That particular attack came while research into False Bay’s shark population was underway and, of course, there were immediate and vociferous allegations that the two were linked, although this was later rubbished by independent experts. However, the surfing community is still generally unhappy about humans dumping blood into the sea because that attracts sharks which then allegedly eat the surfers. You can see this unhappiness here, with quotes such as:

I don’t like the idea of chumming. 20 years ago, we never saw a shark at Muizenberg. Now we see them regularly.

and:

…anything that brings sharks closer to humans isn’t good.

It seems that surfers are obviously concerned about the danger of shark attacks. Who knew?

All of which brings me back to that Cape Times article today. Aside from a few stats on the shark-spotter programme, it also mentioned some natural chumming:

An injured pygmy sperm whale beached itself at Surfers Corner in Muizenberg on Saturday and the red warning flag was kept up to caution the public that its blood could attract the presence of sharks.
The red flag indicates a recent sighting and a high shark alert.

And how did the surfers react?

hundreds of surfers remained in the water to take advantage of good waves.

So really, how bothered are surfers about chumming? Not much, it seems, when a DYING WHALE FULL OF SHARK ATTRACTANT is spewing its load into False Bay right next to their Mecca, they just carry on surfing.
Why on earth would they do that? Let’s ask an expert, surfer Gary Kleynhans, who was there on Saturday:

The surf is cooking! I understand the shark spotter programme is a safety measure and I appreciate that. But if surfers want to go surfing, they will.

I’ve been doing some rudimentary calculations and it seems to me that when a bloke chucks a bucket full of blood into the sea, that will attract great whites, but if a whale beaches and releases a whaleful of blood into the sea, that won’t.

Especially if the surf is “cooking”.

Am I alone is seeing a slight dichotomy here?

Previously, we’ve had Man U (who they?) and Spurs coming over for the annual Vodacom Challenge in the English off-season, but according to the Sowetan, it could be the Mags this time around:

“Negotiations are at an advanced stage between the organisers and management of Newcastle United. I think an announcement will be made in a few days’ time,” said a source involved in the negotiations. “The organisers are also toying with the idea of getting Tottenham Hotspur back in the tournament because they are going back to its original format of four clubs, but the appearance fees asked by the English teams are massive.”

Hmm… “a source”.

Anyway, this comes after Cape Town “lost out” on being a host city for the upcoming Afcon tournament, citing a lack of guarantees about costs and a lot of other political nastiness. Grant Pascoe, Mayoral Committee Member for Tourism, Events and Marketing, was on a local radio station at that time suggesting that the city would at least be likely to host one of the Vodacom Challenge matches.

Putting those two unsubstantiated claims together and doing some rudimentary calculations, I have worked out that Newcastle are going to be playing in Cape Town sometime in the next couple of months and my hopes are now raised just high enough to be completely dashed.

Ha’way the lads!

First off, 1. FC Köln v Bayern München. Bayern aren’t the team you want to face in your final league game of the season, especially when you’re struggling to avoid relegation. And when the visitors led 4-1 with seconds to play, the Köln fans showed thei disapproval thus:

(Another pic here). Obviously, the ref had no option but to take the players off, the game was (technically) abandoned and the result stood, much like the lines of riot police and stewards across the centre of the pitch for almost an hour afterwards.

But of course, it’s England that has the hooligan problem.

Meanwhile in Spain, Real Madrid were coming from behind to condemn home side Granada to a nervy last match next week. The result of this was an ugly brawl between Granada players and the match officials at the end of the game, including a bottle being thrown at the referee by one of the players. Can’t blame the fans for that one, although the referee had to leave the pitch under the protection of three riot shields. In all my years of watching footy in England, I’ve never ever seen that either. Although it seems fairly common in Spain – who could forget the UEFA Champions League encounter between Real Madrid and Barcelona last year, when exactly the same thing happened.

But of course, it’s England that has the hooligan problem.

And the beautiful game, as played in South America, is actually far less beautiful when you look more closely.

I’ve seen players injured on the field of play before, but rarely does the trainer have to come on and treat the player while riot police protect them from objects thrown from the crowd. And by “rarely”, I actually mean “never”.
Police in England don’t use rifles and rubber bullets to disperse angry fans, like they do in Brazil (World Cup 2014, anyone?).

Yes, England has certainly had it’s fair share of problems with hooliganism in the past. But that reputation should be left right there, in the past. While there are problems occurring regularly in other leagues around the world, English football has been free of any major trouble for many years now.
Maybe it’s time that FIFA sorted out some of the other “big” names in world football before accusing English fans of being troublemakers.

I’m not getting drawn into this one. Evans was found guilty and, while I understand that he is appealing the verdict, there is no excuse for what he has done and no excuse for anyone to defend his actions or to question the judgement.

However, Ian does make some valid points with reference to the the way that the inexcusable behaviour of a few idiots has been taken to be representative of the whole club.

This case isn’t anything to do with Sheffield United. It is nothing to do with football. It is about a sexual assault.

Those in charge at Sheffield United FC have dealt with the matter very well. At the minute you cannot say this reflects badly on the club, but now we have the danger of a negative media frenzy thanks to the actions of a vocal minority.

The Sky cameras will be focused even more firmly on United and the supporters on Saturday. A spotlight intensified by the ferocity of comments from some of our support alongside the reported tweets of current and former players. Please don’t let yourselves down. Please don’t let the club down.

And he’s absolutely right. But I feel that his appeal will fall on deaf ears. The vocal minority will continue to be vocal and the media will jump all over it.

Thanks Paul

I wanted to find out exactly how the fixture list is put together and just how difficult a job it is. Needless to say, I spent a large chunk of last weekend in a dark and cool room as my brain tried to come to terms with its most serious case of information overload since I asked my wife to point out my most obvious flaws.

There’s a bit more to it than simply ensuring that The Mighty Blades and the snort-beasts from S6 don’t end up playing at home on the same day:

Putting the fixture list together is incredibly complex – with a whole series of factors ensuring it is an increasingly difficult task.

Just to give you one example; every club is paired with another in regard to when they play their home and away fixtures. This is done for a number of reasons, one being so that clubs like Everton and Liverpool do not play at home on the same weekend.

West Ham, it turns out, are paired with Dagenham and Redbridge. But for reasons of revenue Southend request they do not play at home on the same day as the Hammers as they believe it impacts upon their attendance.

Southend, though, are in Essex, as are Colchester, so they cannot play together on the same weekend. Colchester share stewards with Ipswich so those two clubs also request they do not play home games on the same weekend. Transport links dictate Ipswich and Norwich do not play together on the same weekend either. In other words, when West Ham play at home can have an impact on when a club as far away as Norwich (108.8 miles) play their home fixtures.

And there are 12 other professional clubs in London…

But if you think that that describes the full complexity of the system, think again. Because then you have to avoid fixtures clashing with European games, International friendlies, World Cup qualifiers, English cup competitions, big local events and the like. Then you want to limit the amount of distance fans have to travel on public holidays when public transport options may be limited.

And then there’s the individual requests of each club.

As Fletcher notes:

…it must be an agonising, head-scratching process that slowly strips you of the will to live.

For instance, every time a fixture is changed it affects at least seven other fixtures and can easily impact on as many as 48.

The whole article carefully details the entire process and is well worth a read, even if you’re not a big footy fan.

Before the rain hit, I was lucky enough to have some awesome support from my wife and kids at the top of Edinburgh Drive. There’s something very reassuring about watching your 5 year old son knocking back sachets of Energade at 6:30 in the morning and knowing that you don’t have to deal with the consequences. Running down the M3 seemed like a breeze compared with that.

My concerns about my dodgy right calf proved unfounded (although I ran with it strapped) and after a very slow start due to 15,999 other idiots out there, I got into a rhythm of between 6 and 6:30 minutes per kilometre and kept it there. The weather was outrageous: we were running through ankle deep water at times and watching bins floating down the gutters on Rhodes Avenue. Even the finishing straight on UCT sports field was covered in puddles and I got there much earlier than a lot of people (who, admittedly, were running a lot further than I was).

My headphones gave up at about 12km, my GPS at exactly 18.2km and me just about at the finish line. Perfectly paced by one out of three anyway.

After the finish, I found that the shuttle buses back to the start were non-existent and so I had to walk 3km back there (fortunately all downhill) and then cycle home from there (another 3.5km, all uphill). That 6.5km is probably why I’m feeling so broken right now. I got home at about 9:30, very cold, very wet and very cold.

After a quick shower and some breakfast, we headed up to watch the Insurance Guy come through Kirstenbosch in equally appalling conditions to finish his tenth Ultra (56km), putting my sense of achievement firmly in perspective.

But I’m contented enough. And I don’t ever have to do that again.

Happy days.

Instead, I learned that Hugh “Blades” Bladon had been voted SA’s favourite rugby commentator in a poll on the Sport24 website.

Apparently Hugh’s was a “landslide victory”, polling, as he did, 34% of the vote. His win was described by the site as being “fairly overwhelming”.

Can something really be “fairly overwhelming”? Isn’t that like being “a bit unique”? Surely when wanting to downplay the meaning of “overwhelming” somewhat, you should just use the word “whelming”?

But, rather than a quota photo, some reading material for you, since there’s not ever so much here:

Firstly, this, from the Independent, via my Dad:

Meet the Geordie who led Benfica to three league titles

When the great Eusebio flies to Sheffield to attend a statue dedication, and describes the subject as “still in my heart”, it is quite a tribute.

But so it was for Jimmy Hagan, the legendary former Sheffield United player who managed Benfica to three consecutive Portuguese titles in the early 1970s. He was only manager there for three seasons, but demonstrably left a strong and personal mark on one of Europe’s great clubs. He can be considered among England’s finest managerial exports.

It was not for Hagan’s managerial achievements, though – important as they were – that the statue was dedicated. Hagan, who was born in Washington, County Durham, on the outskirts of Newcastle, is broadly thought to be Sheffield United’s greatest ever player, having played there for 20 years, from 1938 to 1958.

Eusebio, who is to Benfica what Hagan is to Sheffield United, was speaking at the dedication of a statue of Hagan at Bramall Lane 11 years ago, near what would have been Hagan’s 83rd birthday. He died in 1998.

And then, continuing the sporting theme (sort of), this from Jacques Rousseau on Tim Noakes dietary advice flip and the lack of scientific evidence behind it:

Tim Noakes on carbohydrates – fad or fact?

It, therefore, seems premature – even unjustified – to speak of this diet in such unequivocally positive terms, not to mention introducing the language of moral panics in the form of our hypothetical “addiction” to carbohydrates. As Ben Goldacre has pointed out, anecdotes are not data, and the bulk of the data available right now suggest that the main problem is simply that we eat too darn much.

Seriously, they are both worth several miunutes of your time. If I hadn’t read them, I’d be able to blog properly today.

Tomorrow, I’ll try to tell you about the tortoise in Nigeria.

But tomorrow is another day.

Apparently rumours of the Caterham team (for it is they) having a new forked stick and elastic band “launch control” system are wildly exaggerated. But while Mr Kovalainen will undoubtedly have the coolest hat in the procession, it surely does leave his season open to sabotage by rival drivers placing precariously-constructed wooden pigstys at the side of the track, which his car will then be involuntarily, inexplicably and inescapably drawn towards, perhaps losing him time, or indeed, life.

Still, he’ll look really cool as he crashes out of the parade.

This was taken yesterday evening as we were heading down the back of the Danie Craven stand at Newlands after the Stormers v Hurricanes game.
If we’d left earlier (or later), the moon and Venus would not have been so beautifully framed by the stand, the Sports Science Institute and Table Mountain.
But we didn’t, so they were.