England and Australia gone, but much to anticipate as the World Cup show must go on

As the World Cup moves into the knock-out stages, I’m looking on the bright side. My sleep patterns will be able to get back to normal. The early, but not totally unexpected, exits of Australia and England mean that I will find it harder to drag my body out of bed for those early morning kick-offs from my newly acquired stance as a neutral. There are two ways of watching football. One is the nervous, twitching “why do I do this?’ state of virtually kicking every ball as your team is involved. Or alternatively, the chilled out impassive pretend pundit as two rivals who you have no feeling for, battle it out. I like to assume I’m a scout for those games and monitor the players who I would be recommending to my imaginary superior. Australia did themselves proud. Who knows what may have happened if they had got something out of the Dutch game, as they should have. Holland may not have a harder contest throughout the rest of the tournament even if they are eventually dismissed. Coach Ange Postecoglou has done an amazing job in such a short space of time. We watched the first game against Chile with the Cooper’s stout going down well in the Robin Hood at brekkie time. The first 20 minutes were traumatic. As legendary Blackburnian soccer guru Eric Spiby said while sipping his Cooper’s pale: “This is the only sport that Australia play where they go out and expect to get beaten.” Eric appeared to be right. But the Socceroos turned it round in style and almost pulled off the perfect recovery. Eventually they ran out of steam and succumbed to Spain in the final outing. No disgrace in that. At least they can now look forward to hosting the Asian Cup and being touted among the favourites. Good times lie ahead. For England the future looks a little cloudier. Despite affirmations by fans that not much was expected, once we made the swift departure after the losses to Italy and Uruguay, there was all the usual blame game bleatings from back home. I won’t particularly point the finger at Roy Hodgson. He picked a young team, just like Postecoglou, and let them off the leash. They performed with a certain style in both the opening two games and it could be said they deserved something from each of the close encounters. It was a shame that the fans who had travelled all the way to Brazil had to endure a non-eventful ‘dead’ stoush with surprise packets Costa Rica. I reckon another Blackburnian legend, Andy “Beamo” Turner got it right. Beamo is a Rovers fan who has similar feelings for the national team. However, he decided that the cost of heading to Brazil was too much. So me and Gabs received postcards from Miami and Key West, where he was watching England in their two pre-World Cup friendly assignments against Honduras and Ecuador. Sounds like a sun-filled alternative to me. So with my two teams gone, who should I now watch? Dunno… I’ll remain neutral and nonchalant. We are in good company as Italy and Spain have also suffered traumatic, unsuspected farewells. Who would have thought Uruguay and Costa Rica would have gone through from England’s group? Luis Suarez may be banned after his latest biting escapade. If not we can all keep our eyes on him to see who’s next on the menu. He plies his trade for Liverpool so in that far west outpost of the “old” Lancashire Palatine, I’d love to see how he would tuck into the local North-West delicacy of steak pudding, chips and mushy peas in a tray with gravy. He certainly seems to have an appetite. There is still plenty to look forward to so maybe I will clamber out of bed in those early hours to see what unfolds. It could be worth it…

Robin Hood and Lady Daly ready to score as lively World Cup venues

The big kick-off is finally upon us. The World Cup footballing bonanza is just about off and running. Brazil is a little far away so I won’t be there. I love live sport but as this tournament unfolds, the second-best option will have to do. That means television. For most games, communal television. That means the pub. Big screens, noise, atmosphere – the consolation prize for not being at the real scene of the action. In truth, I’ve never been to many England games live. The football big shots never struck the same chord inside me as the cricket teams. Home or away. A couple of low-key affairs at the old Wembley – both times against the Irish – have been my lot. Then there was the anaemic 1-0 friendly win against Australia when I was domiciled in Sydney in 1991. England always seemed to be not as good as they thought they were. It was hard to work out who had more inflated ambitions – the pampered players or the yobbo fans. And for many years, the national team’s cause was hijacked by the Burberry brigade, the rampaging hooligans who seemed to enjoy invading foreign soil and causing mayhem. It was not a pretty mix – ego and aggro. Thankfully, that seems to all be over with. This time there seems to be more realistic and muted ambitions. So let’s get behind the team. And there will also be best wishes for the Socceroos as they attempt to find a way through their treacherous Group stage. So, where to go to view what eventuates? Well, eight years ago the timescale for the Germany World Cup tournament meant the games were on a pretty similar time to the Brazil schedule. It will be a repeat scenario for me. Namely, heading to the Robin Hood Hotel on Portrush Road in Norwood. So close to us, I call it “next door.” It’s gonna be a hectic sporting weekend. The Australia v Chile game kicks off at 7am on Saturday morning, followed by England’s opener against Italy at the same time on Sunday. Coopers stout looks a sound bet for brekky but the pub is serving food as well. If I could be in two places at once I would transport myself to the Lady Daly Hotel on Port Road in Hindmarsh. It’s always been a good looking pub but was never one of my favourites. We would call in before some Adelaide United home games and the menu would feature “Special Events” meals. In other words, the prices on burgers and the rest had been bumped up to fleece the customers aka the football fans. Very naughty… But that’s all over now as the pub has been taken over by directors Mandy Collins and David Limareff. They have given the place a whole new lease of life and will be open for the Socceroos’ World Cup games. The atmosphere should be lively on Saturday as the pub has volunteered itself as the Chilean supporters’ headquarters for their team’s games. Apparently, a troupe of Chilean dancers practise their steps at the nearby Serbian church on Mary Street. So they have been invited to bring their bonhomie and flair to the Lady Daly. Sounds like a fun set-up, especially with the new big-screen plasma televisions being delivered this week for the beer garden. “We have no residents living nearby, so they can be as loud as they want,” said David. In the afternoon, there’s a major pool competition at the pub. Busy, busy, busy… Indeed that’s what the whole sports scene will be on both days. After the Socceroos’ experience, I’ll check out Sydney Swans hopefully turning over Port Adelaide in the table-topping AFL collision on the box on Saturday afternoon. Sunday will be a football/Aussie Rules repeat. And it will be back to live action for me. Win or lose for England, it will be the Redlegs’ visit to Sturt at Unley. It’s sporting overload but it’s there to enjoy. Happy World Cup…

Scarlett Johansson’s alien role offers big-screen distraction amid build-up to World Cup

The World Cup is just days away. It’s gonna mean mega viewing hours for me, watching all the action unfold from Brazil. So what better way to prepare than to forget about it all and chill with a quiet afternoon at the cinema before the globe speeds into footballing overload.  A Monday afternoon at Adelaide’s Palace Nova Eastend  did the trick for me. I am a member at the independent chain which is good value anyway. But Monday afternoons are even agreeable at a mere $7.50 per ticket. The Palace does everything from oddball to goofball to mainstream. This week I checked out Scarlett Johansson  doing a star turn in the Jonathan Glazer’s moody, Indy sci-fi/horror offering, Under The Skin. Scarlett plays an alien from another world who takes human form as her voluptuous self and for some reason, drives a transit van round  the bleak surrounds of Glasgow in a Scottish winter asking male strangers if they would like a lift. Would you get into a van driven by Scarlett? What possible dangers could there be in accepting such an offer?  They are not to know that Scarlett is in reality a visitor from another world. But instead of adopting the oft-imagined guise as a green being with antennae, she is a female who seems to be in excellent health. Each Scottish victim is lured into Scarlett’s vehicle and probably can’t believe his luck as she whisks them away to her house.  What follows is not grisly but definitely “out there” as the males end up in a watery grave – or rather a floating limbo.  The final scene unveils what the film’s title is all about. It’s very wacky, weird and wonderful. Dark, damaged and even disturbing. Scarlett doesn’t stray into imitating a Scottish accent. Her character, who is never given a name, just adopts a mid-Atlantic monotone with a mesmerising, eerie stare. She could even be a distant relation of David Bowie’s man from another galaxy as witnessed in The Man Who Fell To Earth, the Nicolas Roeg sci-fi classic from 1976. It would be fascinating to imagine what such space travellers would make of our modern world. Judging by the drivel that’s on terrestrial TV, any men from Mars would probably turn right round and go straight back home. With a non-stop diet of reality programmes covering all bases from cooking to an unexplained obsession with property, the potential invaders would doubtless reason that there were no signs of intelligent life on the planet. And that’s before we get to the banal offerings of seeing a stream of nobodies scream and howl to ruin cover versions of songs in front of panels of C-grade  celebrities. I’m glad I’m old. If I wanted to see a band, I’d go down the pub and watch some proper live music. Some bloke in a pub was wearing a great tee-shirt the other day. It simply said: “I may be old but I’ve seen all the cool bands.” Spot on. And being old means that I wouldn’t have been scared of getting into a van with Scarlett. I used to leap into cars with strangers constantly. And gladly. It was called hitch-hiking. In the distant days of the Seventies, Eighties and even Nineties, it was still socially acceptable to stick out your thumb on the highways and byways of England and get from A to B.  I began in my student days, living in Birmingham. The price of rail travel was out of the question. On a student grant, Alcohol came before travel expenditures. Once I found out where Spaghetti Junction was, it was an easy route either north or south. East and west too, once you were on the M6 and onto the M1 or M5. Just a piece of cardboard with your destination daubed on in visible felt-tip pen did the trick. And I always got there. It was hardly Jack Kerouac stuff but there was a real feeling of freedom and adventure, simply hitting the road to make it to a Rovers game on a Saturday afternoon or head to another English city for a weekend away. I never got any lifts from anybody who looked quite like Scarlett though. In all my years of thumbing I think only a handful of lasses driving alone gave me a life. And every time it was cos of the cardboard sign. “Nobody bad can come from Blackburn”’ I was told by one of the female drivers.  Er,  I dunno about that. There was great camaraderie on the various turn-offs from what seemed like legions of fellow travellers in those days. You just took your place at the end of the line and hoped your cardboard sign did the trick. There were busy bottlenecks – notably Knutsford Service Station heading north and Hilton Park Services going south. That’s because the North and Scotland lay beyond Knutsford which meant lorry drivers heading west to Merseyside or east to Manchester and Yorkshire on the M62 would drop you there. Hilton Park was a dropping point if drivers were going south-west on the M5 or straight on to London on the M1. Alas, with the world supposedly full of bogeymen these days and dangerous deviants apparently lurking around every corner the slip roads of England’s motorways are bereft of hitch-hikers. Newspapers intermittently run features on whether the practice is still feasible. But the writers always seems to get to the destination. I guess they never got dropped on the Stoke North junction. Only one feeder road spelt danger. Virtually no traffic. I learnt the hard way on a rainy Saturday night coming  back from Rovers earning a 2-2 home draw with Port Vale in October 1974. A decent result in those Third Division days. That was one of my first thumbing forays. Luckily, the experience didn’t put me off.  But it was the early hours before I made it the Edgbaston pad. The longest ever wait? A freezing February winter Sunday afternoon after a weekend in Liverpool. The junction of the East Lancs Road and the M6 going south was not a good place to be. Four hours in the one berth. Sundays were bad days because of the lack of lorries and freight traffic. In the end I got a celebrity lift all the way to Brum, from a member of the Scouse folk band, the Spinners. But back to where we came in, with Scarlett. The Scots in her film all got a lift from a famous face but it didn’t work out for them. There will be no chance of hitch-hiking making a comeback after those events. But Under The Skin was a brave move by the actress. Taking on an Indy role when you are a mega-star is a risky decision. She is now part of The Avengers franchise, and was great in Woody Allen’s Match Point. I’m afraid she lost me in Lost In Translation though, with Bill Murray. So cheers Scarlett, for an interesting interlude.  But now the football extravaganza becomes prime viewing. Fasten your seat belts…