My new bike. on 12seconds.tv
The Tour Of Croydon is a series of routes that I will take on my bike throughout the year exploring this notorious town as I struggle back to some semblance of fitness.
The first route is ludicrously easy. A round trip to South Croydon Railway Station from my street. It would take roughly ten minutes to walk this very short circuit. However, I guarantee that I will be exhausted after completing it tomorrow.
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A list of things I must do in 2009.
1. Exercise more: Buy a bike and take up dancing lessons with the missus.
2. Listen to less podcasts. Only play podcasts on the way into work not on the way home. This leaves more time for...
3. Read more books. Its shocking how few books I've read in 2008. It takes me ages to read books because of all the writing I do at home and listening to podcasts on the train work. That reminds me..
4. Listen to more music. While I'm reading on the train I can listen to music rather than the aforementioned podcasts.
5. Try and secure some freelance work as a writer. You know the sort of thing: No job too small, no fee too big.
6. Write that book. I can say nothing more on that.
7. Prepare for the worst. There is a reasonable chance that I will be laid off this year. I need to batton down the hatches and get a back-up plan ready should it be required.
8. Network more. Be more confident in the things I do well and be friendlier to people.
9. Keep using Twitter. But try not to let it overtake me.
10. Watch less football.
Five times World Champion Raymond van Barneveld is one of the sport's great icons. Four of his titles were in the BDO and won at the Lakeside. However, the rise of the PDC and the challenge posed by Phil Taylor proved to strong and he made the switch early in 2006 with an automatic birth in the lucrative Premier League.
Van Barneveld is Holland's most successful and popular player. Bringing him across to the PDC was a major coup for them and paved the way for many other dutch BDO players to follow suit including Vincent van der Voort, 2006 BDO World Champion Jelle Klaasen and the young prospect Michael van Gerwin. The move will also surely pave the way for the PDC to stage a major televised event in Holland, the sports other great hotbed of support.
His Premier League campaign wasn't up to much and as a first year professional. He failed to qualify for the World Matchplay much to the disappointment of many of his fans and the tournament's promoters. However, the signs that 'Barney' was settling in to the PDC were definitely there when he knocked Taylor out of the UK Open, a competition he went on to win. He proved to be Taylor's nemesis once again in Las Vegas a few weeks later. However, while Barney was clearly the real deal, few would have expected him to win the World Championship at the end of the year. This was a competition that Taylor had won 13 times and was bound not to relinquish it to the newcomer.
No one told van Barneveld that though and the two met each other in the final which turned out to be the greatest ever darts match ever. Taylor forged ahead by three sets to nil only for Barney to storm back. The game went to sudden death and the Dutchman won the title at the death. The crowd went wild and even Taylor, a man who you suspect as trouble taking defeat gracefully, could not help but be caught up with the emotion of it all.
2007 proved to be another good year with van Barneveld defending the UK Open and winning the Desert Classic in Las Vegas. in 2008 however, things have not gone so well. At time van Barneveld as seemed visibly shaken by some of his poor performances and admitted that he had had to take an extended holiday in order to get his head together. He goes in to the tournament as second favourite behind Taylor who has returned to his imperious best. If Raymond starts the championships confidently, he may well regain his crown. It will require a Herculean effort from him though if he is to repeat the scenes of early 2007 .
My latest hair-brained scheme is the 140er. It’s like the Fiver only not as good, long or funny. The 140er is a round up of the of the day's football news in 140 characters.
Hopefully over time it will become a sharp witted, pithy and above all brief news round-up that will become a part of football loving Twitterers daily routine.
I'm going to use @onionbag because it fits and because I'm aware that the majority of @redduffman followers aren't into football. However I am a little worried about the whole @onionbag thing. Should I be twittering as me or as the Onion Bag?
I think a lot of people on Twitter think that official website Twitters are not done. They’re either too commercial or they don’t follow back or they’re generally using Twitter to plug their website. I’d like to think that the Onion Bag is not really into that sort of thing. Its not like the Bag is a commercial organisation. We don't even run ads on the home page, only the archive.
Having said that, since I started the Bag's Twitter stream I've not been entirely certain as to what to do with it. Do I simply use it as another feed like RSS or should I try to write Onion Bag content as tweets (or tweets as very small Bags)?
I guess the answer should be yes to both .So that's why I think its OK to start the 140er on the Onion Bag's Twitter stream. Its time I saw @onionbag as an extension of The Onion Bag website itself.
Rock on.
Further reading: Do Brands Belong On Twitter?
At 25, James Wade is very much a child of the PDC. One of the games rising stars Wade would have grown up watching the likes of Phil Taylor and Dennis Priestley playing PDC darts after it moved to Sky in the early 90’s.
The current World Champion is from Oshawa in Canada. He first rose to prominence in 1994 when he won the BDO World Championship at the lakeside. With the Darts world split into two organisations and with the greatest prize money and TV coverage, not to mention Phil Taylor, at the PDC Part made the move across the darting divide in 1997.
He rose through the PDC ranks and faced Taylor in the World Championship final in 2001 only to be thrashed by The Power.
Two years later he was back and this time it was Part who had the upper hand. He'd been in magnificent form throughout the tournament. Taylor had been at his imperious best and was still the favourite to take the title yet again. It was an epic encounter rivaled only by the great Taylor v Van Barneveld final of 2007. Part claimed the title by 7 games to 6 despite Taylor fighting back from 4-1 down.
The years that follow have been inconsistent for Part, a founder member of the Premier League he lost his spot in 2007 and has struggled to regain those magnificent heights. Nevertheless he remained one of the top players in the World as slowly started to put things back together last year, culminating in a fantastic run the the final of the World Championships this time last year. Rather than face Taylor, he was confronted by the rank outsider Kirk Shepherd whose hot streak had coincided with his appearance in the Championships and had deposited him unexpectedly in the final. It was a disappointing match in truth. Perhaps understandably the occasion got to Shepherd. Part won easily and took his third world crown.
Part plays with a perma-sneer on his face. When he's playing well he is a prodigious double thrower under pressure and a heavy scorer. He also has a reputation for being one of the best counters in the business. His nick-name is Darth Maple and his walk-on music is the Imperial March from Star Wars by John Williams. He is also supposed to be one of the nicest guys on the circuit. All of these elements make him a worthy champion.
On Friday, the best players from around the globe (well most of them at least) will assemble at Alexandra Palace in north London to compete for the PDC World Darts Championship. The tournament will be televised live on Sky. The event is the culmination of a year of ranking tournaments that has seen 13 times World Champion and darting legend Phil 'The Power' Taylor (right) return to prominence after what was a poor 2007, by his standards.
In 2008 Taylor has won all but one televised ranking events. Only the UK Open eluded him. His year started with disappointment as he was knocked out of the World Championship and was forced to watch John Part claim title from the rank outsider Kirk Shepherd in a disappointing final. While he continued to dominate the Premier League Taylor was knocked out in an early round of UK Open which was won by James Wade.
From then on however, it was Taylor all the way emphatically winning the Premier League, the Desert Classic, World Matchplay, World Grand Prix, European Championships and Grand Slam (a non ranking but prestigious event). For many (including me) Taylor is a shoe in to make it 14 World titles.
However, professional darts is not just about Taylor. The journey to the final will be a long, action packed, dramatic roller coaster. For the uninitiated, darts is a game of skill and nerve. Players who can throw rudimentary check-outs with there eyes closed become quivering wrecks under the lights and in front of thousands of baying fans. Literally thousands of pounds can be won or lost on the width of a wire. The tension and excitement make for a wonderful competitive spectacle and darts continues to grow in popularity as a spectator sport.
Over the next few days, this blog will dedicated itself to the upcoming tournament and introduce you to some of the games greatest players and more colourful characters.
But first, here is a wee taster of darts at its finest.
(India v England first test)
I've just watched England's Graham Swann take two wickets in his first over on his test match debut. Taking two wickets in an over is a tough enough proposition for anyone but for a debutant.
His first every ball was a loose one which Gambhir dispatched for four. After seeing that my heart dropped down a setting or two. The sight of a test bowler (especially English) stuffing up his big moment is not unfamiliar and can often haunt them during their short and unsuccessful spell at the top. However, I braced myself and remembered Richard Hadlee's first ever ball in test cricket went for four.
The second ball resulted in a massive shout for a catch at close quarters (I'm not up on my field positions even after years of following the sport). The replay suggested it may have come off the pad (that's not out for non cricket readers). On the very next ball, the batsman refuses to play a stroke and the ball hits the pad. Up go 22 English arms and one umpire's finger. Gambhir is out leg before wicket. The Hawkeye Techno Tracking Thingy confirms (in as much as it can) that the ball would have hit the stumps.
Batting legend Sashin Tendulkar takes to the crease and, wisely, gets himself off the mark and away from Swann with three runs. This left Dravid on strike facing a bright eyed noob who started the over wondering why he was there and was finishing it believing he could bowl the entire opposition out single handed, starting with him.
And so it proved to be. Swann bowled Dravid out LBW. Apparently that's some sort of record. Good for him. However, the replay and Hawkeye Techno Tracking Thingy suggested that the call was marginal. The ball clipped the top of the stumps. There is no way the human eye can tell at that speed whether the ball would have hit under those circumstances and usually you give the benefit of any doubt to the batsmen. The umpire must have looked at it and thought the force was with Swann and gave it out.
I suppose the incident demonstrates three truths about sport:
Don't give up.
Officials will often reward good play by giving tough calls in your favour.
Video evidence can't replace that feeling in your gut.
At the beginning of the football season I set up a Twitter account called Pressffive. The idea was to bring live text updates (live blogging if you like) into the Twitterverse.
For those who do not know, there are any number of live match commentaries by sports website designed to describe the action unfolding at a football match. Anyone stuck at work or otherwise unable to watch a game can follow the action minute-by-minute. Basically someone watches the game and types up whats going on into a CMS which is posted on to dynamically updating or static web page. Leading exponents of this are The Guardian (clever and funny) and the BBC (efficient). It also works brilliantly for Cricket.
To be frank you don't need to be a hot-shot social networking guru to work out that this sort of service would be ideal on Twitter. In fact it would work better as the commentary just becomes part of your Twitter stream rather than having to stare at a browser waiting for it to update. So if you are at work, you could actually get some work done. Or if you didn't fancy that then you can get involved with the commentary yourself in the way that Twitter allows you to do. I've said it before and I'll say it again. Twitter allows you to share a common experience as though you were all sat on a sofa watching the game together. What's more at 140 characters its cuts down on the bullshit.
Anyway so I gave it a try and it was reasonably well received. The first game was a Champions League qualifier featuring Liverpool. It was difficult at first to describe what was going on and keep things pithy and interesting but I thought it worked really well. I even got a request to do a Premier League game later than month. Unfortunately, that's where I ran into trouble.
I'm not wireless. I don't got no laptop and my desk top is upstairs while my Cable box is downstairs. Now I realise that there are ways of watching football on the 'Net through various unlicensed means but whenever I've tried that the quality is appalling. I tried working with live streaming with some Serie A games on Bet 365 but it was crap (and I didn't get much of a response).
That's not my only problem. I work late shifts and one week in two I'm still on my way home from work during mid week games. So even if and when I do go wireless, I still won't be able to provide the regular service that this sort of thing really needs in order for it to catch on. @chrisoakley and I discussed doing something similar for @SPAOTP on 3rd round day however a regular service looks unlikely for the foreseeable.
However, that shouldn't stop anyone else from giving it a go. Let's face it, sooner or later one of the mainstream media will get hold of the idea which, if it falls into the wrong hands, could be really dry and stultified. Something like this needs to start in the Twitterverse by the Twitterverse, not by some noob corporate type who thinks it will be a great idea to intersperse every third tweet with an advert.
There aren't too many football bloggers on Twitter that I can find and there isn't much of a football constituency either. There soon will be though so for any early adopters reading this, maaaaybe they should give it some thought. Perhaps in some sort of joint venture. I'd be the first to follow. Of course, if I can help out at at any time...?
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