supporting teams in other sports

so as mentioned in my previous blog me and sam are watching the liverpool man city match and have just wrote a really quick crap blog about football and this reminded me that we had a conversation recently about me supporting teams in other sports. this is because... ooh i'll break here to tell you dzeko has just scored for city to make it 2-1 to them on the night (2-2 on aggregate)... anyways back to the blog.... sam supports teams in loads of sports. i support middlesbrough in football and have a soft spot for accrington stanley too. but that was it. then a while back sam tried to get me into aussie rules and made me choose a team. so i did. so we decided i need teams in other sports. first though we're gonna look at the teams sam supports and why.

sam supports

football - middlesbrough - home town club, dad supports them, supported them for 16 years. standard reasons really.

aussie rules - west coast eagles - when he was in australia he worked in perth and stayed with a west coast eagles family 

american football - pittsburgh stealers - has family in pittsburgh so thats his local team over there

baseball - pittsburgh pirates- same reason as above (fun fact... they are statistically the worst team in american sports and yanks love statistics)

ice hockey - pittsburgh penguins - has family in pittsburgh so.... oh you probably could have guessed that

basketball - minnesota timberwolves - of all the cities he visited in america he liked minneapolis the most. and since pittsburgh (his home from home) doesnt have a team he thought he would support this shower of shite (he's just informed me that they are shite)

a quick break here to tell you bellamy scored for the fucking scousers. booooooooooooooooooo



as you can see these are all very noble reasons for supporting these teams. now lets see who i've chosen and why....

first the one team i already support...

football - Middlesbrough - local team etc etc....

ooh look at me starting with a noble reason....

so now on to the others. we created a rule here for choosing. it cant be a team that sam supports. we feel the rivalry will help me get into it as i always like to wind people up! anyways here we go

so the first time we had this conversation was during the aussie rules season when sam felt i needed an aussie rules team to go for. this one was easy, i pretty much had only one team to go for....

aussie rules - adelaide crows - paul mcclain who was harold and madge bishops foster son left ramsay street to go play for the adelaide crows

so then we moved on to american football

at the time of deciding this it was down to the last 4 teams in the playoffs. so to have some interest for this season we decided i would choose one of them. it was out of new england patriots, baltimore ravens, new york giants, san fransisco 49ers. sam put forward an argument for the team i should pick and i went for them

american football - baltimore ravens - they play in purple, their linebacker should be in prison and also they are named after an edgar allen poe story.

so now we moved on to the other sports he has teams in......

ice hockey - chicago blackhawks - they are named after a bird and a theme seems to be developing plus and this is what convinced me.... when wayne and garth play street hockey in waynes world they are wearing blackhawks jerseys

when it came to baseball it was a little trickier. there wasnt a bird team i liked the sound of. so after sam making a few possible suggestions of other teams and me suggesting negro league teams i found on wikipedia (woo go zulu canibal giants) we settled on a team...

baseball - milwaukee brewers - i like beer

and now to basketball.... we havent discussed this properly till now. like exactly now while we are writing this blog. by the way the fucking scousers won. anyways back to basketball....

basketball - boston celtics - i played as the celtics a lot on nba jam for the mega drive and have always had a soft spot

so there you go, sam chose his teams for reasons of locality and family and a love for the town or city they were based in and i based mine on a character from neighbours, the colour of their shirts, waynes world, beer and the mega drive

so now we're gonna choose teams in a new sport where neither of us have teams....... lingerie football!!

for those who dont know this sport, its american football played by women in their pants! fucking class!

so how are we gonna pick these teams?

well we are gonna be thorough and take a good look at all the teams and then after really thinking about it probably go for the ones with the best name or fittest girl or something like that

fuck it barca real madrid is on now we'll pick a name and be done with it...

sam - lingerie football - las vegas sin - he likes vegas, he likes the name
dave - lingerie football - orlando fantasy - i like the name

so there we are, who do you support?

sam writes http://irrelevantidiot.blogspot.com/ its good. read it

football

me and sam are watching liverpool man city on the telly and are talking about football

we have decided to come up with our england squad.

goal keepers
joe hart
ben foster
scott carson - sam says he is playing well in turkey (i'll trust him, i didnt even know he was playing in turkey)

right backs
micah richards
glenn johnson

left backs
ashley cole
leighton baines

centre backs
rio ferdinand
phil jones
chris smalling
gary cahill

left mid
stewart downing
adam johnson

right mid
aaron lennon
theo walcott

centre mid
jack wilshere
gareth barry
steven gerrard
james milner

forwards
Wayne Rooney
jermaine defoe
danny wellbeck
peter crouch

chief of staff - robbie mustoe
head scout - des walker
chief moron - carlton palmer

this blog was wrote in under 3 minutes and joe hart has made 3 wonder saves in that time so is definitely nailed on as our number one keeper.

this is a dog in a football shirt we will write a proper blog in a minute 

sick

so last night i was out working and witnessed something that shocked me to the pit of my stomach and made me feel genuinely ashamed of what i saw.

a car full of lads drove past me down the road and then i heard them shout "fucking paki cunt fuck off home" at a young lad walking down the street by himself  50 yards on from where i was stood. it took me a minute to actually realise what had happened, partly due the fact i was concentrating on sending a text at the time and partly cos i just didnt think things like that actually happened anymore.

by the time i had realised what had happened the car had sped off round one corner and the lad had scurried off in the other direction clearly upset. i was left stood where i was working in total shock.

 i'm aware as i'm writing this what i have said already may sound a little naive but i think that is more the way i am putting it across. i know things like this happen, just i didnt expect to see it.

i have become aware recently of how much the far right is rising in this country but this was my first experience of it happening in front of me. i know that the bnp and edl and other far right organisations have gained much more support over the last few years. i am a member of a couple of facebook groups that are against racism and these parties and have lost many hours reading through posts of what racists have said and believe on these pages and i have become angry and get more and more wound up to the point that my only argument to them would be "fuck off!", i have tried joining in debates and always found my arguments falling on deaf ears...

i've heard people having racist conversations and have at times interrupted and tried to put them right, and shamefully on other occassions i have not interrupted and thought there is no point as they wont listen anyway.

i have seen racist comments made when drunk people are fighting and things come out in the heat of the moment. its wrong for them to say that, most of the time the people saying it know its wrong, its said when tempers are lost or to provoke a reaction. this is not right and should not be tolerated but its hard to get involved when tempers are lost and fists are flying.

but this is the first time i have seen grown men racially abuse someone in a totally unprovoked attack.

it made me so angry. there was nothing i could do at the time, as i said, those involved were gone before it had actually sunk in what had happened. i couldn't tell the people in the car they were wrong, that they were ignorant and offensive. i couldnt tell the lad that he should ignore them, that most people disagreed with what they said.

its just i feel i should be doing something though.

it winds me up so much. the stupidity of what they said. i just rant about it, i dont make my point well. i mean telling him to fuck off home, he was a young lad probably a teenager at the oldest he was in his early twenties, more likely than not born in james cook hospital and living within a mile of where this happened all his life and his parents or grandparents may well have come from pakistan, but whats that got to do with anything, they could have just as easily come from india or any other fucking country in the world it actually doesnt matter.

i'm struggling to make my point here, this is the problem i have. there is so much i find wrong with this that i dont know how to articulate it.

 it baffles me so much why people are like this. i have throughout my life judged people on the things they say and do. everyone is individual. you cant judge one person on something someone who has the same skin colour or religion does. thats like people staying away from me cos someone else called dave was a rapist "gotta stay away from those daves, they're all a bit rapey" that is the level of stupidity!

so at the minute when times are harder than they have been for a while. you get groups like the edl or the bnp (look them up if you dont know much about them) spreading a racist message in the guise of protecting this country. i could talk all day long about the points i disagree with them on but i'll save that for another blog.

they twist stories and statistics and they lie, they highlight certain things while hiding others ( i know this could be for any political party)

the trouble is they give an easy answer, its easy to blame someone different. "its the muslims fault", "its the immigrants fault", "its the blacks fault", "its the jews fault".


they are all easier answers to why times are hard at the minute and through ignorance and a lack of information and education people are buying into it.

it starts with the extreme views of the horribly racist, they manage to give it a political meaning and then people start buying into it cos its easier than the truth.

and the problem in these situations is how vocal the far right are. i strongly disagree with everything they do but i dont speak up enough. i will disagree with it when it is right in front of me but i'm not vocal enough to start with. i'm white, my closest friends are predominantly white. i am educated to a decent standard as are the majority of my friends. racism is not often evident in the places i work and socialise.

so i dont come face to face with racism as often as others

and when i do, the opportunity isn't always there for me to do something about it. last night for example.

so has this blog got me any where?

well i believe racism is wrong. i dont think any body should be judged on anything other than what they say or do. i feel like i should do something about it. the hardcore extreme racists are beyond me at the minute, they need people a lot more knowledgable with a lot more power to fight them.... police, lawyers, politicians

i should be able to do something about the people who are buying into their ideas though. i honestly believe that the right is on the rise because they give easy answers and i should be there to point out they are wrong.

i'm not sure how to do this though?