Category Archives: Extracurricular Activities

John Terry: A Career

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If you’re reading this expecting some kind of eulogy, then I’m afraid you need to look elsewhere. In purely footballing terms, Terry will be remembered as one of the better central defenders who played for England, but I’d put him on a par with Dave Watson (13 fewer caps and two fewer goals when England were really terrible) rather than Bobby Moore.

However, Terry will not be remembered in purely footballing terms. Just after the 911 terrorist attacks, Terry – along with four other Chelsea players – was fined for harrassing American tourists whilst he was drunk. Just under a year later was charged with assault and affray outside a nightclub and was given a temporary ban from appearing for England by the FA but was cleared after a court case.

Since then, he’s been fined for parking his Bentley in a disabled bay, allegedly had an affair with Wayne Bridge’s girlfriend (at which point Capello took the England captaincy away from him) and was in court once again this summer following the ‘incident’ with Anton Ferdinand at Loftus Road last October.

So if anyone’s made his position ‘untenable’ it’s hardly been the FA has it? My personal opinion is that Terry is the embodiment of pretty much everything that’s wrong with the elite group of contemporary English footballers: arrogant, overpaid, having no moral compass, seemingly incapable of expressing genuine regret or remorse for any of their actions and – following his laughable display at the end of last season’s Champion’s League final – a bit of an all round dick.

I’ve no doubt he’ll be lauded elsewhere, but I’m actually quite glad he’s decided to retire from the England team. In a couple of decades time he’ll be one of those balding, overweight has beens that Sky Sports dust off to tell us about their ‘glory days’: at first you won’t recognise him…but then it’ll slowly dawn on you…is that John Terry?

Summer’s Here….Wellies On!

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Now the U21s have been knocked out of their tournament – not the first time the team has been eliminated in the group stage either – there’s a bit of a void between now and the next game for the senior team, which is a game against the Netherlands on 10th August.

So now the football season is officially ‘over’ (well, apart from the Copa America but we can’t get knocked out of that) for those of us that follow horse racing, there’s still plenty of action to get involved in over the ‘summer’ (although it’s absolutely pouring down outside the 11 Lions HQ right now) and on Saturday afternoon there are six meetings in the UK that include a couple of cracking looking races – the John Smith’s Northumberland Plate at Newcastle, which is followed by the John Sunley Memorial Criterion Stakes on the July course at Newbury.

Let’s say you fancied Overturn to win the first race and The Cheka to win the second, but you were also convinced that The Rectifier was going to win the 2.55 at Windsor and Chilled would come first in the 3:45 at Chester. You could place four separate win or each way bets but it’d be far more profitable to place a Lucky 15 which is a type of bet where even minimal stakes could return a tidy profit if your four selections came in – it’s basically 15 bets (four singles, six doubles, four trebles and a fourfold) but if only one of your fancies comes in you’re paid at double the odds.

So although there’s no domestic football to get involved with for the next few weeks, if you were lucky enough at the races to build up a nice pot that you could blow on Swansea winning the Premier League at 10,000-1. Don’t laugh though…I’m old enough to remember when they finished in the top six in the old First Division!