Two boobs good, four boobs better

We've used this picture as an example of when lying down on the pitch is justified

So last night saw us beat Andorra in the first qualifying match for the next European championships.

Be honest, how many of you had even heard of Andorra before it was announced that we’d be playing them?  I’m betting zero, unless you bought some questionable foreign beer that was fermented using goats anus or something.

See?  There’s a probably incredibly racist comment.  I don’t know that they even have goats there.  Fuck it, they’ve barely got a population.  Barely 85,000 souls roaming the streets and fields of that great nation.

A great nation that is 468km² and the official first language of which is Catalan, either though French (remember that), Spanish and Portuguese are also known to be spoken.

Not the great nation of Andora which situated in the western part of the Italian Riviera between Capo Mele in the east and Capo Mimosa in the west. This coastal area is called the Palms Riviera which is centred on Savona. To the west is the Riviera dei Fiore, which stretches from the French border to Cervo. Andora had a population of 6,767 in 2001 which swells to almost 10 times this in the summer months.

God bless Wikipedia.

Why am I going on about Andorra and the fact that we beat them last night and secured 6 points?  Because it’s the easiest win we’ve had in recent history in any sport.  Because as one of the Andorran players was coming on as part of a substitution, the commentator mentioned that he made his money as a gardener.

A gardener.

I’m betting the only other time that could be mentioned as part of a soccer match is between two local five a side teams on a Saturday morning.  Accept the line “Well he would be a gardener if his boss hadn’t hung himself to escape bankruptcy, pity that” after it.

I know it's Ronaldo, but still

Although a five a side team would have put up a better fight against our team.  The lads from Andorra seemed to be happy just to be out of the house for the night.  It’s no secret that I know fuck all about soccer, so I won’t be offering any sort of play analysis.  I could spot that Eamon Dunphy seems to have a hard on for someone called Andy Reid, whatever that’s about.

I’m one of those people who just watches the Ireland games when they’re on so that I know what other people are giving out about when we lose or get cheated by a FUCKING FRENCH MAN!  It’s over.  I’m sorry, I’m sorry.

But the one thing I do notice as a casual soccer watcher is the amount of pansies and pussies in the game.  I noticed it when we played Cyprus a few years back and those cunts spend more time on the grass than the white lines.  Last night was no different.

Someone in a green jersey would run past them, not causing enough of a breeze to knock a tissue off of a wobbly house of cards and some cunt in a blue jersey would perform a dive that an Olympic swimmer would get a hard on over.

I posted this on the Facebook page last night and you probably saw it, but only one thing sprung to mind after the 5th or 6th unwarranted dive:

Get ta fuck.  It didn’t stop either.  And after the third goal from Robbie Keane, they just gave up and caused more delays than a disgruntled Ryanair employee.  They’d dive, hold their knee (regardless of where they were hit or kicked or pulled from), get the stretchers out, limp for a bit and then run for the ball when the next chance of glory that presents itself.

At one point, a player had to be taken off because he lost a contact lens.  I swear, next time he’ll be taken off for a broken nail or a stray tampon string.

But let’s not forget our own behaviour.  It still rings around the world the embarrassing behaviour we, as a nation, undertook when we were knocked out of the world cup qualifiers.  Marching on the French Embassy (all 300 of us), Facebook petitions and letters to the French President, all to get a chorus of brie stinched middle fingers raised in our direction.  And rightly so.

They cheated, they weren’t caught and they got away with it.  Whether or not it was intentional, is another thing.

Last night, the goal from Robbie Keane in the 54th minute came from a pass that was played off side.  That’s right, I pay attention.

Check it, it’s quick, but it’s there.

And we’ll say it wasn’t intentional, but even if it was, the ref or linesmen never saw it, so we took the goal that arose from it.  Are we going to give it back?

No.

It would have made fuck all difference anyway, but we would have stood behind Robbie and said that he wasn’t offside, regardless of all the video evidence shoved down our throats.

So when if Andorra don’t make it to the championships, will they look back on this as a time when they were cheated?  Will they bitch and whine for a rematch?  Will they’re citizens start racist Facebook campaigns?  Will they get a half dozen people to march on the nearest Irish Embassy (Probably located over/in a pub)?

Most likely not.  They’ll go back to realising that when a contact lens falls out, you get over it.  When you fall over on GRASS, it’s not life threatening and after all, it’s just a fucking game.

All in all, I’ll bet there were tons of people in late bars until the early hours celebrating the win, and who will continue to do so when they call in sick to work this morning to nurse the hangover.

I don’t understand it though when the match was about as entertaining as watching someone else’s kids in a school sports day.  Not that I do that anymore.

I don’t understand it when the lads could have put some welly into it and gone for another 2 goals at least, securing another few points and making it easier to go on.

Although maybe it was the fact that we finally beat a team in blue shirts, some of which may sound French*.

*I told you to remember that

I’ve never sat down and watched short track skating mainly because I’ve never had any reason to but when you think about it, the women’s discipline is guaranteed to be full of fit bodies in tight fitting one pieces.

Untapped resource? Possibly so given the look of Allison Baver.

The 30 year old is a long time member of the US Winter Olympics team and was ranked as high as third in the world in 2005 and 2006.

At 11, Allison competed in the National Roller Skating Championships in Philadelphia,  and in high school, she was a soccer player and cheerleader. `

She did not take up speedskating until her junior year of high school.

At the 2006 Winter Games in Turin she placed seventh in the 500 metre event and was part of the team which claimed bronze in the 3000 metre relay event at the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver.

In 2009 she suffered a bad leg fracture in a collision with teammate Katherine Reutter during a race in Bulgaria.

Not just a pretty face, she holds a bachelor’s degree in marketing and management from Penn State University and a MBA from the New York Institute of Technology.

Most importantly, according to her official website, she is single.

Form an orderly queue please.

What do you get when you cross a hot swimmer and an underwear line? Compelling viewing, that’s what.

We’re heading Down Under again this week to sample the delights of 22 year old Olympian Stephanie Rice who won three gold medals at the Beijing games in 2008.

She came to prominance at the 2006 Commonwealth Games when she upstaged established swimmers Brooke Hanson and Lara Carroll to win the 200 metres Individual Medley in a personal best time.

Her career has had its up and downs with the latest blow coming in the last fortnight when she was forced to pull out of the upcoming Commonwealth Games in Delhi with a shoulder injury.

Rice dated fellow Olympian Eamonn Sullivan for two years, but the relationship ended due to their hectic schedules.

Fortunately for both they managed to stay together for long enough to be the face of one of Australia’s biggest underwear companies, Davenport.

Rice came under heavy scrutiny from the media in 2008 when pictures of her partying were deemed too raunchy by the Swimming Australia and were subsequently censored.

Thankfully, we at Boob.ie have delved deep into the wonderful world of Google and are pleased to provide you with a link to said snaps.

Enjoy!

Lightweight Championship bout: Frankie Edgar vs. B.J. Penn

This is a rematch of a very close split decision victory where Frankie Edgar just about outworked the former champ to take his title. A rematch was the obvious outcome. BJ Penn still walks back into The Octagon as the favourite and needs to show much more of the type of world-renowned laser-precision striking and all-out aggression that saw him send the likes of Kenny Florian, Sean Sherk and Diego Sanchez to the plastic surgeon.

Frankie, no doubt, will have a few surprises of his own up his sleeve. He’s always been the type of fighter that fights bell-to-bell and no-one gets away from him easily. BJ Penn even admitted to having learned a few tricks from Frankie in the last fight and will not take his opponent lightly. He never does.

This is a real title match-up this one. These two men are the epitome of what combat sports are about. They are what all sport should be about: Endeavour and the quest for perfection. There are no frills here. No Lamborghinis, no trophy wives and no appearances on MTV Cribs. This is real. The tragedy is neither fighter deserves to lose.

Heavyweight bout:  Randy Couture vs. James Toney

This, on the other hand, is a freakshow. Under the auspices of pitting two combat sports against each other like in the first days of the UFC in order to entice other  combat sports professionals to the MMA industry, they have brought in an ageing  3-division boxing champ to fight an ageing MMA legend. The boxer says he will KO the MMA fighter. The MMA fighter says he will ground-n-pound the stand-up guy rendering him ineffective.

James Toney has been talking exactly the same type of smack he would talk to a boxing opponent so either he is as clueless as we all fear about MMA and will be submitted or cut to pieces on the floor or he is hiding a royal flush close to his chest. I don’t see the latter. He has had less than one years MMA training to wrestle against a guy who was an Olympic alternate and who is The Godfather of the modern MMA game, not to mention whose stamina is undisputable. There is no telling how fit Toney is but of course, he always has a punchers chance. Brock Lesnar beat Randy Couture with a one-punch bludgeoning that wobbled the legend. Chuck Liddell did it twice but Toney is neither ham-hock-sized-fist monster like Brock nor precision Muay Thai KO artist like Chuck Liddell. Lucky punches aside, Randy dominates the newcomer ol’ skool.

Middleweight bout:  Demian Maia vs. Mario Miranda

Kudos to Demian Maia for getting straight back in there after his title bout loss and humiliation by the champion, Anderson Silva. He is taking a big risk in his search for the ‘W’ (win) in taking on a relative unknown in Mario Miranda too. Miranda stands to gain a lot more from the upset here as a loss for the former challenger puts him back to the ranks of the also-rans. True fighting spirit by both guys here then considering all of the above.

From a styles perspective, Miranda will want this on his feet as Maias’ Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is his lethal weapon. Miranda will by no means be helpless on the canvas but his obvious advantage is to use his KO prowess over Maias’ mediocre boxing and escape as quickly as he can if it goes to the floor.

Lightweight bout:  Kenny Florian vs. Gray Maynard

When Kenny Florian is fighting, he thinks he’s a Samurai. When co-hosting MMA Live on ESPN, he thinks he’s a lighthouse. He is very, very shiny and his teeth are blinding.  It’s really weird but he can fight. He’s earned two title shots but lost them both and if memory serves, he hasn’t lost otherwise.

Gray Maynard thinks he’s The Terminator. He would fight anyone, that lad. He hasn’t had a title fight. Nor has he lost in UFC. I reckon if he gets past the luminous one, he has a fair claim to a title shot no matter what the outcome of the main event especially as he is the only one to hand Frankie Edgar a loss in The Octagon.

Style-wise, this is a peach. Kenny comes with a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and Muay Thai background. Gray comes with a wrestling and punching your face in background. No matter where this fight goes, there will be pain.

Welterweight bout:  Nate Diaz vs. Marcus Davis

This is an intriguing one. Nate Diaz is a loon who films himself with his equally lunatic brother having knife fights and puts them on You Tube. Seriously, look up Nate and Nick Diaz. They are two seriously badass dudes from the wrong side of the tracks in LA. They throw up gang signs and wear ill-fitting pants and beat the lard out of all and sundry. Hugely entertaining.

Here, have some highlights:

http://il.youtube.com/watch?v=ubt1xeJs3bs

They can also fight and see pain as some sort of validation. Nobody stops them. They have only ever lost by decision. Quality. Nate has recently abandoned the lightweight division for welterweight and has been successful thus far.

Marcus Davis, on the other hand, is a former boxer turned Mixed Martial Artist who has KO’d a few opponents, submitted a few and found himself on the receiving end of a few losses also. To his credit, he is always entertaining inside and outside of The Octagon but he is also the smallest welterweight on the roster. Arguably he should replace Nate Diaz down at lightweight but he has made no such move thus far.

Marcus also struggles against lankier opponents like Nate. He is looking to land that killer blow or get the clinch and takedown to ground and pound. I think Nate is too clever and wiry and tough for any of that and wins by submission. Marcus, like James Toney, always has a punchers chance but bearing in mind that punching upwards is a bitch.

Looking forward to a great event!

rafter

baz

Sports Babe returns after a bit of holiday, and we’re back with a bang thanks to US tennis player Ashley Harkleroad.

The 25 year old turned pro in 2000 when she was deemed the next big thing, and she cracked the top 200 for the first time in 2002.

In 2003 Harkleroad reached number 39, her highest ranking to date, and has enjoyed a solid career on tour.

She took a break in 2009 to have her first child but returned to competitive action earlier this year.

Harlkeroad’s biggest claim to fame so far came in 2008 when she became the first WTA Tour player to pose for Playboy, much to the delight of tennis fans worldwide.

The approach came while she was on vacation and there was little hesitation in accepting the offer.

“I was just laying there for three weeks, and, you know, an offer came to me,” she said.

“I thought, well, I’m not really doing anything right now so I thought about it and it was something that I did. I’m proud of my body. I was representing a female athlete’s body.”

Thanks for sharing Ashley!

Even for those of us who work in the meeja for our sins, there’s always in an interest in how the other half lives.

In the same way I assume most people who work in TV can’t spell their own name, asking a newspaper man how he’d fill three hours of talkshow radio will inevitably bring him out in hives. We’ve no idea how their job works – and they almost certainly couldn’t do ours – but that’s not to say we’re not interested.

And thus I found myself almost magnetically drawn to the Newstalk Off The Ball Roadshow, which landed in Cork on Monday night for the sixth of eight legs of a summer tour that, predictably, has a distinct whiff of GAA about it.

The Off The Ball team - ideal dinner guests, if not catwalk models

If ever you wanted proof that rugby is still the bandwagoner’s game in Ireland, here it was; 300-odd people shoe-horned into Clancy’s on Marlboro Street, and only about seven of them female.

Had it been Rob Kearney and Tommy Bowe holding court instead of John Gardiner and Sean Óg Ó hAilpín, you can guarantee the clunge quotient would have warranted flood warnings.

But aside from one blondie with ample, tattooed cleavage – is it just me, or does that scream “cock hound”? – we’d to make do with entertainment of a more cerebral nature.

And to be honest, I wasn’t complaining. Although a recent convert, I’m a huge fan of Off The Ball. It all started when I got a new car, one that bankrupted me to the extent that I couldn’t afford a new radio with an auxiliary output for some tunes.

Everyone knows iTrips are bollocks, so I became more acquainted with the radio than before. On the majority of stations, any half-decent banter is routinely interrupted with four minutes of Rihanna or Justin Bieber, and I can’t be having that shite – so Newstalk it was.

People will always find something to piss and moan about when it comes to the Irish media – for example, this wagon in the Sindo is my current favourite figure of fun – and Newstalk have had a decent share of crap thrown their way.

Some of the shit has stuck, but for every Boards.ie-inhabiting, self-righteous, put-the-world-to-rights twat for whom nothing is good enough, there’s five or six listeners happily chuckling along.

Newstalk may not have eaten into the RTE figures anywhere near as much as they’d like – or, many would say, they need to – but Off The Ball is their golden ticket, the one show that almost draws universal acclaim.

I certainly don’t have a bad word to say about the show, the presence of Danny Mills excepted.

Sean Óg: some man for the chat. And the armageddon-inducing farts, if this picture's to be believed

It’s kinda like Gilette Soccer Saturday, but without the combined IQ of 27. The presenters always seem like they’re having serious craic, but they deal with everything in an honest, knowledgable way.

And Monday night’s roadshow didn’t disappoint. Sean Óg generally says a whole load of nothing when he does open his mouth, and also doesn’t know when to stop.

When asked about the effect of Donal Óg Cusack’s “Stepford Wives” comment about Kilkenny, he told the room it wasn’t really his place to discuss it, and then went on to do just that in a bumbling, awkward way until presenter Eoin McDevitt finally rescued him.

Ah, McDevitt. The man is radio gold, a seriously skilled operator and interviewer in particular. He’s one of the rare breed of journos who hasn’t forgotten that he’s not the star of the show; his line of questioning is clear and unconvulted, and doesn’t insult the listener’s intelligence.

Having pandered to the local interest with the two shams, out came Darragh Ó Sé, Jamesie O’Connor and Daithí Regan, at various intervals. Ó Sé easily took the banter that comes when a Kerryman – especially a successful Kerryman – goes before the jury on the banks of the Lee (“We know where your car is parked, Darragh”).

He wisely played the populist card by tipping Cork to win the Sam Maguire, which was also taking pride of place on the stage. I remember Mark Landers dragging the Liam MacCarthy Cup around to my school back in 99′, and nearly losing toes when I failed to realise how heavy the shagging thing is.

The Sam looks even heavier; it’s amazing an All-Ireland-winning captain hasn’t yet careered forwards over the barrier and into the bowels of the Hogan Stand when he tries to hoist the thing above his head. It must be like trying to lift Paul O’Connell in the lineout.

Jamesie and Regan are regular contributors for a reason and talked plenty of sense about Kilkenny and Tipp, but in typical arrogant Cork fashion, when the topic wasn’t Rebel-related, elements of the crowd switched off and started talking to each other. I didn’t realise it was that difficult to SHUT THE FUCK UP for a couple of hours, but apparently so. No wonder the rest of the country thinks we’re cunts.

In between all the Gah-related musings, we of course had Ken Early and Murph to talk about soccer and general shite respectively. Early is the unlikeliest-looking soccer correspondent in the history of sports journalism. He loves putting the boot in irreverently too. Which is fine by me.

Clancy's: could have been confused for a Cork County Board meeting, such was the volume of males present for the OTB Roadshow

Murph doesn’t look like you’d expect him to; the man with the culchiest voice on Irish radio is a tall, wiry bastard – summed up best by the lad who texted the show from inside the building: “How did ye pour Murph into his jeans this morning lads?” – but he’s one of those fellas people are drawn to.  I really want to be his friend.

The two hours flew by, until it was time for us to home, and for the Off The Ball crew to presumably go out and get uproariously langers in whatever nightclub is open on a Monday night (probably Havana’s if you’re in Cork, fact fans). Sure why else would they do a roadshow if it wasn’t to ride their way around Ireland?

Am I jealous of their instant cool and jetset lifestyle? Christ yes.

Do I resent the fact that I earn my crust dredging through mind-numbing intermediate GAA match reports written by dinosaurs who think grammar and syntax are the latest Man City signings? Chalk it down.

Maybe I could do this radio thing after all…

The Premier League season is just around the corner is it? Did it ever fucking go away?

So then, another nine months or so of euphoria, disappointment, tears, bad decisions and a whole lot of time spent with your feet up watching TV. It sounds like your average pregnancy, but it’s FAR more important than that, isn’t it boys?

As we found out during the World Cup, football is one thing that really splits society down the middle.  People will define themselves on the back of either a love or hatred for it; we all know a round-the-clock Sky Sports News addict, and we all know someone who mired themselves in their basement amid a haze of drugs just to get away from it.

And what’s the other topic that divides us like no other in Ireland in 2010? The economy. I should know, I spent two years in secondary school and another three in college ‘studying’ economics (I didn’t collect the requisite cynicism tokens and alcoholism vouchers to be let into journalism school).

So, at risk of getting my house burned down, to celebrate the recommencement of the self-styled best league in the world *cough*, I’m going to combine the two – and suggest that if anyone in the Premier League decides an imitation of the Hands of Suarez or Henry is in order, that we ban them for two years.

Sounds harsh, doesn’t it?

Well yeah, you’d be right. But those two incidents, above all others, have proven that football’s incentive structure is all wrong.

Everyone except Sepp Blatter accepts that using technology is a matter of necessity rather than opinion, but to really root out the cheating, football must rip up its rulebook, which increasingly resembles a cheat’s charter.

Rarely do we look beyond the moral outrage that ensues whenever gamesmanship comes across our radar; Irish people were perfectly happy to rip the piss out of the English over Maradona’s Hand of God until something similar undid us 23 years later.

Similarly, Munster rugby fans will remember that once the furore over the ‘Hand of Back’ in the 2002 Heineken Cup final had died down, there was a general consensus that had Alan Quinlan tried the same thing, he’d have been carried down O’Connell Street, handed the freedom of Limerick and all the hookers and blow he could handle.

Economics does a good job of explaining this, however. Artisans of the dismal science are, by their own admission, obsessed with incentives, and they are at the root of the problem here.

Simply put, cheating in sport is like crime: it occurs because the reward often outweighs the risk, and football is not doing enough to mamimise that risk.

Just as placing a spike on a steering wheel, aimed at a driver’s heart, will encourage him to drive more carefully, a footballer will be less likely to cheat when it is not just the officials he has to con.

The Suarez incident can only tentatively be compared with Thierry Henry’s last November. One handball prevented a goal, the other helped to score one; one man was caught, the other wasn’t.

Suarez: someone told him it was a hot potato

What both incidents do have in common is that they occurred because the incentives in place to prevent them were far from strong enough.

Henry only had to fool three people in the Stade de France, no matter how loudly the rest of the watching world bleated. Similarly, Suarez was able to illegally prevent Ghana’s goal because there was no guarantee he’d pay the ultimate price of his team going home.

The rules see his handball in the same light as a goalkeeper chopping down a striker who has just gone around him – denying a goalscoring opportunity.

A red card and a penalty is the prescribed punishment; the opposition must then make them pay from 12 yards out. Suarez rolled the dice and won; fair is foul, and foul as fair, and all that jazz.

While his action has been described by Uruguay coach Oscar Tabarez as “instinctive”, Suarez wouldn’t have done it 20 minutes into the game. It was a desperate last act; the Ajax man traded a certain goal for a 20% chance Asamoah Gyan would miss the spotter.

henry

No sporting code has a perfect system of implementing fair play and making correct decisions, but World Cup 2010 has done a good job of showing how comparatively weak these are in football.

GAA and rugby both have variations on an after-the-fact citing system. GAA stations extra officials next the goal, though as the Leinster SFC final proved, this does bollocks-all if the man in the middle is too arrogant to ask their opinion when a flashpoint incident occurs.

Tennis and rugby both use technology to make crucial judgments. Rugby allows for a penalty try when a certain score is wrongly prevented; football does not provide for a penalty goal.

And what of cheating? Athletics and cycling both have doping problems we’d never want to see in football, and the incentives clearly aren’t working there either.

But at least if you’re caught, you’re banned for a couple of years. Suggest that a footballer be banned for that time for an incident like Suarez’s, and you’d be laughed out the gate. But is it any better than a blood transfusion to get you up l’Alpe d’Huez ahead of the rest?

The same goes for diving – you can be sure the Drogbas, Robbens and Ronaldos if this world wouldn’t go down like they’ve just spotted a manhole leading into a barrell of tits, if they knew they could be collared afterwards and banned.

Whether it’s the hands of Henry and Suarez, Lampard’s goal that wasn’t, Tevez’s offside or Luis Fabiano’s juggling act, harmful controversies will always occur in football – as long as the rules allow them to happen so easily.

Anderson Silva vs Chael Sonnen

If Chael Sonnen gets his way, it will be a vicious brutal war of attrition as his fights tend to be. Chael is an Olympic standard wrestler whose relentless ground and pound attack has taken the heart of many an opponent.

If Anderson Silva gets his way, he will teach Sonnen the same lesson he has taught most  of his last few opponents by taunting and toying with them,

“You are not good enough to be in here with me”.

Prior to his confident clown persona, he finished a who’s-who of the division and made  two forays into the weight division above and did likewise. Silva is exceptional,  outstanding. When he performs to his best, superlatives abound. Unfortunately of late,  he has lost interest due to the lack of quality opponent and has been boo’d out of the  arena.

Sonnen believes he is the man to reverse the trend. He believes he can beat Silva and  has embarked on a campaign of truly atrocious trash talk, the likes of which I have  never before seen. Plenty of fighters talk trash to each other but Sonnen has assumed  the moral high ground like only a staunch republican party candidate can and has  labelled Silva an arrogant and dishonourable champion who he will righteously take down  a suitably befitting number of pegs.

The problem is, the Brazilian loves it when fighters come after him. Nobody can counter  punch, duck, dive, dodge and avoid an opponent like Silva and while he is doing so he  is equally unrivalled at administering punishment. When he fought former 205 champ  Forrest Griffin, he stood with his hands by his side and side-stepped as Forrest  charged forward then with laser precision accuracy placed his fist on just the right  point of Forrests chin and dropped him. When he fought Chris Leben, he hit the  iron-chinned loon about a dozen times with the same type of accuracy and eventually he  floundered to an ungracious halt. It was like watching Neo in The Matrix. He just seems  to be able to see things quicker.

Expect highlight reel action whatever the outcome.

Clay Guida vs Rafael DosAnjos

Whenever the man known as ‘The Carpenter’, Clay Guida, enters an arena, everybody stands to their feet because win, lose or draw, Clay Guida fights like a beserker until you stop him. Clay is a tough evenings work for any man. Unfortunately his record is sketchy of late with as many losses as wins but he consistently fights at the top of the division. Brazilian Rafael Dos Anjos, coming off a bonus-winning ‘submission of the night’ win against a dangerous Brit in Terry Etim, has been offered the chance of a lifetime to make his presence known as a lightweight contender. His cardio is untested in The Octagon whereas his stand-up is sufficient and his ground game are outstanding.

That said, Guida lays down some mean punishment on the ground and can brawl with the rest of them without being a precision striker. If this goes the distance, it will likely be his fight so I expect DosAnjos to push for the earliest finish possible if he can weather the unrelenting storm.

Jon Fitch vs Thiago Alves

This is a classic clash of styles match-up. It’s even a clash of body shapes match-up.  Fitch, the American and undisputed second best 170 pound fighter in the world behind Canadian Kingpin Georges St Pierre to whom he has suffered his only loss, is long and  lean with excellent reach, wrestling and relentless stamina. Alves, another Brazilian  who is no slouch in the cardio stakes either is a short, muscled brute who packs devastating KO power in his kicks and punches and can grapple with the best of them on  the deck if needs be. He also counts Georges St Pierre amongst the few men to  have  defeated him.

Another who has done so is Jon Fitch and I’m not sure what the point of this rematch  is. Maybe it’s cos so many of that weight division are Fitch’s team-mates or he doesn’t  like to travel cos Dan Hardy and him would have a great scrap in England whilst Carlos  Condit could have kept Alves busy. Either way, they are two top contenders, two  immensely talented fighters and it should make for good watching.

Matt Hughes vs Ricardo Almeida

Having convincingly defeated Almeidas’ coach in his last outing, Matt Hughes can walk  confidently into The Octagon saturday night against the young buck who will need to  prevent his thirst for revenge from affecting his performance. You see, Almeidas’ coach  is Renzo Gracie. The name Gracie (the Brazilian family who developed and mass-marketed  Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu), to any MMA or UFC afficionado holds as much weight as names like  Tyson to boxing, Jordan to basketball, Lomu to rugby and Beckham to mid-priced  sunglasses and ill-fitting underpants.

Moreover, Hughes, a former long-time welterweight champion, hall of famer and owner of  one of the longest undefeated runs in UFC history defeated Renzo in a manner which  rendered him completely ineffective whilst employing techniques he seldom usually espouses. It was virtually unheard of and hugely impressive. Which method he uses to approach Almeida will be fascinating. Victory here for Hughes arguably pushes him back  to contender status as will victory for Almeida.

Big stakes here!

Junior DosSantos vs Roy Nelson

Roy is a big boy but he doesn’t look like a fighter and the great debate is whether or not Roy Nelson is good enough to occupy The Octagon with unbeaten Brazilian  Junior Dos Santos. Roy Nelson believes he  is good enough to face anyone and he has proved it by winning the heavyweight season of  The Ultimate Fighter then finishing all of his opponents since signing with the UFC and  is reputed to have asked for a tougher test so now he gets it.

Junior Dos Santos is as babyfaced as his name suggests but he is a destroyer tearing  through everyone he has faced thus far including Pride Legend, Mirko Crocop and the  first guy to beat Fedor Emilianenko in an age over at rival franchise ‘Strikeforce’,  Fabricio Werdum. A win over Roy Nelson will put him up next for a title shot against  the winner of Brock Lesnar versus Cain Velasquez. This one has “explosive” written all  over it and moreover, “Explosive finish”.

Not that kind, Maxi!

Or, you know, whatever floats your boat. Just don’t let them find out!

Rafter

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This week’s Sports Babe comes courtesy of a request from one of our loyal readers, and I think you’ll agree that Jessica Ennis fits right in with our previous hotties.

The 24 year old is the current World and European heptathlon champion and world indoor pentathlon champion.

A bronze medal at the 2006 Commonwealth Games provided a great platform for Ennis and she was able to build on it over the following two years, picking up the inaugural European Athletics Rising Star Award in 2007.

Probably the biggest disappointment so far for Ennis came in 2008 when she was forced to miss the Beijing Olympics after it was discovered that she had three stress fractures in her foot.

After a year on the sidelines, she bounced back in 2009 with a new personal best at the IAAF World Combined Events Challenge in Desenzano del Garda, and went to the 2009 World Championships as the number one in the world where she became World Champion in the Heptathlon for the first time.

She picked “Sportswoman of the Year” award from the (British) Sports Journalists’ Association and also came third in the 2009 BBC Sports Personality of the Year.

So far this year Ennis has been voted European Athlete of the Month three times, winning the January, March and May awards.

The lack of glamour shoot photos is very disappointing but hopefully with a bit more exposure Jessica will be getting her kit off with the best of them.

If there are any untapped babes from the sporting world that you would like us to take a closer look at then let us know!

Three years it took to build the Aviva Stadium, but three seconds was all it apparently took to get a pint of Guinness there.

Without a World Cup qualifier or an autumn international to occupy their minds, the pleasure was in the detail for the majority of punters sampling the new €410million stadium for the first time on a match day.

And being served their pint of plain in a fraction of the time normally taken — eight seconds at our count, a forensic examination which involved Boob.ie standing around the bar trying not to look like a perv — thanks to fast-pour taps, left the majority surprised with the outcome.

Boob.ie had an outstanding view from the press box, as the Leinster/Ulster and Connacht/Munster teams ran out at the Aviva Stadium

“It’s as good as any pint. Well, any stadium pint anyway,” purred Connacht fan Steve Hickey from Galway. “The traditionalists will probably hate it. Then again, they’ve hated it ever since they started serving stout colder than a penguin’s backside.”

Traditionalism has indeed been thrown out the (very bloody bright) windows at the Aviva. Rugby has been played on this site since 1878, but never in such glamorous surrounds.

Spacious concourses have replaced dank corridors, smoothed counters instead of uneven edges. For now, though, it retains a sense of being unfinished, with just 3,000 seats shoehorned into the north end, out of necessity.

The goalposts are difficult to make out against the wall of glass behind, and no doubt will unnerve many a goal-kicker in the future.

And when you looked back again, there lay a pitch so perfectly manicured, Rory McIlroy could putt away on it to his heart’s content.

Comparisons with Croke Park, as well as the old Lansdowne, were inevitable. Certainly, rugby’s return to its spiritual home has plenty of pros and cons.

The pitch is the correct size for a start, and the fans are closer to it. A friendly combined provinces encounter of this nature was never going to provide a true barometer of whether the ‘Lansdowne roar’ has returned — we’ll have to wait until the autumn to discover that — but the initial signs were encouraging.

The restricted seating at the Havelock (north) end; the wall of glass means the goalposts are hard to make out from the other end.

November will also likely provide the first shock to the system for fans and club members who have become accustomed to the availability of tickets at Croke Park. With 30,000 less seats here, an under-supply is all too likely.

This wasn’t a problem on Saturday; Bank Holiday weekend plans — not to mention the sporting drama taking place across town in GAA headquarters — probably helped revise downwards the pre-game predictions of a 45,000 attendance.

In the end, 35,150 pitched up to be part of a little piece of history, plenty of which was made on the pitch.

While Jamie Heaslip had scored the old ground’s last try, it was an Ulsterman who nabbed the first on the new turf; Craig Gilroy couldn’t help but celebrate early as he crossed after just five minutes.

The lack of meaningful resistance from the Connacht/Munster selection certainly did little for either the atmosphere or the spectacle.

The crowd had resorted to Mexican waves before half an hour had elapsed, while the ejection of one supporter for brandishing a vuvuzela got an ironic cheer.

Fancy press box: soft seats, a telly for replays, and a sound link-up to the referee. Happy days!

Gilroy’s partner in crime on the other wing, Andrew Boyle of Leinster, had claimed the Aviva’s first hat-trick of tries inside an hour, while 10 tries in total helped Leinster/Ulster to a winning margin of 68 points — it’ll be a long time before that record tumbles.

The fans’ gripes afterwards were few and far between; access to the ground was a problem for some, and traffic jams were an issue as many ignored the IRFU’s plea to use public transport. The lifts were quite slow, while many couldn’t bring themselves to call it by its new name.

However, the views got universal approval, as well as the legroom, while the child-friendliness of the stadium was another big selling point. Not that bringing kids to matches enhances the experience in any way, you understand.

A few complained bitterly at the lack of a smoking area — the entire stadium and grounds are smoke-free zones — and noted the problems this may cause at concerts in particular.

Personally, there was plenty of frivolous stuff to note. The urinals in the jacks are waterless, and angled so you aren’t left with vats of warm, stinking piss by the end of half-time.

On the downside, everything predictably costs a small fortune. The GDP of mid-sized African country will just about get you a mediocre hot dog baguette and a bottle of Coke without the screw-top.

But overall, fans of both codes can be proud of ‘the Aviva’; whether they’ll ever get used to calling it that, is another matter entirely.