A most stressful position

 Spot the difference:















One came to power on a wave of expectation lauded by a public who thought he could right the wrongs of the past and lead the nation into the history books, staking a rightful claim amongst other world powers. He failed miserably and plummeted in public esteem after a catastrophic fall from grace.... The other is former Soviet Leader Boris Yeltsin.


Bahraini football coach Milan Macala, a Czech, will no doubt fall on his sword, or be pushed upon it, after another fall-at-the -last-hurdle World Cup Crusade.

He has finally spoken out saying that his team felt the stress and pressure of the do or die World Cup game in Wellington.

Being a football manager is no doubt a stressful job, as evidenced by the high rate of heart attacks among top flight coaches, but with the risk comes reward and when the dust settles it is, after all, just a game of football.

Try talking about stress and pressure to Macala lookalike Boris Yeltsin. After a tenure pockmarked with corruption, guerilla war and economic collapse you could forgive him for going a wee bit Britney on it:
Yeltsin Highlights Reel

Here's hoping that Macala, by all accounts an honourable foe for All Whites Coach Ricki Herbert last weekend, exits with a bit more grace.

Welcome to the life of a football tragic

Everybody's blogging at me. / I don't hear a word they're saying, / Only the echoes of my mind:

Welcome to the life of a football tragic. I grew up in the last large landmass to be discovered, a long necklace of pearly jewels dripping from the humid South Pacific to the cold Southern Ocean- not exactly tropical, but lush and fruitful, and full of warrior mystique.

I'm talking about New Zealand/Aotearoa, which glistens like a pearl at the bottom of the whirl.

Heavens above, so many myths abound here about aggression and confrontation- how the demi god Maui stunned the Sun so as to create more hours in the day, or how the true-to-life chieftan Te Rauparaha created the All Blacks a new Haka by hiding from a raiding party in a kumara pit under a Kuia's fanny.

It's like our men and women were born to punch above their weight- a typically aggressive turn of phrase that is wheeled out every time our sports teams achieve somesuch semi-miracle, or a rural bred scientist has split some past-participle or otherford. But last Saturday night, as a football tragic, I witnessed a true sporting miracle, when for only the second time in my lifetime New Zealand qualified for the 2010 Football World Cup in South Africa-Praise Sepp Blatter!

I had the honour of playing a behind the scenes role in the tragi-comedy too- employed by New Zealand Football to recruit and organise the Stretcher bearers, and to coordinate the darling wee players' escorts; the juniors who hold the players' hand during the opening stanza.

Here is a Youtube clip taken by my colleague Ken, of us all lining up in the tunnel- the atmosphere is electric, but tragic as I am I am far too focussed on the job at hand, to be overwhelmed by the moment. Can you spot me:



More about my tragic life in the days to come, and more about that fateful night too

Stay tuned amigos~