My main sporting passions at the moment are Football and American Hand-egg (Football).
Newcastle United Football Club
Being in 7th place in the Premier League and 5 points clear of 8th isn't a bad place to be for a club that was in the Championship a couple of years ago, in fact it's very good. A lot has been made of the success story so far this year, but it seems to be coming to an end now. The lack of squad depth has been very obvious over the past few weeks, despite the good draw we got out of Manchester United and the awful refereeing decisions in the Chelsea game, but never more so than on Saturday against Norwich City.
The first ten minutes started well enough, then the game settled down. Alright, it was a bit of a snooze-fest for the first 35 minutes I suppose. Then suddenly, after a bit of pinball in the area, Wes Hoolahan opened the scoring for Norwich. "Alright", I thought, "we can come back into this", and sure enough Demba Ba continued his prolific goal scoring season by equalising just before half time.
Not long into the second half it wasn't going well... two more Norwich goals went in from headers. We were 3-1 down, but I still had faith, we had come back from worse...only last season we came back from 4-0 down against Arsenal to draw the game... And then Dan Gosling got sent off. I turned my attention away from the game and started to do something else, no way we were scoring now with our team riddled with injuries.
However, a few minutes later I noticed the black and white shirts wheeling away in celebration...it was 3-2, and somehow we were back in the game! From then on we were pushing and pushing, and you wouldn't have known we were a man down and a goal down, we could draw this game...or even win it!
Oh wait...Norwich scored again...from a header. FOUR goals had gone in from headers (deflected or otherwise).
I mean I know we're lacking squad members, and I hope something is done about this in the January transfer window (we got 35 million for Carroll last year, come on, let's spend some), but we just got embarrassed by Norwich City. Norwich City! When you think about Newcastle you think Shearer, Beardsley, Gascoigne, Milburn... the list goes on. When you think about Norwich City you think Stephen Fry, Delia Smith and my Year 5 primary school teacher (well maybe you don't). What just happened?
Anyway, Swansea next week, maybe we can get things back on track.
Seattle Seahawks
Here's another team I support which is decidedly average, yet showing moments of brilliance at times. We had a pretty awful start to the season, although I'll admit we've definitely turned it around over the past few weeks. In fact if we win the remaining four games in the regular season, there's a very big chance we'll be going to the play-offs for two years in a row! And we do have a few players who seem to perform very well in big pressure situations... we all know what our premier running back Marshawn Lynch managed in the play-off game against the Saints last year. What's that? Most of you don't know? Then allow me to educate you:
Even if you don't like American Football, you have to admit that's impressive. That's not a one-off either, check out this touchdown he scored in the game from last week against the Philadelphia Eagles:
My favourite part was the commentator saying "he's not gonna get anything..."
Anyways, hopefully Lynch, the quarterback Tarvaris Jackson (who, by the way, has been playing half the season with a torn pectoral muscle, ridiculous) and the rest of the Seahawks can go on a winning streak to the end of the season and then put up a good play-off run as well.
So there's a little insight into my sporting passions, thanks for reading
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