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John Meehan ☭ writes in the Tomás Ó Flatharta blog that Irish podcast host and former Gaelic Footballer Joe Brolly slams President Joe Biden over USA support of Israel : “a rogue state completely out of control.”

We thank Joan McKiernan for drawing our attention to Joe Brolly’s blistering attack on Joe Biden’s support of Israel.

Irish podcast host and former Gaelic Footballer Joe Brolly has criticized President Joe Biden over America’s support of Israel. The American President has requested a package worth $105 billion to be used towards humanitarian and military assistance for both Israel and Ukraine.
Joe Brolly is married to Joe Biden’s third cousin,
Laurita Blewitt (Image: Twitter/@joebrolly1993)

The $ 14.3 billion earmarked for Israel includes $10.6 billion – via the Defence Department – including provision for air and missile defense. There is also $3.7 billion from the State Department to be used to bolster the Israeli military and strengthen the US Embassy’s security.

In a social media video from his Free State Podcast, Brolly describes Israel as a “rogue state, completely out of control” and criticized Biden – who is a third cousin of his wife, Laurita Blewitt – for his support of the country. Brolly, who won an All-Ireland Senior Football title with Derry in 1993, visited the President in the White House on St Patrick’s Day in 2022.

The podcaster also condemned the fact that Biden, who sent Brolly a wedding gift earlier in the year, failed to meet with the bereaved Palestinians who lost family members during the conflict between Israel and Hamas. The President visited the region last week.

Brolly said in the clip online:

We’ve been here before brothers and sisters. In May 2018 after Israeli snipers had casually murdered over 60 Palestinians in Gaza the leading Jewish academic, Norman Finkelstein, whose parents both survived the horrors of the Holocaust and the Warsaw Ghetto, he wrote Gaza is a concentration camp, that Israel are committing war crimes and that the only way to avoid being murdered for Palestinians was to quote ‘meekly accept imprisonment inside the concentration camp of Gaza. Ursula von der Leyen announced in the past week that they’re increasing their aid to Gaza, presumably so the people there can eat and drink while the Israelis bomb them to oblivion. A whole 20 trucks. 20 f***ing trucks wouldn’t stock a decent-sized Tesco. President Biden has pledged 14 billion in state of the art weapons of war for Israel to continue to pummel this defenceless population. And 20 trucks of humanitarian aid for Gaza. I cannot think of anything sicker or more obscene bombing churches, hospitals, indiscriminate slaughter. Israel is a rogue state, completely out of control, as described by many leading Jewish academics and thinkers, acting beyond all norms of morality and anything that we could conceive of as decency and humanity. And when Joe Biden goes to Israel and hugs, quite rightly, the parents of those slaughtered children and human beings who lost their lives on 7th October, he doesn’t f***ing go to Palestine and do it and hug the children there and hug the mothers and fathers and tell them that he loves them. That alone would bring about a ceasefire. I stand with humanity he should be saying.

Source, 

Joe Brolly (born 25 June 1969),[1] born Padraig Joseph Brolly,[2] is an Irish Gaelic football analyst, former player and barrister who played at senior level for the Derry county team.

Brolly played for Derry in the 1990s and early 2000s and was part of the county’s only All-Ireland Senior Football Championship winning side in 1993. He also won two Ulster Senior Football Championships and four National League titles. Source : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Brolly

⏩John Meehan is a veteran Left wing activist. 

Joe Brolly Slams Biden Over Support For Rogue State

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of Seven Hundred And Eleven

Caoimhin O’Muraile ⚑ It was with great sorrow fond and memories that I heard the news that Manchester United and England great, Bobby Charlton, had died on Saturday 21st October 2023.


Bobby had experienced a lot in his career, chalking up 758 appearances for Man United and 106 international caps for England, beating the former record holder, Billy Wright of Wolves by one cap. In all this time Bobby was never sent off and received only two cautions, against Argentina in the 1966 World Cup Quarter Final and against Chelsea in the league. A truly remarkable record. I wonder what his opinion of the cursed VAR would have been? Bobby had been ill with Dementia for some years, including when VAR was forced upon football, so, to my knowledge he never gave an opinion.

Bobby and his brothers, Jack (of Leeds United fame, and manager of the ‘Republic of Ireland’) and Tom, who is lesser known, was born in Ashington in the North East of England and it was a footballing family. Bobby’s cousins, Jack Milburn played for Leeds United and Bradford City. Jimmy Milburn played for Leeds and Bradford Park Avenue (then a league club) and George Milburn played for Leeds and Chesterfield with Stan Milburn playing for Leicester City, Chesterfield and Rochdale. Bobby's mother’s, Cissie's (nee Milburn cousin, the Great Jackie Milburn was one of Newcastle United’s greats during the 1940s and 1950s. Jackie would often take Bobby and Jack (Tom I would imagine) to Saint James’s Park to watch Newcastle play (when he was not playing himself, usually through injury), probably standing on the Leazes End, which during the sixties would become Newcastle’s vocal end, and/or the Gallowgate End terraces.

Bobby was spotted by United chief scout, Joe Armstrong, and signed for Manchester United aged fifteen in 1953. His mother was worried about him taking such a gamble as in those days a career in football was full of uncertainties. He made his debut against, ironically enough, Charlton Athletic in 1956 aged 18. He scored a hattrick ironically again against Charlton in a later game. Bobby was one of Matt Busby’s famous team the ‘Busby Babes’ and played alongside players like Duncan Edwards - who coincidentally he did national service with - Tommy Taylor and Liam Whelan. Bobby played either midfield or forward and was famed for his shot, recorded at 89.9 MPH, beaten only by Peter Lorimer of Leeds United scoring 90 MPH, but he shot with a much lighter ball as early modernisation of footballs on health concerns had begun. The question is, could Peter Lorimer have hit the old leather ball like Bobby Charlton at 90 MPH? I doubt that very much, though Lorimer did have a ferocious shot. 

Bobby survived the Munich disaster of 6th February 1958, being pulled out of the plane by United Goalkeeper, Harry Gregg. It took five years for Matt Busby to rebuild Man United after Munich and in 1963 we beat Leicester City 3-1 in the FA Cup Final, with two goals from David Herd and one from Denis Law. Bobby played in the victorious 1966 England World Cup winning team against West Germany, along with brother Jack, but was not captain that day - that honour fell to West Ham's Bobby Moore. A hattrick by Geoff Hurst of West Ham and a goal by Martin Peters also of West Ham gave rise to the Irons fans claiming not unreasonably, ‘West Ham won the World Cup in 1966’. A handy little boast and who could blame them! 

Bobby retired from international football after the 1970 World Cup. Bobby also lifted the ‘Ballon d Or’, the European Footballer of the Year in 1966. Two years previous Denis Law became the first of the ‘Trinity’ to lift the prestigious award in 1964, and in 1968 George Best completed the compliment, placing Bobby in the middle, representative of his attacking midfield position.

Bobby Charlton played among great players at United, from Duncan Edwards until Munich, and the ‘United Trinity’ of George Best, Bobby Charlton and Denis Law. He also played against great players like the immortal Pele, Eusebio, West Germany’s Gerd Muller and Frans Beckenbauer. Until his dying day Bobby maintained Duncan Edwards was the finest, most complete player he had ever seen, including the greats mentioned. I was not fortunate enough to see Duncan play, born too late, but back in the day at Old Trafford I have heard old United fans, many now dead, claim “Duncan Edwards was the greatest player ever to grace a football field anywhere in the world”. 

For me, George Best was the greatest player I’ve ever seen, closely followed by Bobby and Denis, but I never saw Duncan. I would never doubt the word of those older fans, they knew their football, and if they and Bobby say Duncan Edwards, that’s good enough for me. All I know is I was privileged to see the ‘Trinity’. Just as many young fans today cannot envisage what these three players were like, similarly, I could not have witnessed Duncan, too young.

Bobby Charlton played his last game for Man United away at Chelsea in 1973. I was not at the game, too young for such a distance, and was familiarising myself at that age, twelve, with Old Trafford unaccompanied. I heard from the older lads who went to the game that United took over 20,000 fans that day taking over Chelsea's Stamford Bridge ground, including their so-called ‘infamous’ Shed terraces. Chelsea won the match 1-0 but the ovation for Bobby from Chelsea fans as well the army of visitors was immense, so I am told.

Bobby captained our victorious team at Wembley in 1968 beating Benfica 4-1 scoring twice that glorious night. He took the captain's armband in the absence of Denis Law that night as Law was injured. In the ten years since the Munch disaster Bobby Charlton, Bill Foulkes and Matt Busby, Munich survivors, had finally achieved Matt's dream, the European Cup, becoming the first English team to win the trophy. In 1977 Liverpool ruined our song about “Man Utd, the only English team to win the European Cup”. I won’t swear, not the time but of all teams, Liverpool being the team to do it, why could it not have been a team such as Stoke City!

Bobby died surrounded by his family on Saturday 21st October 2023. The Munich reunion is now complete with Matt as manager. Bobby was the last survivor of the team, eight of whom perished that February day. On the same day of Bobby's passing Manchester United beat Sheffield United 1-2 at Bramall Lane. A shot from Diogo Dalot screeching into the top corner, a gaol Bobby Charlton would have been proud of. A case of one door closing another one opening? I doubt that, Diogo, but a great goal! 
Caoimhin O’Muraile is Independent Socialist Republican and Marxist.

Bobby Charlton

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of Seven Hundred And Ten

 

A Morning Thought @ 1952

Bill O'Brien ☭ republishes a speech he delivered at a conference In Athens in 2016, explaining what his group was doing in Ireland.

In May 2014, the week following the Odessa massacre, a small group of mostly non-aligned antifascists in Ireland organized through word of mouth and through social media a successful demonstration in Dublin. We rallied against the fascist atrocity and described it as part of an imperialist anti-Russian agenda in the EU and we called for support in Ireland for the struggle against the Ukrainian army in Donbas. 

There was very little reporting on the atrocity in the mainstream media. Unfortunately, it was complimented by virtual silence from nominally anti-imperialist, socialist organizations in the country, despite the fact that a massacre had occurred the day after Mayday, the historical day of workers' solidarity and that it was committed by openly fascist groups inside a trade union hall. What seemed surprising to us at the time was the fact that the Irish trade unions had issued no statements at all on the tragic event of May 2. There were no messages sympathising with the loss of life or condolences to grieving families sent by the union hierarchy, no expression of solidarity as one would have expected. There was no condemnation, or even any acknowledgement from the trades union movement that a horrendous crime had been committed against young anti-fascists who had sought refuge from an armed fascist mob in the Odessa House of Trade Unions.

When we raised the question of this silence with members of groups associated with the Left in Ireland, we found that most were hardly interested in addressing a threat that even some right-wing commentators had been drawing attention to - i.e. the re-appearance of Nazism and the support fascism was receiving from the Ukraine government - in a part of Europe that was aspiring to join the EU. To the extent that these leftists mentioned Odesa at all, they argued that the massacre took place in the context of a war in Ukraine between forces aligned with two equally regressive imperialist regimes -. between supporters of the EU / NATO on the one hand and supporters of a paramilitary Russian nationalism aligned to Russian "imperialism", which was attempting to redraw the Ukrainian borders. Those who died or suffered injury in the Odessa massacre were portrayed, when they were mentioned at all, as unfortunate victims of inter-imperialist rivalry.

The successful resistance and defeat of fascist brigades in Donbas earlier this year - by "tractor drivers and miners" as Putin put it - halted a march to the right that was taking place across the whole of Europe. That defence gave the world time to face reality. Social media and non-Western media sources have allowed us the space to counter much of the propaganda. We have received support from trades unionists as well as from those political groups that are not tied to the pro-UK line followed by most of the official Irish media.

But we have found that attempts to oppose a pro-imperialist narrative are too often treated as affronts to the unity of the Left political project in Ireland. Political discourse of the sort that insists on a precise understanding of the meaning of words is too often dismissed as sectarian or divisive. In the lexicon of much of the Left, the concretely understood word "imperialism" has been replaced by words taken from the language of "humanitarian" intervention that has been promoted by groups such as Amnesty. When we say that Russia is not an imperialist country for instance we get accused of introducing what are termed "sectarian ideological squabblings." Bono's latest political musings seem to outdate Lenin's formulation on any matter! According to the humanitarian Left words like " imperialism" get in the way of a united strategy that should be aimed at electing progressive left-wing representatives to the Irish parliament institution that is largely powerless in the face of austerity measures dictated by international finance.

Left unity that is based on the abandonment of principles can only weaken the fight against imperialism. This has been demonstrated in the Irish "humanitarian" Left's responses to the present conflict in Syria and the current refugee crisis. The influential Washington-based Foreign Policy magazine wrote correctly this month about how Russian involvement in Syria is inextricably linked to the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. Such links have to be understood and taken fully into account in the building of a genuine internationalist movement against imperialism.

The Odessa massacre, as we know, occurred on May 2, 2014. Sightly over a month later, the Zionist onslaught against Gaza began - on 7 July 2014. The responses in Ireland to the two events were totally different - almost as if two tragedies were simultaneously taking place on different stages on different planets. In response to Gaza, a pro-Palestine demonstration was called in Ireland's capital city, Dublin, for Gaza; it was attended by something in the order of 10,000 people. Those ordinary citizens at the march had undoubtedly been moved by an act of incredible brutality by a Western-backed regime on a defenceless Palestinian people. Those speaking on the Save Gaza platform did not ever mention the Ukraine bombardment of civilian areas - supported by the US and its allies - that was taking place in Donbas at exactly the same time as the Israeli military strikes on Gaza were occurring. The same people had supported the Maidan coup. The bombardment of Donbas was also supported by the US and its allies so wouldn't it have been sensible for the Gaza rally organizers to mention Donbas? At exactly the same time as Gaza and East Ukraine were under attack, the US and its allies were organizing proxy "rebel" forces in Syria aimed at the destruction of the nation's secular state and its replacement by a pliant regime. The Syrian crisis did not get mentioned at the Gaza rally either on account of the opportunist alliances between leftists who dominate the anti-war movement in Ireland and the Muslim Brotherhood.

We have been working since 2014 with members of the Ukraine and Russian communities in Ireland and called demos in support of Donbas. We visited trades union headquarters in Ireland and helped Russian and Ukrainian leftists in Ireland bring the Odesa massacre photo exhibition to the country's major cities - Dublin, Cork and Belfast. We have held events to coincide with the showing of the photos, which have been attended by sympathetic trades union leaders, members of the Russian and Ukrainian communities and Irish republicans and socialists. We were very pleased that our limited endeavours in Ireland have been well-matched across Europe and beyond and we draw strength from this international solidarity.

🖼 Bill O'Brien is an independent republican.

Odessa Massacre 2014

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of Seven Hundred And Nine

Fra Hughes 💣writing in Jude Collins on October 17 highlights the plight of pregnant Palestinians in the face of Israeli barbarism.

According to the Palestinian health ministry ih ministry in Gaza 50,000 Gazan women are set to give to birth in Gaza within the next 14 days.

Israel’s abhorrent genocidal destruction of Gaza continues unabated. The ongoing targeting of the living, the dead and now it appears the unborn, garners no criticism from the political elite in the West but only unquestioning support. American boots may be seen on the ground soon.

There are nearly 3000 dead with a suspected further 1000+ Gazans missing presumed buried under the rubble of their homes and more than 10,000 wounded. Figures that we endured in 30 years of conflict have been visited upon Gazans in just ten days.

No water, no electricity, no food and no fuel is condemning the most vulnerable in society to death, that is the very young and the very old. How many miscarriages, still births and deaths in labour can we expect to see when there are no hospital beds, medicines or sterile equipment to help facilitate these births?

Like baby Jesus in the biblical tale who was born in a stable in Bethlehem in Palestine 2000 years ago because there were no available lodgings, will we witness Gazan children being born in stables, in the back seats of cars or by the roadside as tens of thousands flee from one unsafe area only to discover their new place of refuge is to be bombed too? Accompanied only by the cries of dying children, dying mothers, dying grandparents and their extended families, carried on a fetid breeze filled with disease and death.

Some may question the actions of the United resistance in Gaza who mounted operation Al Aqsa Flood on October 7, 2023.

People should remember, all resistance from Gaza is purely reactionary to the ongoing policies of the Zionist apartheid regime.

Netanyahu at the UN assembly recently, showed his new map of the Middle East which erased Gaza and the illegally occupied lands of the West Bank to show one Israel from the river to the sea.

Let us not forget Ariel Sharon, the’ Butcher of Beirut’ in 1982, desecrated the Al Aqsa mosque in Al Quds, East Jerusalem when he led illegal settlers into the building sparking the first Intifada.

While Netanyahu played his game of provocation at the UN, right-wing, Jewish religious fundamentalist broke into the Al Aqsa Mosque and desecrated the third holiest shrine in Islam just last week potentially igniting the current situation.

240 Palestinians in the West Bank have been murdered just this year alone, and that was before the Gazan resistance launched operation Al Aqsa flood.

Between 800 and 1000 Palestinian children are arrested and detained in the occupied territories each year, many as young as 12 and charged with throwing stones at occupation forces and imprisoned.

More than 5,000 Palestinians are currently languishing in Israeli prisons many without charge or due process under administrative detention. Hundreds suffering with chronic medical conditions such as diabetes and cancer are refused medical treatment.

Illegal settlers continue to steal Palestinian land and water resources, they attack Palestinian farmers out collecting their harvest and burn the olive groves upon which many families rely.

Israel ethnically cleansed 750,000 Palestinians before their self declared state was recognised in 1948. The Stern gangs, Leahy and Hagganah were terrorists who genocidally purged Palestine of many of its indigenous people, levelling 500 villages, so Palestinians had no homes or land to return to. To this day Israel refuses the Palestinians their Right of Return enshrined in UN Resolution 194.

Believe me that is what we are witnessing today in Gaza. The whole-sale destruction of Northern Gaza is designed to prevent the people from returning to their homes and land. 2.3 million people will now be herded like cattle into a strip of land now halved in size to 3 miles by 12 miles, half the size of the Ards peninsula where life will be untenable.This is Israel’s intended endgame.

They want Gazans to be forced into the Sinai in Egypt and the people of the occupied West Bank to be forced into Jordan. The Americans are using the refugee crisis to assist Israel in its long-term goal of expelling every last Palestinian from their homeland when it asked Egypt, Qatar and Saudi Arabia to take the Gazans in.

Not content with creating millions of refugees from Syria to Iraq and from Yemen to Afghanistan they want another 2.3 million on the road with nothing but the clothes on their back, the shoes on their feet accompanied by the cries of dying children, old men, old women and the disabled, all fleeing for their lives.

For those of you who wave flags and then go for a beer a coffee or a shopping spree while in town I would ask is that really enough for you?

Waving a flag?

Like snow on a ditch on a spring morning will you disappear back into the comfort of a Saturday bet, minding the grand kids or booking a holiday? Will we really not see you do anything until the next attack, maybe in Jordan, or Lebanon, in Syria or Yemen,in Iran or Iraq. Greater Israel has designs on lands far bigger than Palestine They already illegally occupy parts of Lebanon and Syria.

Give yourselves a shake.

Commendable as it is for tens of thousands of people of good conscience across this island to call for an end to the bloody unilateral coercive measures imposed on Gaza, if that’s all you intend doing I respectfully suggest you question your motives.

You are obviously following your conscience and I commend you for that, but once the gunpowder residue and the building dust settles are you going to help the people on the ground or simply put Emmerdale on the TV, and have another coffee, put on another bet, warch the champions league or have another round of shopping ?

Only you can answer that question

Well, you and your conscience.

A 71-year-old American landlord assaulted his tenants in a frenzied attack last night. He stabbed a 6 year old boy 26 times leaving him dead and his mother fighting for her life in hospital saying “You Muslims must die.”

An isolated deranged loner or a sign of the huge rise in Islamophobia created by our cherished political leaders who are beating Palestinian supporters on the streets of Germany, banning the Hijab in France while allowing nuns to continue to wear their habits, and equating Zionism with anti-Semitism in order to obscure the difference and de-platform and criminalise those who stand against political Zionism?

Corbyn won’t be the last victim of smears lies and distortions, you can bet on that.

Israel has now given orders to its storm troopers to shoot any male of fighting age.

Not content with wiping out a generation of unborn Palestinian children, they are going to kill the present generation of 16 to 60 year olds without justification.

If you’re 14 and you look older or 70 and look younger well that’s just too bad.

The only good Palestinian apparently is a dead Palestinian.

Palestinians have the right under international law to resist the illegal occupation of their lands and homes .

If it's good enough under international law then that’s good enough for me.

I stand by the right of Palestinians to choose how, when and where they resist that illegal occupation.

The question is, do you?

Fra Hughes is a Belfast based writer and activist.

50,000 Pregnant Palestinian Women Are Due To Give Birth Within The Next 14 Days

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of Seven Hundred And Eight

 

A Morning Thought @ 1951

Anthony McIntyre ☠ Why do the targets of genocide morph into genocidaires? 


The answer might lie in the Carl Jung observation that “the healthy man does not torture others - generally it is the tortured who turn into torturers.” 

The inference to be drawn is that Israel, if not a sick society, is very much a sick state with a body politic poisoned by its ardour for child murder and civilian massacre. 

Last Monday night some citizens of Drogheda for the second day in a row took to the town's Bridge of Peace for a vigil in solidarity with those being massacred hourly in Gaza by the Israeli military. I rushed in on the bus from Dublin to make it. It was organised by Sinn Fein who the vile Israeli ambassador to Ireland has since taken to lambasting.  At various points in Israel's persecution of Gaza, the party has put people on the street in a bid to rally public opposition to what a friend today called IDF Battalion 101's murder mission. Each time it does I turn up. Political differences here matter little in the face of the Nazi-like onslaught bearing down on the innocent of Gaza. Bickering in the face of the blitzkrieg is a symptom of vanity, not sanity. 

A certain image shudders to mind upon learning of Israeli air strikes that bury the civilians of Gaza under the debris of the buildings in which they either lived or sought shelter. The image is the ravine Babi Yar where the Nazi murder squads killed Jews and buried them much like the Palestinians are being buried. The Nazis, comparatively less cruel, killed their victims before covering them with soil. The Israelis don't always kill their victims immediately, opting to bury them alive in rubble where they die slowly and silently. Babi Yar is a site of genocide which helped spawn the phrase never again. Gaza too is a site of genocide which has rendered the phrase never again pretty much redundant, a mere myth contrived to allow the tormenter to continue tormenting.


Even as I write I am certain that Palestinian children lie huddled and terrified, their parents unable to console them or assuage their fears, as they await in dread the terror assault from the skies. Much like their fellow Jewish children when faced with a Luftwaffe assault, they can only hope or pray to the god of indifference. Often the Luftwaffe was challenged by other air forces and had, with some courage, to fight for air superiority. Not so with the Israeli air force. Even the world's biggest coward can fly safely in the skies above Gaza, in the certain knowledge that the children they intend murdering can offer no defence nor strike back

Meanwhile the Slaughter Squads continue to mass on the border. English observers familiar with notorious English child killers will hardly feign surprise if they were to hear on the news that amongst those assembling for invasion are the Hindley Brigade, the Brady Brigade, The Huntley Brigade, The Black Brigade and the Letby Brigade, all gagging for the child murder that awaits them. 

It is sometimes said that the Israeli military is the child of the Nazi death camp. If so its line of descent is easier traced back to the quarter where the Kapos were housed. 

One of the most common uses of the slur within the Jewish community comes from those on the right towards those they perceive as being too sympathetic towards the Palestinians.

The children of Kapos are murdering the children of Gaza.
 
⏩Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.

Children Of The Kapos

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of Seven Hundred And Seven

Peter Anderson ⚽ At the weekend we saw exactly why football is superior to rugby.

Argentina faced the mighty All-Blacks in the World Cup semi-final.

Despite coming out strong and having a go, two quick tries from the New Zealanders meant that game was effectively over after 12 minutes.

In rugby assymetrical games are just not worth watching, as the underdog has no available tactic to win the match. 16 hours later Everton travelled to Anfield in another similarly assymetrical game, the difference being that deep defending and counter-attacking is an option for underdogs in footy. And despite going down to 10 men with two-thirds of the game remaining, Everton were still in the game until Liverpool scored their second in added time.

I have to mention the England rugby team as they put up a spirited fight against South Africa. In the end they were beaten by a single point when the pundits predicted a 10 or more points gap. South Africa go into the final against the All-Blacks as a very tired looking squad. So far they have faced Ireland, Scotland, Wales and England in the last 4-odd weeks. My mate played for Scotland in the '99 World Cup and he was telling me on Sunday how tired the players will be, and how multiple matches in a short period produce mental and physical fatigue. New Zealand have had a much easier run culminating in an easy semi against Argentina in which they were able to rest players. Get your money on New Zealand for the final!

Talking of my rugby mad mate, he just paid €1000 for two tickets to the final next weekend. The tickets have a face value of €200 (€100 each). The owner sold them to a tout company for €700 and the tout company has added €300 for their own profit . . .  ahem . . .  admin fee. Big sporting finals are no longer for the real fan and haven't been for years. 80% of tickets should go to season ticket holders of the teams or countries involved.

This month has seen the sad end for two of English footballs legendary figures, Francis Lee and Sir Bobby Charlton. So many of the big stars of the 60s and 70s are passing away these months, the players everyone was talking about when I was getting into the sport as a boy. Sad times.

It was great to get the EPL back after the unwelcome international break. City limped to 3 points against a very good Brighton, while Chelsea threw away 2 points when they let Arsenal back into the game.

The Chelsea bench for the game was: Disasi, Badiashile, Madueke, Jackson, Ugochukwu, James, Petrovic, Maatsende and Souza Eugênio. How the actual fuck is this your bench after spending £1 billion in the last few years? Unbelievably, more money needs to be spent before Chelsea are back in the mix. Liverpool got the usual 3 points against the Toffees and Villa and Newcastle have continued their impressive charge up the table. With only 5 points separating the top 7, the league is shaping up to be a cracker.

Peter Anderson is a Unionist with a keen interest in sports

Soccer Uber Rugby

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