My last few posts have made references to attending rugby games – a little out of character, given that I’ve been a staunch supporter of Sunderland AFC for my whole life. This past weekend, I was at the Saracens vs Exeter Chiefs match to see the Sarries’ final match at Vicarage Road.

As a football fan, Vicarage Road has always been associated with Watford. Heck, the next street along from the ground is called The Hornets! Unfortunately, it’s not exactly modern – the side of the pitch where the TV cameras shoot from contains just one “stand” taking up about a quarter of the length of the pitch, after the rest of it was deemed unfit for use.

So, with a modern day capacity of over 17,000, how does it measure up? Even with the ground around a third-full, I have to say it held up surprisingly well – although football fans are refused alcohol (since all of the bars, at least in the Rous stand, have a clear view of the pitch; a no-no in the football community), the hard stuff was flowing when the Saracens came to town for the final time. I hadn’t a drop of it, but thanks to the TV cameras (and our front row seats), you can see me and my wife on the ITV4 highlights of this past weekend’s games. Just look for the miserable one in the second half!

After 15 years, the Saracens will be getting a ground to call their own, moving ten miles from Watford to a redeveloped stadium in Barnet. Financially, it makes sense – Saracens will have more say in what to do at their ground, and won’t have that awkwardness of supporters going into a ground full of adverts for the football club. I’d also hope the new ground has a scoreboard that’s slightly more up to date than their current DIY affair!

On the pitch, Saracens fell behind 10-9 at the break, but were able to quickly get their noses in front in the second half, and the game went as the form book expected, racing to a 40-10 lead before Exeter pulled back some points in the dying moments; a performance that more than made up for what was a bitterly disappointing first half – in terms of score and entertainment!

With the regular season over, Saracens’ third place finish could yet see them win the league, thanks to the Aviva Premiership’s post-season play-offs. Much like the NFL (although more closely aligned with the Football League’s promotion playoffs), a tournament is held between the top four teams – 1st vs 4th, 2nd vs 3rd – with the winners playing each other in Twickenham to determine the overall winners. Given that I’ve seen Sunderland finish 3rd (top of the play-offs) eventually lose out to a team who finished 7th, it’s quite the galling prospect, especially if you’ve seen your team at the top of the league all season, only to lose to someone who’s finished the season strongly.

Next up for the egg chasing (at least, for now!) the Carnegie Challenge Cup final at Wembley in August. And for now, the London Broncos are still in the competition!

Just a quick posting – I got an e-mail in the past few days from someone who used to listen to Ringside/Ringside Live, asking why the link on the front page for the archives is broken.

I still have the domain, but I need to rebuild the holding page for the site. For the moment, anyone who wants to listen to the old shows should go to our “secret” page on Podbean for the short run we had on recorded shows, as well as the highlights of the days back when we were live. Just excuse the broken image links!

Last week, Sky broadcast a debate involving the three main challengers for the post of Mayor of London… and for the first time I can remember, I engaged in the “new way” of watching television. By not actually watching it.

Although I’m an avid member of it, Twitter is quickly becoming overbearing whenever you watch TV. As a wrestling fan, I’ve become numb to the constant mentions to Twitter on the WWE products – handles as a part of the wrestler’s entrances, Trending Topic graphics during shows, and even instructions to wrestlers about what hashtags to use and when. But for it to bleed into mainstream television is another thing: hashtags flashing up during Britain’s Got Talent, nudging you to tweet about an off-handed comment and join in the debate with other folks who are talking about #newonedirection or #they’llbeforgotteninthemorning (don’t fall for it! don’t become one of “them”).

Anyway, during the London Mayor debate, the hashtag #skylondondebate appeared in quite a few of my tweets, and somehow ended up in a discussion between cyclists and motorists. I’m not that big into politics, being one of those “I know what I stand for, and I’ll vote for whomever comes closest to those ideals”. At the moment, those ideals are pretty much “anyone but Ken Livingstone” – even if you ignore his prior run as mayor, his CV in politics would seem to make him difficult to believe in. Which is saying something for a politician!

As one of the millions of commuters, I’d apparently stand to benefit from Ken’s fare cuts if he got re-elected. Price cuts that would be paid for by using TfL’s budget surplus… which sounds great now, but what happens in 12 months time when that surplus is gone and the running costs rise? Yup – HUGE fare increases, with three years left of Ken as mayor. And that’s discounting the “what if” scenario if there was an emergency that required money to fix (say, large scale engineering work). If the surplus was gone, and no money was in the kitty to pay for it… Yup, huge fare rises. Be warned. There’s never such a thing as a free lunch.

Then came the issue of cyclists. Yes, in a large city such as London, cycling is a good way to get about, especially when roads are busy to the point of gridlock. Only thing is, why should motorists be subsidizing them? As a car owner who pays £200 a year just to use the roads, I really resent cyclists being able to use said roads for free. Even more so when my car insurance gets renewed (another costs cyclists don’t have to bear). Now, I understand that not all cyclists are careless, inconsiderate and generally a menace to drivers, much like how every driver isn’t a maniac who goes out with the intention of running over a cyclist. But if a cyclist goes too close to me and scrapes my car, who do I claim from? Yup, my own insurance, mostly because there’s little way of identifying the cyclist, and even if they did, they’ll likely have no insurance.

Whilst imposing a national system of bike tax and bike insurance would be prohibitively expensive, I’ll end this lightning rod of a topic with this: how about adding a charge to all new bikes? A charge that would go into a pot that would effectively act as road tax and insurance for cyclists, that people can claim from in the case of a cyclist scratching their car, or (God forbid) cyclists crashing into each other.

Just a thought.

In my last post, I wrote a little bit about how I was looking forward to watching some egg chasing… well, a little over a week on, the pros and cons of following rugby have been weighing on my mind.

Don’t get me wrong, Sunderland was my first, and will always be my main (sporting) love. However, since moving down to London, following the Lads has been just that. Following them. Short of blowing upwards of £100 every other week on transport to and from the North East, watching the Lads isn’t an option any more, and on the few times I am able to get a ticket, it’s invariably going incognito amongst the home supporters, biting my tongue as we either lose or win.

So, thanks to those folks at Groupon, I was able to take in a Super League game at the end of March, watching the London Broncos at Twickenham (not that one, the Stoop – less than a mile away from the more famous stadium). For £7 it wasn’t a bad day out, especially once you take into consideration that my Oyster travel card somehow meant that I was able to get there for free via Tube, Overground and mainline rail services.

Atmosphere-wise, it couldn’t come close to what the Stadium of Light offers. Then again, the Stoop barely had 2,000 in a 15,000 capacity stadium that afternoon, whereas Sunderland average out around 38,000 these days. The one thing that was somewhat alien, though, was home and away fans sitting amongst each other, having a drink, without any stewards or police even thinking of throwing you out of the ground. Although I was not around in those days, I’m reliably informed that it’s a throwback to the “good old days” of football, long before the Premier League was even conceived.

As for the result, the Broncos obliterated the Wakefield Trinity Wildcats 36-0 in what was an enjoyable performance – and even making connections back home via the mainline, District Line and Central Lines wasn’t too bad, although I’m glad that most SuperLeague games are Saturday afternoon kick-offs, which would allow for a reasonable return after the game. Only thing is, the Broncos are somewhat nomadic, and although they currently share the Stoop with Harlequins, they are toying with the idea of moving around London, perhaps with the idea of a longer term groundshare (this season they have games at Leyton Orient FC and Gillingham FC’s grounds – only one of which is (barely) in London!).

So what if you can’t get to the game (especially if your adopted “home” team likes to move around)? Without Sky, you’re extremely restricted in terms of coverage of either rugby code. ITV has highlights of rugby union buried away either on ITV4 or late at night on ITV1, whereas rugby league has one highlights show on the BBC – bizarrely on BBC1 North East and Cumbria on Sunday lunchtimes (a BBC region that currently boasts ZERO Super League teams), with a replay on BBC2 in the small hours later that day.

Well, at £15 for a ticket – unreserved seats too, so no surcharge for wanting to sit on the halfway line to see all of the action – it beats Sunderland hands down (and soundly thrashes the £50 paid to see Arsenal vs Sunderland earlier in the season). If only getting to Twickenham wasn’t such a pain in the rear, perhaps I’d be fully converted. Bad puns? I try…

Coming up in May: Saracens vs Exeter (in what will likely be Saracen’s final game at Watford’s Vicarage Road, before a move to Barnet next season. Perhaps that’ll be easier to get to?)

Okay, I’m guilty – no blog updates in two months. You’d think I’m slacking off, again! Well, a lot has been going on, with my second book nearing completion, there’s actually something to talk about!

With sales of Wrestling’s Sinking Ship still going strong, largely thanks to it’s availability on the Kindle and iTunes, I’ve taken the decision to make the second book available only in electronic format. Given that this is, for all intents and purposes, a “short”, it’ll be released at a price to reflect that – and of course, when it’s out, you’ll know about it! The book will be available on iTunes (for the iPad, regardless of whether it’s original, 2 or new, as well as the iPhone and iPod Touch), as well as the Barnes and Noble Nook, and a myriad of other e-readers. Those of you without a Kindle can read it on whatever you’re using to read this with: Amazon have apps for the PC, Mac, Android smartphones, Blackberries, Windows Phones and iOS devices. (phew!)

That brief plug out of the way, it looks like I’ll be branching out into other sports. Thankfully, not writing about them – but in recent weeks, apart from the obligatory watching of the Six Nations, I’m starting to take a bit of an interest in egg chasing. Having watched some of the rugby league four nations tournament at Wembley, I’ll be taking in another league game at Twickenham in a few weeks’ time, with the newly-renamed London Broncos taking on Wakefield Trinity Wildcats in a bottom-of-the-table clash. A month later, I’ll be switching codes and going to the top, as I’ll hopefully catch Saracens attempt to retain their Aviva Premiership title with their final regular season game, at home to Exeter.

On the podcast front, I’ve been listening to some hidden gems from the past – Joe Gagne has recently gotten some notoriety with his Funtime Pro Wrestling Arcade series on YouTube, where he’s summarising pretty much every single wrestling game that has been released, even those on the Commodore 64! Back in the day, though, he had his own podcast series – Joe vs. The World. Episodes have become scarce in recent months, but as a catch-up exercise it’s good fun, especially with their last few episodes going through the early 1990s WWF. All of those episodes are a little over an hour long, which is a breeze compared to a podcast I’d given up on years ago.

Smart Wrestling Fan was a decent podcast back in the day, and for a show that has been around since 2005 it’s quite an achievement to remain a fixture and maintain it’s following. The only problem is, along the way, it’s lost one important thing in podcasting: brevity. Even back in it’s heyday (read: before the split), the shows usually lasted between two and three hours long, which at the best of times is a challenge. Flash forward to 2012, and the new SWF episodes have been known to last for over six hours… whilst an aural experience for those listening live, anything that long is just too daunting for casual fans. Still, if you stick with it (and can put up with their forced wackiness), you’ll get all of your wrestling covered – if it’s on TV somewhere in the world, they’ll mention it, be it Raw, SmackDown, NXT, TNA, Superstars or even Ring Ka King.

Flipping over to an entire network, and the SNS Network of shows has something for everyone. Wrestling News Live is their flagship show, having been going (in various forms) since 1996, mainly covering Raw, the week’s news, and a bevy of big-name interviews. That being said, the remainder of the network can be hit and miss, depending on whether the shows interest you – in general, the live shows tend to be the best thing on the network (and I’m not saying that because of any bias or friendships), whilst the pre-recorded podcasts somehow suffer from repeating news (seriously, not every show has to have “news of the week” – especially if it’ll be badly out of date by the time it’s uploaded) and, astonishingly for a show on tape, an insistence that everything is done in one take, regardless of whether a botch is made.

Elsewhere, get your comedy fix with Shoot Promo - think of it as a wrestling version of Mock The Week, or any other panel comedy news show. Definitely not one to listen to if you’re easily offended, but if you don’t mind it, it should be the first thing you download every weekend.

Right, that’s the new series of the Apprentice starting. Here’s hoping that the next update comes before next year’s series starts!

Saturday, January 28 2012 saw TNA return to Wembley Arena for their fourth “Maximum Impact” show… a show that was switched to a TV taping about three weeks beforehand. Two episodes of Impact, which will air in the first two weeks of February on Spike TV in the US and on Challenge TV in the UK. Spoilers – albeit badly-written, done on a phone as the show went on – lie after the break…

There were lot of seats tarped off at the back of the arena. If sold out, crowd will be around 7,000 (and there were empties even after they covered off a lot of seats).

Dixie came out before the show to thank us all. Crowd booed the mention of the TNA German and french TV partners. The show had a very basic stage, which will come across as extremely weird and possibly even low-rent in comparison to the on-the-road Impact tapings they’ve already done in the US. No entrance videos for anyone, as the video screen (in the photo) only showed the Impact Wrestling logo on a loop, and there was no place for the commentators, with neither Tazz or Mike Tenay in the UK.

February 2nd show

Bully Ray and Bobby Roode come out for a show-opening interview. Roode calls out Storm, who is followed by Sting who announces a four way main event for Against All Odds: Roode, Ray, Storm and Hardy for the title. Sting also booked Roode vs Storm and Ray vs Storm tonight (I thought Sting was a babyface GM?)

1. Magnus & Samoa Joe vs Matt Morgan &  Crimson in a  Buckingham Brawl. The rules were that the winners of the coin-toss had a 2-on-1 advantage the whole time, whilst the losers had to tag in and out. Joe and Magnus won the toss (albeit after Borash threw the coin out of the ring in error!)

Magnus and Joe win a decent, if not confusing match, after Magnus hits the knees off the top to Morgan.

2. Austin Aries beat Mark Haskins by submission. Haskins botched a shooting star press Lesnar style (Haskins got a minor concussion after this, which will probably air knowing TNA’s history!). Brainbuster followed by a roll into submission. Haskins was helped to the back after the match.

3. Bobby Roode beat James Storm with a spear after interference from Ray in a very good match. Ray and Roode attacked Storm post match, Sting made the save.

Eric and Garrett Bischoff segment.  They’ll reveal who trained Garrett. My money’s on Hogan. Cornette Face made an appearance here, for those Botchamania fans!

4. Tara beat Gail Kim with Widow’s Peak. Some botched moves, and interference gone wrong from Madison Rayne led to the finish.

5. James Storm beat Bully Ray after a super kick. Storm had taped ribs, Roode and Sting came out during the match to interfere and prevent it… Sting fended off Roode with a black cricket bat to prevent Roode interfering in the finish.

Main event segment: Garrett came out to announce his trainer. Eric and Gunner came out to mock… but in the end Hulk Hogan is revealed as Garrett Bischoff’s trainer. Insert joke here.

February 9th show

1. Daniels beat AJ Styles after hitting him with brass knuckles during an attempted Styles Clash.  Daniels had thrown the knux to Kazarian at ringside, who acted conflicted when it came to throwing the knux back in.

Interview segment with Ray, Roode. Sting comes out and adds himself as enforcer at PPV. Books Ray and Roode vs Storm and Sting for the main event.

2. Alex Shelley beat Doug Williams and Austin Aries in a 3 way, pinning Aries with the Sliced Bread after Aries had kicked Williams low following a Chaos Theory on Shelley.

Magnus and Joe promo. Huge pop for Magnus who did a patriotic speech, ending with a line: “this is England”. They challenge Crimson and Morgan to the titles at the ppv. Champions come out and send them packing.

3. Velvet Sky beat Mickie James. Crowd did not know what to make of this face vs face match. Sky won with an inside cradle.

Segment with Garrett and Hogan. Crowd turned on Garrett after he got the Hulk Hogan seal of approval. Wonder if this will be edited, as nobody seemed to care about Garrett for the entire night, and when they tried to force him down our throats, well… you know the rest! Hogan announced Garrett vs Gunner for Against All Odds. Eric then low blowed Hogan, and Gunner / Eric took out Garrett. Hulk hulked up, and tosses out Garrett. This storyline is not going to go well…

4. Main event: Sting and Storm beat Roode and Ray when Sting made Roode tap to the Scorpion Deathlock. Ray teased interfering but bailed on Roode.

Slow paced match, but the crowd liked it. Everyone seemed really burned out at this point though.

Good show all in. Hogan and Sting got the biggest reaction. The lack of an interval between shows killed the crowd towards the end of show 2. No Angle or Flair for the tapings (Hardy had been announced in the week-long media build as not appearing – likely due to his recent stint in jail), which was surprising. Pretty much two Impacts using what would have been the house show crew, plus a few names.

Kurt Angle did come out after the tapings finished, interrupting after a Sting promo (typical “thank you” to the fans – Sting announced here that he’d “blown out his heel” in the match, and he was visibly limping). Angle, Ray and Roode beat down Storm and Sting, before Hogan came out to make the save and do his posedown routine to send everyone home happy.

More photos available on Facebook via Wrestling-Online.com.

Sometimes, you just can’t win. Even when something happens that, in the bigger picture, is actually for the best, there’s always those who like to nitpick.

After spending the end of 2011 promoting the return to television of Brodus Clay – a character who was last seen in squash matches on WWE Superstars, after being a nondescript bodyguard character – we finally got the payoff. With Clay’s return/debut having been continually pushed back since November, where he was originally meant to debut on an episode of Raw from Liverpool, England, the big event finally happened… but it wasn’t quite the same Brodus.

“Hailing from Planet Funk,” Brodus’ new character would be extremely polarising. “The Funkasaurus” Brodus Clay, an updated version of the Flash Funk gimmick used by the-artist-best-known-as Too Cold Scorpio in the mid 90s, was a refreshing change in a company where every character is either deadly serious, or seriously bad at comedy. Yet somehow, the only criticism of the new character seems to be that “it wasn’t what was promised”. Now, if WWE had still been running the same promos of Brodus in the weeks before, showing him as an unstoppable monster, then I’d understood. However, his name had barely been mentioned on television in recent weeks, so why should we have thought that they were still bringing him back at all? After all, I don’t remember anyone crying and moaning about Hade Vansen…

So, this past Monday, Brodus Clay came out in his red jumpsuit, jacket and fedora, quickly beating Curt Hawkins with the same set of moves he utilised in his squash matches on Superstars. Days later, he repeated the act, beating Tyson Kidd in even less time, showing that the emphasis was on the character, rather than the in-ring work.

Yet, the polarisation of this character is such that fans are either praising WWE for doing something outside of the box – by giving Clay a character that he has to work to play, rather than a by-the-numbers monster heel who would be forgotten as soon as WWE’s resident monster Mark Henry returns from injury. In the meantime, the nay-sayers are screaming from the rooftops, somewhat upset that they didn’t see the Brodus Clay that they (didn’t) see on Superstars, or that Brodus was squashing “the wrong guys”. Somehow, I think these are the views of those who love the sound of their own voice or perhaps have their own agendas, hidden or otherwise.

In short, those who still get a kick out of watching wrestling, regardless of their age, seemed to get a kick out of the Funkasaurus, whilst those who claim to be down on the product, yet still watch (presumably to give them something else to talk about whilst waiting for their next bandwagon – this is not a shot at anyone, trust me). Perhaps this is a sign? In the meantime, I’ll be happily listening out to the music we first heard nearly ten years ago with Ernest Miller, whilst also figuring out another what I should listen to instead, as I’ve hit unsubscribe on that podcast…

Hope everyone had a safe and happy new year’s celebrations… for those of you who have sobered up sufficiently at this point, there’s some good news…

Amazon.co.uk have reduced VAT on eBooks (not sure how long for) – which means that Wrestling’s Sinking Ship is now available for £2.63 for purchasers in the UK. Grab it now at this link… or search in your Kindle for it!

Normal, non-shilling service will resume shortly, with news of further releases…

So, we’re nearly at the end of 2011 – hope everyone had a great Christmas/Holidays period (even if you’ve lost a day – Samoa, I’m looking at you), as we get set for 2012, there’s a few things that I wanted to put to paper… okay, keyboard!

Is it me, or is the art of customer service dying? There are still some companies who believe in it, and maybe it’s just bad luck, but a lot of dealings that myself and people I know have had over the Christmas period have been excruciatingly bad. It can go from folks not wanting to the work, to a total hard headed-ness “it’s the policy, I’m afraid” level of excuses.

Some examples: the Post Office’s “check and send” service for passports – because the photograph didn’t have the mouth glued shut, “I’m afraid we can’t accept this photo, it’ll be rejected”. After comparing the new photo to the photo in the current passport, and realising that, if anything, the “new” photo had the mouth open less, we sent the passport off a few days before Christmas. New passport received ten days later (astonishing, considering it was over the Christmas period) – score one against the Post Office who didn’t want to do the paperwork…

Okay, so we’re not getting our passports done every day… how about just buying something in a shop? Understandably, shops have got a lot of temporary Christmas workers in to cope with the increased volumes that they’re expecting over this time of year. Training them shouldn’t be too hard, but in cases where something falls through the cracks, there’ll be someone on hand to point them in the right direction, right? When someone’s got to “go to the back” to replace a dummy case with the real thing, they probably shouldn’t have to ask five colleagues, all of whom shrug their shoulders in confusion.

On a somewhat related point, I won’t virtually scream at an electronics chain who took an order for an Android tablet, then when we called four days later for an update, assured us it was fine, only to send us an e-mail five minutes later to announce that the order had been cancelled. Not too sure that that was breaking news to the point where their systems hadn’t been updated…

Copy Protection – I understand the reasons for it; to stop piracy at the opportunist’s level (to stop some bloke buying a copy of, I don’t know, “The Hangover 2″, ripping it and selling cheap copies down the local). I’ve always been of the belief that penalising legitimate consumers is not the way to scare off those who are pirating on a massive level. Remember back in the days when some CDs were unplayable in your PC? What about the days when some music CDs actually installed malware on your PC, supposedly as a way to let you play them? Remember all of the goodwill that generated? No? There’s a reason why.

As a Christmas present, I purchased “Attack The Block” – the Blu-Ray and DVD double pack, purchased specially as I was aware of copy protection on the DVD that was so over the top, it actually prevented a lot of DVD players from even recognising the disc. Not PC DVD drives, not video game consoles… bog standard DVD players. So, at my parents’ place, we put the DVD in, it loads, and then the player flashes up “the disc is dirty”. Tried it in a laptop, disc was unplayable.

We finally watched the movie via the Blu-Ray version, and it was a pretty good movie (albeit one that probably wouldn’t be understood by people living outside of London, or any major city). It’s just a shame that there’s been bad feeling left behind by the DRM – intended to protect the disc from being copied, but in reality, prevented it from being played.

Ending the year on a good note, Wrestling’s Sinking Ship continues to sell well, despite it being nearly six years old. Not read it yet? You can pick up paperbacks from Amazon (or order from any good bookstore), or if you have pretty much any electronic device, you can purchase it there as well.

On iTunes – for iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, or just reading in iTunes – search via iTunes or click http://itunes.apple.com/gb/book/wrestlings-sinking-ship/id442095132?mt=11

On Kindle – either on Kindle e-readers, Kindle Fire, or the variety of Kindle apps for PC, Android, iOS or Blackberry smartphones. Either search in the Kindle Store, or click here (UK) or click here (US)

On Barnes & Noble Nook (yes, it’s available there) – click here.

Hope you all have a happy and prosperous new year – see you all in 2012!

Apologies for the shameless plug, but if you haven’t gotten your copy of Wrestling’s Sinking Ship yet, now’s the perfect time to grab it!

If you’re leaving it late to get the paperback version (at time of writing, Amazon UK and Amazon.com have stock), you can get the book electronically. Kindle owners should be able to get their copy for under $4, whilst Apple/iOS users (iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch) can get a copy from iTunes as well.

Psst… pass it on! 2012 should see the release of future books, including the Wrestling Rule Book and some iTunes/Kindle-exclusive content as well.