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| What we learned this year… Unusual suspects are game for a laugh | Barney Ronay A supporting cast of beach balls, bongs, footstools and fire hydrants have got in on the actThe year in sport has been dotted with unusual objects, a cast of inanimate gatecrashers that have picked their moment to leap up out of the landfill site and squat briefly centre stage. Sport has always been vulnerable to interruptions by the everyday. Usually the gambolling dog or the wind-blown crisp packet comes as a brief, welcome antidote to the willed solemnity of the occasion. In 2009 the objects have taken things further. The objects are getting uppity. They want screen time and script input. And in many ways this has also been their year.In November England's 2018 World Cup bid was almost derailed by a handbag. "This malaise of my wife and I has been allowed to fester for too long," declared the Fifa vice-president Jack Warner, returning a £230 Mulberry handbag presented by the bid team as a gift for his wife Maureen. And suddenly the bag itself – red, shiny, matronly looking – was an object of fascination, as were the 23 identical bags subsequently not delivered to Warner's fellow bid executives and now presumably lurking beneath the desk of the England 2018 bid (fancy goods distribution) officer.Perhaps the most high-profile object of the year was the beach ball thrown from the crowd that provided a vital goalmouth deflection on Darren Bent's winning goal for Sunderland against Liverpool in October. At the time it was dismissed as simply bad luck, not to mention the most notable rotund, inanimate object found in Liverpool's six-yard box since Robbie Fowler's brief return to the club. But if Poirot has taught us anything it's that every detail has its own significance and the beach ball did also tell us things. For a start, we learned that it was possible to buy a Liverpool FC beach set (cost £10) from the club shop. Also, that perhaps in a simpler world where aggressively hair-gelled marketing men called Gavin had yet to convince our football clubs of the need for "alternative revenue streams", the beach ball would never have existed in the first place – or would at least have remained a truly random object, rather than an intrusive rubberised accessory tinged with a mild dramatic irony.In other random sporting object news, Olympic swimming gold medal-hog Michael Phelps was pictured smoking a marijuana pipe at a party, and suddenly sport was furiously swotting up on bongs. Phelps and his bong posed questions of their own. Such as, is using a drug that, rather than making you better at sport, makes you feel tired and unusually keen on peanut butter, really a matter for the swimming authorities? And also, what kind of person shares their bong with Phelps anyway? You're not going to get it back from the big-lunged eight-foot bong-hog.We also found out about crystal meth, the disco drug that Andre Agassi confessed to using at his peak. Agassi said it made him want to scrub his house obsessively, which, on a personal note, led me to consider leaving some crystal meth out for my cleaner in order to create a similar irresistible urge to Hoover and dust rather than simply texting and leaving early. Instead crystal meth made us think about the slackness of the ATP in accepting Agassi's excuses for failing a drug test. And then about the strangeness of being a career tennis prodigy, and the collateral damage in chiselling out your own little twitchy, resentful child millionaire.Otherwise there were plenty of peripheral objects that told us simply that a great deal of energy is expended staring beneath the fingernails of sport. For example, the screwed up paper ball that was thrown on to the pitch and helped Werder Bremen score the goal that knocked Hamburg out of the Uefa Cup (the original is now in the Bremen club museum). Plus there were objects that formed part of a larger narrative. The steward's small plastic footstool hurled at Emmanuel Adebayor during his celebrations after scoring for Manchester City against Arsenal, now surely the most celebrated small plastic footstool in the chequered and seamy history of small plastic foot stools. And something called the "double-tier rear diffuser", a go-faster-auto widget visible only to intense, fidgety men in overalls, the early adoption of which by the Brawn team nudged Jenson Button towards a Formula One world championship.Finally, what has now become the biggest sports story of the year provided us with the roadside fire hydrant. It was one of these that halted the progress of Tiger Woods' SUV in the wee hours, first drawing attention to the fact that something might be amiss in the burnished tableau of his lucrative family life. The hydrant is a brilliantly appropriate random object: mundane and bathetic, but providing as much insight into our own obsession with incidental celebrity narrative as it did into the prolific promiscuity of the world's best golfer.LiverpoolMichael PhelpsTiger WoodsBarney Ronayguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Arsène Wenger's Arsenal hit their straps as Manchester United and Chelsea run lame Win against Bolton tonight and Arsenal's young colts are the form riders in what has become a three horse race for the title. telegraph.co.uk |
Cote d'Ivoire reach quarter-finals Cote d'Ivoire became the first team to reach the 2010 Africa Cup of Nations quarter-finals with a 3-1 triumph over severely depleted Ghana in Group B. foxsports.com.au |
Carling Cup mayhem and top Gunners Paul Doyle, Raphael Honigstein and Barry Glendenning join James to discuss a feast of midweek football action.The Carling Cup semi-finals produced a 10 goal bonanza at Villa Park and a very tasty Manchester derby. But will Carlos Tevez' goal celebration come back to haunt him in the second leg? Will it? Eh? In the Premier League, Arsenal went top and Liverpool showed there is life in the mangey old dog yet. Were Arsenal right to carry on after Mark Davies went down injured? And could Owen Coyle's commendable footballing philosophies spell bad news for Bolton? There's a full round-up of the leagues in France, Germany, Italy and Spain (with a bit of help from Dr Sid Lowe) as well as the latest from Angola where the Africa Cup of Nations is reaching the knockout stages. Leave messages on the blog below, or find us on Facebook or Twitter.James RichardsonPeter Sale guardian.co.uk |
Santos deal almost done: Robinho Disgruntled Manchester City striker Robinho has told Brazilian media he is "90 percent sure" he will leave Eastlands to re-join his old club Santos. foxsports.com.au |