Robin van Who?

Cricket

Here's a tip. If ever AD suggests going to anything, anywhere, whatever it is, and then finds out he's double-booked and can't make it, ensure you get along, by hook or by crook. He's infallible. Mr 100%. As soon as you the text or get the phone call saying “I've got my shift dates wrong”, that should be the cue to start buying up tickets.

Fantastic game last night, low scoring, and a robust and resilient Sussex team were properly tested by a very good Warwickshire side. It was just great cricket, great sport and something you couldn't take your eyes off. Enthralling.

Sport v PE

Mr Naugthy put it into words. Often, with getting the semantics right, understanding follows. I have been confused about just why the school sport thing has rankled so much. It is this. They (the supposed experts in the field) are confusing sport and PE.

PE is about diet, no drugs, going to the gym, doing some aerobics or whatever flavour that has at the time (spinning? Zumba?). It's all that boring stuff they had us do in the school hall in our vests and pants in the olden days.

Absolutely different, totally separate, in another dimension, is sport. This is competitive, more social, less about self, more about the team you play for. All that.

The edges are not blurred just because both involve some exercise. They are discrete, with definite borders. Having the space to 'run around at playtime' does not equate to having a proper go at the neighbouring school's rugby fifteen.

Many a true word spoken in jest and all that. Darren Gough, asked whether competitive sport should be compulsory, said: “absolutely, yes. I was rubbish at geography and they made me do that.”

There's the simple answer. The argument has been hijacked by people who think it's perfectly fine to cry off sport, but want political correctness to be a core subject.

Oh, Robin Robin...

...you went to Man United and won f**k all.

I hope he's getting that from the Arsenal fans at the end of next season. The season after, and every season to come.

I think there's more chance of 'Oh, Robin Robin' than there is of 'Oh, Alex Alex, you went to Barcelona...'

We need a went to Barca and hardly got off the bench song for Song.

Wenger and the Arsenal board are not playing a straight bat. Seven years without a trophy. Seven years sounds okay until you put that in a footballer's lifespan:

Say you break into the first team at twenty, with the odd appearance, then start to peak physically and as a player at twenty four. Twenty four years old, and you're now a first team regular. Seven years later, you're thirty one. Until van Persie (at twenty nine) United had a no signings over twenty six years old policy. Thirty one is no age, but it's twilight years for a footballer. I know we're not struggling against relegation and I know all that gumph about how we're top of the financial table. But I'd go. Given the sniff of joining a club with real ambition and genuine chances of success, given a four year contract seeing me through to thirty three, I'd be off like a shot. Wenger's spiralling eccentricity and the club's focus on the bottom line of the accounts rather than the spiders' webs in the trophy cabinet are all anyone needs to know.