As predicted its all come down to the last race of the season and my favourite track of them all, Interlagos in Brazil.  It’s one of those rare tracks in Formula 1 that really allows the drivers to have a chance at overtaking and as such 9 times out of 10 it’s an incident filled race.  It used to be like that when it was the opening race of the season and it hasn’t dulled any with being the last race now!  As an aside Mexico was also one of my favourites, awesome straight!
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It’s kicking of right about now (check out the twitter account for a link), not that you’d ever guess it because other than a little bit on the BBC news this morning the Rugby League World Cup seems to have gone right under the radar.  You’d think that having bypassed the 2004 world cup because of a worry about the viewing figures that they’d have made sure to overdo the hype machine this time around, doesn’t look like it though?

It’s a bloody shame because Rugby League is an excellent watch.  When you think of how much England get behind the national Rugby Union team with a little bit of publicity you could get the same for league. There are some problems with the competitiveness of the tournament and the organisers know it.  That’s why they’ve gone down the line of changing the group system so that the better teams stand a better chance of getting through to the later stages rather than having walkovers at the semi/final stage.

Anyhoo the first game is England versus Papa New Guinae, expect plenty of hard hitting violence.  This is the sort of thing Sky Sports should be covering, not fishing!

(ps don’t forget it’s the Anglo Welsh cup today as well, plenty of top draw Rugby action. As if you needed an excuse to sit on the sofa all day with beer! It’s pissing down out there).

Has there even been a less suitable sport for TV than fishing? I can’t think of any, OK, maybe female weightlifting but that’s just wrong in so many different ways!

It seems that as Setanta encroach more and more on Sky Sports that they are turning to filler “sports” to occupy their schedules. I wonder how long it will be before we see the current 4 Sky Sports channels cut down? I was at home a lot this week and took the chance to watch quite a bit of sport. It’s a shame then than so little is worth watching. Is anybody really interested in the Welsh Carp Open or whatever the hell else they put on? I don’t mind fishing, it’s a good participation hobby (not a sport), it’s relaxing and it gets you out of the house. That said I would never want to watch a bunch of fat bearded blokes cramped over like they’re taking a dump for hours on end. Only then to catch something and land it in a net that you could drive a bus into. Here’s a tip lads, do away with the poles and rods and just scoop around with your XXXL sized nets. I’m sure there are trawlers out in the North Sea that have smaller nets, you couldn’t fail!

I’m not going to say that I hate fishing, because I don’t. But as far as turning it into a sport and putting it on a sports channel stop it will you?! If you haven’t got enough sport coverage to fill your channels then do us a favour and reduce the number of Sky Sports channels and our subscriptions into the bargain? Whatever you do don’t waste our time with activities that quite rightly get more than enough coverage on the various hobby channels!

I drank beer on Friday night. This shouldn’t be that much of a problem but for me it is because every single time I have a “few” I’m dying for days afterwards. Saturday was spent on the sofa not moving, the last thing I wanted to do was upset my guts anymore than what they were! Sunday I was still feeling too rough to do much of anything, I’m just about coming around today.

The cool thing is that because I was fooked it meant that I got to watch a lot of sport. I managed to catch 2 Heineken Cup games over the weekend. First of all Leinster stuffed Wasps in a game that was far more 1 sided than I was ever expecting. Leinster were happy to run the ball and kick at the right time whilst Wasps were looking for the kick all the time. The end result was 41 – 11 to Leinster, was much deserved as well. The second game I caught was another Anglo/Irish game, this time the current champions Munster against Sale Sharks. Again it was the Irish team that looked to play the running Rugby from the start and Sale were looking desperate at times. They did manage to get themselves back into the game but that only drove Munster on to try harder winning 24-16. Not a stuffing but still it was convincing enough. Special notice must go out to Munsters forwards at the breakdown, they were excellent at isolating the Sale players are turning the ball over, it’s probably what won them the game. Also something that made me laugh, the touching moment when one of the sale forwards wiped the “split open” head of one of the other forwards with his rotten shirt, as if it was going to help. The ref still made him go off, has rugby gone soft?

Saturday was also the first round of Premier League games after the international break so I was looking forward to catching up on all the games on Football First. All the top teams did well, winning convincingly. Well all except Liverpool anyway who in their normal style for the season were jammy as hell and didn’t really deserve fuck all. But what you gonna do? One thing that did annoy me was the lack of the Man Utd – WBA game from football first. Shitty Setanta strikes again. I wonder how long the greedy bastards are going to carry on putting sports fans through this for?

Sunday I was up early for the Chinese Grand Prix. Wasn’t a classic was it? As soon as Hamilton was in front it had that look of being all over. It was no surprise as well to see Ferrari pull out some team orders near then to try and get that midget Massa as close to Hamilton as possible for the last race. I started this season as a long time Ferrari fan but I’ve really swung around in the last half dozen races. It Massa wins the title then Formula 1 loses all credibility as far as I’m concerned, I’d rather watch a A1GP race than that! Anyhoo, Hamilton goes into the last race of the season at Brazil with a 7 point lead knowing that a 5th or better finish wil secure the title. I’m expecting plenty of steward action to try and screw him up as much as possible.

So other than all that I also caught some of the snooker, which was as dull as watching paint dry once Rocket Ronnie was knocked out by that 11 year old. Oh yeah and Andy Murray won some Britvic or something like that as well. But we don’t like Tennis, it’s full of nob heads.

The FA are a greedy bunch. It should be the right of every tax paying citizen to watch their national team in their national sport! Not tonight though because if you want to watch England play Belarus not only do you need a Sky Subscription but also a subscription to an Irish pay-per-view channel. This is rediculous.

There are ways and means however, there are many online TV packages that have sports channels that will show this game (as it’s syndicated around the world to get the FA even more money). Alternatively a number of free programs also show channels that may show the Belarus – England game live online. Check out RojaDirecta.com for more information.

After an action packed (well the first bit anyway) Japanese Grand Prix we are still no closer to knowing who will win this years drivers championship. Massa finished in eighth place securing one championship point whilst Lewis Hamilton finished in 12th, well outside of the points.

During the race both contenders were penalised by the stewards, Hamilton on the first corner of the first lap for overtaking The Boring Bastard and Massa for spinning Hamilton. At the end of the day this left Alonso to take another victory (I wonder what odds you would have got on Alonso winning to races in a row this year?) With 2 races left there is now 6 points between the top 2 drivers and it looks like the FIA have got what they wanted all along. With so much money in terms of TV rights covering Formula 1 it makes perfect sense that the powers that be would want the championship to be dragged out until the last race.

I’m fully expect a few more things to go in Ferrari’s favour before this seasons out.

The Heineken Cup started last night, it’s the biggest thing in Northern hemisphere rugby outside of the world cup, so perhaps I should mention it!

Last night it was Northampton vs. Toulon. Toulon doesn’t have a wage cap as they are French and spend £5 million a year. Northampton being English do and have a MAX of £1.5 million

Result: 56 – 3 to Northampton.

Money can’t buy you everything.

The Heineken Cup is well worth a watch, here’s the fixture list.

According to the English press we should expect this to be 473 – 0 to England. Because as we all know by now that’s just how easy international football is!

England were fantastic last time against the Croats but before that game had been decidedly dodgy under the new manager, Capello. I’m still nervous as to which England team is going to come out tomorrow, the headless chickens or the team that tore Croatia apart. Things aren’t helped on the injury with news that John Terry will very likely miss the game. Whilst I don’t rate Terry in terms of technical defending ability what I do think he adds is huge amounts of composure and organisation. Will England suffer without Terry being in the heart of defence, likely, will they be a lot less organised having the skipper (most probably going to be Gerrard) in midfield, definitely!

For all our sakes I hope England take the points from this game, it should give them the confidence they need to run over (well, beat anyway) Belarus on the 15th. Two wins in these games puts us in a good position for qualification. Lets face it with the way the world is going to shit we could do with a good party in 2010!