If you can't beat 'em, for the love of God don't let 'em beat you!

I can't believe Tottenham. Honestly, we're horrible. I don't know if any other team has allowed more goals i the last five minutes of a game than Spurs. I also don't know how to find that stat, so we'll just assume I'm right.

At any rate, Spurs went down 2-0 at the Reebok - but then they fought back to 2-2 thanks to some good effort from the team and *sigh* Darren Bent. Who would've thunk it?

But then, four minutes to time, we lost. 3-2. Off a corner. Story's in the books.

Now, the question comes back to "what to do?". I'll tell you what not to do: bring back every former player and their grandmother. Unbelievable. I love Jermaine Defoe and Robbie Keane, I was extremely happy with their play at White Hart Lane and I was horribly sad to see them go. When Chimbonda left - I was excited.

And yet - we've spent far more money than we made trying to bring these guys back. Defoe's been off his game, but he's getting there. That said, it's a slightly different situation - he never wanted to leave and he's coming back to play under his favourite manager. Chimbonda was shite at the Lane, bad for morale, bad for the team. Now - Robbie Keane. His boyhood club was Liverpool. If I were a professional footballer and Spurs offered me the chance to play in North London, I'd be there in a second. Then, if Spurs decided they didn't really want me anymore, and sent me back to the team I came from for half the price they bought me for... well I'd be crushed. And I certainly wouldn't be excited to play. That's what's going to happen if we bring back Robbie Keane, and it's a scary prospect.

Anyways, this is a team that needs to do a few things;
1) Have the mental strength to pull through the last minutes of a match
2) Be smarter than a monkey with a wheel when it comes to transfers
3) FUCKING WIN

Now, in university 'news':
1) Men's basketball played a hell of a game against the Varsity Blues. With a minute and a half left they tied it up. With 17 seconds left they went down by 4 points and the game was lost.
2) Men's hockey had one hell of a weekend - they beat Ryerson and U of T with minimal fuss, though they almost blew it against the Varsity Blues.
3) I've been throwing around ideas for how our football team is going to do next year, and I'm starting to get increasingly excited by our prospects. Maybe we're not going to fall apart next season?

As always, Andrew, Phil and I will be doing Premier League Punditry today at 1:15 p.m. at Sporting Madness, be tharr or be squarr...

Obituary - Queen's Homecoming

Please read Neate Sager's post from Out of Left Field, explaining to a tee my feelings on Queen's administration canceling changing the date of Homecoming to late May.

And shed a tear for the moving of this school's greatest tradition, and no I don't mean Aberdeen.

The thing about the Aberdeen party is this:
Queen's students go to the street, mull about for a while, then leave.
Non-Queen's students spend hours on the street 'waiting for something to happen'.

Here's the letter I sent to the Carleton Charletan* last month explaining my feelings on this in response to an article on their journalists had written on our Homecoming (why the fuck did they have a reporter at Queen's Homecoming. Carleton is unassociated....).

Thanks McGill, Carleton, Ottawa, Western, U of T, Ryerson, York, Laurier, Waterloo, et al, you fucked it up for us.
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* I don't know why they called me "Amrit A.", I gave them my entire name. High-quality newspaper eh?

A day later, but still good

So, Kill McGill didn't quite go to plan. Long story short: 3-0, one 'fight', outshot by a little more than double, and learning that the best way to climb out of a 3-0 deficit in the third does not involve spending half the period on the penalty kill.

That's about all I have to say about that, on the blog anyway. I should have a web article about the game going up soon enough, and Andrew live-blogged the hell out of that badboy over on Sporting Madness.

Also, I've decided that the press box at the Memorial Centre is easily the scariest thing I've ever set foot in, and odds are I won't do it again. Even Eric (the civil engineer) said that he couldn't work out how the balls it stays in the air. Needless to say, odds are I won't be watching a game in or under the bloody thing. Unfortunately I can't seem to find a picture of it, but that's all the more incentive to go out to a Gaels home game and see it for yourself!!!

Ovular domination ends so soon, but continues so strong

So, Queen's dominating ovular-ball-game-teams went 1 for 2 this weekend. (For non-Queen's sports stuff, scroll down).

Our football team had a pretty shitty performance at Richardson in the semifinal, falling to the University of Ottawa GeeGees 23-13, ending Yates and Vanier dreams.

This brings up my major problem with this first-round bye business. Yes, it's nice to not have to play a game when everyone is, but it makes for some serious focus issues. Games allow teams to center and focus in a way that practice can't. Queen's hadn't played a game for two weeks before the game against Ottawa, and they came out absolutely flat. A play-by-play rundown of the game can be found here. I was hoping that the punt-block safety at the end of the game would be the momentum turner our boys in gold needed, but unfortunately they just never got it going and fell into shambles. Dream season turns into nightmare I suppose.

Our rugby team, on the other hand, continued it's kickassery with a convincing smashing of the Western Mustangs, in a repeat of the game I traveled down to London to cover (see game report here and here). Western played the exact same game it did during the regular season, but Queen's didn't react. This gave Western no opportunity to exploit Queen's being a man-down, and the Gaels pushed forward for a 19-8 win, setting up a second final featuring the Gaels. They'll be playing in Markham against the McMaster Mauraders next weekened - I encourage all Queen's sport fans to travel down on the fan bus to watch what must be Queen's best varsity squad.

In pro-sport news:

Spurs are rolling! 'Arry is fucking fantastic, we took a 2-1 win over Keano's new side Liverpool at the lane over the weekend. Mind, it was on a late goal by Pavlyuchenko, and the other Spurs goal was a Carragher (sp?) own goal, but whatever, I'll take it! 7 points on 3 matches is a definite improvement from the start of the season, where the Lilywhites couldn't be counted on to get 3 points from 7 matches. On a related topic - how on-target were Phil's predictions?? Jesus!

The Leafs (I hate to, but I have to put it in*) had an amazing comeback against the Rangers on Saturday, one that actually got me out of my seat. I like the Rangers (see below), don't get me wrong, but that was one hell of an exciting performance. The Leafers have been putting on a pretty decent show this year, and I couldn't be more pissed.

The Sens took one point out of the weekend after a shootout loss to Tampa, leading to an incredibly interesting article on the Sens Army blog regarding the game and our shootout lineup which, frankly, is retarded. Also, I've come to like Ruutu. The world might be imploding.

Finally - my dominance in NHL 09 has been qualified by a tournament win. The Rangers (Yours truly), Sabres (Apps), Capitals (Eric) and Flames (Conal) went head-to-head in a round robin/knockout tournament over the weekend. The Rangers were weak on defense, but the offense was their saving grace, allowing 10 goals but scoring 13 in the round robin, this compared to most games ending 1-0 or 2-1 over 3 games. The final was fought out between the Rangers and Sabres and, in a dramatic overtime plagued by ill discipline by the Sabres, the Rangers put the game home to take the first ever NHL 09 gold. Another tournament should follow, here's hoping the result is the same!**

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* That's what she said
** This entire paragraph was unneccesary

Hockey does the splits while rugby steamrolls

Pretty decent two day show for the campus teams I was watching.

Rugby
Gaels 70 - 3 University of Toronto Varsity Blues

Rugby performed the steamroller act we all know only too well against the lowly Varsity Blues over at Richardson Stadium. No one felt it necessary to tell me that as I stood shivering against the weather at Kingston Field before finding out about the location switch. A short cab ride over, and I asked a fan the score. The game kicked off at 1, I arrived at 1:20 - the fans had already lost count of the score. Now the scoreline isn't much of a surprise given the outcome of the last Gaels v Blues rugby match, but I thought the weather might have actually made an impact today.

Let me paint this picture the best way I can - miserable. Absolutely miserable. High winds, freezing cold, pouring rain (my notebook fell apart), not dry even under the makeshift tents set up at the endzone. The field was in such poor condition that a few tries were missed as a result of players sliding through the try zone and not getting the ball down in time. Absolutely. Fucking. Miserable.

But the talent prevailed, and the Varsity Blues' season (unsurprisingly) came to an end on the rainswept fields of Richardson Stadium. Next match for the Gaels - the Western Mustangs. This time they'll be visiting here, I went down to London to cover the last Western match (a dramatic 12-12 draw). Since we drew that one on a last-play try, I'd be interested to see how this one goes. There's some bad blood between the teams, many of the players know each other pretty well, suffice to say I'm really looking forward to next weekend.

Hockey
Gaels 2 - 5 Carleton Ravens
Gaels 4 - 1 University of Toronto Varsity Blues

Friday night against the Ravens was an unfortunate game for the Gaels. They forechecked tenaciously, took the body hard*, and all-in-all just made life hell for the Ravens. Then they scored on a goaltender's mistake, and the Gaels lost their tenacity. Queen's started to regain their confidence towards the end of the period after a short burst of Carleton dominance, but couldn't buy a goal and, late in the second, Carleton made it 2-0 on a powerplay goal. The third period was just flat unfortunate for the Gaels, they pulled one back 1:20 in, and allowed three goals (scoring one halfway through).

Saturday night, Queen's seemed to figure it out. U of T is a formidable opponent (as far as hockey goes), there's a divisional rivalry and, judging by the hits and the talk of the players (I was sitting near the penalty boxes), personal rivalries there too. Some iffy refereeing throughout the game, a lot of no-calls and over-calls, but somehow the refs didn't lose control of the game. Queen's had one hell of a first period, scoring two goals in less than a minute and their third goal 8 minutes after that, taking a 3-0 lead into the period break (after killing a minute-long 5-on-3). The second period was largely a stonewall by Queen's. Toronto took 10 shots on goal (their lowest, believe it or not, period shot-count of the game), but Queen's survived. The third period saw UofT pull one back about halfway through, but Queen's pulled it back on an empty-netter with 39 seconds left (yeah, the OUA got it wrong there - they said it was with 30 seconds left. Pft). Solid night overall, though.

My biggest concern with the hockey team after this weekend is the defense. The Toronto game was hallmarked by some exceptionally clutch saves by goalie Brady Morrison, but it could have easily gone the other way. The Gaels were outshot 41-29 against Carleton and 38-18 against the Varsity Blues. Something that definitely needs to be remedied, as it's been said before - Morrison's good, but he's no Gibb**.

Oh, and also - the Sens fucked the bed tonight. That's about all I have to say about that.

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* That's what she said
** I can't find any of Gibb's stats from this season at Laredo, but then the CHL season is about as fresh as the OUA one so, watcha gonna do. At any rate; this is what they say about him on the team page.

Sorry!

On the subject of Sorry!, does anyone actually remember how to play it? I'd love to get my nostalgia on.

Anyways, this apology is for the lack of articles recently.

Both Milway and I have been getting our collective ass handed to us by midterms and essays and whatnot - interrupted only by copious drinking.

This is, of course, why we haven't put up anything new since 7 days ago - typically something of a sin in my eyes for a sports blog. Especially when there's been so much going on in our little world.

Summary:
Queen's football - perfect 8-0 season
Queen's rugby - undefeated 5-0-1 season
Soo Greyhounds - had their asses handed to them by the Fronts :(
Sens - mixed results
Spurs - got beaten by Stoke in probably the worst match I've seen in my entire life
England - beat Belarus, have turned the tide, quickly starting to play up to their potential

Anyways, sorry for the lack of posting lately, we'll try to get back into the swing of things immediately following this busy period. Please refer to any or all of the blogs posted on the right-hand side of the page for further time-wasting!

Game the second and Queen's sport stuff

Sorry for the delay folks.

Unfortunately I didn't get the chance to watch the game yesterday as I was covering Queen's lacrosse, so I'm not going to bother with a game recap because... well... the one I'd give would be a lot less useful than this, this or this.

That said, it was 3-1.

On to Queen's sport:

Football
Queen's 80 - 0 York

The starters came out midway through the third quarter... and the second/third strings beat up on the Lions too. What is it with Toronto-area universities being so shitty at ovular-ball related sports?

Next weekend sees the CIS #2 Gaels take on the U of O GeeGees at Richardson. It'll be on The Score... which is unfortunate because the stadium the student side will be empty... before and after halftime. That said, it is fortunate because (hopefully) I'll be able to watch the game on TV. It'll be the Gaels' last real test before playoffs start, and hopefully it'll be a huge confidence boost. That said, week 8 is against Waterloo so I can't imagine we'll be going into the playoffs on a low.

Men's Rugby
Queen's 106-0 Trent

Men's ovular-ball-sport for the win! It would appear our rugby team is chugging along nicely, and setting an OUA record along the way. That said - Trent got beaten 99-0 last year (the game was called to avoid further embarrasment), so this wasn't much of a test. The test is this Friday, when the Brock Badgers (last year's OUA finalist and the team that beat us) is coming to Kingston Field. Be there! Brock's lost some of their key guys from last year but their core is more or less still together... it'll be one hell of a game!

Men's Hockey
Queen's 0-2 Western

Looks like there was no party-spoiling - we beat them on our Homecoming and they beat us on theirs. The men's home opener did not have a strong scoreline (for a Queen's fan), but I wasn't there... so we'll wait for the home opener this week to see how they're playing. Wait, fuck. Thanksgiving. I won't be there for that game either, but if you're in town, our boys have their home opener against York this Friday night and that weird Oshawa school-like thing on Saturday afternoon.

Women's Soccer
Queen's 0-1 Ottawa
Queen's 6-0 Trent

Solid split - Ottawa's one hell of a team, but Trent isn't a team we should be losing to... and we didn't. Good result for a young side, but I didn't see the game. That said, Andrew will have more analysis in The Journal tomorrow.

Men's Soccer
Queen's 5-0 RMC
Queen's 2-0 Trent

Holy fuck. Men's soccer finally had a weekend worth talking about... and I wasn't there. Again, Andrew will break it down later, but this has been a really unsuccessful season for the boys and this will be a good confidence boost for them.

No Queen's wins (that I know of) happened in sports that I don't typically cover, so I'm not going to get into it - but in short, women's hockey lost, women's rugby lost, men's lacrosse won, women's lacrosse lost-lost-won... that's it I think.

Clear eyes, full hearts, and there's some hockey at the end

If they can do it, so can I.

A new season of Friday Night Lights has begun, and I for one was a little skeptical, after the train-wreck that was their last season. Murder (er.. manslaughter... self-defense... what?), ridiculous stories of teenagers running off unchecked to another country for magic shark cells of some kind, adoption, a set of over-tumulus love triangles, squares, etc... it was ridiculous.

But, like any good fan, I'll watch it regardless. And the new episode is probably their best since the first season. Looks like they're getting back to more realistic situations for the characters... and a whole lot of football. Oh yes, in yesterday's episode there were multiple practice scenes and a game scene! Hurrah! Mo' football, says I!

Now, the only hole left is that Hispanic kid from last season, who Buddy Garritty adopted. Where'd he go? Lyla seems to have decided to stay (I thought it was her senior year last year, but whatever) with Buddy while her mom, stepdad and (presumably) siblings all went to Northern California (hippies!!), but Lyla's staying with her dad. Okay. But, like I said... what happened to the Hispanic kid who Buddy adopted?

As for interesting twists, I'd like to see how this whole thing plays out with the freshman quarterback and Matt Saracen. Badass! And hooray for Tim Riggins continuing to hook-up with Lyla Garrity, attaboy!

Anyways, the show seems to be good again, I'll keep watching.

Oh - and by the way: staying with football, the Gaels are ranked number two in the country! WOO! Queen's Silver Gaels? At any rate, this is a bye week for the Tricolour (err... York, bye week, tom-ay-to, tom-ah-to), then next week will be the last big test before playoffs. Ottawa, at Richardson. Should be a barn-burner. Or, a barn-wrecker? At any rate, it'll be on the Score, and I for one will be watching!

Touching briefly on hockey: the Gaels had a pretty unsuccessful preseason in the Atlantic provinces, but will be looking to shake it off with their first regular season game at Western... on their Homecoming. Wow, the Queen's v Western Homecoming games just keep on rolling, don't they? At any rate, in the words of jead coach Brett Gibson, "We're going there to spoil a party". Them's fightin' words, I love it.

Oh, continuing to briefly touch hockey *whistle whistle*: the Sens beat Frolunda today 4-1. Alfie got a standing O from his hometown crowd when he notched a beautiful backhand over the Indian's goalie to make it 2-0. Jason Smith deflected the puck into the net for Frolunda's only goal... it'll happen. I unfortunately won't be able to watch the season opener on Saturday against Pittsburgh, if someone would keep me posted I would be most gracious.

Well, I might as well continue to briefly touch hockey: The Soo Greyhounds are in Kingston on October 17th. I'm fucking jacked.

Gaels ride Mustangs at Homecoming

Unfortunately, the Journal is space-deprived this week, and my super-awesome long-ass football article couldn't make the paper. Fortunately, it means that I don't have to write a new article for the blog about the football game (at the permission of boss-man). Enjoy!
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Twelve Mustang turnovers, fourteen Queen’s points in 24 seconds, and a gaggle of engineers, this year’s Homecoming football game was one to be remembered. The Queen’s Gaels, wearing antler decals on the back of their helmets in memory of Hal ‘Moose’ McCarney, defeated the Western Mustangs 43-16 on Saturday, to the delight of the sellout crowd at Richardson Stadium.

The game got off to a slow start, as both teams were trying to adjust to the challenge of playing on a rain-soaked field. Neither offense could get anything going, most passes were off-target or dropped, and neither running back could make any headway against the strong defensive corps.

Then came the first mistake of the game, as Mustangs long-snapper Conor Elliott snapped the ball over the head of punter Daryl Wheeler, causing a safety and putting Queen’s in the lead. With just under five minutes remaining in the first quarter, Elliot missed another snap, causing a scramble and an eventual fumble, which Queen’s recovered on the Western 10 yard line. This led to Queen’s running back Mike Giffin’s first touchdown of the game, a one yard hop over the Western defensive line.

Turnovers continued to be the story of the game in the second quarter, as Western’s offense was knocking on the door, and looking to bring the 9-1 scoreline closer, but Queen’s Alex DePrato intercepted Western quarterback Michael Faulds’ pass at the Queen’s goal line and returned it for 95 yards, giving Queen’s gorgeous field position for their second touchdown, courtesy of Giffin on a 3 yard run, giving the Gaels a 16-1 lead. Another Western fumble, created by Osie Ukwuoma and recovered by T.J. Leeper, gave Queen’s offense the ball on the Western four yard line. This led to Queen’s third touchdown of the game, scored on a 6 yard pass from quarterback Danny Brannagan to tight-end Chris Ionnides, sending the teams off at halftime with the Gaels in the lead 23-1.

Western’s offense finally started to click in the second half, as a 10 play, 104 yard drive was capped off by a John Leckie two yard run, but the Mustangs failed to complete their two-point conversion, bringing the score to 23-07.

In the fourth quarter, after Leckie had scored his second touchdown of the game to bring the game to 23-14, Western’s offense was continuing to pressure the Gael’ defense, but on third and inches they couldn’t convert for a first down, giving Queen’s the ball on the Tricolour 33. The offense went on a 77 yard drive to score another touchdown, with Brannagan completing an 11 yard pass to slot back Scott Stinson.

Immediately after that touchdown, a Western fumble off the kickoff gave the Gaels’ offense the ball back in the Western half, and they made no mistakes as Dan Village cleared a field goal, then less than a minute later converted another to give Queen’s a commanding 36-14 lead.

Finally, in the last minute of play, Gaels’ Peter Boshyk intercepted another pass from Faulds, and after a 41 yard return, the offense took over with Giffin scored a 29 yard run, capping off a three touchdown game which was also his first regular season game of under 100 rushing yards since 2005.

Queen’s football head coach Pat Sheahan acknowledged the achievements of the defense in helping his team beat the Mustangs.

“Unbelievable defense today,” he said. “[The Mustangs] have a prolific offense and their kids caught the ball today, they were completing some passes. Our kids knew they weren’t going to shut them down, they caught the ball and moved the ball with ease.”

As for the turnovers, Sheahan said that felt they caused the momentum shift in the game, and gifted the Gaels points.

“The DePrato interception there where it’s 9-1, in my mind, that’s the TSN turning point,” he said. “All of those turnovers we had today had a major impact. Almost every one had ramifications and consequences to it. It was interesting how many of our tallies came off their turnovers.”

DePrato said that his interception was a result of luck, but changed the flow of the game.

“Everyone got pretty amped up afterwards,” he said. “Right place at the right time, but yeah, definite momentum changer.”

Jimmy Allin, who ended the game with one interception, 22 rushing yards and 50 return yards said that the offense gave Queen’s the advantage early in the game while the offense was sorting itself out.

“Our defense was out there a lot for the first half, but our offense is just way too good to be held down all day.”

Western head coach Greg Marshall said that the turnovers were what cost his team the game.

“That pick was big,” he said. “It could’ve been 9-8, all of a sudden it was 23-1. … There was a direct relationship [between the number of turnovers and the final score]. We put our defense in bad situations. Give Queen’s credit, they forced those turnovers.”

Wuck Festern indeed

More details on the Homecoming game will be thrown down tomorrow, as I am about to go drinking.

Happy Homecoming to all, and to all a drunk night.

At any rate, I'll be writing a blog post on today's game tomorrow at some point, so be jacked for that.

Andrew over at Sporting Madness will be blogging about it today (probably), and Neate at Out of Left Field did a liveblog on the game (I should've told you folks about that earlier), and I'd assume they'll have more details on the game later.

Cha Gheill!!

Imperfect, but no longer inhuman

Every Queen's men's rugby game I've covered this year has been a tale of destruction. West Point, U of T, Ulster, all crushing victories for the Tricolour.

I travelled to Western with the men's rugby team this weekend, and it was a hell of a show.

The game started hard, both teams dug in and didn't give an inch either way, it was back and forth. Both teams managed to sustain pressure during the first half, but neither team managed to score. If anything, Western was granted the initiative with the opportunity to convert a couple of penalties, but the three points eluded them because, apparently, their fly-half has two left feet. And by that, I mean he couldn't kick for shit.

As the first half was wrapping up, Queen's managed to smash a try through the Western defensive lines courtesy Pat Richardson... powerful as hell, scrappier than that.

The second half was an interesting one, and it started badly for the Gaels. Fullback Colin Alexander absolutely ruined what I assume was their wing while he was in midair. I'm talking YouTube quality hit, horribly illegal, but absolutely brutal, and awesome to watch from the other side of the field. Mustang going for a ball in the air, Alexander dropped his shoulder and went midair, flipping the poor bugger and lying him out. Probably a red card offense, he was sin-binned.

Western took the initiative from there, and after a fair amount of pressure, they managed to score their first try of the game. But, like I said before, their fly-half is balls and he missed the conversion, leaving the score at 7-5.

Alexander returned, but we took another yellow card from there, a pretty iffy call from the ref, something about illegal movement in the scrum. Either way, we were a man down for another 10 minutes, and Western managed to convert again. This time they went damn near right through the pipes, and their fly-half would have been hard-pressed to miss this one. 12-7 going into the end of the game.

So we enter extra time, Queen's is at full-strength, and pushing harder than all hell. Their efforts were finally rewarded as Richardson punched through his second try of the game, tying up the score. The passion was running incredibly high, and I couldn't contain my own cheering as they pushed the try home. I know, I know, impartial reporter, blah blah blah, there's only so much emotion one can ignore before reverting to the fan that they truly are. The conversion was missed by mere inches though, and that wound up being the last kick of the game, as the game was tied 12-12.

The post-game interviews took a very different tone than they had in any of those previous games I'd covered... they were actually emotional. There was something other than "w00t we won!", it was human. There was a palatable sense of accomplishment, but also one of loss.

The post-game was also mind-blowing. For me, the game always ended at the final whistle, a couple of interviews and I'm on my way. But, when you're a 5 hour drive away from home, it's not easy to pull that off. I was introduced to the tradition of the home team hosting the away team to dinner. Hearty, hot food was served up by the Western team, and the teams sat together and talked. Even after the game, during the seconds match, there was a fair amount of socializing between the players who had, only moments ago, been out for eachother's blood. Everyone seemed to know eachother and, beyond that, seemed to be friends with one another. At the dinner, the captains chose the opposing team's players of the game, and then everyone went their own way.

The social, the human aspect to the game I'd never experienced before was impressive as it was surprising.

I would also encourage Gaels fans to start going out to men's rugby home games. The team is amazing, their play is exceptional, they're easily one of the better teams in the OUA, if not the CIS, and, like all varsity teams, could do with some more fans.

Delayed but nevertheless

Who would've thunk it, I come back to school and I'm busier than I was all summer at work. Sorry for the dinstinct lack of posting, but I'm no longer spending 7.5 hours/day parked in front of the ordinateur*... doing nothing. Now the 7.5 hours/day I spend parked in front of the ordinateur are filled with... well, MSN, GoogleTalk, Facebook, FIFA 08, Weeds, Scrubs, and other fun-filled activities.

At any rate, some updates, then my post. Firstly, Milway isn't lazy, he has in fact written a new post. Unfortunately, it was written in MS Word, like all his other posts, but all of a sudden Blogger isn't letting me post it because of some HTML in the World file... even though I'm copying it into the blog word-entry thingamabob. I'm mighty confused, but I'm trying to get it up (that's what she said), because it's really good. The Seventh Inning Stretch is still alive and kicking though, not to worry baseball fans.

Now, for my posting of random thoughts:

1) ENGLAND FUCKING WON. In the event that you happen to live under a rock, England smacked Croatia about 4-1 in Zagreb, where the Croats (had) yet to lose. Boo. Fucking. Yeah. Theo Walcott had a hattrick, Rooney was setting up bloody everything and finally popped in his own goal. Of course, this was the game that I decided "fuck it what's the point", but from Phil's account, apparently England were playing beautiful flowing stuff, almost toying with the Croats, playing well, not Turkish, as they had against Andorra. They played with creativity, poise and ablity. I honestly could not be more pleased. Croatia may not seem like a strong adversary, but they're a damn good side and they'd never lost at home. England squeaked past Andorra.

2) The Premier League is becoming absolutely retarded. If Chelsea is Chelski, Man City is now Abu City, playing out of the Middle Eastlands.

3) Queen's men's rugby faces their first real test this weekend... in a friendly against the University of Ulster, who smacked Trent 64-3 on Tuesday. They also beat the balls out of Fleming College... we're playing for Canadian pride here, let's go Tricolour, come on you Gaels!!!

4) Why won't hockey fucking start. Goddamit. I plan on getting NHL 09 at some point in the very near future, be excited for a review of that game, or, better yet, a review of what the game does to Test subject A (myself), B (Mike), and C (whoever is unfortunate enough to be C).
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* homage to the fact that I worked in Hull

Hey remember that time when Queen's beat up on the US Army?

No? Then clearly you weren't at Queen's v West Point men's rugby yesterday. 40-8 final score. Good dancing Jehovah.

It was interesting watching Army for a couple of reasons. For one - they're the motherfucking United States Army Academy's rugby firsts. But, moreso, because they reminded me a lot of RMC. Their game was a physical one, but there was little in the way of finesse, speed or real talent on the squad, they preferred to bash through than pass around.

Queen's had unbelievable ball support and speed, which were well-combined to create some kind of fearsome try-scoring machine... yup. It could at one second look like they had a man completely isolated up the pitch but within seconds he would have at least 2 passing options. West Point clearly had no idea what was going on.

I had the opportunity to talk to Army's coach (Rich Pohlidal) after the game, who said (among other things) "They play with great pace, you could really see the experience. They also play as a unit, it's amazing to see that level of unity and that level of cohesion at the collegiate level."

So there! Good things to come for this season? If they play the season with the same tenacity and ability they did today (without getting into all the penalty trouble they found themselves at the end of the game), I don't see why not.

More detailed story to come in The Journal later on this week, I'll link it when able.

Back in Kingston

So I'm back in Kingston after a relaxing time out of the country (but no more than a 2 hour drive away from it...), and am delving headfirst into my life as a university sports journalist.

First, though, a small point. In the article I wrote about beach volleyball uniforms, I linked three risqé pictures. From those pictures, I have gotten close to 100 hits. I'm not sure how I feel about that... while on the one hand it's awesome that I'm getting so many hits, it kind of cheeses me off that all those people are entirely missing the point of the article. Dammit.

Anyways, the past few days have been pretty busy in the world of sports.

First - professional sport. The Sens traded Andrej Mezaros to the Lightning for Filip Kuba, Alexandre Picard and San Jose's 2009 first round draft pick (let's hope the Sharks tank*).

Second - new uniforms. Queen's updated it's look and have gone for more uniformity, if you will, across all its sports. Adidas is making the gear - I really hope they sell caps with the new Queen's logo because I will buy that in a second. Here's a slideshow where it goes through all the uniforms for Queen's sports. Oh, and we're now called the Queen's Gaels. To be honest I like all the changes - Golden Gaels sounded fruity to everyone not at Queen's... so yeah I like it.

Third - Queen's sports. Men's Rugby beat Dartmouth 19-0 today to kick off an annual preseason tournament. They will meet West Point tomorrow, a game I'll be covering. Not a chance of a liveblog but I'll probably throw up a summary post-game sometime. Men's basketball continued their mingling with Americans when they beat South Alabama in 102-94 in triple OT in Ottawa today.
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* My obligatory pun.