Lewis Hamilton will find out today whether or not his appeal to be reinstated as the winner of this years Belgian Grand Prix is successful. With any luck justice will be done, Formula 1 and the FIA will be put back in their place (to govern racing, not kiss the ass of Ferrari) and racing will be the winner.

Hamilton was full of balls at the hearing yesterday, turning around and giving Ferrari counsel, Nigel Tozzi a fist full of attitude. Good on him. I don’t understand why Ferrari are involved at all, it should be a case of Mclaren versus the governing body, not Ferrari. Hamilton asked Tozzi at one point, “Are you a racing driver? NO!”

Tozzi then told Hamilton to “stop personalising” the issue as he was under instruction from Ferrari, who “know as much about Formula One as you do”. Hamilton replied, “With respect, I doubt it.” He’s right. Ferrari are a company, the knowledge of Ferrari is contained within the individuals who have come and gone over the years. Hamilton is UNDOUBTADLY the most talented out and out racer on the planet today. It’s refreshing to see a British sports personality who has personality, cockyness for sure but when you’re good then you shouldn’t have a problem telling people how good you are. Especially arguing with somebody who is only being paid to voice an opinion on a subject of which they have no experience.

If Hamilton and McLaren don’t win this then in my mind Formula 1 is corrupt, simple as that.

I thought it couldn’t get any better than Friday nights play off between St Helens and Leeds. It was a cracking game. Some excellent handling from both sides, but St Helens just slowly pulled ahead till they were miles in front of Leeds. They are such a complete team: Power, Pace and Finesse. It really was a treat to watch.

Then came Saturday. Catalans had 10,000 supports, and Wigan had 200 hardy souls, including a couple who had travelled from Singapore purely to watch the match. For the first 20 mins Wigan didn’t touch the ball, Catalans threw everything at them, but couldn’t cross the line. Once Wigan had the ball, they scored, but Catalan kept at it and with 20 mins or so to go it was 20-20. Then Wigan just exploded and scored 10 odd tries. Yet again it was a cracking game.

So nothing is going to stop me watching the final eliminator next Friday with Wigan against Leeds who have a second bite at the cheery. Come on you Pie Eaters.

World Series? Do I need to elaborate? Even the eccentric British World Championship events such as Worm Charming and Cheese Rolling have entries from all over the world. But the Americans “create” a Tolkien-esque world where only the good old US of A can take part in the “World Series”. As for baseball itself, or “rounders” to give its correct name, is not a real sport but more of a mess around when the games teacher can’t be bother running around reffing a football or rugby match. Oh and when you have a picnic and everyone is tanked up, but even then it’s boring as they keep hitting the ball away from the 3 fielders you have trying to cover an area the size of Alaska. Anyway to summarise: American Baseball: Pants.

Other Baseball Haters:-

• The Bemusement Park » THINGS YOU CAN AND CAN’T HATE ABOUT BASEBALL – Mar 21, 2005 … You can hate baseball TV announcers. You can hate the radio guys, too, … 2 Comments. THE MARLINS ARE GOOD ENOUGH TO HATE AND I DEMAND YOU …
• 26 Years. 26 Bad Teams. The Real Redeem Team? – I hate baseball for making me care about them. I hate baseball for not punishing them. I hate baseball. That hate, however emotionally useful, is probably going to be let go at the end of this season. I never thought I’d see the day …
• baseball players have the best names | The Churning – i hate baseball. but the players have the best names. i say we list them here and now. i’ll put down the … 17 comments. April said: March 1st, 2006 on …
• I Hate Baseball… Less – But it makes me un-American to hate baseball, so when it is on, I don’t protest too much. I’ve recently come to realize that there is some entertainment value though:. Batters look hilarious when they swing and miss – especially when …

Americans wind up the crowd

First post, and what a weekend to write about. It was sport, sport and then more sport on top just for good measure!

Lets start with the Ryder Cup shall we. I was one of those people who finished work early on Friday to catch the start and I was glued to it over the whole weekend. It was clear early on that Americans were up for this and determined to take back the trophy. I’m sure you can read about it in glorious detail on the BBC website but I’ll just say that in my opinion the moment the Americans got their noses in front it looked like it was all over. There was some hope for the Europeans on the Saturday keeping the gap at 2 points but in the singles the Americans just seemed to have the edge, hitting some very impressive way under par rounds. It was just a shame that the American fans couldn’t win with dignity, by all accounts some of the “baiting” of the European players was appalling although a lot of it must have been lost through the power of TV. Overall a deserved American win, I did feel sorry for Nick Faldo, he looked like he’d taken the whole thing just a little too personally. A special mention has to go to Ian Poulter as well for being the highest scoring individual, in no way shape or form did he deserve to be on the losing side.

So my golf viewing was interrupted over the weekend to watch several other things. On Saturday it was mainly the Davis Cup on BBC1. The doubles match I watched was looking like it was heading for a very early finish with the Austrians trouncing our guys. We did manage a small come back to drag the game out a bit but it was soon over. Andy Murray did well yesterday for us but by that time it was too late and team GB had lost 3-2 to Austria, I think that takes us out of the top 12 now.

I also had time to catch the Help For Heroes rugby match on Saturday afternoon. It was great to see that they went past the 1 million target although I was a little curious to know why they hadn’t made a phone line available? I’m sure many of the people watching would liked to have given money as well? Anyway, the game itself, although a little slow, had plenty of “physicality” and a couple of great tries. I’m not sure where the “friendly” part came in but it was a good watch all the same. It even had big Lawrence Dallaglio drop kicking a conversion! Overall the HFH team beat the World 15 by a comfortable margin.

My football for the weekend was a bit limited. I was flicking to and fro to the Liverpool home game on Saturday. Liverpool looked very unlucky in my eyes. I am getting sick to death of hearing whinging about referees this early in the season. Either they are good enough or they are not, if they are not perhaps sacking them might be an option. If you’re that bad at your job in any other walk of life (well accept the public sector) you’d be “released”. Why not football referees? It’s either that or punish those that do nothing but complain about them. What are we striving for, the perfect robot official or a little bit of humanity in which case mistakes just need to be accepted on the basis that they’ll even themselves out over the season. The same can be said about the Chelsea, Manchester United game which I watched yesterday as well. Both teams could have cause to complain but should they?

Well that was a little longer than I’d planned for my first post but never mind. It was a great weekend of sport, hope you enjoyed it too!

Arsenal travelled to Bolton yesterday for what is normally one of their bogey games of the season. You’d never have guessed! As much as it pains me to say Arsenal looked on fire, Wenger has got a really young team together that just look full of running with bags of energy. They were literally running circles around Bolton and 2 of the goals were fantastic passing moves. Even for somebody who doesn’t like Arsenal one bit it was a joy to watch for any football fan.

Anyway rather than bang on about it here are the highlights of the Bolton – Arsenal game.

True story. After Liverpool’s guts and glory performance last week against my beloved United I’ve had to put up with nothing but piss taking by errrrrrrr Scousers eeerrrrrrrrrr all week. It doesn’t help that a few of my mates are huge Liverpool fans so all the old favourites have come out “Leagues ours this season laaa”, “It’s the mighty reds again”! etc

I’ve been OK though because I’ve just been banging on about just how inconsistent they are, they are shit against the lower teams. For the last 10 years they’ve been the most inconsistent team in the Premier League . So confident have my scouse chums been that I got pretty good odds from them because I “knew” that Liverpool wouldn’t win against Stoke today. Of course they wouldn’t. They’d go straight back to being a mediocre team again.

So right now I’m not only delighted that they’ve failed to take advantage of all the hard work they put in last week but I’m also quite a bit richer. That’s the thing about Liverpool, they very rarely disappoint and that’s why’d I’d have money on them not finishing any higher than third this year. Cheers boys.

Tonight sees Wigan play Catalans in the eliminator for the Play offs. Unlike the St Helens/Leeds game this is a real eliminator and will be the last match of the season for one of these teams, hopefully it will be the Snail Eating Froggies from Catalans. Paleaaesina is always a joy to watch, all 18 stone of him on the charge. Although after 2 runs he needs oxygen. Hopefully Barrett, Leuluai & Higham will pull all the strings and create havoc for the opposition. I unfortunately haven’t a good thing to say about Catalans. So to call this a win for Wigan is easy, I just hope the lads don’t let me down. It will of course be another cracking Rugby League Game whomever wins.

Tonight sees St Helens v Leeds play off in the eliminator for the Play offs. Actually it’s not an eliminator, who ever wins goes straight in to the Final and the loser gets a second chance by playing the winner of the Wigan vs. Catalan game tomorrow. If they win they get a rest week to recover.

Although the great Shaun Edwards is famous for saying “Rest is Rust”. These two have provided all three players short listed for the Man of Steel Award. One is the Challenge Cup holder and the other World Club Champion. They also have 5 players each in this years’ Dream Team, so there is plenty of talent on display. It could go either way and if Sinfield, Diskin, Senior & Burrow are playing well then Leeds might just do it. However, St Helens are just so hot at the moment and I could name nearly every player in the side as a game breaker, but Price, Long & Cunningham are the main ones. They slacked off in the draw against Wigan in the final game of the season but by then everything was in the bag.

I’m not too bothered who wins as I just know it will be a cracker, the beer chilling as I speak type.