Diver

All you United fans who said Van Nistelhoff wasn't a diver...

I miss him in the premiership tho, along with Paul Parker he was great. Tho there are some amazing arsenal greats of seasons gone by which I will remember forever. Apart from the obvious Anders Limpar and John Hartson (harsh), I'll never forget the formidable back 4 of Bould, Adams, Winterburn and Dixon. For what felt like 20 years they were rated as the best defence in the league. And, they were 100% english! What's better is that when Bouldy retired at the age of 54, Norn Iron regular Stevie Morrow was drafted in, complete with dodgy tache.

Still think Le Bob Pires was a worse diver than this performing seal?

Halloween

Well, it's that time of year again, were people take off/put on their masks (delete as appropriate), and tiny animals get blasted into space with the help of a few firecrackers. Hopefully my cat won't be caught up in the festivities. Strange things happen round halloween I've noticed, like Gayle looks like this for a start... Sexy.

Me and the lovely lady are headn to see the Goo's on Wednesday, which should be sweet. I've always had a likening for their songs, but never liked to admit it. It's like saying you like Del Amitri, or Bon Jovi. Or 5ive.

The seagoes are parents

Who would've believed it, after only 6 months of marriage and the seagoes are parents. And what a lot of work it is, feeding, cleaning, keeping entertained! But he sleeps a lot of the time too which is a bit of relief, but mostly he's full of life, scurrying about the floor, trying to climb up my leg. He's called Bruce.

Memories

Was thinking again today, while the radio was on and Saddam is being tried for genocide and continually he's thrown out of court, about all the wars that have happened in my lifetime, and it's strange that I can remember exactly what I was doing at the time. Like on the day of 9/11, I was looking for a house in Jordanstown for starting Uni. And when the Gulf War was on I was in P7, and we'd to bring in newspaper clippings everyday for a scrapbook. And the day of the Omagh bomb I was playing footy up at Graham McGuigan's, which we did most summer days off school.

Anyway I then thought how class must it have been to be a disciple of Jesus to have witnessed all these miraculous events, and be able to pin point their exact whereabouts when the event took place. Or even the general public in those days, when they heard the news that this mighty man Jesus, the Son of God, had performed another amazing feat. They would no doubt remember where they were that day.

Anytime I write something serious in this thing I strive to make a point, but I can't manage one here, not sure what i'm trying to say, if anything at all.

the Pope

Was just thinking today when the news was on. In a speech, during a visit to Germany, the Pope quoted a 14th Century Christian emperor who said the Prophet Muhammad had brought the world only "evil and inhuman" things. In response to this, the Pope was reminded that there is nothing in Islamic faith that preaches violence against non muslims. Oh aye, and they built and burnt an effigy of the Pope, and killed a nun.

Way to get your point across eh?

reedstar*.com

Yup, so it's been a while, but I've been busy.

Been working a bit on a website for reedstar* and you can see the progress here. It's even a .com would you believe?! Still working away at it, getting the lads to send me content etc so it'll be a while before she's lookin sweet.

Bought a few new CDs the other day, both by a band called Jars of Clay check their site out, and check their music out they rock. For the Kingdom. The CD's called Redemption Songs, and is class. No exaggeration. They've taken 13 hymns, some forgotten by the church, and put them to modern music. Not just modern music in fact, really catchy rocky country at times music.

For me it really works, because I find a lot of the newer praise and worship songs lack depth lyrically, and more emphasis may be on the emotion of the music rather than the actual lyrics. These older hymns just seem more focussed lyrically, but with the added bonus of the great music. And these guys are great musicians.

So buy it. Personal favourite on it is "I'll Fly Away", which was originally written by Albert E. Brumley, and Johnny Cash covered it once too me thinks.

Oh yea, and Arsenal beat the Scum 1-0, the unaging Nwankwo Adebeyor popping up in the '86th min for a well deserved victory. Jens took a nasty shot to the face, but at least he saved it. He's ugly anyway, didn't make much difference. Why Eboue wasn't marking him is another matter. Still think we should play him right-wing, cos anytime i look, that's where he is.

Rosicky shone again, Fabregas masterful (Patrick who?) and all this without talisman Henry. That'll show those who say we're a one-man team. Just wait till we get Senderos and Clichy back too. And Lauren! The back four will be Lauren-Senderos-Gallas-Clichy. Gallas quite clearly loves his new team, shouting for a good 5 mins after the match, he was well up for it. Lovely.

Super Norn Iron

Well, I was wrong. Loads of times. When we went 1-0 down, 2-1 down. Wrong.

We won! Can you believe it? I'm still in shock. Lawrie rung the changes, brought in Evans and Lafferty for their first full caps, dumped Jimmy and Tony, and played Bairdy in defensive midfield. If Healy wasn't an idol before, he certainly is now with a splendid hat-trick. The first of his goals was what we as Norn Iron fans are used to seeing. His next two, against a team ranked 7th in the world remember, really were something special. You can check out some highlights from the game here. They're the BBC highlights from the English gits.

His second was obviously worked out on the training ground. We won a dangerous free kick on the egde of the box, right hand side close to the byeline. Sammy Clingan (whose head is actually shaped like a Klingon) cleverly cut the ball back to the penalty spot where Healy had made a run, and he absolutely rifled it into the net. Iker Casilla, yes, Casillas, Real Madrid keeper since he was like 12, had no chance. In fact, I hear he only saw the ball there now. Oh, he's just realised they've lost too!

His third was even better. Long ball out of Taylor's hands, Spanish defence think Healy's offside but he ain't, and he lobs the ball 25-odd yards over Casillas... for the third time that evening! Unreal. And it was a year ago today we beat England. Onwards and upwards.

Though why Roy Caroll started the game is beyond me, Taylor has had more matches and this showed when chubby Rob pulled up after 10mins with a strain. Also rumours about big Lawrie's future being uncertain are a bit worrying. This man's done so much for this team, broke the goal drought, got us a win, got us a goal away from home, beating World Class teams... hope he stays.

Up and down

Since I last bloogered I have had a down. Then an up. I think tonight will be another down.

"I'd play George Jones at left back and put Capaldi in charge of the decks. It couldn't be any worse than Saturday's performance by the pair of them". - Bannsider

On Sat there I had the pleasure of watching the mighty Norn Iron (funny quote on main page, I have it above) take on the even mightier Iceland. Below are the current World Rankings taken from Soccerphile.

72 Northern Ireland
73 Moldova
74 Jamaica

...etc etc including duffers like Honduras, Oman, Uganda (do they even have a football team?), Cuba and Botswana...

104 Armenia
105 Benin
106 Iceland


So, I went along expecting a good game full of hard tackles, long balls, and dodgy defending. Not from us, from Iceland. I was however completely wrong. My prediction of 1-0 to Norn Iron was quickly dashed as Iceland had the game won in the first twenty minutes, before adding a third before half time. Capaldi was truly awful, constantly giving the ball away at the worst possible times, and any times he didn't give the ball away was when he was hoofing it back to the opposition defence. In the past I've been quick to jump to Jimmy Quinn's defence, which is more than I can say for him being jumping at the Iceland defence. Time after time we saw long ball after long ball lifted to Jimmy, and his feet were rooted to the spot. Changes will have to be made, though we're gonna struggle no matter what we do against Spain. I was present 2 years ago when we drew 0-0 at Winsdor, but that seems highly unlikely this time around.

Positives out of the Norn Iron game were pretty slim, though Healy, Taylor and Davis didn't put a foot wrong. Taylor could do nothing for any of the goals, defence were totally at fault. Stuarty Elliot played a good game too, even at one stage he looked to have picked up a nasty injury, but came back on with a tearing run down the left.

Anyway that was Saturday... Sunday was better. The mighty reedstar played a gig up in CFC in Belfast. And it was great! We weren't playing any of our own stuff, we just led worship, but the place was buzzing. Buzzing with the presence of God. There was something about it, probably something to do with the quality of sound in that building, but it felt so right playing there, was a confirmation that what we are doing is glorifying God. Sense. It's something I'm really enjoying, like a real purpose. Nice pic to the left, with Philbus looking deep in thought as usual. Robbie has more photos from the Summer Madness gig on his page here

So the other down, yea that's tonight when we get beat 5-0 by Spain. It's gonna be 'Spainful'? Bawd. Real bawd.