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!