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Archive for March, 2010

Soccer – Is Golden Goal A Better Option?

Posted in Football, tagged , , , , on March 21, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Melbourne Victory was beaten in the A-League grand final last night by Sydney. Scores were locked at 1-1 after regular time and after 30 minutes of extra time. Sydney ended up winning the penalty shoot out.

As a spectacle, it was a pretty ordinary game. Both teams generally sniped away at each other all night, but the major contributor to the poor standard was the surface at Etihad Stadium. Once again I ask, how the hell does Ian Collins get away with providing such a crap surface week after week after week? It’s bullshit! It’s interesting that Victory has lost three players this season to significant knee injuries, all of which occurred at Etihad from memory. On that subject, let’s hope Archie Thompson makes a speedy recovery – he is a significant signature player for the A-League.

With the way the game was decided, it makes me wonder why soccer doesn’t embrace the concept of “golden goal”, instead of the penalty shoot out, which seems to be the way that is commonly used to break deadlocks in major games. Golden goal basically means that, once extra time has commenced, the side that scores the first goal wins the game.

In golden goal’s defence, it would mean that all effort would be made by each side to score, knowing the next goal will be the winner. This would make it a much better spectacle for spectators. It would also remove the penalty shoot out option, which is really a lottery based on which direction the goalkeeper decides to leap and which angle the shooter decides to strike the ball. If the keeper guesses right, then sometimes he gets lucky.

Critics of golden goal would no doubt argue that there is no guarantee that a goal would be scored, which is certainly true. They would also suggest that it is unfair on coaches, who mange their substitutes with the expectation that play will go on for a set period of time. Surely the solution to this would be to allow substitutes to come back on.

Has golden goal been tried in soccer previously? I’d be interested in comments on how it went.

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My Long Term Challenge

Posted in Health & Fitness, tagged , on March 17, 2010| 2 Comments »

I’ve been super impressed with the achievements of friends and work colleagues who successfully completed the Run For The Kids last Sunday. For those that don’t know, RFTK is a fun run over 14.6 kilometres through Melbourne (http://www.runforthekids.com.au/r4k/). Money raised goes to the Royal Children’s Hospital Good Friday Appeal. It’s one of the more interesting runs in that it takes in the Domain tunnel and the Bolte Bridge, two pieces of infrastructure that don’t see pedestrians in / on them any other time during the year.

I’m sufficiently enthused to want to do exactly the same. So I went on Facebook earlier this week to declare that in 12 months time, I will be at least 7 kilograms lighter and will have just completed the Run For The Kids.

It was fantastic to get the support that came through in people’s comments. Of course, I got the usual smart arse remarks from the usual suspects (thanks Chris & Mick).

I just wanted to make sure that my commitment was out there in my blog for constant review, rather than hidden away in Facebook statuses (is that a word?). I AM DETERMINED IT WILL HAPPEN NEXT YEAR.

Dave from Step into Life Mordialloc wants me to do a 10 kilometre run in July. Hmm, that’s only four months away. Watch this space.

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