Safe Hans?

Modern-day football is a reactionary business. As soon as a team loses three of four matches then their manager is said to be under pressure, or fighting to save his job. So much so that ‘under-fire’ is now the world’s most popular team name prefix. Where once we may have talked about the Dynamo Kiev manager, or the Dynamo Moscow coach now it’s under-fire Sunderland boss, under-fire Blackburn manager, and under-fire Wigan gaffer.

Gordon Strachan, a loan subversive wit in a sea of clichés, once mocked this scapegoat approach in a post match interview when asked how his Coventry had turned their fortunes around to get a first away win. “We sacked the bus driver” was Strachan’s succinct reply. However, in this past week, it seems Strachan’s tongue-in-cheek route-to-cause approach has been mimicked by the media’s new favourite Premier League manager.

Step forward, the rent-a-quote fruit and veg stall holder of top flight football Harry Redknapp. With the form of goalkeeper Huerelho Gomes taking a path for which the word ‘eratic’ was seemingly invented Redknapp has shown perverse faith in his goalkeeper. After gifting a goal to Fulham last weekend, and regularly showing as much composure under a cross as a cat that’s just fallen in the bath, it was clear that something needed to be done about Gomes.

Redknapp and Tottenham reacted clinically... and sacked their goalkeeping coach. Presumably Hans Leitert had not spent time instructing Gomes in the technique of flapping and flailing around his six-yard box in hapless pursuit of a corner like Daryl Hannah in Kill Bill 2 having just lost her other eye. However, it is he who pays the price for Gomes form whilst the Brazilian goalkeeper lines up between the posts again, presumably chortling like a child who just got their sibling into trouble for something they ultimately did.

Oh, And if you are passing along Tottenham High Road in the coming days and you pass a man in a tracksuit on his knees thrusting his arms up into the sky yelling “Why? What do I have to do?” at the top of his voice. Fear not, that’ll just be Cesar Sanchez, Tottenham’s second choice keeper.

Haka Sack

I read an article recently which suggested that the Haka, the pre-match ritual traditional dance performed by the New Zealand rugby squad, had run its course. That in modern rugby union it was an outdated and unnecessary piece of showmanship which no longer bore any relevance. At around 5:10pm on Saturday this suggestion was refuted as New Zealand faced Wales at a packed Millennium Stadium.

The word ‘faced’ is more descriptive in that sentence than it would normally be in reference to a sporting event. The dial on the Welsh crowd had been slowly turned up toward eleven by the presence of Joe Calzaghi, and the sort of pulsating music and pyrotechnics that normally greet an X-Factor winner. As such, they refused to fall quiet for the Haka and the tongue waggling, and the emphasised gesturing were played out to a chorus of “Wales! Wales!” from the surrounding three tiers.

And so as the Haka ended, a piece of glorious sporting theatre played out in a very minimalist fashion. The New Zealanders remained in formation on the half-way line, and ten metres away a line of scarlet shirts looked straight back at them. And so this continued; all the time, the noise in the Millennium building as the two sides simply stood their ground in the face of their opposition.
The referee blows his whistle to get the two sides ready for action and still not a player is moved. The two sides are now embroiled in the kind of staring match that is normally only undertaken by gunslingers at a high noon-shoot-out. Eventually, eventually the referee is able to usher the two teams in position and the game can begin. I normally find the co-commentary of the less than impartial Brian Moore about as tolerable as stubbing my toe on the base of a door, but it is he who I quote when I conclude; "Why would you want to get rid of the Haka when it produces moments of pure theatre like that?"