Captain Purplehead

What an uninteresting week it’s been. I’ll be first to stand up and say that, by and large, football is a much better game than rugby. However, on the evidence of the World Cup so far, no one would believe me. There’s a couple of reasons for the whole suckiness of the World Cup so far. Firstly, there’s the fact that the ball has been changed again and it is taking teams a while to get used to it. This happens in every World Cup and it sickens my shit every fucking time.
I’ll go as far as to say that Robert Green probably wouldn’t have made that hilarious mistake, if they hadn’t made a ball that moves around way too erratically and is lighter than its predecessor. How about changing the ball at the start of the domestic season? Much more leeway for fuck ups at the start of a season than there is in a tournament. Who am I kidding though. FIFA have never listened to reason and probably never will.
The soundtrack to this monotonous football is fitting, if insanely annoying. It is the Stadium Horn, otherwise known as the vuvuzela. It’s a horn that, when played, produces a drone in monotone. It’s a fucking wart on the arse of sanity and they won’t ban them because they can’t unless someone uses it as a weapon. I mean surely someone has shoved a vuvuzela up someone’s hole at this stage. Fucking things are like a constant swarm of bored to death bees. GGGRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!
Maradonna is as colourful as ever but, sadly, his team aren’t. Despite the fact that Messi shone, the Argentines merely lent a hand to the overall mediocrity we’ve seen so far.
Not to fear though, it always starts to get better in the second round of games and I’m still looking forward to a decent tournament.
Also this week, we are presented with a comedy of fucking idiocy from the Irish government… AGAIN!
Brian Cowen has said that he is determined to see out his tenure as Prime Minister because he wants to make the tough decisions that have to be made to get our ecconomy back on its feet. Well, at least he’s not making the easy decision to line his and his buddies’ pockets at our expense for a change but I just have one question. Last week, Brian Cowen said that there was no point in investigating the government’s role in the financial crisis because everyone knows that the fiscal policy they used was flawed and ultimately wrong. In short, they fucked up. Apart from his plea for no investigation into a governtment, in which he was the minister for finance at the time, being a load of old bollox, what makes him think that, if he made the wrong decisions all along, he’s suddenly going to get it right now? Sling your fucking fat hook, Brian.
So, the light at the end of the tunnel is that he faces a vote of confidence in his leadership, possibly leading to a general election that the country so badly needs.
Ok, if you’re the opposition, you’re rubbing your hands together and getting your wagons in a circle. Not the clowns on the other side of the Irish political fence, however. Nope, their deputy leader said that he had no confidence in his leader - the interminably purile Enda Kenny. What does Enda do, to the tune of “It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to”? He sacks said deputy, Mr Bruton.
This all comes at a time when the Labour Party appear to be making ground on the inside. I think it might be a bit soon for them but everyone knows this country is badly in need of a unity government that we’ll never get anyway.
So there you have it. What a load of bollox this week has been. Bollox I tells ya.

For those of you who don’t know, the FAI stands for the Football Association of Ireland. In fact, they should be called the FAD - the Football Association of Dublin. Y’see in our fair isle, if you’re not doing something to promote Dublin, you’re simply not doing it - or, at least, you’re doing it without any support. Take, for example, our international airports. On the East of Ireland you have Dublin Airport and on the west you have Shannon Airport. Shannon is in Clare and Clare is in Munster, yet Shannon Airport is governed by the DAA - the Dublin Airport Authority. Doesn’t make a whole lot of sense until you take a look at how both are getting on. Shannon has been gutted of flights and staff while Dublin flourishes. It’s another sick fact of life in Ireland - or, at least, outside of Dublin. The rest of the country has a bus service called Bus Eireann, which translates as Bus Ireland. In Dublin they have Dublin Bus. Yep, being the capital has very much gone to their heads. The only thing that they don’t promote in Dublin but liberally promote for every other county, particularly Limerick, is the fucking crime rate. Dublin is awash with violence, gangs, drugs and corruption but Limerick gets the bad name.
Ok, before I get too far off of the point, I’ll relax a bit and say that I’m fucking enormously fucking furious at the FAI. I mean, I’m more furious than I normally am at them. Remember that this is the organisation - (that’s a laugh) - who orchestrated the shambles in Saipan for the Irish Soccer team. They have a long history of recognising a bulging brown envelope before recognising a need or a nonsense in Irish soccer. The Irish Soccer team do not have their own stadium. Why? I mean, it’s not like they haven’t generated enough funds to build a couple of them. Well, they don’t have their own stadium because they are fucking money grubbing morons who care more about wining and dining themselves than actually nursing football in Ireland.
Ok, so the greatest team in the world at the moment, Barcelona have agreed to play a friendly with Limerick FC at the home of Irish rugby, Thomond Park. As part of this agreement, Barca agreed that their brightest stars like Messi and Ibrahimovich would definitely play some part in the game. This, translated into monetary terms, means about ten million euro for the local economy. That’s an important chunk of change given that we’re in a recession. Ok, what’s the problem? This is good news, right? Well, it was greeted with jubilant enthusiasm by all who follow sport, so yes, it was great news. Unfortunately, the FAI has refused to sanction the game because of the following three made up reasons.
1. There are two other Airtricity fixtures pencilled in for that day.
2. There is an unspecified third party commercial agreement which means that the game cannot go ahead.
3. The FAI is already in talks to bring Barca to the new Aviva Stadium - although, unlike Limerick, they haven’t reached an agreement yet.

Ok, let’s answer question 1: So fucking what if there’s another ten Airtricity fixtures going on at the time? As long as Limerick isn’t involved, what’s the fucking problem? In fact, if there was a need for some bullshit Irish International friendly where we get to watch the likes of Paul McShane running around like a headless chicken, you’d amend the fixture list? This is not a reason for your refusal; you shower of fucking knuckle-dragging reprobates!
2. Give details of this so-called conflicting agreement or just stop fucking lying, you fop- haired fucking intellectually challenged fucking muppets.
3. Ah, this is closer to the truth - not quite there - but closer. You have agreed no fucking date for the proposed friendly with Barca and Limerick City has. Which one should go ahead? In fact, why can’t both go ahead, you shower of insipid arse-reaming fucking sacks of shit?

The answer to this outrage, I’m afraid, is quite simple; Limerick isn’t in Dublin. This was way too big a fixture to let it go ahead outside the fucking capital. We need to keep promoting Dublin and fuck the Mid West. Yeah, they don’t even have a proper airport anymore. Where would the team fly into?
I fucking kid you not; these guys can’t even dress or groom themselves properly, not to mind run a sporting organisation. Look, here’s a picture of the chairman, John Delaney, if you don’t believe me.

Look at the fucking head on the cunt! Would you trust this man to even bring your shopping in from the car? Would you allow your shopping to be seen with him?
Here’s Fran Gavin, director of the Airtricity League.

Holy fucking shit! These guys are costing the local economy in the mid west ten fucking million euros! Leave the money aside, these guys are denying the mid west an occasion we richly deserve. We have given Munster to the world of sport and, along with that package, comes the supporters who are amongst the best in the world. We are passionate about sport. We go and watch sport in all weathers. Leinster supporters would feel the need to visit fucking Brown Thomas to kit themselves out in fucking designer wet gear or they wouldn’t fucking go at all. I am fucking sick to the teeth of these rank idiots who run our sporting organisations…. oh, and our fucking country, for that matter.
This whole country needs a fucking radical change. Make Limerick the capital. We don’t mind sharing. FUCK THE FAI! They’re probably still pissed off because we got to open our pubs on Good Friday. Fuck them.
This rant has been one stream of abuse at a group of fucking idiots who barely deserve to be mentioned at all. If there are spelling or grammatical mistakes, I apologise because I’m too fucking pissed off to run a spell checker across it.

So we have confirmed Trappatoni as Ireland manger. He’s had a lot of success at club level and I sincerely hope that he will have a measure of the success that he had at club level. He hasn’t had much success so far with international management but I’m not going to be one of those guys who points out his shortcomings before he’s even started the job. All I’ll say is that, at least he has more English that our last manager.

It’s funny the way things go. Days after making the ludicrous claim on Sky Sports News that his time in charge of the Irish team was a success, Steve Staunton takes the post of assistant manager of Leeds. This also puts into stark relief the inanity of his appointment as Irish manager. Are we saying that the level we require is that of an assistant manager at a third division club?
Trappatoni is now in the frame for to succeed Stan and, though I would never question the managerial record of the great man, I sincerely question his passion for the role of Ireland. Firstly, he is seventy on his next birthday and has barely a word of English. Ok, I know that Stan had very little English but we should be looking to improve the lines of communication between manager and playing staff. His only other experience of international management came as manager of Italy during the 2002 World Cup. He was sacked after their exit at the hands of South Korea. Of course, we should look at that as a political exit as they had 3 goals disallowed in that match so that the co-hosts could go as far as possible in the competition.
Right, why are we suddenly singing the name of Giovanni Trappatoni? I’m not going to go through what is a glowing CV as far as club management is concerned because everyone can use Google these days but I will say that I don’t agree that he should be our manager. The man is at the very end of his career and he’s simply picking up another pay packet. Like Venables, I can’t see him having any passion for the job. I don’t think he’d be quite the disaster that Venables would be but he’s not going to give us the long term stability we need. We need young, hands on manager who won’t suffer egos or fools - normally the same thing - easily. We need a no-nonsense manager who won’t be afraid to tell the criminally inept FAI to keep their noses out of his affairs and won’t be afraid to strip Robbie Keane of the captaincy. In fact, he shouldn’t be afraid to drop Robbie if his poor international form continues. It is for these reasons that the likes of Venables and Trappatoni should not be considered for the Irish job.
I really doubt that we’re going to find any stability given the corruption that is rife within the FAI but we shouldn’t stop criticising Delaney and his clowns.

So Steve Staunton has been sacked… Well I’m not saying I’m sorry to see him go but his dismissal only serves to illustrate that the FAI haven’t a clue what they’re doing. John Delaney and David Blood should follow Stan out of Irish football if we are to have any hope of resurrecting our National team. They appointed Stan despite his complete lack of experience in a managerial role. “He has one hundred and two caps so he must know what he’s doing” was their rationale. I once watched a guy fix a car but nobody’s offered me a job as a mechanic.
I feel sorry for Stan. He was a brilliant player for Ireland and my beloved Villa. He was a great servant. Who’d have thought that he was so tactically inept? His ineptitude, however, pales in comparison to the ineptitude of the FAI.
Let’s see who they appoint as the next manager. Why not David O’Leary? He systematically destroyed Villa and was involved in the pulverisation of Leeds, which makes him the perfect man for the Irish job.

I have been absent for a while due to work commitments - lowly vessels won’t pillage themselves, y’know - but I’m back now. The hold’s rum supply is once again replenished and I’m doing ok for trinkets and such. I was going to write a new post on Wednesday but I decided I’d watch the match first. I use the term “match” loosely because what it really was was a pile of steaming elephant shit. I speak of course of the Irish soccer team’s meeting with the mighty Cyprus. Yes, Cyprus, that giant of international football. Brazilians shudder at the very mention of its name.
Cyprus has a population of around 730,000 people and a couple of goats. 12.5% of Cyprus belongs to Turkey so that leaves around 640,000 people to pick a football team from. Taking that into account, Ireland should be streets ahead of them in terms of the quality of players available to them, right? Absolutely right. We have better players in every position. We should be blooding new players against the likes of Cyprus and still beat them by at least a couple of goals. Let’s take it one step further: Cyprus are a crap football team. We were in a crap group. The Czech Republic are no longer the force they once were and Germany are now pedestrian at best. We had two games this week and we should have won one of them. I speak, of course, of the game against Germany. All we were missing in that game was a Spurs jersey because, if Robbie Keane had been wearing a Spurs jersey instead of an Irish one, he would have scored at least two goals against an average defence. Take the captaincy off of Robbie and he might be a better player for it.
As I watched - simultaneously reminded of a painful molar extraction - I noticed something that you would expect a manager to notice. Joey O’Brien played a decent game at centre-half against Germany. John - the donkey - O’Shea has proven time and time again his ineptitude in the centre-half position. John - the donkey O’Shea is a donkey but he’s a better midfield option than anything Cyprus had to offer. I know what you’re thinking; why is he telling us this? Well, Staunton decided to use John - the donkey - O’Shea as a centre half and push Joey O’Brien into a central midfield role that he had not played in before. This smacks to me of a man who hasn’t a clue how to manage a football team. Do I blame Staunton for the current mess we’re in? No.
In the stands at the game were two of Ireland’s better known criminals, Bertie Ahern and John Delaney. Ireland crumbled under minor pressure while these two fucking dickheads discussed how best to describe a brown envelope. John Delaney should step down from the FAI and take up a job as George W. Bush’s speechwriter. Fucking clueless fucking moron who cannot even manage a decent comb-over. TWAT TWAT TWAT TWAT!!!
The one thing that pissed me off about the encounter, after the manner of our capitulation, was that we weren’t beaten by the four goals that Cyprus deserved.
Here’s a little statistic for the FAI to chew over. If the table was displayed after two games against Cyprus, it would read that Ireland have scored two and conceded six. Fuck off Delaney.

Imagine if the soundtrack to Rugby was hip-hop and it was played by overpaid primates wearing helmets and more padding than George Michael’s tennis shorts. Imagine then that each game was split into four quarters and was governed by plays, meaning a game could go on for hours. Imagine that the greatest Rugby team in the world called itself The Munster Pirates. If you haven’t cottoned on to the gist, I’m talking about the fiasco that is American Football. I know I’m immediately inviting the ire of my American friends but I simply must draw the line here. Since they started showing the NFL on Sky Sports, I have actually tried to sit through a game and I have to say that it is the single least entertaining game this side of curling.
I wasn’t considering a rant about this… ahem… sport but I was asked by a friend of mine if I wanted to join a little group he was setting up. It is an NFL party league. Yes, you heard it. Each member of said group would agree to hold a party at his or her house for an American football game. This guy’s chosen team is the New York Jets. “Great idea!” said I, “now, if you were to say to me that we’d do it for soccer or even rugby, I’m in but I can’t reconcile myself to watching a game that is, quite frankly, boring.” Aghast, he replied, “but it’s the NFL.”
This guy’s idea of travel is a two week break in Lanzarote every year so how the hell did he get hooked on American Football? You would have to have grown up having it rammed down your throat to be even remotely interested.
Now I know that the owner of my beloved Aston Villa also owns the Cleveland Browns and I know that soccer players are also overpaid but that doesn’t matter. Soccer is an entertaining game. The reason that Americans haven’t taken it to their hearts is because it’s the one sport that they’re not particularly good at. Anyway, that’s neither here nor there. I have tried to understand the attraction behind the hype of American Football and I just can’t do it. I love sport but that game is just crap. In fact, it’s unbelievably fucking moronic crap. It seems to me that it has more to do with sponsorship that sport but I suppose all sport is going that way.
When Sky Sports started, there was a suggestion that they would alter the game so that it could be split into four quarters rather than two halves. This would be an ideal way to sell more advertising space but would ultimately ruin the flow of the game and so it was thankfully dismissed out of hand.
I can understand Irish people who have lived in the States becoming interested in the most popular sport over there but I cannot understand people like my aforementioned friend becoming obsessed with it. It’s all part of America’s bid for world domination through the television. This guy has developed the unfortunate interrogative inflection in his voice. “I watched the Jets game last night?”
I can kind of understand baseball. I don’t particularly like it but I can understand it. It’s far more entertaining than the abysmally boring cricket but I wouldn’t give up five minutes of bollock scratching to catch a baseball game. My main problem with that game is this. Why do they call their biggest event the World Series? I know that Japan are now involved but it’s always been called that when it is pretty much an American competition. Our national sport is hurling. It is far more dangerous, far more skillful, far more entertaining and far less popular. Limerick is in the major hurling final tomorrow and what do you think we call it? THE FUCKING ALL IRELAND!! NOT THE INTERGALACTIC CUP, THE ALL FUCKING IRELAND!!!
So, am I going to watch any NFL game this season? Not if it was the women’s league, they all looked like Maria Bellucci, had to play the game naked and the winners got to shag me. Life is too short to be that bored.

I have just come around from the shock of seeing one of the worst FA Cup finals in living memory. I thought that the Villa - Chelsea game was bad but the final I’ve just seen was, well, horrendous. Chelsea and United are two teams who should now be suspended from further participation in this competition until such time as they can take it seriously. We know already that United found the World Club Championships more important. A pissy little fucking tournament that nobody watches. I am a Villa fan and I can honestly say that I’m slightly relieved that the mantle of worst FA Cup Final Ever will now slip from the last one in which we were involved to be firmly placed on the fiasco I have just had the misfortune to watch. I will now list five things that I would have been better off doing with my time.
1. Counting how many times I exhale in a minute.
2. Painting something - such as my TV screen - and then watching the paint dry.
3. Seeing how long it will take me to go completely bald by plucking every hair on my head.
4. Shaving my tongue.
5. Just about anything other than watching this fucking match.

And these are supposedly the best two teams in the most competitive league in the world? Hopefully next year we’ll see an Aston Villa - Arsenal final.

I must dispense with the YAAARRRRSS for a moment, in favour of a resounding WWWOOOOOOOHHHHHOOOOO!!!!! Villa have hockeyed Muddlesbourough to climb into the top half of the Premiership. To say I’m delighted is a major understatement. Congrats too to me oul mucker, Bock The Robber as his beloved Scunthorpe have won promotion to the Championship. Hartlepool will be taking their place in league one after their promotion and commiserations must go to Luton and Rotherham who were relegated.
Birmingscum City got a poxy win today but hopefully Derby County can hold them off to a play-off place. It’d be a dream come true to see West Brom beat them in the play-off final. Hee hee.
GGGOOOOOAAANNNNNNNNNNN THE VVVIIIILLLLLAAAAAA

I watched in horror last night as Villa looked like they had forgotten they were playing a game in the first half against Everton. We were rubbish in the first half. We couldn’t keep the ball, we couldn’t pass the ball and we just weren’t on the ball. We came out in the second half a completely different team. Everton were, for the most part, spectators. We should have won on the second half performance alone.
I never had any notions of Europe this season as we are in a fairly major transition but we are definitely in a relegation fight now and I certainly didn’t think that would be the case. We should have hockeyed Bolton, we should have demoralised Newcastle but we just can’t finish.
Remember when Villa could do this?

And this?

And this… fucking hilarious.

And this is how to beat Everton!