World Press Photo winners 2010

The results were announced yesterday.

The photograph which caught my eye was the winner of the The Daily Life Stories category - taken by Martin Roemers, entitled Metropolis, documenting life in Calcutta, India.

On the blanket at Goodison

There's no Rope as long as Time

Eight months later, I stop to contemplate World Cup 2010 in South Africa and whether or not it was an appropriate choice of venue for the world’s largest sporting (and arguably social) event.
Yes, I went there with few qualms – after all it enabled us to combine a “passing of age family holiday” with a beautiful country and my / our primary waste of time – the beautiful game. These benefits conveniently outweighed any moral dilemmas we had over the economic impact the World Cup would have on the country and the inequity of granting of a major global franchise to a country still seeking to rid itself of the hangover of apartheid.

Soccer plays a huge part in the lives of black South Africans. While much has been written (and filmed) about the 1995 Rugby World Cup triumph and Mandela’s role therein, the real triumphs in the ongoing fight against discrimination come through the beautiful game.

On our visit to Cape Town, we visited, as everyone does, the island prison colony of Robben Island. Here, in 1967, the inmates formed the Makana Football Association and matches commenced during the two hours of every Saturday which was allocated to the inmates outside their prison routine. Sunday evening was reputedly for talking about the game, Monday to Wednesday for dealing with breaches of rules, and Thursday and Friday for choosing squads and strategizing. Many of the advanced political strategists believed that if a league could be run effectively in such extreme conditions, then there was no reason why they should fear running a country.



We visited the “Fields of Play” exhibition which charted the development of soccer in the Cape Town and indeed in South Africa. Despite a sporting legacy so bitterly entrenched in the horrors of the apartheid regime, the exhibition was admirably non-political - albeit a portion of the exhibition did focus on the relocation of clubs during the District 6 racial segregation removals in the sixties.

“The Afrikaner officials of the apartheid regime never embraced soccer, preferring rugby and cricket. Funding for soccer was initially withdrawn and subsequently some matches were banned. Apartheid's opponents quickly seized on the potential of using soccer to rally support and raise funds. The African National Congress (ANC), then a banned underground movement, quickly realized that wherever there was soccer, there was a crowd.

Political meetings suffered a blanket ban from 1976 onward, but it was far harder to prevent several members of a political party from sitting together in the stands, amid thousands. By the 1980s, activists commonly organized themselves into soccer squads (the most infamous was sadly the Nelson Mandela Football Club) to confound the regime. They could travel easily across international borders, and matches represented a valuable source of money for underground anti-apartheid organizations.

By the late 1980s, soccer matches were at center stage of the country's rapidly evolving politics. ANC flags, which were still banned, were seen openly in soccer stadiums, a sign of the regime's weakening grip on power. In 1991, two years before the collapse of apartheid, South Africa's current soccer federation was founded. During its inaugural meeting, it stated that its’ formation was "only natural ... as the sport of soccer had long led the way into breaking the tight grip of racial oppression."

The Fields of Play exhibition also turned up our old Leeds friend, Albert Johanneson the first colored player to appear in an English FA Cup final.



Apartheid fell in 1993 and seventeen years later the country hosted the World Cup finals. The football was circumstantially poor but the event was a sparkling success. The event was well organized, the hosts friendly and the facilities top class. The perception of South Africa as a modern nation improved globally.

But perhaps the most important observation that one could make was that a host team, with only one white player in eleven, received the support of a whole nation – the Bafana Bafana shirts were worn by children and adults who were both black and white, or differently put – were neither black nor white, but who were South African. In a manner that appeared to mimic Mandela almost single-handedly embracing the Rugby World Cup win, the population at large seemed to adopt the Zulu boys and will them (sadly unsuccessfully) to further glory. For a short while, the past seemed like the past.

Perhaps this spirit of togetherness will prevail when the true financial cost of hosting the World Cup is worked out and assessed. And when the incredible harmonising powers of Nelson Mandela are no longer there, and younger and more militant influences within the ANC are more prevalent. If the togetherness prevails, and let's pray that it does, then the decision to place the competition in South Africa will have been an immeasurable success.

Steelers get turned over

Commiserations to Mark Cusick on the Steelers defeat last night.

At one stage it looked like they would tie the Packers but MVP Lennon showed true leadership qualities in pushing the Greenbay offense to crucial touchdowns. One can't help wonder how Steelers would have scored had they left Ben Roethlisberger off team. His off-field problems impacted strongly - remember Roethlisberger was accused of misconduct and the sexual assault and rape of a 20-year old college student - and he was only cleared after paying hefty fees to a bunch of maverick small-town American attorneys, Squint, Sandblasters and Dumpsters.

Top receiver was Nelson, while Mendenhall was top rusher with 64 yards and a touchdown.

The irresistable charm of Peter Osgood

One of the great unsolved mysteries arising from seventies football is whether or not Peter Osgood actually gave Raquel Welch one in the dressing rooms at the Bridge after (or maybe before) a game during the 72/73 season. The tv cameras recorded the visit, it appeared on The Big Match , and let's face it - there really can be no other reason why she was frequenting the Bridge at that stage in her career - after all, he interest in the game did appear to wane as her acting career progressed. Acting career in the loosest sense of the word.

Maybe she will reveal all before she passes away but even if so, sadly we won't hear the real juicy bits as Ossie took his side of the story to the grave when he passed away in 2006. Long live the king.

Raquel wasn't to be the last doll to get the Chelsea kit on for a bit of frivolity as we remember Peter Mellor's friend, Antonia de Sancha who famously donned the home kit for the 1991-2 season to assist Peter get dumped from the cabinet.

The Beautiful Game

I see a little silhouette of a ball, Scaramouche can you play the fandango.....

Romance of the Cup

Despite there being a 1 in the year it's hard to win the FA Cup when there's a 4 in the score and the others have it. So another ignominious exit for the Yids, at the hands of Fulham this time and that means just the winner of the Chelsea v Everton replay will remain in the Fifth Round.

Probably the worst fifteen minutes of football anyone has ever had on Sunday - Michael Dawson OBE.

Sad state of affairs.