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The Hand Of Hidden Forces - !! WDB !!

Listed below are comments made by The Hand Of Hidden Forces - !! WDB !! between Monday, 9th November 2009 and Sunday, 29th November 2009.

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O2 Arena plays perfect host to season finale 8:40pm on 29 Nov 2009 On the actual organisation, I would say:

Arena - Excellent

Format - The round robin remains confusing: to the players themselves, never mind the audience. I think some form of sudden death play off might be a more satisfactory conclusion in the event of a tie.

Scheduling - They really must remember that people have to travel home after the event. Basic error.

Scheduling 2 - The fact that the first semi-finalist has such a clear advantage over the second semi-finalist in terms of recovery time is the worst thing about it. They really must find some way to get round this.

Music - Oh sorry, THIS was the worst thing about it. Ditch the music please. Or if you absolutely MUST have it, please play something half-decent instead of freakin Robbie Williams ballads.

All said however, the fundamental flaw in the concept still remains. It comes right at the end of an extremely tiring and over-long season. The players are nearly all knackered. Nadal and Djokovic looked about dead on their feet. It's no surprise that someone known as the Ironman on account of his remarkable stamina and endurance ended up winning it...
O2 Arena plays perfect host to season finale 8:29pm on 29 Nov 2009 "The first edition of the ATP World Tour Finals in London was a stunning success"

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Can't help feeling the sponsors will disagree with you there - in private of course.

After the late withdrawal of Roddick, 3 of the top 4 big name players went out in the group stage - and then Federer himself was the next to be eliminated.

Great for tennis fans - I mean, how many of us are really rather delighted to see Kolya play so well and win a big tournament? It would take a hard heart to begrudge him.

But I suspect the public at large will have been rather disappointed - after all the hype - that the big names underperformed and went out, and someone they had only heard of with regard to betting irregularities ended up lifting the trophy...
The wait goes on for Strachan and Cooper 00:10am on 29 Nov 2009 You have to wonder what Steve Gibson's motivation was for sacking a manager when his team were one point off the top of the league?

Did he see some corporate moneymaking advantage to plummeting the club into a mid-table position, which the rest of us less-shrewd individuals have missed?

If not, his lunacy has cost the club dear.
What's wrong with football? Blame women! 9:05pm on 26 Nov 2009 "On the whole women do tend to resent their men going out of the home to enjoy themselves - and this applies to football matches too,"

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Neither laughing nor horrified at this - actually finding it rather refreshing to see the truth stated plainly in the media, rather than varnished over with a slather of PC-optimal gloss.

As someone who didn't come into the world till a considerable time after this report, my main impression is that folk in those days were perhaps more honest in their public statements than now.

What they didn't foresee, ironically, was the major impact which the reviled T***vision would have in getting girls interested in football themselves.
The SFA should sacrifice their blazers 6:30pm on 22 Nov 2009 "Simple really the Old Firm began to resent their committment to the Scotland cause and so began a process of instilling in certain players there Club came before there Country."

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You make an interesting point, MoraytheMighty. But I would urge you to bite the bullet and speak the whole truth. Yes, there has been a shameful catalogue of players who - metaphorically or actually - have given the V-sign to their country.

Ian Ferguson, Duncan Ferguson, Lee McCulloch, Kris Boyd, Barry Ferguson, Allan McGregor.

You refer to them as "Old Firm" players. Ermmm... yessss... technically.

But we could be slightly more specific - and honest - than that. Don't you think?
The SFA should sacrifice their blazers 6:21pm on 22 Nov 2009 Check out George Peat's expression in that photo!

It's like he's thinking "That journalist over there KNOWS I'm a clueless incompetent. But I'm no' done yet. I'll outmanoeuvre them all politically and retain my position of power despite my absolute ignorance of all the major issues."

Why are these clueless clowns running Scottish football???
That was horrid, Henry 1:49pm on 19 Nov 2009 It's not good enough to say 'I handled it, but I'm not the referee.'

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You're right Robster.

It's like saying, "Aye, I beat up my granny. Now give it a rest, I'm not a bloody policeman."

Thing is though, this incident will live long in the memory when Thierry Henry is spoken about in years to come. I think he will come to regret it.
'Crown jewels' list sets arguments raging 7:08pm on 14 Nov 2009 I must say I'm highly amused to hear some folk parroting off the media companies' line about their money being absolutely necessary to the wellbeing of a whole raft of sports. Indeed, without this money it appears no-one would even participate in sport, the unused energy would cause widespread rioting of the leisure-deprived masses, and society would grind to a halt.

Big Media cash is NOT necessary to the wellbeing of sport in this country, as even a rudimentary analysis reveals.

As if - in the days before cable & satellite TV - grassroots sport was in a terrible state, there was a lack of interest and kids didn't play games. On the contrary, the rise of cable and satellite has coincided with a substantial DROP in the number of kids participating in sport. Cable and satellite have been a bad thing for grassroots sport: but a good thing, to be sure, for those quangos "promoting" grassroots sport, who now have more money than ever to broaden their powerbase, and secure cushy jobs for themselves and their mates as the selfappointed guardians of our leisure future.

The best way to promote sport to kids is to make the big exciting events freely available for all to view on normal TV. The excitement generated far outweighs the effect of the small trickle of Sky money that actually gets down to grassroots level. Nearly all the serious money is sopped up by the sports clubs to pay ever-more-obscene wages to imported foreign stars, who then proceed to oust our own young players from the teams - and the rest pays the wages of the placeholders and admin-wranglers in the sports bodies themselves.

And if there is an argument over which events should be on the reserved list? Double the size of the list. Simple.
Spotting a red flag 12:17pm on 10 Nov 2009 The cleric doesn't even come into it.

You have a muslim in your army, and you send him to kill his fellow muslims, in a country which you have invaded. If he says he's NOT unhappy about that, that's when the bleedin red flag should be raised.

And then, when this man - whom you have personally trained to maim and kill - makes it clear that he is very uneasy about the idea, what then? Do you admit to yourselves, "Well that's perfectly understandable, we are after all the aggressor in this conflict"? Or do you just carry on blithely - "Well, yur in thu Army soljer, heh heh heh..."

The red flag should have been raised before we invaded these countries in the first place - incidents like this are simply the unsurprising consequences of our own actions.

Contrary to the views of religious extremists, the wages of sin are not well-accounted in this world. The wages of aggression and stupidity, however, are tragically evident.
Banks must invest trust in Scottish clubs 2:31pm on 09 Nov 2009 At a time of global hardship, businesses going to the wall right left and centre, families losing their homes, and taxpayers being forced to bail out the banks themselves, the LAST thing the banks should be investing in is bleedin football.

Where does the money ploughed into football go? To struggling families, to the disadvantaged, to those sufferng extreme hardship & famine in the 3rd world? No, it goes into the pockets of ludicrously highly-paid footballers, some of whom earn more in a day than a working man does in a year.

It would be a public disgrace if the banks started subsidising football.

On the contrary - it's time to get much much tougher with football clubs.

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