AT BBM, making incredibly rash predictions ahead of the weekend is the name of the game – so congratulations are in order for Swiss ace Roger Federer on his sixth Wimbledon title and 15th Grand Slam.
OK as we write this, the quarter finals still haven’t been played but we’re going to stick our necks out and say that Federer has just cruised to the title in third gear against (* ).
The only bit of excitement in a one-sided final was when Ana Ivanovic ran stark naked onto centre court declaring her love for Maria Sharapova, who appeared from nowhere to join her fellow tennis ace in the middle of the nets for a bit of lesbo rumpy pumpy.
*insert appropriate name here
TEST SERIES IS OVER (GOUGED) OUT
IF there’s one thing us English like doing when we lose, it’s creating a ridiculous scapegoat that we can blame everything on.
So the reason we lost to Argentina at France 98 was because David Beckham lifted his leg up slightly, Cristiano Ronaldo denied England a certain World Cup in 2006 by having the audacity to shut one eye and if it wasn’t for referees Anders Frisk and Tom Henning Ovrebo, Chelsea would be the undisputed champions of Europe sweeping all before them with their own brand of sexy samba style football.
We can only assume, therefore, that the rest of the home nations (and Ireland of course) have diluted this usually misplaced sense of outrage – as, frankly, the British and Irish Lions have every right to be really fucking pissed off at South Africa.
In an otherwise pretty damn exciting Test match, the Lions and the Springboks were dirtier than a German backpacker after a scheisse movie.
And the main villain of the piece was South Africa flanker Schalk Burger who blatantly tried to use the eyes of Luke Fitzgerald as some kind of impromptu stress toy after just 32 seconds.
The ref duly bottled it and only dished out a yellow, setting the tone for a vicious game which ended with a last-gasp 28-25 defeat for the Lions. That’s the series over then.
Still some justice was meted out afterwards, with Burger slapped with an eight-week ban. Sounds good on paper, but it basically means he’ll only miss four games – one of which was the dead rubber against the Lions at the weekend.
QUOTES OF THE WEEK
• “BEFORE I crack on with my eulogy to Michael Vaughan, there is one thing I’ve got to get off my chest: he ain’t a Yorkshire lad, he’s from fricking Lancashire!” – Matthew Hoggard begins his new column on Cricinfo.
•“WE’RE not friends but Jose (Mourinho) has always kind of rated me if you know what I mean. He was asked a question to recommend somebody for something or put them up and I was very grateful that he did it.
“When I thanked him he said, “David, I wasn’t doing you a favour even though I like you, it’s because I rate you,” and that’s his attitude” – David O’Leary would really like another job in football.
• “POSSIBLY, on the day, I could have been criticised for being a bit overzealous on the touchline, but I’ll learn from that. And if some people say I need to calm down then the only thing I would say is that I was very passionate about England winning” – Stuart ‘Psycho’ Pearce defends his ‘passion’ during the England U21’s Final loss to Germany.
•“IT doesn’t make any difference to the way you perform, the hype. If you spend the whole time – if you work in media and spend a lot of time reading the papers, watching everything on the TV, all the things that are getting said on the radio – then you get caught up in it” – Andy Murray makes familiar noises.
