Category Archives: World Cup 2006

World Cup Final – A day of activity

Posted on by

So, the day of the World Cup Final dawns and its a France v Italy final. Good for the French and Italians in London but not so exciting for the Brits. Still, its not everyday there is a World Cup Final so we made plans to meet and watch the match anyway. Clearly the pubs weren’t going to be overrun with English supporters so we had no worries about rocking up an hour or so before the match and still grabbing a seat. As a result we had the whole day to find something to do.

The weather was slightly on the dodgy side but we decided a bit of Pitch n Putt wouldn’t go astray. A quick search on google and we had a venue: Queen’s Park. I was surprised to find that Queen’s Park isn’t all that far from home and after about 40-45 minutes of walking (not walking all that fast either as I was on the phone most of the time so was a little distracted) I arrived at the tube station where I met up with Sir Jules and Einstein. The park itself was only a short walk away from the tub.

Having read that the park is about 30 acres I thought finding the Pitch n Putt was going to be a bit tricky but it was actually relatively straightforward. In fact, in combination with the tennis courts it takes up about maybe a quarter of the park so its fairly hard to miss. The course itself is 9 holes with the longest hole being about 80 yards – so not too big. They make it easy to “tee-off” as well as each hole starts on top of a platform and I’m sure that this also saves replacing a lot of grass. Pitch n Putt was great entertainment and its just a shame the course wasn’t a little longer or an 18 hole one as we got through it pretty quick smart – despite not being the greatest golfers – and luckily for the other golfers on the course I didn’t hook/slice the ball too much as usually happens. Scorecards are here.

We thought we were going to be hours out on the course but, due to a combination of our clearly superior skills (ha ha) and size of the actual Pitch n Putt, we ended up finishing in just about an hour and most of that time was waiting for the group in front of us to finish. As a result Einstein thought a bit of practice on the boulles would be good.

After looking for what we thought was a lawn bowl green – what we found instead was a square of dirt. Turns out we were playing PĂ©tanque (ironically a French game) instead. Its kind of like lawn bowls except you sort of toss (instead of roll) metal balls like small shot puts (instead of a bowl) at a small wooden ball, which to my amusement is called a piglet, (instead of a white jack) trying to get as close as possible. Strange game though I’m not sure how long it would keep me entertained on a normal day – even today it kept our attention for, oh, about fifteen minutes. There must be something redeeming about it though as about 17 million people in France apparently play it, most notibly during their summer holidays.

Next stop – something to soothe the beasts in our bellies. Being a Sunday it was the perfect day for a Sunday roast dinner. Sir Jules had found a nice pub for us to try out near Marylebone but unfortunately it was a no food day. Can’t understand why but perhaps some pubs find it easier to serve drinks only on a day like today (being the World Cup Final) or perhaps no food was being served due to there not being that many people around. Still, their loss was another pub’s gain and we found a good pub with a really nice Beef Roast and two TVs to watch the Wimbledon Men’s Singles Final on. Surprisingly after our roast we still had a couple of hours to fill before the final started at seven so it was off for a bit of ten pin bowling at the Trocadero.

Coming out of Picadilly Circus it was clear that the French and Italians were definitely out to enjoy their day of glory. You couldn’t turn anywhere without seeing someone draped in the blue, white and red or the green, white and red and of course there was much singing and chanting. But back to the game later.

The bowling at the Trocadero was okay. The lanes seemed a bit shorter than I’m used to so as Einstein commented it seemed a lot easier to hit the strikes and spares. Well, easy for her to say since she (and Sir Jules) scored well into the 100s. I did get a spare or two I think but still a pretty dismal effort in the light of everyone else’s peformance. I will say something about the bowling at the Trocadero and its that they were playing fab music. Well, for the short period we were there at any rate. A quick stop at the 2p machines, of course, and then it was back to Marylebone to find a pub to watch the final in.

I’m not going to say much about the game itself because it was boooring. Except for that one moment that everyone’s talking about when Zidane head-butted that dude that had seemingly been giving him a nipple cripple. THE funniest moment in the football ever and I’m sure a moment that will be replayed over and over. Yes Italy went on to win the game on penalties and yes, my neighbourhood was celebrating into the wee hours of the morning (much car-honking and I think it was Bolero or something played REALLY REALLY loud.) I was disappointed to see them win but then again at least we Aussies can now say we were beat by the World Cup Champs.

What a game!

Posted on by

I’m getting some grief from the Poms I work with who question the legitimacy of Australia’s claim to a spot in the World Cup (personally I think they’re just jealous that they don’t have Warney on their panel of pundits. Heh heh.) Yes admittedly football comes a distant fourth to the three other football codes in my country and yes we do call it soccer but given these limitations I reckon we play some pretty mean football. A number of the Australian squad play in England’s Premiership so we can’t be too awful. Today was a chance to show what we Aussies are made of and I’m glad to say we didn’t let ourselves down.

I’ve watched what feels like a ton of games in the last 9 or so days of the World Cup but today was the first chance I’ve had to watch the Aussies in action. (I missed the first because I was … ahem … working at the time.) Playing their second World Cup match in this year’s competition they had a pretty tough challenge ahead of them in Brazil. The match wasn’t actually on until 5 o’clock today but seeing as how patriotic Australians are the venue, Temple Walkabout, was guaranteed to be heaving very early on. It actually opened at 12 and that’s what time we decided to meet. It turned out to be a very good move because I’m fairly sure by 12.30 all available seating was taken and by 13.30 the Walkabout was pretty much full to the brim. Walkabouts have a pretty dodgy reputation as a bar but its a great venue for big sporting occasions like today. There a huge number of screens around the place and one giant screen at the back so I’m sure most people were okay with seeing the game.

So, we had about five hours until the match actually started and although there was an early match on, Japan v Croatia, it wasn’t the most interesting of matches and barely kept our attention. It probably didn’t help that the commentary was muted so although we could see the match its always more interesting having that commentary. So we had to entertain ourselves by reading magazines and watching adverts like the one on the right.

Finally it was Australia’s turn.

The build up to the match was pretty amazing with everyone really getting into full cheering gear. It must be noted that although the majority of the people in the bar were Aussies, there was also a small contingent of brave Brazillian supporters. It was great to see that as much as they were taunting us with all their insanely annoying whistling and braying and just general cheering, most of the people around them remained in good spirits and good natured.

Having been to two England matches I have observed some small differences in the two groups of supporters. Today’s crowd was definitely much louder than the crowd’s at either of the two England matches I’ve been to so far and it seems that the crowd today was just so into the match with face paints, tattoos and specially made shirts to show their commitment to our team. Not to mention cheering every single challenge and possession of the ball. Perhaps the difference is that our appearances so far in World Cups have been pretty rare so we have plenty to cheer. This is not to say that English supporters aren’t loud in their own right and just as passionate but in today’s crowd I just felt something a little special.

As for the game itself we did eventually go down to Brazil 2-0 but I don’t think the score really represents how the game really was. I don’t claim to know much about football but even I could see that Brazil are still not in top form and Australia really gave them a good go. Unfortunately we couldn’t capitalise on some great chances to score. Let’s just hope we can overcome the Croats later on this week to guarantee ourselves a spot in the second round.

World Cup Tuesday roundup

Posted on by

There is nothing quite like being in an English pub when England are playing. Today we visited the Litten Tree for England’s 5 o’clock game against Trinidad and Tobago and it was heaving. We arrived there about an hour early but clearly, even on a working day and even though this was still only a knockout match, it wasn’t early enough to garner a comfortable position (I felt most sorry for Chicken who was absolutely surrounded by everyone’s bags so she could barely move at all.) It was actually amazing to see the absolute stream of people coming into the pub as, just when you thought there was no way for more people to fit, another stream of people would come through again. The pictures don’t capture just how ram-packed the place was. Pretty amazing and to be honest I’m just surprised that I wasn’t wearing any beer though there were definitely a couple of close calls.

Keen. Updating the World Cup spreadsheet in the pubAs for the game itself, England did itself no favours for the first part of the match as they had plenty of opportunities but just couldn’t capitalise. It wasn’t until late in the game (something like after 80 minutes had been played) that Crouch finally scored followed by a beauty of a goal by Gerrard in extra time. I’m sure you could hear the roar from our pub from miles away. I was just relieved that England got away with a result in the end because I can just imagine how worked up the crowd would have got otherwise. The funniest moments during the game was whenever the camera found Rooney, whether he was warming up or just sitting on the bench, cries of “Rooney, Rooney” would surely follow.

Hunger won out eventually over watching the next match (Sweden v Paraguay) so off we headed to Nando’s and if this isn’t life’s full circle taking effect we ended up at The Elusive Camel yet again to watch the second half of the match. And this time we saw plenty of England shirts – the bouncer last Saturday must have been a newbie hence his eagerness to enforce the rules.

World Cup Saturday roundup

Posted on by

Today England played their first game in the World Cup (against Paraguay) so, in true English tradition, a group of us went to go see it in a pub. It was kind of an interesting day (even if the football wasn’t always so) with three different pubs, three different experiences, two world cup games – all in all one very long day.

The (first) venue we tried was The Elusive Camel at Victoria, yes a sister in a chain of Camels as per the one we went to last week near Waterloo. It had apparently rated very highly as a venue for football watching and at first it seemed okay – having at least one nice big screen where we had prime watching position to see the game. Then it all went downhill from there with pricey drinks and food (for a pub) and then finding out, more importantly, that there was to be absolutely NO football jersey wearing allowed during a football game. What the?! On the day of England’s very first game in the World Cup and patrons are not allowed to wear their England jerseys? What an outrage. It was clear that we weren’t going to get much atmosphere at this pub for the game as all the English supporters, doing their patriotic duty in donning their jerseys, were simply walking out in protest. We decided to mount our own protest by going to find another pub. But unfortunately we made this decision too At the Litten Treelate for James and Jon who each went off to buy drab green t-shirts to wear instead … see pic above of the dashing due in green.

We ended up at The Litten Tree which is actually not too bad a venue. There are two large screens in separate areas and although the tables are a bit awkwardly set up we managed. As with many other pubs around Victoria The Litten Tree didn’t seem all that crowded. Either the weather was too fabulous on the outside (and it really was fab) or Victoria is too much of a commuter area to attract too many people during weekends. I think we’re actually planning on coming back to this pub on Thursday for England’s second match so it will be interesting to see how much more crowded it gets. I tried to instigate a Shot (of alochol)-Per-England-Goal for the game to make things interesting but unfortunately England failed to deliver much. Although they did get a result (a 1-0 as if you didn’t already know) it really was one of the more boring games of football I’ve seen (also considering the goal was an own-goal!) This is to be contrasted with the one we saw later between Sweden and Trinidad and Tobago at King’s Arms which I thought was infinitely more interesting even though it ended in a 0-0 draw (and no, it wasn’t purely due to the eye candy on display! The Swedes have AMAZing bone structure …) Strangely there also appeared to be a lot of Trinidad and Tobago supporters in the King’s Arms including the bar staff which added to the atmosphere. Not something I expected in an English pub that’s for sure.

Operation Take-Every-FlagOne small nitpick about the King’s Arms. They obviously shopped at the same place for flag hangy thingies as the Stanhope Arms because to my annoyance once again there was no Australian flag to be seen in the bar! To be fair though, we weren’t the only ones to miss out with Angola, Ecuador, Ghana, Iran, Serbia and Montenegro, Togo and Tunisia also missing representation. And just for me here are the flags of the missing countries – nice and big so no one misses them. 🙂

The evening was rounded out with an Indian curry at a local curry house. Quality of food wasn’t the greatest but we had tons of fun entertaining the little kid at the table next to us with flags pilfered earlier (see pic to the right for Operating Take-Every-Flag.) She is going to be one huge England supporter when she gets older. Oh, and we scored some more pint glasses for the office. See the spoils of war here.

World Cup Mania

Posted on by

As World Cup Mania descends in the UK, and the rest of the footballing/soccering world, it seemed like a great time to start Extreme interest in the Urban Chill masseuseone of our own competitions. I think it was Sir Jules’ idea first so I’ve called it Sir Jules’ World Cup Comp. I’m going to set up a page that will sort of monitor how the entrants are going (there are 18 of us) though I’ve yet to work out how to do this so the page is blank for now. There are no skills involved for this Cup as its more like a complex sweepstake (thank goodness because as readers know I have very limited knowledge of the sport though it is growing.) We each get four teams (one from each level of rankings) instead of just one team so all of us will have at least a sporting chance.

I think this is how the prizes will work out:

  • Team that wins the World Cup (and as there are 18 of us there will be two/three people with the same World Cup winning team so it will go by countback on how well the 2nd ranked team went and then the 3rd and then the 4th if it needs to go back that far. Prize will be split if it is still a tie.)
  • Best net goal position for all four teams.
  • Team who has the highest individual goal scorer (and again it will go back to who has the team with the second highest individual goal scorer and so forth until we have a result.)
  • Booby prize for worst net goal position for all four teams.

Jonathan finally succumbingSo, tonight we had the “draw” for the teams. Its all an excuse for a bit of a drink and laugh really. Its kind of ironic how the results fell out because apparently I ended up with nearly the perfect set of teams having drawn Brazil as my 1st ranked team, the Czech Rep as my 2nd, Serbia and Montenegro as my 3rd and the Ukraine as my 4th. We shall see I guess. This is the World Cup after all and anything could happen.

What Sir Jules thoughtThe night turned out to be quite a bit of fun. We were at The (Elusive) Camel and although the reviews for this place weren’t the best it ended up being okay – good position near the bar and we had seats all night. There is nothing I dislike more than having to stand up the whole night! Not the greatest thing for backs. Speaking of backs, at about 10pm these two girls walked into the bar and started walking around offering the customers something – turns out they were offering on the spot massages. Hmm … very wierd. At first everyone at our table laughed at the suggestion but apparently it caught Jonathan’s interest because he couldn’t help but look at the massage being given to a neighbouring customer. See pic to the right above. Eventually he succumbed and got one for himself! Its one of the wierdest massages I’ve ever seen with the masseuse using her face and forehead and just some generally strange things. Actually thinking back its a great time to hit people – when they’ve had a lot of drink and when they’ll agree to practically anything!