• Welcome to the ShrimperZone forums.
    You are currently viewing our boards as a guest which only gives you limited access.

    Existing Users:.
    Please log-in using your existing username and password. If you have any problems, please see below.

    New Users:
    Join our free community now and gain access to post topics, communicate privately with other members, respond to polls, upload content and access many other special features. Registration is fast, simple and free. Click here to join.

    Fans from other clubs
    We welcome and appreciate supporters from other clubs who wish to engage in sensible discussion. Please feel free to join as above but understand that this is a moderated site and those who cannot play nicely will be quickly removed.

    Assistance Required
    For help with the registration process or accessing your account, please send a note using the Contact us link in the footer, please include your account name. We can then provide you with a new password and verification to get you on the site.

Matt the Shrimp

aka Harry Potter
Joined
Oct 27, 2003
Messages
19,929
Location
Lewisham, London
Very amusing excerpt from a piece on the Grauniad website by Dara O'Briain. I love his analogy about the Victorians codifying fire or the wheel...

:D
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Football
Sorry, you didn't invent it


Preston football club's ground, Deepdale, is home to the National Football Museum, where I once spent a large chunk of an afternoon marvelling at the sheer brass neck of whoever had collected the memorabilia inside. The depth of exhibits is quite astonishing and 95% of them could be prefixed with the words "the actual". There are the actual balls from the 1930 and 1966 World Cup finals, the actual replacement Jules Rimet trophy (after the original was stolen) and, most impressively, the actual jersey worn by Diego Maradona in the 1986 "Hand of God" match. The thrill of seeing that jersey in a case in front of you can only be a fraction of the emotion that Maradona must have felt when he received a letter from an English football museum requesting it. He must have turned to whoever was standing beside him and gone: "No way! You're sh*tting me, right? This is a gag, isn't it?" To the best of my knowledge, there is no glass case in Hastings containing the arrow that killed Harold.

The museum should lay to rest one old chestnut, though. The English didn't invent football. They codified it, which is a different thing altogether, and a less emotive thing to shout about when you next fail to qualify for the World Cup. You didn't invent football because you didn't invent the ball, or kicking, or fields. We should only be grateful that the Victorians didn't gather together in a room and write the first rules for the use of the wheel, or fire, so that you can claim credit for them as well.

Villages have been dragging, pulling, kicking and running against each other for millennia; you just happened to be the ones with an empire when the upper class took an interest.

It was Cambridge University who initiated the first rules, in 1848; a further 15 years passed until the formation of the FA, and even then the game was sufficiently unrecognisable from the modern version that one of the delegates, from Blackheath, lost a vote to retain shin-kicking and the club promptly left to turn their schism into rugby instead.

And I'm sorry if that sounds harsh, but I'm telling you this for your own good. Almost 150 years later, whenever an English team is beaten, the line bemoaning, "This, in a sport we invented", still gets trotted out.

You've got to snap out of this. It's like you want to pour vinegar into the wound. It's a bit like having Maradona's jersey in the middle of the national football museum. Had to pile on a fresh layer of pathos, didn't you? Couldn't just enjoy a nice day out at the football museum. Had to have a little bit of disappointment in the middle of it.
 
I hate that fat bald c**t...:p

you're really turning into the grumpy old man of the board!

maybe a name change to OldBlueGrump is in order!?!!

personally I like Dara O'Brainianiaiiinaininiaiiin, good article, and he had a great cameo on Gameswipe
 
you're really turning into the grumpy old man of the board!

Turning?
I've always hated him & whenever his name crops up I've always commented on my dislike of him.

Anyway, since I went on my "Managing Stress" course, I've actually adopted a far more positive, less agressive stance on life, and it does seem to be working as people have commented upon it. I thought (hoped) as well that this had been reflected in my limited (seeing as I'm nowhere near as prolific as I once was) recent posts.
 
Turning?
I've always hated him & whenever his name crops up I've always commented on my dislike of him.

Anyway, since I went on my "Managing Stress" course, I've actually adopted a far more positive, less agressive stance on life, and it does seem to be working as people have commented upon it. I thought (hoped) as well that this had been reflected in my limited (seeing as I'm nowhere near as prolific as I once was) recent posts.

I'm only yanking your chain, I've never noticed you to be stressy or anything. I'll just remember not to mention Dara O'Briianananiiinan in front of you.


*Look at the ginger*
red743.jpg
 
I'm a fan of Dara O'Briain aswell... I was on a flight recently that had an O'Briain stand up as some of the In-Flight entertainment and I was laughing so much the Old Hag in front got a trolley dolley to ask me to quiet down. So I drunkenly acosted her until she shut up.






The Trolley-Dolley, not the Old Hag.


















Ok, I did both.
 
Back
Top