Norwood pubs keep the social culture imbibing and thriving

Happy hour culture is alive and well and living in the pubs of Norwood. I used to scoff at such notions as being yet another symptom of the world being Americanised. But what better fillip at the end of the working week than imbibing and thriving on a late Friday afternoon and getting value for money in the increasingly expensive hobby of drinking alcohol. Leading the way is the Britannia Hotel on the corner of the treacherous Britannia roundabout. At $4.50 for a pint of glorious Cooper’s stout it’s a tremendous deal. The staff are all smiles and welcoming. Plus free pies and pasties are distributed between 4pm and six o clock. And there’s a chance of taking home hearty foodstock in the form of a free meat raffle. Highly recommended. Get there. What a refreshing change from all the self-styled “bars” that blatantly rip you off. Just up Kensington Road at the top of the incline is the Robin Hood. Great pub. Grand staff. Five dollars will land you a tipple of local ale. Alas, it doesn’t apply to stout. But we’re approaching an Aussie spring so I’ll be back on Cooper’s Pale soon. And add to the list the Alma Hotel on Magill Road. From 5pm it’s $5 drinks (stout included) until 7pm as well as free gourmet sausage butties and Bingo. Bingo! I thought bingo was an old folks’ game but this one is read out by Adelaide Crows’ stars such as Patrick Dangerfield and Tex Walker. The pub is owned by Mark Ricciuto and other Crows connections so they can have the lads’ services on tap. I have not been a winner so far but the craic is great. For a Blackburn Rovers fan it’s the equivalent of having Shearer and Sutton shout out the numbers. Get close and personal you AFL fans… Word of warning: it’s mobbed. Pubs have always held a special connection to me cos I’m English. Pubs back home are basically an extension of your lounge room. I’ve got mates I’ve grown up with whose houses I’ve hardly been to. Why? Just see ya down the pub. Visiting Australians still don’t pick up on this concept. Barbecues in the back yard are really not an English thing. It usually rains so standing round in a garage, semi-cold wi grey skies and drizzle aint a lot of fun. Especially when the pub is just down the road. So the pub it is… If you stop your car back home and ask somebody for directions, they will usually point you the way via pubs. Again, a peculiar English habit. “Keep going to the roundabout, turn left at the Coach and Horses, carry on til you see the Old Duck, then when you see the Cross Keys you’re on the right road.” And so it goes on. Aussie pub culture is slightly different but it maintains the vibe. The front bars of country pubs in South Australia are testament to that. I head to the UK this week. First stop post-Heathrow, the pub. Where else? My lifelong mate Ivan Hickmott is due to pick me up at Heathrow en route to a 60th do for equally legendary Clitheroenians Tony Woods and Eric Spiby. Eric is so jangled he has fled Adelaide to have the do on home soil in Blackburn. I’d do the same. Anyone reading this is invited. Eric sez it’s open house. See you in the Wilpshire Hotel pre-gig on Sept 6. Before that it will be Friday evening in the Cricketers on Redbourn green with Jonathan Moore, a convivial professor, Chelsea fan, cricket enthusiast. An old mate of Ivan’s from the Leeds University days. Dare I mention the Royal Park? The Cricketers is an English village scene so clichéd is should not exist. But it does… No doubt sport will be a topic of conversation as we babble on about nowt in particular. Jet lag? I mock jet lag. Bring on the beers. Meanwhile, can the residents of Norwood make up for my one-week absence by downing a few stouts in the Alama/Britannia next Friday night. Cheers…

Welcome back to the intense and crazy world of English football

The start of the English football season seems to come round quicker each year. In my case, maybe it’s just another symptom of the ageing process. The lesser lights of the English footballing pyramid kicked things off last week. Now the stage is set for the main event, the Premier League to strut its stuff. There has been money aplenty spent with a barrel load more foreign imports added to the list of participants in the league that touts itself as the “biggest and best in the world.” Oh, well, we’ll see… Maybe it has all hurried round this year because we have had the World Cup in Brazil in between. Germany’s triumph was enjoyable but it seems like we haven’t had a break. There is even the intrusion of English clubs embarking on globetrotting ventures to play friendlies on the other side of the world. These games are now seen as being so important that they are given saturation coverage on the various satellite channels. My own personal interest centres on the madcap institution known as the Championship. Already after just a week, my hopes for Blackburn Rovers have taken a knock. An uninspiring 1-1 home draw with Cardiff City was broadcast on Setanta in Saturday’s early hours. It seemed the epitome of mediocrity. Then in midweek we were bundled out of the League Cup by Scunthorpe United in front of a paltry crowd of just more than 5,000 at Ewood Park. I had to go to the record books to discover that we had only ever crossed paths with Scunthorpe twice in our history, the 1972-73 season in the old Division Three. At least we managed to beat ‘em at Ewood during the heady autumn of ’72 when the lanky John O’Mara landed a double. I was there in my teens as that overrated and puzzling striker did the business. Already after this week’s shameful result, on social media, there have been calls for the head of manager Gary Bowyer. Oh, dear… It’s not as crazy as it seems cos already Huddersfield Town have sacked their boss Mark Robins after just one match. True, it was on the back of a rather embarrassing 0-4 home rout against Bournemouth on the opening Saturday. However, it does seem a tad over the top but just illustrates what a befuddled landscape the Championship has become. Down the road at Leeds United, the eccentric Italian owner Massimo Cellino has installed Dave Huckaday as manager. Dave who? The bloke has all the apparent managerial credentials to take charge of a Sunday morning pub team having never operated at Football League level before. I wish him luck coping with the wrath of the demanding Leeds fans if things pan out as they maybe are expected to. And on Saturday my Rovers try to regain some early momentum with a trip to the seaside to visit a club who are seemingly run even worse than we are. Blackpool only had eight players on their books a couple of weeks ago and the fans are in open revolt against the regime of chairman Karl Oyston. Belgian Jose Riga was handed managerial duties during the summer but he appears to have inherited a thankless task. Rovers’ game already looks like a battle of the basket cases at Bloomfield Road. Elsewhere Nottingham Forest re-installed former club playing legend Stuart Pearce as boss. Forest duly opened their campaign with a 2-0 home win over the hapless Blackpool, who had actually managed to raise a team for the occasion. But not before Pearce had had a very public falling out with the club’s owners about their transfer policy. Pearce blew his top when chairman Fawaz al-Hasawi sanctioned the sale of defender Jamaal Lascelles and goalkeeper Karl Darlow to Newcastle United against the manager’s wishes. The pair were promptly loaned back on year-long agreement but Pearce was less than impressed. Still, things could settle down and Pearce may lead Forest back to the promised land of the Premier League. Who knows? I certainly don’t. It’s such a topsy-turvy playing field that anybody in this tier can beat anybody else. Derby County have seemingly been installed as promotion favourites, probably just due to the fact that they limped through to the play-off final at Wembley in May. Last season’s relegated pair Fulham and Norwich City are also among many people’s fancies but they both suffered opening away defeats at Ipswich Town and Wolves respectively. Even the bookies can get things way off kilter. Last season my Claret chums from very near the Yorkshire border, Burnley, were rated as the fourth favourites for relegation. But this weekend they open things up with a home game in the Premier League against Chelsea. The Ginger Mourinho meets the real thing. Who’d a thewt it? But just to prove that the Premier League can still steal all the headlines, even in the ranks of sheer madness, comes the news today that Tony Pulis has walked out on Crystal Palace just two days before they are due to open proceedings with a daunting assignment against Arsenal. Pulis performed a near miracle last season by keeping Palace afloat in the Premiership when for a long time, they looked goners. But this weekend they face the Gooners with their main man gone. The bickerings about transfer funds – or rather lack of them – between Pulis and chairman Steve Parish finally spilled over and off he went “by mutual consent.” And what of the new man at Manchester United? Things could even go awry there. Louis Van Gaal, fresh from leading the Netherlands to third spot in the World Cup, is a noted authoritarian and likes to have his own way. How will he take to having his methods scrutinised by Sir Alex Ferguson, the grand old man sat up in the stands, overlooking his former pastures at Old Trafford? David Moyes found it all too much. However, Van Gaal may stand firm about how he wants things to be run now that he has moved into the hot seat down Salford way. Football… It’s back.

Australian slump in Games prompts demanding calls for turnaround

Jeez, the fallout from Australia’s second place on the medals table in the Commonwealth Games is already with us. Stern faces abounded as the goals were set for the Rio Olympics of 2016 and the Commonwealth Games of 2018 when the Aussies will have home advantage on the Gold Coast. Even though many cast derision on the Commonwealth Games with the medals count being dubbed “fool’s gold”, the second place on the ladder behind England appears to have really hurt. All went swimmingly early on in Glasgow as the medal haul in the pool climbed through the roof and the shooters struck gold six times at Carnoustie. But as the athletics program kicked in and Australia ran out of “favourite” sports, the dreaded English surged past them to the top of the medals pile. Suddenly there was consternation on the faces of breakfast television announcers as the grim tale unfolded. You expect that from the mainstream channels but it even spread to the ABC where Virginia Trioli and Michael Rowland seemed unable to contain their indignation as the Aussie hopes went sadly awry. Their link-ups with sports correspondent Paul Kennedy in Glasgow grew increasingly fraught. At least Kennedy got into the spirit of things and donned a kilt. But never mind that Australia were still landing medals a-plenty, the only thing that mattered to them was keeping the English at bay. When that didn’t happen and their sporting pride was wounded the “sulky chops” manners even spread to Games’ Aussie broadcasting hosts Channel 10. Melanie McLaughlin, Ian Thorpe and assorted guests tried to retain their professional impartiality but it was a tough task. Now the orders have gone out – must do better. Revenge and a top finish in Gold Coast is all that will be accepted next time the Games come round. Anything less will be deemed failure. And with two years to go to Rio, similar diktats were barked out this week by Australian Olympic Committee president John Coates and the chef de Mission Kitty Chiller. Since the dreamy days of Sydney 2000 Australia has slipped down the medals rating from fourth to 10th in London when they were blitzed by a rampant Team GB in front of fervoured home support. In Rio, the two leaders are calling for a top five finish even though that will need a significant improvement in the medal collection. But as they issued their grim-faced ultimatum, they seemed to be taking all the fun and joy out of the mission. Chef de Mission at Glasgow Steve Moneghetti tried to argue that any Games were not just about counting medals but his lone voice was howled down. The Glasgow Games did seem fun thanks to the passion of the Scottish crowds and the irreverent opening and closing ceremonies. I didn’t see many English gold medals captured on the TV coverage so was pleasantly amazed when the tally kept rising during morning report after morning report. It seems the Aussies are not very good at being second best. Everything was fine when Mitchell Johnson was blowing England to bits in the last Ashes series or when Lillee and Thommo were inflicting grievous bodily harm in similar fashion in 74-75. But when Douglas Jardine concocted his ruthless Bodyline strategy to curb the great Don Bradman, it was deemed completely out of order by the Aussies. The esteemed English journalist Simon Barnes, formerly of The Times, once dubbed Bodyline as “the greatest sporting whinge of all time.” Hard not to agree. Even though I wasn’t there. Maybe we English have had more chances to get used to losing on the international stage. Various World Cup engagements on the football field have turned to mush – usually at the hands of Germany or Argentina. Compared to that Australia normally wipe the floor with their few rivals at rugby league and Aussie Rules doesn’t even have any international focus, unless you count the flawed experiment with the Irish. Anyway, someone has to win and the other has to lose. That’s sport. It’s sometimes fun. The daunting assignments handed to and demanded of the Aussie competitors at Rio and on the Gold Coast look anything but that. Good luck…