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| Barney Ronay: Time was right for Flintoff's farewell The popular Lancastrian all-rounder will be sorely missed, and not just by English cricket fansFarewell, then, Andrew Flintoff. England's greatest cricketer who people actually liked (even in other countries: an astonishing, almost baffling feat for an England cricketer) has now retired from "all forms of cricket". This will hopefully include not just batting, bowling and catching with brilliance, but also Flintoff's most recent form of cricket, which has amounted to not actually playing any cricket at all but instead appearing on game shows where people shout angrily with laughter and a boisterous host intones scurrilities to choreographed jeers while an ineffable nimbus of futility descends across your living room like Lancashire drizzle.His retirement is a great shame. Along with everyone else, I loved Flintoff's carelessly chucked about moments of greatness: the era-kickstarting 95 at The Oval against South Africa in 2003, after which he romped off waving his bat and forgetting to look haggard and tortured at missing a hundred, instead appearing genuinely wowed by the first visible spike of his own periodically outsized Flintoff greatness. I also enjoyed, perhaps even a little bit more, his ridiculously studious and pronounced forward defensive shot, a shot that could almost be described as sarcastic, the bat a neurotically tiny balsa-wood plank in his vast grip.Flintoff's retirement was also a source of more widespread unease this week, dovetailing as it did with talk of some kind of fundamental problem with our other great stubbled, rambunctious English colossus, Wayne Rooney. Rooney, it has been suggested, may have entered a chronic cycle of decline. He may be growing truncated before our eyes, his career already fading, thickening and beginning to stop. This is an extremely upsetting idea and one we should resist. All sports people have a tipping point after which they begin, tangibly, to end, but I believe Rooney is still some way short of this.For a start, Flintoff has been hobbling his way round a valedictory farewell lap for some time now, his career ensconced in what we might call the Roadrunner Years, a modern sporting phenomenon where from a distance it is quite clear you've already gone skittering out over the edge of the cliff, legs pumping, held up by nothing more than fame-momentum and celebrity ballast. This is the main reason sports people don't go away as much as they used to. Even with their powers in decline, they linger and pad and fill, their floppy-limbed, cadaverous bodies still powered relentlessly forward into battle by their own highly motivated PR machinery. This is not necessarily a good thing. Assailed on all sides by spin and vested interest it is more important than ever to make a clear distinction between things that are actually, properly over – albeit still hanging about the place making comebacks and doing interviews – and those that are simply in recess, but still worthy of our urgent interest.David Beckham, for example, is over. Famous but over. Talented but over. Over with an agent. Andy Murray is not over but perhaps repeatedly attempting to bully him into winning a grand slam is over. The Lampard-Gerrard "conundrum" is over. The England football team are over. England, generally, is over. Cars are over. Small, very expensive organic chickens with pretend-homemade plastic packaging are over. The phrase "properties of this quality very rarely come on to the market" is over. Twenty20 cricket is over. Opening up a pretentious high end coffee cart in the East End of London, growing a straggly beard and talking in a sniffy voice about the quality of your roast is over. Telephones with wires are over. In fact, pretty much everything is over apart from China, pornography and multiplying legions of sub-KFC fried chicken outlets called Chicken Shed and Chicken Bungalow and Chicken Loft.Plus of course Rooney: Rooney is not over. Flintoff's retirement may have come with an earned sense of relief from his creaking knees, those unreliable hinges and cranks. But Rooney still pulses with angry vitality, still carrying with him the imprint of his career high with England at Euro 2004, the Croatia defence scattered like late-night kebab salad brushed angrily to the pavement, tongue lolling like a length of prime luncheon meat, seeing in front of him only the engorged and pulsing flower of the goal between its vulvic posts and demonstrating, in effect, tremendous quality from the young lad.For Rooney, the enemies of promise are more diffuse, and not solely confined to tabloid entities known as Rooney Hooker and Rooney Threesome Girl and even Rooney Hooker Dad. There is also expectation: the fact that we now look for, and expect to find inveterate decline beneath the star-burnish.If Flintoff's retirement is a reminder of anything, however, it is of the sadness that comes at the end of a career fraught with terribly addictive headline highs and lows. Maybe it might act as a reminder too. Just give us five great years, and then a few more of stately decline. After which he can simply give up and spend the rest of his days wrestling pleasurably with his appetites.twitter.com/barneyronayWayne RooneyAndrew FlintoffCricketBarney Ronayguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
2012 Super Bowl organizers moving ahead with plans By MICHAEL MAROT 2010-09-23T20:01:46ZINDIANAPOLIS (AP) -- Organizers say they don't expect the NFL's uncertain labor situation to delay the 2012 Super Bowl in Indianapolis.... hosted.ap.org |
Proposed switch to end Cheltenham Festival on Saturday is put on hold • Edward Gillespie warns that facilities must be upgraded first• Course MD says move may be five years or more awayCheltenham's managing director Edward Gillespie has revealed that ending the course's hugely popular Festival meeting on a Saturday could be five years or more away.Gillespie, speaking at Cheltenham's pre-season press day, did not discount making the switch from a Friday finish to the four-day fixture in 2012 but warned that he would want to see facilities upgraded at the track before sanctioning the move.While accepting that the trend within the sport's authorities is to encourage racecourses to move their premier fixtures to weekend slots in order to maximise attendances and exposure, Gillespie fears that the current grandstand facilities, some of which date back almost a century, run the risk of turning off the different audience of racegoers who might be attracted to a Festival Saturday."There is a masterplan as to how I would like things to look and it hasn't changed much over the past few years, but what has changed is the financial situation. Jockey Club Racecourses have been involved in redevelopment projects at some of their other tracks and I have been proud that Cheltenham's profits have been able to underpin that work."When we moved to a fourth day of the Festival, for the first couple of years I felt that we were attracting a different kind of racegoer than we were seeing on the other days of the meeting and I think if we raced on a Saturday, the situation would be the same. The issue at the moment is whether we would be delivering them an experience that they would recognise as being a world-class sporting event."We haven't ruled out including a Saturday in the 2012 Festival. But we might have to wait five or so years until we are in a position to make the investment in our facilities and I would question whether it would be better to wait until then."Instead Gillespie hinted again that he is keen to look at moving the April fixture, returned this year to two days instead of three, although a shift to a weekend slot would mean a clash with Sandown's big mixed meeting.Whatever is to be decided, Gillespie will be able to argue from a position of strength. The Jockey Club returned an operating profit of over £17m last year and is on course to post a comparable figure this year. Although only one of 14 tracks owned by the Jockey Club's subsidiary Jockey Club Racecourses, Cheltenham is believed to be responsible for more than half of that profit.Despite the positives, economic pressures currently being felt throughout the sport hang over the course. Festival ticket sales to Irish racegoers were down 30% last season and Irish companies Ballymore Properties and Smurfit Kappa have left the Festival sponsorship rota. Overall prize money will be cut by six per cent over the course of the season.Some multiple attendance tickets have been withdrawn and the price of others increased, most notably a four-day Festival badge for the Best Mate enclosure which has gone up from £50 to £150."These are difficult times and we're not immune, but when you can get into the main enclosure for £22 at all meetings other than the Festival I think that still offers really good value," said Gillespie.Horse racingCheltenham festivalWill Haylerguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Giants advance to NLCS, send Bobby Cox into retirement San Francisco won another thriller, again with help from some shaky Atlanta defense, and the Giants are off to the NL championship series for ... rssfeeds.usatoday.com |
Canada pole for Hamilton ALTHOUGH Lewis Hamilton broke the Red Bull stranglehold on 2009 pole positions yesterday, he did it by taking a tyre gamble that could backfire today. timesonline.co.uk |