Sunday, January 25, 2009

Two game players...

Jonathan Ross's reappearance on the airwaves has seen a lot more newsprint wasted on the matter - hardly surprisingly, print media have adopted the high moral ground over their television and radio rivals. Again hardly surprisingly was JR's modus operandi, which was pretty much as was but without any mention of Andrew Sachs and his granddaughter. All of the hacks in the audience for Friday Night With Jonathan Ross - of which there were many - have had a field day reporting how the studio version differed from the edited, broadcast effort, as if the whole process and concept of editing is a dark and dirty secret. Again, a waste of everyone's time and effort. But journalists are notoriously lazy, sensationalist bastards, aren't they?

Russell Brand has, of course, just knuckled down and got on with his life and is only concerned with moving ever onwards. His Guardian columns have continued to elevate football chat above the level of the tired old cliche that generally plagues any commentary on the game. This week's effort was an especially dashing piece and his closing words re money, talent and time left me all goosepimply and choked...


Kaka is well into the ol' Christianity and therefore is attuned to ideas beyond acquisition, and decided that as a footballer his priority must be football. It is a magical thing to be a professional footballer and the gift does not alight for long before departing and leaving bland mortality where once its sheen did linger. The deficit that excellence-departed exposes is almost impossible to grieve. Paul Gascoigne daily does battle with the torturous abyss left by his fleeting talent.

None of us then should be seduced by the transient glow of money and superficial splendour, as for all of us the presence of wonder is all too brief. Burnley for a while were level with Spurs in Wednesday's Carling Cup semi-final, ahead on the away goals rule. All they had to do was hold on through extra time, to reach the final against Manchester United. But the glory proved impermanent, Roman Pavlyuchenko scored and then Jermain Defoe, and the dream was all undone. Like the end of Bagpuss, when the sprightly mice are once more ornaments, the haughty professor a bookend and even Bagpuss, so full of slovenly vitality, becomes again a stuffed cat.

Don't. Waste. A. Second.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2009/jan/24/russell-brand-robinho-manchester-city

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