Get in the hole!!

Get in the hole.......if Sportsmouth hears another loud mouth American utter these words again, it could lead to untold pain to that particular loud mouth!!!

Now being a golf fan & having already voiced my discontent with the coverage of U.S golf, now the next target is those brainless fuckwits who yell "get in the hole" everytime Tiger hits the ball, it could be a par 5, they just don't get it!! Just this morning watching the final round of the U.S Open, Tiger has played a tee shot into the right rough, he according to the commentary has two options to try & hit over the tree (not the best option apparently) or hit a lower fade into the green trying to run the ball onto the green. Well Tiger decides (against the commentators wishes) to try and hit the high shot, anyway he hits & clears the tree but finishes up well short of the green in heavy rough, now as always with Tiger they replay the shot 400 times, but one angle from his front left, left Sportsmouth wanting to reach through the t.v screen and belt the bloke right behind Tiger. The reason, Tiger plays his shot & this guy just starts hooting and hollaring "yeah yeah, get in the hole, alright whoa, yeah" fist pumping the whole works!!

My point is this, it was a bad option followed by a worse shot, yet he just had to make a fuckwit of himself, I hate this guy just for doing that.

The solution is this, if you ever go to watch a live round of golf and someone yells out "get in the hole" (putting is okay, because there's a real chance it could go in!) turn to the yokel who said it & ...........punch him in the face!

Moneyball

Sportsmouth has just finished reading a very interesting book, titled "Moneyball". I know what your thinking this is a sports blog, not a book club, but, "Moneyball" is all about baseball, but has some valuable lessons on investing amoung other things.

What this book really opened Sportsmouth' eyes to is the fact that, one baseball players are ridiculously over paid and two they are not people but, commodities!!

Lets start with the overpaid part, some guy who can hit a baseball and catch one (with a glove) could be worth up to $10 million a season, yet he still needs a batting coach, a first base coach to tell him when to run or not, a third base coach to tell him to go for home or not, plus a team manager to tell the other coach's what to tell the player!!! I guess the clubs way of thinking is "I'm not paying you $10 million a year to think"!

Now when a player is drafted by a club, they have his services locked in for the first 6 years of his playing career (unless they trade him, that's the commodities part) after that period he becomes a free agent, so although you hear of said player getting paid $10 million a year, he, especially if he's been playing for the Oakland A's one of the poorest teams in the league, with a budget of $40 odd million per year for their whole major league squad of 25 players, has probably been getting paid less then a $1 million a year, and in some cases alot less.

The commodities part, comes with the trading of players, for example in the book, a player is traded in a round trade with two other clubs, leaving him in the situation of having played against the Oakland A's one night, then playing for them the next night against the team he was just traded from and he has no idea it's taken place until the A's GM comes down and tells him!! Now this particular player was playing for Toronto, thought he was going to get traded but to San Diego, but ends up in Oakland!

It really is interesting to see how the A's with the miniscule budget of $40m (makes NRL salary cap look a bit ordinary!) continue to have success finding players that are undervalued and getting the best out of them, compared to the richest team in the league the New York Yankees who's budget is three to four times that of the A's who only buy the so called cream of the crop, yet their regular season record is very similar!

Sportsmouth doesn't proclaim to be a lover of baseball, but it certainly changes the way I view the sport!

The Sport of Kings

Sportsmouth received this interesting little trivia;


Regarded as the 'Sport of Kings', the first horse race took place in
England in 210 AD. Encouraged by Royal patronage over the last 300
years, the English thoroughbred has been the foundation stock of
racehorses world-wide.

In fact, all modern-day thoroughbreds can be traced to one of three
great English sires:

* Darley Arabian (1700): 90%
* The Byerly Turk (1689): 5%
* and The Godolphin Arabian or Barb (1724): 5%.

Thanks Greeny (aka aussiegolfer)

Cheers

Redneck, Nutbags get up!

Well there you go, obviously the bagging Sportsmouth gave Qld worked as they really put NSW right out of the game from the get go!

All credit to them, they played very well & NSW were terrible, it certainly shows the mistake they made picking Hunt at 6 for the first game and the presence Steve Price has on the rest of the forwards, he still is one of the best props in the game. Qld won by winning the dominance of the ruck by their forwards which allowed them some space to create opportunities out wide (especially on the right) it was an obvious place for them to attack, a new centre/wing combination in defence, which on more then one occasion was left high and dry by the players inside them! But the biggest difference in that right hand side defence was when Gasnier made the decision to go up and in his winger either wasn't aware or wasn't told, this is something that Cooper on the left hand side of the field is a master at, his defence is outstanding and probably is the best defensive centre Sportsmouth has ever seen, plus when he went in his winger instinctively or under instruction went with him, so in the second half when Qld did try to go down the left, they really ended up resorting to trying to kick in behind them, which worked once, well and good.

I won't go into a player ratings as it'll take up to much space, but I'm sure that before game 3 there'll be some changes to both sides, obviously if Darren Lockyer is fit he'll play for Qld, while I really think that either Jason Ryles or Brent Kite should be a starting prop for NSW!!

That's it, Wallabies to have their first Test under new coach Robbie Deans this weekend against Ireland, who last week served it up to the All Blacks, look forward to that!

QLD woes!!

Well the state of Origin II is nearly ready for kick off, but what Sportsmouth has had enough of is the bleating coming from the Qlders!!

After complaining about anything & everything after the first game, they had better find some new excuses after they lose tonight!!!

As soon as Qld lose a series (especially if it's 2 - o) we'll here the following from north of the border, "We don't need to play the third game, what's the point?" (I actually agree with that, but if they're up 2-0 you never hear them complain) & the one I really love "Origin is dead" (if they've gone down three nil).

Lets be honest, the only reason they've won the last two series is because of the following players Darren Lockyer (best in the world, the only current player voted in top 100 of all time) Jonathon Thursten (best halfback since Andrew Johns) Petero Civenociva & Steve Price, two great props who work overtime to cover their teammates mistakes, whilst continuing to shoulder the brunt of all the forwards work!

Why I think NSW will win tonight, well Qld selection is wrong again, and it's across nearly the whole squad, but I'll get into that post game. The backrow for Qld are anonymous on the field giving very little to their side in attack, proving more defensive then offensive!

Score, much the same as the first game, something like 20 to 10

there'll be a wrap tomorrow, where Sportsmouth will explain the selection problems for Qld whilst also comparing the ratings the journos give in the paper to what really happened!!

State of Origin v Teams

This question was raised to sportsmouth by a friend and subsequently the following week was all over the papers, "what to do about the affect the absence of a teams origin stars has on their club teams"?

There have been a few different approaches over the years, but the NRL continues to come back to playing the game mid week, with the selected players not allowed to be involved in the club games preceeding an Origin match. This obviously affects some teams more then others i.e Melb. Storm & the BrisVegas Broncos provide 15 players between them for the next match, thus severely harming their chances of winning the club games that preceed the Origin matches. But does it really effect their finals chances, probably not as if they manage to win one of those games, then it's a bonus, it also gives them a chance to throw some young fringe first grade players into action to see how close they are to making a step up, its actually a tribute to those teams and their coaches that they continue to produce representative players at the rate they do.

The real issue is for the fans, who really wants to pay the price of an over priced ticket to a game where there are none of the teams stars involved? I wouldn't & what they should do is slash the ticket price for games like this, anyway I'm getting away from the original point, sportsmouth is of the opinion that each origin team should be announced on the Sunday following the last game of the round (no monday night footy that weekend) and both teams should do it side by side making a big deal of it, similar to how the yanks show the draft for some of their sports on t.v, then both teams go straight into camp for the rest of the week & play on Friday night, making them available for their club games on the weekend & with some smart organising by the NRL makes sure that teams that are less affected play on the Saturday. Now one argument that'll come out is, it'll cannabalize the crowds for the weekend games, again this is where the fixtures need to be organised properly, make sure that if the Origin was played in Sydney, then the only games played in Sydney that weekend are local derby's held at the local venues, simple really!

A little fore thought from the NRL would solve this issue, although I'm the first to admit the NRL/ARL/NSWRL/QRL have bigger issues to resolve (that's right all those people have a say in the running of the game, its a joke!) its probably lucky at this stage that we don't have more teams privately owned, like English soccor they wouldn't want to let there highly paid stars risk injury in a game that is not for the club!!

That's it for now, if you''ve got a topic you'd like to vent about sport, please feel free to pass it on.

Sportsmouth.