First game of the season - Hull City v Brighton 18/08/12

After the 'spectacular summer of sport', which seemed to consist of England failing miserably in a major competition once again, before Team GB surprised everyone by being quite good at sports no-one usually watches, it's time to get back to real competition once again. Yes - the Npower Championship kicked-off the 2012/13 season this Saturday, and I took Kyle along to see our beloved Brighton start the annual disappointment much earlier than usual.

The Humber Bridge

Hull itself is a terrible place to visit - a typical Northern town desperately trying to reinvent itself as a tourist attraction, but only managing to reinforce a sense of sadness & despair. As the old saying goes - you can't polish a turd, but you can roll it in glitter.

It's often better to face away from the pitch when Brighton are playing.

We stopped off at a reasonable pub (the Three John Scotts - a bog-standard Wetherspoons, not really worthy of a place in the Good Beer Guide), and then made our way to the ground. The KC stadium was one of the original 'new breed' of out-of-town football stadiums, and is starting to look particularly shabby in places. Once inside, it could have been any stadium in any city in the world - there was nothing to make it stand out.

New signing Tomas Kusczack

The football itself was a strange one. Brighton played well enough - new signings Bruno and Bridge were excellent in the full-back positions, whilst Crofts and Bridcutt bossed the midfield throughout. However, there was no penetration at all, and the forward pairing of Mackail-Smith & Barnes looked starved of possession. Hull showed no style, and were content to chase possession for much of the game. Things changed when Kazenga Lua-Lua was introduced, and his pace & tricks started to worry the Hull defence. However, despite this, Hull capitalised on a loose ball, and Jay Simpson scored a late winner. 

Horrible foul on Craig Noone - not even a yellow card.

Kusczack watches the play

Luke Campbell - Hull's gold medal winning boxer

On the balance of play, Brighton deserved the win, but I think we'll play a lot worse than that this season and still get results. Priority has to be a new target man though - you can't play two small strikers when we've got such good quality crossers of the ball.

Still, a good day overall.

Hull City 1 (Simpson 85mins) vs Brighton 0

First match of the season

The whole point of starting this blog was to have a way of following my little obsessions. As people who know me will be aware, the largest obsession I have is with football. So, when I found out that one of Team GB's olympic football matches would be at Old Trafford, it was an easy decision to go along.

Now, i'm no Man Utd fan - far from it, but i've always enjoyed going to Old Trafford. It's a wonderful old stadium, which has been expanded and enhanced without losing that feeling of history. There's not a bad view in the ground, and you really get a sense of a true football stadium, not like these soulless new builds being launched all the time (Yes Cardiff and Manchester City - this is directed at you).

The event itself was good - we'd been warned about the increased security before arriving, but I don't think anyone realised just how bad it would be. I got to the ground at 4:30, which was half an hour before the first game kicked off. There were loads of queues opposite the ground, and I waited 45mins for a bag check to be conducted by an officious jobsworth Scouser, in which he placed my bag in a sealed plastic container for me to take into the ground. I then had to put my wallet, keys and mobile in another plastic bag, and hand it to the stewards before entering. I'm all for good security - no-one wants to be blown up after all - but this was pure overkill and utterly pointless. The stewards didn't know what they were looking for (they challenged my bag because it had a corporate logo on, but missed the flick-knife I keep on my key-ring....), and there were no signs directing us where to go.

My ticked entitled me to see two games - the first of which was United Arab Emirates vs Uruguay. UAE looked a trick and skillful side, but ran out of stamina after around an hour. Uruguay, who had the racist cheat Luis Suarez in their side (roundly booed with every touch - well deserved), were dull and formulaic, but ended up winning 2-1.

UAE celebrate Matar's opener

United Arab Emirates 1 ISMAEIL MATAR (23'), Uruguay 2 RAMIREZ Gaston (42'), LODEIRO Nicolas (56')


 The main event was Team GB, captained by Ryan Giggs, against Senegal. 

The teams line up for the national anthems

I'll be the first to admit that I know very little about Senegalese football, but their players seemed to be under the impression that points were awarded for the amount of times you can kick your opponent. Fouls ranged from the niggly to the violent, with one particular one on Neil Taylor being as bad as i've seen in the professional game. Still, it seemed to work for them, and the game ended in a 1-1 draw. Team GB looked poor, and I can't help thinking that the 3 'over 23' players were poorly chosen. The team needed speed and domination, and Giggs, Bellamy & Richards can't provide that any more. In my opinion, we should have looked for a pacy winger (Adam Johnson or Shaun Wright-Phillips) and a clinical striker (Bobby Zamora).

Butland takes a goal kick

Team GB 1 BELLAMY Craig (20'), Senegal 1 KONATE Moussa (82')

Still, despite all this, it was nice to get back to seeing some football again. Roll on 18th August.....

Subbuteo World Cup 2012 - The Results

Quick blog entry tonight about the Subbuteo World Cup held last weekend in Manchester. I was there for both days, and saw the very best players in the world compete for the trophies. Not only that, almost all of them took the opportunity to beat me as well.

I'll do a full review soon, but these are some of the results along with my pictures of the event...

The main event was won by Spain's Carlos Flores, who beat Massimiliano Nastasi of Italy 5-3

In the Veterans category, Italy's Francesco Mattiangeli beat Spain's Vicenc Prats Salat with a golden goal after a 2-2 draw

The Ladies event saw the Belgian Delphine Dieudonne beat her team-member Emile Despretz 5-1

All of the youth categories were won by Italy

U19 Bjorn Kegenbein beat Luca Battista 4-2

U15 Matteo Ciccarelli beat David Gonzalez with a golden goal after a 3-3 draw

U12 Marco Di Vito beat Nicola Borgo 3-0

Malta line up against Japan

Victorious Belgians

The Spanish U15 team

A winning Spanish goal

More to come....

Ted: Toy Story for the Hangover generation....

I promised myself that this wouldn't turn into just another film review blog. However, I was lucky enough to get a free preview ticket to Ted - a new comedy starring Mark Wahlberg & Mila Kunis, and produced by Seth MacFarlane who is the brains behind Family Guy - so I thought i'd share my review anyway...

I'll admit, I went into this with fairly low expectations. For those of you who haven't heard of the film, it's based around the story of a boy (John Bennett) who makes a wish to have his teddy bear (Ted) come to life. When the wish is granted, they become best friends, and grow up together. The film picks up the story when both John and Ted are in their late 30's, living out life as stoners & deadbeats. Despite the fairly standard plot-line (failing relationship, 'comedy' best friend, odd cameos), this film really blew me away. I can't remember the last time I laughed so much in the cinema - some of the one-liners had me crying with laughter. I won't give away too much, but there's one specific fight scene that is possibly the funniest thing i've seen in a film for years.

The cast are all excellent - MacFarlane gives a great vocal performance as the titular Ted, whilst Mark Wahlberg and Giovanni Ribisi are both outstanding. However, top billing should be given to the amazing Mila Kunis. Now, I absolutely adore her anyway, but Kunis was at her best in this, playing the overlooked girlfriend who is being sidelined for a foul-mouthed teddy. She plays it perfectly, bringing the right amount of cuteness / emotion throughout.

It's hard to find anything negative about this movie - if I analysed it enough, I suppose there's a chance that some of the references (Susan Boyle, Jack & Jill, yes, even Peter Griffin) might date the film very quickly, but this can be easily overlooked by the sheer number of laugh-out-loud moments. Respected critic Mark Kermode says that a comedy should make you laugh at least six times, else it has failed. Using this formula, Ted has enough laughter for at least 5 films, if not more.

Despite my love of the 'classic' films, comedies are my real guilty pleasure. If i'm in the right mood, there's nothing better than watching movies like The Hangover, Jay & Silent Bob, I Love You Man etc. After tonight's viewing, Ted will be a staple of my late-night movie watching for years to come....

The Dark Knight Rises - a review.

So. The Dark Knight Rises. Better than Batman Begins, not as good as The Dark Knight. Possibly my third favourite Batman film of all time (for those of you wondering, my second favourite is Batman: Year One - an animated film from 2011 starring Eliza Dushku). However, none of this really matters. We could spend time discussing a clunky formulaic plot (a race against time while a bomb ticks down to zero? Really?), almost inaudible dialogue, and an unbelievable bad guy who was actually quite a decent chap who then inexplicably started killing people. We could also talk about another fantastic performance from Gary Oldman, a career-high for Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and a criminally short turn from Cillian Murphy. However, all of that would take focus away from the most important discussion point of all - the ending.

By the way - spoilers coming up....

Let's make one thing clear, the ending was amazing - lots of twists, fantastic acting all round, and a genuinely emotional scene with Gary Oldman. But, there's two key things that just didn't sit right with me.

Firstly - Robin. This one really pissed me off. I mentioned this above, but Joseph Gordon-Levitt was excellent throughout the film - truly engaging, and a perfect balance to the hyperbole and action taking place with Batman and Bane. However, he is playing Detective John Blake, who reveals towards the end that his middle name is Robin (before paragliding into a waterfall like some sort of Oxbridge student in a gap year...). So, Christopher Nolan is setting him up to be a new Robin within the Batman universe? Fair enough, but at least tie it back to the canon that already exists. All fans of Batman and DC know that Robin is Dick Grayson (or Jason Todd, Tim Drake, Stephanie 'Spoiler' Brown or Damian Wayne). Why then suddenly throw John Blake into the mix? Would it have been too difficult to have Detective Blake say to the solicitor "I should use my given name - Jason Todd" ?? The whole Robin thing seemed shoe-horned in for no reason at all. If rumours are to be believed, Christopher Nolan is not returning to the franchise after this film, so all he's done is make it really difficult for the next director to pick things up from where we left off. No matter - with the way Hollywood is going these days, we'll get a reboot in a couple of years anyway, and have to watch a young Bruce Wayne see his parents murdered yet again....

Secondly - the scene in Florence. At first glance, this was a lovely little scene that made people cry a bit. Loyal butler Alfred got his wish, and Bruce Wayne ended up all happy and content. Bollocks. Once you start looking at it a bit deeper, it's not a big leap of the imagination to start challenging all aspects of that whole scene. Let's take it step by step. Batman is dead. Yes, he enabled the auto-pilot (that Lucius Fox was 'too busy' to do), and yes, he's quite agile, but a nuclear bomb exploded on top of him. No escape, no handy ejection seat, nothing. Also, we saw this whole device in Nolan's greatly over-estimated film Inception (it's like Stephen Fry - it was stupid people's idea of what 'clever' is meant to be....), where people were living out dreams as if they were real. Alfred saw what he wanted to see - I could go on for ages about symbolism & staging, but the most obvious device was Selina Kyle dressed in a light-coloured outfit, when throughout the whole film she's only ever seen in black.

Overall, it was enjoyable, and made the trilogy a solid piece of work. It didn't blow me away though, and was nowhere near as good as Avengers earlier in the year. I see that the Sunday Times gave it a 2 star review this morning - bit harsh, but I see where they are coming from.