Movember

It is quite amusing to see the pubs and bars full of blokes who look like porn stars with their best efforts at growing facial hair all in a good cause, falling short in some regards!! Good on them for trying though.

So whats been going on Up North this month?

First off was another visit to the Hill Dickinson stadium to watch england v Australia rugby league. I have not been to a league game since the London Bronco's used to play at Griffin Park. My then girlfriend of the time was a big Wigan fan so we went to see them rather than the Broncos. the Paul brothers, Jason Robinson, Shaun Edwards and others were in that great team.

The match at evertons new stadium just confirmed my view that its a dull form of entertainment where you watch the same game every week. England were well beaten,

The next day SWMBO and I went to see Dara O' Briain at the Liverpool Empire. He was very good value and I would well recommend seeing him if he comes your way. Next day saw me packed and off to Lisbon for a three day golf break with 'the teachers', a group of members from Wallasey and beyond. We stayed dry and I came second on the final day which got me some money from the winning pot.

We are in the lucky position of having a reduced price holiday in 2026 by virtue of Rory McIlroy winning the Masters and our travel agent running a competition based on him doing so. Happy days.

On my return I needed my eyes testing before enjoying the 25th anniversary beer festival at port Sunlight with some friends and fellow real ale buff's

As we ponder how and when to downsize, November allowed us to look at a couple of houses which could be possible targets for us. One we saw was a Bank reposession and would have been idea, but the people vacating the place has stripped it bare. No kitchen, no bathrooms, electric wiring all over the place and no doors on any rooms. All could be overcome, but the Bank wanted a 28 day exchange period and there was no way we could sell and fund the works in that time, so sadly it will have to pass.

Things wer ethen a bit sad for a day or two as we attneded the memorial for our good friend Ailsa who passed suddenly after suffering a stroke. There was a great turnout at twickenham RFC where her family and friends spoke well of here and gave her a really fittin sendoff. She was a great photopragher and many of the old pictures from rugby tours, dinners and other memorable events were there to browse through. She will be sorely missed.

The month then ended with a IBM lunch in Manchetser where I met up with some colleagues I had not seen for a while, and the on Saturday we had the St Andrews dinner, a red coat event at the golf club.

So, all in all a pretty busy month.  

Roaring Rory

What a dramatic Sunday at the Masters this week, as Rory McIlroy embraced his life work, emotional rollercoasters and good golf shots with exceptional, and at the same time, awful shots as he cruised to the win, gave it back and finally staggered over the line.

He became the sixth winner of the 'Grand Slam' and the first European to achieve the feat. Bobby Jones won a similarly rare accolade when he won the US Amateur and US Open together with the Amateur and the Open in 1930. He then went on to design Augusta National and instigate the Masters, and the Green Jacket winners prize.

Having spent almost 5 hours watching events unfold, it got me thinking about other sporting occasions which got the National off their feet either live or in their iwn living rooms. Here is my list, I am sure you can think of others.

Football World Cup 1966 has to be up there near the top, Botham's Ashes and Stokes World Cup winning feats lead the cricketing memories, and Johnnie Wilkinson going to extra holes to win the Rugby World Cup is also a contender.

There are probably Olympic events which others will add to the list, mostly athletics based such as the Coe and Ovett duels, the Mobot, Daly Thompson,  and  the women decathletes but also rowers Pincent & Redgrave, swimmers like Duncan Goodhew and Winter Olympians Torvill & Dean.

Finally I have to add Andy Murray to the list, he is almost more like Rory than Rory, but his Wimbledon winning  efforts had the whole Country united behind a Scotsman, no easy feat in itself!!

Out of the Woods

 A very early start got us to Augusta National golf club at about 8:30 in the morning. The first priority then being to empty my wallet in the merchandise shop. 

A fishing chair (no arms allowed) was the first priority. Then with the weather forecast tomorrow, a brolly would come in useful. After that it was bits and bobs for people who asked and a half zip to for me. Masters green of course.

Then it was to the course where we set up our chairs on 13 before walking up 18 to see where Sandy Lyle made his miracle bunker shot to win in 1988. Next we hit the practise green and driving range where most of the big names were honing their game. David Clarke was on the bag of Justin Rose. David and I used to play 3rd and 4th team for Twickenham RFC in the day.

We then met Derek Lawrenson , the Daily Mail golf correspondent, and Wallasey member who warned us Tiger would be on the course at about 2pm. We dropped in to the 16th where it is traditional for players to try to skim their ball across the lake onto the green. Bit of a mixed bag but lots of crowd participation. Interestingly John Rahm got a hole in one with his skim last year.

After seeing a few Europeans including Rory McIlroy, we avoided the Tiger Woods show to return back to the hotel.

So what to make of it? Well it is a huge money making operation for Augusta National. Everything is geared to making it easy to part with your money quickly. The course and the general real estate is immaculate but the layout of the course makes it difficult to follow players around it.

Couple that with the fact there were very few players out there to watch  then day 1 was a bit disappointing. The weather forecast tomorrow is not good but we will see how things are in the morning.

In the meantime there is some Southern fried cooking to enjoy. Grits anybody?

Pimples

On Sunday, Lewis Hamilton, a racing driver supported by a team of over 1000 people, who races maybe twenty times a year and has only one serious rival, won the BBC Sports Personality of the Year award for 2014.

He beat Rory McIlory, a golfer, into second place. McIlroy has probably fifty rivals, all capable of beating him on their day. He plays probably 30 times a year, and is supported by a small team which includes his caddy, coach,  management team and various suppliers and sponsors.

Whether it was the right decision is taking up a lot of column inches in the newspapers at the moment. Hamilton won the F1 World Championship, which he has won previously. McIlroy won the Open Championship and the US PGA championship. No European has ever done that before in the same year. He also won the Bridgestone Invitational and the PGA championship at Wentworth. He was also part of the European Ryder Cup team who defeated the USA.

McIlroy has a personality, Hamilton is a bit dull. So it would seem that petrolhead's took the trouble to vote, whereas golfers didn't.

Sadly it's another sign of the fading star which SPOTY has become. SPOTY has always been a must watch in our family, and I can remember the sixties programmes when the BBC had most of the sporting coverage in the World to use to produce their programme. Henry Cooper won the title twice, and he never really won anything of significance in his sport. David Steel was sent out to face the barrage of West Indian fast bowling and almost single-handedly saved England from ignominy. He won it for true British spunk.

More recently, however, the BBC have struggled to find any sporting coverage to populate the programme with as Sky and now BT, hoover up all the best events. The 2014 show reached new depths with repeated voiceovers by Eddie 'the idiot' Butler, listing the names of great British sports personalities, but showing almost no action at all.

The BBC must have know the writing was on the wall when in 2009, a year with no Olympics, World Cup or Commonwealth Games, the winner was Ryan Giggs, an aging Welsh footballer who is best know outside football for bedding his own brother's wife. Jenson Button came second that year so even the petrolhead's must have been bored with the whole thing.

Aging pop band Simple Minds opened the show on Sunday, and that, sadly,  is a suitable  phrase to refer to the BBC blazers who masterminded the whole thing.

A thrash round a field

Rory McIlroy had just come back from a boys weekend in Ibiza, before he went on to win the Open Championship at Hoylake last week. Clearly that sort of break can do your golf the world of good.

I was one of the volunteer marshal's and did seven or eight shift from the Tuesday onwards. It was fascinating to see the players close up and wonder at how they hit the ball so far with apparently little effort. I am told something's called timing and practise are to blame!

I did not exactly meet the world but I did see David Clarke, an ex-Twickenham RFC lad with whom I used to play golf. He was caddying for Cameron Tringale, who had two steady rounds but was unable to make the cut mark.

David must be one of the most unlucky caddies around, he was with Justin Rose when he turned pro, and went through the hard times with him. They parted on good terms some time later but before Justin started winning big. He was with Michelle Wie when she had totally lost her game, and then moved on to VJ Singh for a while, and VJ has never been the fame force since his deer antler scandal.

I did appear on the BBC news at 7pm on the Sunday as a lady reporter did a piece to camera. I had my back to her and looked like I was perched on her shoulder like a parrot. We got £12 food allowance which did not buy too much food at the prices they were charging, so I saved mine up and got a bottle of champagne from the beer tent...every little helps.

So after Rory played so well after his boys weekend away, I wondered what difference my trip to Lisbon had made, and the formula seems to have worked. I went round Southport and Ainsdale yesterday in 82 shots, helping Wallasey to gain an honourable 4-4 draw. Interestingly when I consult my records I see that during our Southport flog expedition in 1988, I birdied the first hole and then went round in 103, so I seem to be improving!

Gold......

We are in the lull between the Olympic Games and the Paraolympic Games. The gap has been filled by a riveting final test match between England and South Africa.We were fortunate to be at Lords on the Saturday as is our tradition, and its fair to say that the Safa's just played the better cricket and deserved to win.

I suspect the Kevin Petersen saga will run and run, and it must have had an affect on the England camp and the way they performed, however, I would like to congratulate Vernon Philander for winning man of the match, and almost putting this web site on the map big style, a cricketer and a philanderer, now he would not have been the first!

The whole success of Team GB has once more focused the political radar on sports fields and physical exercise in schools. We all know there are too many fat kids about, but in many cases they take the lead from their parents. It is they who buy them playstations, x-boxes and Nintendos and are happy to leave little JoHannie to become a coach potato. I wonder if we will now see more and more children being attracted to social clubs to try to emulate the recent stars we have all see strut their stuff very impressively on the biggest sporting stage.

Rory McIlroy must have felt a bit miffed that not too many people  were watching when he won his second major, the US PGA Championship, which concluded during the closing ceremony of the Olympics. The lure of the Spice Girls reunion was just too much for some people.

They tied in the themes quite well in the ceremony, just missing the opportunity to have Duran Duran perform Rio as the link up to the 2016 Games. We are already making plans to go, principally to watch the rugby 7's. it will certainly not be as ferocious as the Paraolympics version aka Murderball.

So as the footie season kicks off again with the usual petulance and cheating lets see if some of the Olympian fair play and sportsmanship is able to filter through society and make everybody strive to do that little bit better, but always within the spirit of the game.