Viva Espana

The Spaniards might have a history for harbouring despots, cranks and crooks like Franco, Pinochet, and of course Skasey, but as a nation they have one thing right. Well, two things - those being their excellent and tasteful selections as their national sports of choice. The national sport of Spain is football, closely followed by MotoGP. And you thought their national sport was stacking their Paralympics basketball team with tall wankers pretending to be 'tards.

The A-League is actually pretty good. No, seriously.
To the A-League, for no reason other than its strategic alphabetic advantage. The last couple of weeks have seen some entertaining football being played, and some even more entertaining Random Shit going on in the background, or more aptly on the sideline. Last weekend's Sadelaide-Melbored game belied the two cities' funereal reputations, being a tense, pulsating affair headlined by the awesome set-to between Adelaide coach Johnny Kosmina and Victory arsehole-in-chief Kevin Bloody Muscat. Chasing a ball over the sideline, Muscat barrelled into Kossi at a decent clip and knocked him off his $7.99 Kmart resin chair and onto his arse in no uncertain terms. Kosmina, known for his even-tempered approach to both the game and to life in general, responded by grasping KBM by the throat and offering his services as a freelance trachaeotomy vendor. The lanky frame of assistant coach Aurelio Vidmar may have been all that prevented Kossi from tearing Bloody a new one. A few weeks prior, an equally entertaining sideline stoush saw NZ Knights coach (apparently they have one) Paul Nevin banished to a seat in the rafters for a couple of games. Made no bloody difference whatsoever. Can't win with him, can't win without him. Can't win. Any wonder why all the decent All Whites now play for Perth... or Brisbane... or Newcastle... or Sydney...

Not that young NZ winger Jeremy Brockie (the kid with the skanky dreads) is getting much of a gig at Sydney at present, not with Benni Carbone in town for his guest stint in the blue and blue (and bits of orange, randomly) shirt. To turn Carbone's guest stint into a full-time gig will supposedly cost the cash-strapped glamour club about $300K for the year. They need to do this. Now. If they don't, I think we'll finally have figured out what the FC stands for, i.e. a character description of their board and chairman. Carbone has them fresh skills so ill he makes anyone playing alongside him look twice the player. Even Sasho Petrovski - even though twice fuck-all is still fuck-all.

And the fun keeps coming. Latest rumour has Perth Glory, fresh off tanking their 10th anniversary game against the Raw, looking to recruit some experienced finishing by employing newly-retired Everton great Drunken Duncan Ferguson. Which would be tops - there's a man who'd be an instant cult hero, not only in the Shed, but throughout the comp. It's all looking pretty good for the A-League, with boisterous crowds, entertaining football, interest from overseas talent, and not all the clubs being completely broke yet. So, on balance, is the A-League up to much? Fuckin' A.

Meanwhile, in Europe...
Same old same old. Chelsea are leading the Premiership, winning ugly. Mourinho's whinging. Liverpool are alternating astonishing wins with implausible disasters. Madrid are fucking appalling. What's new?

Well, Chelsea's most recent ugly win over promoted blue stripey team Reading came at a price - that being the consciousness of both their starting keeper Petr Cech (anyone want to buy a vowel?) in the first minute, then replacement gloveman Carlo Cudicini (who's been around at Stamford Bridge since the days when he was number two to Mark 'Mindless Drug Hoover' Bosnich) got knocked out in a goalmouth scramble near the end of the 90 minutes. Captain, centreback and definite-non-goalie John Terry went cautiously in between the sticks for the duration, hurriedly pulling on the third choice goalie's jersey. Hilario!
(That's actually his name - he's the third-string keeper who started the Barcelona game this morning. By the end of which, he was probably be wishing for a sudden lack of consciousness - if only to blot out the memory of Barca's hideous fluoro orange away strip. Yes folks, they've managed to top last year's iridescent yellow council hi-vis jackets...)

Quote of the Weak
...goes to William Gallas, newly arrived at the Arse, who has ended up with squad number 10 off the retiring shoulders of Dennis Bergkamp. Clearly being bestowed with the most famous shirt number in football (as worn by of Pele, Maradona, Baggio, Zidane and Steve Corica) even though he's just a vaguely useful left fullback has gone to his head. Either that, or he's just an arrogant French prick. Quoted ahead of the recent round of Euro2008 qualifiers, he said this of his national team:
"These days our group opponents are quaking in their boots when they look at our line-up, especially when you look at the spine of Henry, Vieira, Makelele and Thuram and then see Gallas, Ribery, Abidal and Sagnol. People are scared of France again. We got our status back at the World Cup when new players came through and showed their worth."
That weekend, France played Scotland. And lost one-nil.

Keeper fucks up. England lose. What's not to like?
Meanwhile in somewhere unpronounceable in Croatia, England played like a busted arse and lost 2-0 to the tablecloth wearers, with the second goal resulting from Spurs' Paul Robinson taking an astronomically appalling air-swing at a loping back-pass and watching in slo-mo horror as it kicked up, sailed over his outstretched boot and into the back of what some would call the Auld Onion Bag. Being not only an astoundingly bad piece of goalkeeping, but one which caused England to lose a football game, it was truly one of the funniest things I've ever seen.

But that wasn't the funniest thing I've ever seen.

This is the funniest thing I've ever seen.















But suddenly, the stunt goes horribly wrong...

OK, so that's just the 'Before' photo. And before we get to the goings on at the Interior Parabolica, turn six at the Circuito do Estoril, and the circumstances by which the number one team in MotoGP conspired to lose both their championship-contending riders in the same hilarious moment of insanity, in the second last race of the year... some context.

Ten years ago, the Valentino Rossi of the '90s was a grizzled old Queensland bastard who walked with a limp and rode like he was wrestling a rodeo bull. His name was Mick Doohan and he was tougher than old boots. These days he's more famous for nuding up in Darwin strip joints and getting turfed out by security, but in his '90s heyday on the works Honda NSR500 he was a machine. He'd comfortably tied up the 1996 world 500cc title long before the season-ending Australian Grand Prix at Eastern Creek, ten years ago last weekend. The Creek had managed to pinch the GP off Phillip Island at the beginning of the '90s, but the decision to take the race back 'home' to the Island from '97 on had been greeted with widespread joy in the GP paddock. Regardless, Doohan had every intention of winning the last ever GP at the Creek, and on the all-conquering Repsol Honda, he had no real challengers. Bar one, of course - the only other guy on a Repsol Honda, a young Spaniard called Alex Criville. Criville had chased him all year - he wasn't up to being a race leader on his own merits, but could follow doggedly in Doohan's wheeltracks while the Aussie tried his usual break-'em-from-lap-one charge from the startline, and had even succeeded in pinching one or two races on the finish-line from his senior team leader this year. Which pissed Our Mick off no end, as you'd expect.

On the last lap at the Creek, Criville was leading, upsetting the form guide, and of course Our Mick. Not for long. Doohan scythed down the inside into the Turn 2 hairpin like Vinnie Jones in his Wimbledon heyday clattering into a poncy opposition winger, with or without the ball. The two team bikes hit solidly, fairing-to-fairing, and Doohan was through into the lead. There was only one other place to pass on the uninspiring Creek layout - the downhill right-hand hairpin behind the pits about 2/3rds the way through the lap - and Doohan was going to make damn sure Criville wasn't coming through. Except Criville was equally sure he was, particularly after the unceremonious hip-and-shoulder from the boss. Two shiny Repsol Hondas tried to fit into a section of tarmac (the apex of the downhill right-hand hairpin behind the pits) in which only one shiny Repsol Honda could fit. Result: two not-so-shiny Repsol Hondas in the dirt with bits missing off them, two Repsol Honda team riders who were now very much off each other's Christmas card lists, and an astonishing debut 500cc win for Loris Capirossi on the Marlboro Yamaha YZR500. So surprising, in fact, that the Marlboro Yamaha team had already fired Capirossi for season '97.

Fast forward ten years, and seamlessly switch tenses. Mouthy, Cletusesque, dubious-facial-hair-sporting Septic Tank, Nicky Hayden is leading the world championship with two rounds to go, but is choking like Greg Norman in Michael Hutchence's hotel suite; the Mick Doohan of the naughties, Valentino Rossi, is hunting him down on his Yamaha, coming back from a 50 point deficit only a handful of races ago. Hayden's Repsol Honda teammate, young Spaniard Dani Pedrosa, fast as you like but genetically incapable of smiling, has ballsed up his own title aspirations by taking a chunk out of his knee in a crash in Malaysia a few weeks beforehand. Off the line, front row starters Rossi and Yamaha teammate Colin Edwards (who's half Australian, i.e. the half that isn't intermittently shit) are in formation, chased by those shiny Repsol Hondas, the young Spaniard in front. Anyone else see what might happen here? Yup. Hayden barges past into the tight left-hander behind the pits, Interior Parabolica. One lap later, same corner: Pedrosa misjudges his braking, puts his front wheel onto the painted kerb on the inside of the corner, and drops the motherfucker, skittling his world championship leading teammate into the dust. Two not-so-shiny Repsol Hondas in the dirt with bits missing once more. And likewise the Christmas card list thing. In fact, in a glorious tanty captured in super slo-mo by the trackside cameras, Nicky Hayden throws the toys so far out of the pram you'd need Google Earth to see the bastards. Dr Yobbo offers him a free character reference and doubles up in hysterics on the couch.

And Valentino Rossi wins the race. Or would have, if he'd finished it 0.003 seconds earlier than he did. Young Spanish rider Toni Elias (no relation of Back Door Benny) completed the distance some two-thousandths of a second ahead of him, after drafting past on the run to the line. Like Capirossi, Elias' Fortuna Honda team may have already fired him for next year - but they're suddenly revising those plans in a great big fuckin' hurry. And one other ironic throwback to the Creek ten years ago... in Elias' corner, down in the Fortuna Honda pits all race, and cheering him on from the enclosure below the podium after it, were his two biggest supporters. One, his dad, a former Spanish motocross champion. The other, his mentor, 1999 world 500cc world champion for Repsol Honda... Alex Criville.

So to Toni Eliarse, Grand Prix winner, the Weak would like to say: nice work my son. However, if Vale loses the world title to that fuckin' hillbilly by the five points you pinched off him... we know where you live, sunshine.

The Doctor is OUT.