A weekend of triumph and disaster

I feel like a bit of a let-down. I know that I promised you all a blog last week and for the lack of one, I sincerely apologise. I would love to pretend that my extended essay writing session was due to a high level of interesting subject matter but, if to be honest, it wasn’t. The treatment of trauma in contemporary literature really doesn’t get me that excited.

However what does every year without fail is the F.A. Cup final. This year’s episode of the greatest series in sporting history saw what many romantics would class as the almost perfect cup final. Champions and moneybags Chelsea against relegated, broke Portsmouth. In the absence of a lower league fairytale to back most of the nation were right behind the south coast club.

Alas, the tale was not to have a happy ending although the telling of it was enthralling as always. There was the seemingly magically protected Portsmouth goal and the penalty which felt almost inevitable.

What there was not was a hero, someone who at the appointed hour would stand up and set the country to laughing at Chelsea. Kevin-Prince Boateng had his chance and he scuffed it. In a cruel twist of fate’s knife, two minutes later Didier Drogba showed him how to make sweet contact with a football as he crushed thousands of Pompey hearts.

But if we neutrals thought that was harsh then spare a thought for the fans at Fratton Park. Most times when a smaller club makes it to Wembley it is on the back of a great season and they go away enthused and hoping to kick on. Not this year.

Portsmouth now drop into The Championship and will be happy if they survive long enough to play in it. The fans will be feeling a strange sense of desolation that really shouldn’t exist just four days after a trip to the home of football.

Elsewhere this weekend England won the World Cup. Unfortunately not the one that we all hope and dream of but the Twenty20 cricket version. Congratulations must go to the team, especially the captain and leader Paul Collingwood who has come in for a lot of criticism over the years, but one has to wonder about the lack of coverage that this success has got.

I know that it is cricket and that a lot less people care about it than football but I must admit to a slight sense of disappointment in the media for not going for this story a bit more.

Maybe the reason for this is the sheer number of ICC tournaments that are thrown at us. There is now a Twenty20 World Cup every year with a 50-over version every four. We have also had the pointless Champions Trophy.

When Sepp Blatter mooted that the football World Cup be held every two years there was outcry from a lot of football people. They knew that this would dramatically lessen the prestige of the tournament and the impact it had on the world stage. As every England football fan will tell you, four years is a long time to wait for another shot at glory and it only increases the excitement.

For possibly the first time on my life I would suggest that FIFA has shown the way to do things.