Sad, yet annoying...

England are out of Euro 2004. They lost to Portugal after a penalty shoot-out. Full-time ended 1-1. Extra time ended 2-2. And we lost the shoot-out 6-5. There are lots of things to say about it - plenty of reasons for the defeat - but it would make this post far too long and I doubt any of you care that much anyway (if, indeed, anyone reads this anymore). So, I will bullet point my views for those that might have seen the game:

• Great goal by Owen
• Heskey should have come on instead of Vassell after Rooney injury
• Referee was dreadful - and biased against England
• Midfield looked exhausted
• Campbell and Cole were magnificent
• Campbell's disallowed goal should have stood
• Beckham was unlucky to take first penalty with such a dodgy penalty spot

This will be the last post before we go to Spain. Depending on Internet access I may be able to post a message while we are there and maybe even post a photo or two. So, until next time...

Spain have gone home and we're going with them...

So Spain were knocked out of Euro 2004. As were Italy last night in the most dramatic of circumstances; they scored a last gasp winner (2-1) in their game against Bulgaria and celebrated because they thought it was enough to qualify for the next round, but at the same time as their goal Sweden scored in their game against Denmark to make the score 2-2, which is the result that was needed to see both Sweden and Denmark qualify and Italy to be eliminated. Heartbreak for the Italians.

We're off to Spain on Saturday. I started getting my things prepared: the pre-pack preparation you might call it. Looks like I'll be able to pack all my clothes into my backpack! Which is good seeing as we have to take our tent with us and have a personal checked baggage limit of 15kg.

More later, bye for now.

Like an outgrowing radish...

Once again, the title of this post has little to do with the post itself; I'm just running out of interesting things to say.

Just had Andy, Fi & Griff over to watch the England vs Croatia game. It was a fine game of football, won by England 4-2. Croatia scored the first goal and for 40 minutes it looked like England were never going to get on the scoreboard despite being easily the best team. Then Scholes scored for England after good work by Lampard, Owen and Rooney. It was Scholes's first goal for England in three years! Then five minutes later Rooney blasted in a shot from outside the box; set up by a nice move involving Owen & Scholes again sucking in the defenders leaving Rooney is space just where he is most dangerous. In the second half Rooney scored again when he ran on to a great through ball from Owen and calmly sent the Croatian keeper the wrong way. The one downside to the game was that England look very susceptible to corners and free kicks around the box. Both Croatia's goals came from wide free kicks with England not looking confident in the air. Frank Lampard got England's 4th.

So, England are through to the Quarter Finals and will play Portugal on Thursday. France won the group and will play Greece in their QF.

At home, Marla and I are starting to prepare for our trip to Spain next week. We will be staying with Fi's parents at the new home near Barcalona. Andy and Fi are leaving on Wednesday along with Jason, Marie and Andy's parents. Paul, Rachael, Griff and the two of us will join them on Saturday and will stay until the following Friday. We've got softball tomorrow night and the England-Portugal game on Thursday so we really only have Wednesday and Friday to get our things together.

Apart from the trip things are mostly normal. Had a very nice message from Rob Scutti (from KC) on Sunday reminding us that the US Grand Prix was about to start... it was an incident packed race and Schumacher (Rob's favourite) won, so hopefully Rob enjoyed it. That's all for now.

A rumber of thundle...

Sorry, that title has nothing to do with the post it's just something funny that the TV weatherman said today. So, England beat Switzerland 3-0 this afternoon. It was a great result and an OK performance. Rooney scored two (although one hit the post and went in off the goalie's head) and Gerrard scored the third. The key players for England (Scholes, Beckham, Gerrard and Owen) all played a bit better than against France although none of them are up to the standard they can be. Anyway, with France and Croatia drawing 2-2 (crazy result, by the way) it means that England will go through to the next round if they draw or win against Croatia on Monday.

On the home front, things are fine. Our softball team lost again on Tuesday. The weather is cooling off a bit after a week or two of heat. We had dinner at my parent's house tonight, which was nice. Although Dad's back is really bad, which means he is in pain and his movement is considerably restricted.

That's all for now.

Rumours...

Just in case any of you have forgotten what I look like, here I am! This was at Anfield earlier in the year. I heard a rumour today that Steven Gerrard has made a verbal transfer request to leave Liverpool, which if true could be a real blow to the team. I am a little doubtful whether it is true though considering the timing - why would he do something like that during a major championship like Euro2004?

Bugger...

England lost to France 2-1 last night. I wouldn't mind so much except they lost it in the worst way. They played very well and were 1-0 up at full time. Then France scored from a free kick and a penalty in the three minutes of extra time - thanks to silly mistakes by England players. It could be a real confidence killer - but hopefully the team will take heart from the fact that for 90 minutes they were better than the best team in the world.

Sniff.

Keeping up with the Clists...

Andy has a new-look weblog so I thought I should not get left behind and so have chosen this bright and cheerful environment. Hope you like it.

HP Prisoner

Saw Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (or HP Prisoner as the board at the cinema called it) on Wednesday. I liked it a lot. More than just an entertaining couple of hours (like films 1 & 2). It was actually a good film. The main cast are growing into their roles nicely and it was well directed I thought. A lot darker than the first two (as is the book I understand), which meant they had made the sets much more sinister and more moody - not necessarily a bad thing, but I would have liked them to keep Hogwarts more or less the same throughout the series. Apart from that minor problem, I thoroughly recommend it. 3 or 3.5 stars (maybe 3.25).

Euro 2004, An Introduction...

Euro 2004 starts on Saturday. For the uninitiated, Euro 2004 is the trendy name of the European Football (soccer) Championships. It is basically the Europe-only version of the World Cup and in my opinion (and the opinion of many people inside the footballing world) is more difficult to win than the World Cup. Sixteen teams split into four groups of four. Each group plays round-robin with the top two teams from each group going through to the Quarter Finals. The key difference between the European Championships and the World Cup is the fact that there are relatively few mediocre teams. In the World Cup there is quite often one or two weak teams from Central and South America, plus teams from Asia & Africa that are not always top class. In the Euro's all the teams are quality (except for Latvia, but no-one knows how they managed to qualify) and every game is hard to win.

England have a good chance of doing very well. Last time I checked they were 8-1 sixth favourites to win the tournament, but I think their chances are better than that. They have a very difficult opening game against the favourites and holders France but man for man against France I think there are a number of favourable match-ups for England. France's defense is a bit long in the tooth these days and so hopefully Micahel Owen and Wayne Rooney (England's attackers) can run them ragged. The other two teams in England's group are Croatia and Switzerland, neither of which should be a problem for England.

So, from this Saturday (June 12) there will be games almost every day until the final on the 4th of July. Stay tuned for updates.

www.euro2004.com

Many thanks to the pioneers...

Thanks go to Greg P. for completing the first successful test of the comment feature. Everyone else can now see that it works and should also proceed to use it.

Played softball again tonight. Lost again - we still have not won a game. Everything looked good until the 4th inning when we gave up five runs (mostly from walks!). Marla played very well and I played good defense at SS but could not hit at all. Griff has moved from 2B and is now playing 3B (trying to emulate Joe Randa). Marla and Rachael are a nice little middle OF partnership.

Going to see Harry Potter tomorrow night - quite looking forward to that. I'll try to give a report later in the week. And then on Sunday there is a TV-fest at Rachael's flat. The Classic Movie Club will be meeting to watch The Graduate, then there is the Canadian GP and then the highlight of the day, England vs France in the European Championships.

Another weblog improvement...

Hot on the heels of adding the ability to post pictures directly to the weblog, I have now enabled a comments feature. From now on, all my posts will have a comments link at the bottom. Clicking on that link will take you to an area where you can read other people's comments and actually post a comment yourself. I have no idea whether it's something any of you will use, but I guess I'll find out.

Hello BloggerBot...

This is a test of a new function of my weblog (called the BloggerBot!) where I can quickly and easily upload images. This is a photo from our visit to Lacock Abbey while Susanne and Mark were here. Clicking on the image should pull up a larger version.

Many photographs...

I managed to put the photos from Susanne & Mark's visit into an Ofoto album, here it is:

Susanne & Mark

I also created an album from the opening night of the Bath Music Festival which was the 21st of May - the day before the Imrie-Holloways arrived, it is here:

Opening night of festival

Good times...

Susanne and Mark left early on Monday morning. We were staying at the Park Lane Hotel (thanks to great rates because Mark works for the company) and they caught a cab to Heathrow. It was too early for us to be bothered to see them go so we said fairwell in the hallway the night before. That day (the Sunday) we had spent plenty of time walking around London. In the morning we had done the usual tourist stuff of Westminster-Whitehall-Trafalgar Square-The Mall-Buckingham Palace and then after a nice lunch in the hotel we had a fruitless and wet walk to a closed Harrod's in Knightsbridge.

I have yet to download the pictures from my digital camera but should be able to do that this evening and post them at Ofoto quite soon.

Life is now back to the day-to-day grind. The next thing to look forward to is the European Championships (Euro 2004) which starts on the 12th of this month. England drew 1-1 with Japan last night in a preparation game and the consensus was that they will have to improve dramatically if they are to get a decent result from their first game of the tournament which is against the Champions France.