The Games Come To Brum Just As Football Comes Home

I was up early on Friday in the company of ICW. We were making the small hop to Coventry for the opening session of the Commonwealth Games Rugby Sevens. I analysed the organisation at the venue with the expert (take that with a large dose of salt) eye of a 2012 Games Maker. There were teething problems at the venue (the excellent Coventry Stadium) and clearing security took too long, such that despite our early arrival at the venue we missed the first couple of matches. No matter, the volunteers started to find their collective voice and the general atmosphere of bonhomie went undisturbed. I can pay it no better compliment than to say that it put me in mind of London 2012.

The rugby was good. Sevens (never a discipline that suited a mud-plugger such as the Pig) requires deftness, vision, and buckets-full of speed. Unfortunately the English men seemed clumsy, tunnel-visioned, and slow as they got dismantled by Samoa. Oh well. 

ICW was on a Games marathon of his own on Friday. Having spent the morning with me, he was up and in spectating mode once again for the evening session at the swimming. He jovially reports that it was an excellent night, bar having to hear the all-conquering Australian anthem seven times. Oh well.

The Games were just up the road in Sutton Park for three days as the site of the various triathlons. The locals were out in force and rewarded by a lot of English gold medals. For today I am here at my desk but playing golf later with the Monday Night at PH lads. Tomorrow I have the first of five days at the athletics, accompanied on this first day by WJR. This will bring back memories of all the athletics we were privileged to see live as youngsters in the company of our grandfather, W. Harry Hayward, a Vice President of the Amateur Athletic Association. He would have loved all of this on his doorstep. Oh well. 

Football's Coming Home. That excellent sentiment has become rather stale since it was given musical life by Skinner and Baddiel back in 1996. Well yesterday it at last made some sense as the England Women won the European Championship at a packed Wembley. That Germany were the beaten finalists seems somehow fitting. And it is nice to see that we can stage a major final without it being hijacked by a rogue tribe of coked-up piss-head savages.

Cerrtainly all of this uplifting sport serves as a welcome distraction from the unlovely spectacle of the Conservative Party tearing itself apart to find a successor to the awful Johnson. I cannot slide a fag-paper between the two candidates in terms of their lack of loveliness. Thankfully I don't have a vote. Never have I felt quite so divorced from my political instincts. Apathy Rules UK? Oh well.