sandwichsaint

From the original 'ugly inside' forum (I'm going back 9 or 10 years!) StIan .... all things punk Tonesus...drummer in a punk band Battersea Saint Sandlemoore .... still see at games NewMiltonSaint....ditto LadySaint...still posts on here happy days!

Just back from four awesome days in the Pyrennes. Saturday we rode 30k and then the HC Plateau de Baille (17k at over 8%!), the climb that Armstrong said was against his human rights (it didn't do much for mine either), took my nipper 2hrs and me 2hrs 40min. Awesome descent, down in 17 minutes! Sunday we rode 10k to get there then the Cat 1 Ax Trois Domaines (8k at touching 8% and the bottom 4k at over 10%), red hot day, dropped into the shade just below the 5k mark to watch the race and the riders looked absolutely shot when they went past us-just seen on the recordings the cat and mouse between Contador and Schleck over the final 3ks. Monday we rode 10k flat and then the HC Porte de Bailles (10k at something reasonable and then about the last 7k all over 7.5 percent); even hotter than the previous day and awesome crowds and atmosphere. Again dropped into the shade to the 5k mark to watch the race - riders were in full on mode past us at this place and we were only about 400m below where Schleck had his mechanical though obviously didn't see it and not aware of it till next day. Bad form of Contador to attack and the French papers slaughtered him for it though opinion in the teams and riders seemed split fairly evenly. Tuesday was our last day of riding and another HC to round the week off - 28k from Glasnost to the Col d'Aubisque via the Solour, two climbs in one! 12k to get there then something like 8k x 8% up the Solour, down and round to the Abisque on the self-styled 'prettiest road in France' - a balcony carved into a cliffside several 100m up from the valley floor, followed by a killer 6k of climbing to reach the top of Aubisque. With frequent stops made it from tent to top in under 3 and a half hours. Dropped to Solour to watch the riders and a major surprise to see Armstrong rolling back the years and driving hard in third place. As per the other days Wiggins looked a shadow of last year's rider (hot weather possibly? .. shouldn't be...) and was well off the pace. Absolutely brilliant event live, a real buzz every day of riding on the same roads and in front of the same crowds as the real riders do - not many other sports where you can replicate the identical conditions that the real competetitors use. TV and media, brilliant though the coverage is, can't begin to convey the sheer scale of the achievements of the riders or the speed at which they carry them out! Any body who follows it on telly really does need to get out for a couple of stages if they ever get the chance, great crowds and great company with everybody there to have a good time - and you are allowed to eat and drink as much as you can as often as you can and still come back a couple of pounds lighter!

You, me, and everybody else has been massively scammed by alethal combinatioon of bent politico's and greedy, grasping, private-sector consultants'n'contractors. Where did this money come from? ... it never existed .. it was borrowed on the never never. Where's it gone? ... we'll never know! Will we ever see it back? ... no way! 'Ordinary people' will pay for this in taxes/unemployment/reduced public services for years to come....

Is 'anyone' going to appear in court for the wholescale 'leagalised theft' that's been purpotrated on the ordinary taxpayer over the last 10 years? If this was France people would be swinging from motorway bridges by now...

Thanks for posting that up. So if 'you' knew that well over half the games were to be played at what is quite a considerable altitude would you have specified: a - a perfectly spherical, lightweight ball that is designed to go 'further and faster' (with the unintended but obvious consequence that every mi**** will be amplified by a factor of X) (and even though a normal ball would have gone further and faster anyway), or b - the 'normal' ball (ideally one that's beefed up a bit to counteract the lighter air then given some fancy trim and a posh new name) which you would you have choosen? Toughie....

How many of the games/grounds have been at 'altitude'? My SA geography isn't all that good. When we watch the wayward shooting and long passing I always give my youngest a bit of stick 'Loughborough fecked the World Cup'. He's at L. but fortunately he had no part in the design of this shi7e ball! it would probably be fairer to say 'Greedy FIFA stiffed the World Cup', what's wrong with a normal football FFS!!!

Eurosport live coverage here, run it in the background and listen-while-you-work to the 'commentary/chat' in a TMS stylee, enjoy. http://www.fromsport.com/v-0/0/148/v-14923.html

Most games we'll do OK, some games we will be brilliant and there will be a few shockers in there as well; I wonder if AP has decided which games will be which yet?

Anybody on here ever go out to watch it? I'm going out to the Pyrenees next Thu, we will be taking our bikes and will ride and watch four mountain stages on the Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue. Awesome event to attend live, just one big all-day party - bikes, beer, food, music, all wrapped up in temperatures of nearly 40C. This will be the third time I've attended live, we went to the Alps about 5 years ago and went to the Pyrennes and Andorra last year (also seen the TDF twice in Kent but that doesn't really count!)

Has Holmes been released? It certainly does look a bit threadbare if that's the best bench we can offer.

Don't all binmen work for private companies now? (mine certainly do and have done for prob the last 20 years)... Guess what? Mine run round early on bank holidays too ... how negligent of their private sector bosses, to think they could be running around their rounds everyday.... Boooooooooooo.

Red and White striped away shirt? Black and white striped home shirt sponsored by ZEBRA finance? Relocation to Basingstoke and renamed the Southern Saints? Instalment plan for pie purchasing? RL co-opted onto the board to 'rebuild relationships with fans'? Pay toilets installed at SMS? Swipe-card, fast-track system introduced to avoid queueing over the bridge after games? Don't come moaning to me when all these come to pass.....

Have a word with yourself, these are OUR legends, and it is entirely fitting that we remember and celebrate them. 'Champers and padded shoulders', are you sure you are supporting the right team?

Not sure quite how you compute the maths but when we got to Cardiff and were flying high high under WGS ST holders had one ticket each (18-20 ST holders at that time?), plus corporates, plus players etc; then it went to memberships, they counted down the database 'games attended' and the cut off for a cup final ticket was 8 games (I know that because I had myself and my two lads exactly on 8 and Mrs Sandwich on 7 games - despite my special pleading we got three tkts rather than 4!). When we were doing really well only a few thousand people had 8 or more games against their number (tho obviously balanced out in part by much larger number of ST holders). On that basis there probably can't have been more than a couple of hundred last year with 14+ pay as you go attendances.... I went to 10 homes and 10 aways last season ... has NC factored in that having a ST ties a lot of your money and your time to attending home games ... without an ST you are much more able financially and everything else to attend more away games? The break-even figure for non-renewers and for 'regular' walker-uppers of FOURTEEN GAMES looks massive from here ... if I had been SFS I would have tried to sell 20k STs at whatever price it took ... money in the bank.. a fairly full crowd every game... hooking in familes and groups 'for the journey' etc etc. The only conclusion we can say is that we all know which is going to be the hottest seat in the stadium next season ... the one that AP sits on! Let's just hope that on the pitch we don't see an England-style crisis of over-confidence and paralysis by expectation. Any let-up in results and crowds will be smaller than last season, an extraordinary result given the feelgood end to last season.

If we assume that 2 of the 8 QF refs won't be seen again that leaves 6 teams for 4 games - maths says they can't all get one! Perhaps our boys have been fast forwarded to the last 3 games, the weakest team dropped, and positions 2-5 have been given the QF's? Gives them the chance to use the best 2 from the QFs plus our boys in the last 3 real games (and a consolation prize for somebody or other to take the meaningless 3/4 place game). Only IMHO of course .... but I would be very surprised if the 'top 4' had been given the quarters .. and we have been ranked 5 or 6.

Anybody see the stats in the Telegraph yesterday? They printed 'distance covered' and 'top speed' (stop s******ing at the back) for all of England's outfield players. Not sure what crit they use to measure 'top speed' presumably 'quickest player' over say 10m(?). England's fastest player, as measured by whatever they measured it by was ...... Lampard England's fourth fastest player ..... Heskey Lennon not in the top 6-7 England's slowest outfield player ..... Crouch The 'pacey' Glenn Johnson ... not in the top half Sorry, don't have the actual figs to hand nor can I find a link to the online version but some food for thought?

I feel your pain!

Far too reasonable, that'll never catch on round here.

And therein lies the rub; on top of anything else our players simply lack the intellectual maturity to compete at this level. They appear to fall between two stools, on the one hand they don't have the crazy gang, all-for-one-one-for-all type spirit that perhaps some of the 'smaller' teams, or even Argentina seem to possess. And if you don't have that then you need to have a system based on self-motivation and all the individuals contributing selflessly towards the team, everybody knows their job and everybody does it ... clearly we didn't have this model either. The squad would appear to be cliquey with far too many egos and far too many players too sure of their place in the pecking order and their place in the starting X1. Players who don't/won't/can't play for the team, the obvious examples being Rooney. 'Lamps'. and Gerrard. Team England is just a money-making band wagon for the FA and the players who play the fans for mugs at every turn. I know someone in the media who covers England at the highest level and sees all the training etc and he says that the stand-out player in the 30 players in Austria was Scott Parker (who came off the back of an excellent season at WH), this was also commented on in at least two papers at the time.... was he picked ...was he flip! We wouldn't want a work-a-day ex Charlton Athletic player mixing it with the giants of CL football would we? Bless...diddums..the players were 'bored' were they? Visiting a foreign country, taking part in the biggest event on planet earth, spending time with your mates in complete pampered luxury, hell, even having to go to work somedays for a couple of hours! Nice WAG and family back home, more money in your bank account than you can spend in a lifetime, and the support of a whole country back home who pay their wages and look to their team to give everybody a lift in these difficult times..... sorry we couldn't do it (they haven't actually said 'sorry' by the way)...sorry, we didn't do it ... we got a bit bored ... we don't really like our boss.... but we'll definitely win it next time! Complete and utter tripe ... England will never a world cup till a core of 6-8 players have experience of playing 'abroad' in different leagues and in different 'cultures'. If you want the England World Cup experience in a sentence it would have to be Alan Shearer's pre-match question. 'How many of the Germans would get in our side?' Err, 9 or 10 Alan? And Brazillians, and Argentinians, and Mexicans, and Dutchmen... feck me ... Algeria passed it better than we did!

Have to say that Cashley (for all his off pitch nonesense) is one of the very, very few 'top class' players available to us; on the showing of this tournament possibly the 'only' top draw player we have? Not saying he played particularly well over the four games but he was terribly exposed in this formation and the complete lack of any discipline from Gerrard in front of him.... He is one of the few players in the squad that mixes pace,athleticism and technique, he always looked a threat when he got over halfway, unfortunately due to our abysmal ball retention and completely non-existent midfield he only managed to get forward on very limited occaissions. He also looked fit and determined, much fitter and more determined than most other members of the team. For the record I dislike him as a person as much as the next person but I think anybody that thinks we have a better option at LB really would be throwing out babies and bathwater. Glenn Johnson on the other hand ..... absolutely shocking at RB, and very over-rated as an attacking option.

What 4 games have you just watched?

..................................... Hart ........................................... ?? ?? Dawson Cashley Lenonn(Walcott) ?? Huddlestone J Cole Gerrard Rooney BIN: Green/Terry/Upson/G Johnson (single most OVER RATED player in the whole side, terminally gash as an orthodox RB)/Lamps/Heskey/SWP(FFS!)/Carragher/King KEEP IN SQUAD: Barry/Defoe/Crouch ADD TO SQUAD: Scott Parker/Danny Murphy/Zamora/Rodwell/Jenas

And England would have beaten Ghana....? might have got 0-0 on a good day.

Interviewer to Capello "Individually England have some of the best players in the world ...blah..blah... blah...?" Not sure how Capello kept a straight face!

Sky 1 NC O c16,358 A low-key start to our promotion season.