Rugby World Cup

A fully deserved win for Russia. Holland dropped the ball completely this time. oh well. next time better luck...

Shocking, really, given the Dutch dominance of the so-called group of death.

Italy is out, good riddance with their 'game play'.

Sad to see the Dutch out, but they didn't look like the same team from the group stages. I wonder if it was some nerves that got to them. They just didn't seem to want to attack. Russia played excellent and deserved to win.

Agree about Italy. There are some really nice semi-final matchups. Should make for some good football. I'll be rooting for the Deutschland, but wouldn't mind seeing Spain take it all either. Russia is a serious threat and it seems like Turkey is rising to meet every challenge so far.

Another great game to watch tonight, Germany - Turkey, suspense till the last seconds...

Did you lose video several times in the second half, tliet? Trying to watch the second half on ESPN was downright painful, as they switched from the game announcers (who were in Bristol, Connecticut, rather than at the match, and who therefore couldn't see anything when the video feed went down) to the thoroughly inane studio crew. Two goals happened during these outages (the second just before the video returned), and immediately after the final German goal the feed went out again; this time it didn't come back. All in all, a fairly miserableviewing experience for such an amazing game.

They said that the video feed was cut out for all broadcasts. It really does expose ESPN's method of broadcasting the games. I can understand why they didn't want to ship their announcers around during group stages and even the quarterfinals. There are a lot of games and although soccer is getting more ratings, they probably couldn't justify it. Overall, I am happy that the games are live and I can catch them on ESPN360.com for no extra charge.

That being said, they should be able to ship their announcing crew out for the semis. At the very least, they could have cut off to some radio feed. Surely it's playing somewhere. Even if it was only the Spanish audio, at least it would have been something. They were really slow to get the replays of the goals as well.

Edit:

http://soccernet.espn.go.com/news/story?id=551287&cc=5901

The game was still available on local TV and Al-Jazeera. Surely ESPN could have afforded those video feeds as backup, if for nothing else than to give the announcers something to talk about.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/25/2008 08:27PM by Mokers.

There were a couple of interruptions, some channels had no picture but did have audio, at some point the video feed worked, but the commentator's audio was cut off. The BBC solved this nicely by plugging in some Scottish or Irish (couldn't make the accent out) radio commentators audio along with the video feed.

As Remy link also says; apparently, the weather in Vienna turned absolutely horrible, cutting power a few times.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/25/2008 10:13PM by tliet.

Good job to Spain. They really played well this tournament. No other team was close to their form (even if the Italians managed to hold them scoreless) and it's good to see attacking soccer rewarded.

In other news, I really want China to put on a good Olympics. Loved this sentence about some preparations for the sailing venue after an alagae bloom:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/01/world/asia/01algae.html

Media reports estimate as many as 20,000 people have either volunteered or been ordered to participate in the operation

I bet the organizers gotta love being able to call in a favor to the People's Party, capitalist reforms and all.

Agree about the game Remy, believe it or not, I actually watched the finals in Germany.

What a thoroughly satisfying tournament. The only way it could have been improved, that I can think of, would have been for the negative, cynical Italians to go out in the group stage.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/01/2008 02:40AM by Jeff Cooper.

The NBA is dead.

Long Live MLS!

Really horrible about the Sonics. Were they actually losing money in Key Arena or did they just want Seattle/Washington State to pay for a new arena? It's not PC to say, but it is the Hornets that should be moving to Oklahoma City. The city really can't sustain a franchise. The professional leagues say they want to help by keeping their teams there, but at the same time want the state to pay for infrastructure improvements it can hardly afford. Who knows, maybe you'll get Hornets or the Grizzlies or the Hawks.

The Sonics were loosing money, but mostly because nearly a decade of horrible business decisions, not the quality of the arena.

Stern is a scumbag who did everything he could to screw-over the people of Seattle in order to get a gig for his good buddy.

OTOH, I'm a big soccer fan and I'm really pumped about the Sounders opening next season. And Jim Kerry insisted they have their own marching band. How cool is that? Beats canned, over-amped, base heavy noise anyday. I just wish I lived in the Seattle Metro area so I could have auditioned. Oh, and fans are club-members who get to vote out managers they don't like. If that were how SSS were run Wally Walker would have been out on his ass long before the club ended up on the rocks.

Sucks about the Sonics, yeah. One of the places I could see living in long-term... hopefully by that time they'll have a new Sonics franchise. At least the city gets to keep the name and colors. Bennett is a fucking snake. The NBA just wanted an arena that generated more revenue - they weren't losing money, pretty sure.

NO would've been the practical choice, true, since OK had already tasted them. But now that they're kicking ass, their attendance is much improved. And the only parts of NO that haven't been rebuilt are too poor to afford NBA tickets anyway, right?

Grizzlies deserve to escape Memphis. And their dumb owner and GM.

http://www.mokers.org/blog/archives/sports/well-played-brazil-well-played.php

sorry, not rugby.

Apparently I like volleyball.

Wait... they play Baseball outside the US, Japan and Korea from April to October? Once every four years? And the Cubans do what?

Wait... this is the last year for it?

Well, all of the above is just not right.

As is Wakefield on the shelf. WTFBBQ? This is =his= time of year! He god-damn owns from now until November! Usually.

And Zinc? Dude. You're named after an element, and you throw a knuckler. You are the Wake-after-Wake. How dare you choke? Sports-talk-AM will be WROTH WITH YUOOO! Oh Noes! We has no peetchink. Sept for Dice-K. And Beckett. And John "Fuck YOU Cancer" Lester. And Josh "Who the Hell is... Ok He's Good I Guess" Bird.

Now we will talk about Dustin Pedroia's mutant ability to grow a five-o-clock shadow at will.

~ Soop

Nice, Remy, very nice...

On another note, this is just not cricket...

Stupid sports rumor of the day. I should really lay off this stuff.

Vince Young to the Patsies for a buncha junk - picks, some cinnamon pop-tarts, a box of old Gameboy Advance carts. Titans think that's all he's worth, NE thinks he's another Corey Dillon, who can come in and produce almost immediately in the right environment. New World - scouts have a background in forensic psychiatry and risk mitigation. Or at least some of the ones reporting to Scott Pioli do.