Thrills, Spills and Anonymity

Most of us saw Jenson Button take the F1 drivers championship in style recently with some good driving and some nail biting moments over the season. However, on Sunday there was another closely fought championship being battled out in the last event of the season between two drivers just 1 point apart. I am of course talking about the WRC. (World Rally Championships). What’s more, this event was here in Great Britain. Now how many people watched or even knew about it? Not many I guess. Why? Because the TV and media coverage is terrible. You get one hour of highlights on Dave, who own the rights to the WRC coverage on terrestrial TV. But quite frankly, anyone who has seen the highlights will know that by the time the presenter has stopped arsing about and interviewing people who not only have nothing to do with rallying, but have no idea about it, the highlights of the action probably total about 10 minutes. A WRC event is competed over 3 days and numerous stages covering hundreds of miles. How much of this do we see? Sod all.

Rally Cars spend a lot of time being airborne!

For me, Rally driving is the ultimate test of driver skill and ability. Now I’m not criticising other forms of racing at all though. But whilst most drivers will go round a circuit for lap after lap, a rally driver will go from point to point and therefore has no real idea of what is ahead or around the next bend. Yet they still drive flat out. All this on a multitude of surfaces and conditions, from loose gravel mountain tracks in Argentina to wet muddy Welsh forest byways, the hot Australian outback to the snow and ice of Norway. All whilst trying to be the fastest. Getting the car sideways, performing handbrake turns, hitting jumps at speeds in excess of 100mph and splashing through streams, fords and rivers are all part and parcel of rallying. It is truly a major spectacle and one we really need to see! Hitting a 100mph on a motorway is pretty fast, but try doing this down a narrow gravel track with trees, obstacles and spectators just a few feet either side of you takes balls of steel and immense concentration. One minor mistake and game over. There are no tyre walls or gravel traps. Its trees, walls, cliffs and buildings you are going to hit. The margin between success and failure is minute. But consider this also. The cars they drive have to take this battering and get to the end of the rally. The mechanics have literally minutes after every few stages to repair damaged steering, broken suspension and smashed radiators. No mean feat. (If only the local garage could fix your car as quick as these guys!) So as you can see, the ultimate driving challenge!

Six times World Champion Sebastien Loeb

As for the weekends event, the championship battle was between the flying Finn Mikko Hirvonen and the French Star Sebastien Loeb. Hirvonen was 1 point ahead going into the final event and needed to finish ahead of the Frenchman to claim his first title. No mean feat though as Loeb has won the previous 5 titles and was after a record breaking 6th. Both were flying but Loeb had the upper hand with a 30 second lead entering the third and final day. Hirvonen had nothing to loose and started to cut into the lead after the first 2 stages of the final day. However, whilst pushing on the penultimate stage Hirvonen hit a jump at speed and landed with such force the bonnet came open and eventually started to block his view, meaning he had to stop for his co-driver to get out and pull the bonnet off completely before continuing. This lost him a lot of time and effectively handed Leob his 6th WRC title finishing over a minute ahead of Hirvonen and by one solitary point. An unbelievable end to the most challenging driving events in the world.

Mikko Hirvonen fought hard in Wales

What annoyed me even more than the rubbish highlights was the lack of media coverage. It was as if the event didn’t exist. Nothing on the news and just a few paragraphs in the national papers. Why? People should realise what a truly awesome sport rallying is. If only they could see it!

Sour Blackberry? Try Orange

No, this blog isn’t about fruit, but phones. This Wednesday, my Blackberry broke. Again! The third time in as many months and with the same problem each time. Thankfully, I have it insured and Orange send out a replacement the very next morning. Now it was getting very frustrating to have the same problem for three times so I asked if I could have a different model. Unfortunately, they could only offer me one different model which was actually larger in size than the one I have now. Most of you will know that Blackberry’s with a full keyboard type pad aren’t the smallest phones available so I didn’t want the different model. Oh well, at least I would get the replacement the next day. I did indeed and to my surprise, Orange sent me new accessories too as well as a memory card by way of apology for the disruption of having so many problems.
However, the problems didn’t finish there. Once I set up the phone I found I couldn’t connect to the internet. I had no idea what to do, so I phoned Orange. A very polite and helpful bloke on the other end of the line talked me through what I needed to do to regain connection. Perfect! A good job done and I was very pleased. After hanging up I then discovered that the email application had disappeared. How frustrating! I wasn’t able to send or receive emails now. One of the main reasons I have a Blackberry. So yet again, another phone call ensued. This time I was greeted by a very polite young lady. I explained the problem and she instantly knew what to do. I removed the files necessary and she some how sent over new replacement ones which appeared on my phone as we spoke. Again problem sorted. So although it was very annoying to have the problems in the first place, the very polite and friendly people at Orange sorted it out no problem. So it just goes to show that not all customer services are rude and unhelpful and it was refreshing to get such a good service from a large company. (Plus it was nice to speak to people without foreign accents you cant understand!)

Also this week, I took part in a golf day at Newmarket golf course. The weather turned out to be pretty good after the deluge we had the previous day, and the company was great. I have never played at Newmarket and it was a very nice course. It was also very interesting that a few of the holes you had to play over the Gallops used by the many Racehorses in Newmarket. Pretty unique!

Sports update now! The rumour is that McLaren might be making a bid for Jenson Button as he is still to settle on terms for a new contract at Brawn. Jenson was being paid £10 million a season whilst with Honda and took an 80% pay cut to drive for Brawn. He now wants to be paid £10 million again. This may seem a lot. But consider he is now the world champion, Kimi Raikkonen gets paid £25m, Fernando Alonso gets £20m and Lewis Hamilton gets £15m. Also a story leaked that Jenson had to wash his own overalls after each race. When he put in the bill to the teams finance department, they refused to pay it! Is money really that tight at Brawn especially as they have a new multi million pound sponsorship deal for next season?

- Jenson Button discusses
washing powder -


On to football. Ipswich conceded a 94th minute equaliser midweek to take their winless streak to 13. To any Liverpool fans reading this, you think you’re having a poor run of form?

I watched the Fulham match against Roma in the UEFA cup. Sorry, Europa league or whatever its called. FIFA are trialling the use of two extra officials to stand on the goal line to watch out for any incidents that the ref needs an opinion on. For example, ball not crossing the line, penalty area fouls etc. 20 minutes from the end, a Fulham player brought down a Roma player on the edge of the six yard box conceding a penalty. Also the player was to be sent of. After a brief discussion between the Ref and the official on the goal line who was less than six yards away, the wrong player was sent off. After much confusion the player who committed the foul had to tell the ref he was the perpetrator and should have got the red card. So the stupid people who thought it would be a good idea to bring in extra officials instead of video technology have proved that it doesn’t work and have built another case for the video replay. When will they understand.

Finally, after the last blog I have a quick beach ball update: Aston Villa manager Martin O’Neil has signed the goal scoring beach ball as a replacement for Emile Hesky. In a recent press interview O’Neil was asked if the rumour that the ball was being paid £50k a week was true. To which O’Neil replied, ‘Of course not. It’s just hot air!’

My First Blog

So here it is. My first blog. After much thought I have decided to start blogging to share with you what is on my mind. After this weekend it seems to be a good time to start, so lets go....


There have been a few important things happen over the weekend that I would like to talk about. No, I’m not on about X-Dancing or Strictly Factor and how good Simon Cowell's Cha Cha was or whether Len Goodman did the Britney Spears song justice, I'm talking far more important things. Sport!

For those of you who have suffered temporary concussion or have just arrived in a time machine, Jenson Button is now Formula One World Champion! The tenth British driver to win the championship and the first time there have been back to back British winners for 40 years. After the weather affected qualifying and a dismal 14th place on the starting grid, it looked like the championship decider would go on to the final round. But Jenson didn’t read the script and produced an inspired drive and pulled off some amazing overtaking moves. The moves on Roman Grojean and Sebastian Buemi were particularly impressive and showed why he is championship leader. I superb finish in 5th place and an 8th place for Barrichello meant the title was back in British hands. I worthy winner and great work from a driver who didn’t even know he was going to be competing 10 months ago in a team that didn’t exist at the beginning of the year.
At this point I would also like to congratulate another British champion. Beth Tweddle won gold in the gymnastics yesterday too so well done Beth.

Another hot topic in sport comes from football. Although my beloved Ipswich failed to win again meaning they are the only team in the English league not to win, I still have faith in Roy Keane. Lets not forget, when it took over at Sunderland, it was December and Sunderland were at the bottom of the Championship table. By May, they had won promotion to the Premier League. So he has what it takes. After all, Form is temporary, ability is permanent. So I'm not worrying just yet. There have been some good players bought in over the summer and they just need to start to gel.
Enough of my team, the hot topic actually involves something you might not see very often: A beach ball in Sunderland. Something you would see even less often, is that beach ball scoring the winning goal against Liverpool! A totally bizarre incident and something that apparently shouldn't have happened as the goal should not have stood. but funny none the less. I really hope that Fabio Capello was watching. He might realise how useless Emile Heskey is now. The beach ball was on the pitch for 5 minutes and has already scored more goals than Heskey!
As you might have guessed, I'm not a great fan of Emile Heskey. When he played against the Ukraine, he looked like he was playing for a local pub team the morning after a heavy night out. I realise that Fabio Capello is a good manager, but why play someone who has hardly played all season with no goals to his name when the likes of Defoe and Agbonlahor who have been scoring for fun lately are on the Bench? The top English scorer in the league so far this season, Darren Bent, wasn’t even in the team! I really hope Heskey doesn’t go to the World Cup finals next year and takes up a place in the squad when someone a lot better could be there. Right now, the beach ball seems a better choice!

Winter is now creeping up on us and Sunday morning saw the arrival of the first frost. Some of you might not have realised this, but I was up at 6am and by the time most people woke up at a normal time on a Sunday morning the frost had probably cleared. I didn’t have any de-icer or a scraper in my car but luckily the RAC came to the rescue. No, I didn’t call them out. I managed to scrape of the ice with my membership card! It really is starting to get cold and today my feet were like blocks of ice. The clocks go back soon and its getting depressing. I think I’m suffering from S.A.D. - Seasonal Affective Disorder. Mind you most people probably get it. No one really likes cold wet miserably winter days do they? I am really contemplating going into hibernation.

Thats seems to all from me for now and if you haven’t heard from me by April, then the chances are I have dug myself a hole, filled it with nuts and leaves and gone to sleep!