of all possible schools they could send their children to. Ignore, just for the moment, the likely scenario that high SES parents will be more informed of their choices. Now let us suppose show that even if this assumption were true, our model showed that allowing all schools to select on ability would cause such strong social segregation that the implied necessary improvement in teaching quality for less able pupils in poorer areas was implausibly large.


The initial implausible assumption was there to provide the ideal scenario for some hypothesis to be true, just as engineers initially simulate plane designs in frictionless skies. If, given that ‘ideal world’ assumption, that plane doesn’t fly, or the theoretical model generates implausible results, then we can probably ditch that design or rule out that hypothesis altogether. The model was wrong, but it was also useful.

Drive, the Artist and Annie Hall

A week ago I decided my daily afternoon naps were getting a bit weird and that, for the sake of my PhD at least, I should start drinking coffee again. Since then I've been reading journal papers like Johnny Five, mumbling 'Innnnn-puuuut' while dribbling through my gurning chops.

Caffeine hits me hard, I've been off it since 2007. Back when I traded European stocks, I started work at 6am. This meant getting up at 5am and downing 2 coffees by sunrise just to jolt me into coherence. Then I moved to the US shift (12-9.30pm) and due to an abundance of sleep, I just kind of gave up. Ever since then, the merest whiff of caffeine has had me rocking back and forth in sweats. So, this week, some of you may have noticed a higher than normal tweeting frequency, an added adamance to the crap I usually talk and an all round more intense demeanor.

Or maybe you didn't. Who knows. I'm told I go on a bit, but that all in all, it's part of my charm. I've always wished I was a quieter person, but it's not in me. If I'm enjoying conversation, I'm happy for it to go on for hours. I insist people watch my favourite documentaries like Hoop Dreams, (or Senna, or Hands On A Hard Body) or listen to Talk Talk's Spirit of Eden. I think drinking coffee has intensified this behavior this week, but then I'm not too sure, I've been too wired to reach a considered judgement.

Sometimes, I wish I could be more reserved, more silent, and leave everyone else wondering what I'm thinking. But I'm not that kind of a guy and most of the time, I'm fine with that. A week ago, I was especially reassured by my second viewing of Annie Hall. Now, obviously I am not claiming to be as witty as Woody Allen, but it was great to see a beautiful woman like Diane Keaton fall in love with a skinny neurotic guy who can't stop talking.

Alvy Singer... here's a guy I can relate to. He doesn't really know what the hell he is doing, makes jokes in inappropriate situations and gets wound up over nearly everything while carrying an air of genuine "damn it all we're all gonna die anyway" irreverence... and he can't park for shit either. A friend of mine said she thought I was just like him. I was tremendously flattered. After that, I had a good week.

Last night (also for the second time) I saw Drive, a magnificent film with a beautiful soundtrack. But good grief, I say more in my sleep than Ryan Gosling does in the whole film. I'm sitting there watching it thinking, "Is this what women want?" He more or less just sits there, bulky-chested, wonky-jawed and boss-eyed, like a roided-up Rodney Trotter that's just munched an ice cream tub full of Valium. Gosling, referred to as 'The Kid' is basically exactly that, a child. At least the actual kid next door (that Gosling befriends) occasionally proffers some sort of cartoon based view on the world. Gosling's only response is to knowingly clench his jaw. I wish I could do that, carry that air of strong silence, but I'm scared if I just stared dead ahead, saying absolutely nothing, people would just think I was plain weird.

Don't get me wrong, I loved the film. I like a doomed love story. I like a protagonist that bears his cross with a silent dignity. I love all that shit. But I'm not too thrilled about the current love for men who have nothing to offer but their bodies. Gosling says nothing, while occasionally smashing someone's face in with a hammer for the sake of the woman he loves.

 "Don't worry. We can walk to the curb from here."

Meanwhile, everyone goes batshit crazy over the Artist, a 90 minute tantrum from a recently redundant performing monkey. We no longer watch silent films for a reason. Yeah, there's a novelty to it, I grant you that. But it's just a novelty. Serve me a bacon sandwich with no bacon in it at all and I will temporarily reconsider my conception of the sandwich. But once is enough.

There's more to being a man than violently protecting women and nodding sagely at fatherless children. We're not here for the benefit of other people's amusement and the tortuous process of understanding our existence is not one giant slapstick performance. Sure, some things are better left unsaid. Sometimes a silence can be deafening. But just staring wistfully into space shouldn't necessarily imply that someone is thinking something profound, or that there is something profound to be thought. Sometimes, I suspect filmmakers are just using the ambiguity that such silence provides as a substitute for actual ideas.

Give me a sandwich with actual bacon in it, any day of the week.