Dave’s Football Blog

You can tell the Rugby World Cup is getting closer by the number of people out there trying to do the All Blacks’ Maori Haka, but some people, like Max Bretos of Fox Soccer Channel here, should probably just leave it alone.

To be fair, though, he does it better than these guys.

(Spotted on Soccernista.)

So Jozy Altidore, the teenage striker for the New York Red Bulls, is blogging for the New York Times, and he wrote last week about how he and some other players like to take their laptops with them to watch movies while taking the train to D.C. for a road game.

Anyway, nobody blames Jozy for wanting to watch a few flicks while on the road, right? Well, someone left this comment on the blog:

EDITOR: For Jozy’s protection, you’d better remove that comment about watching Bourne Ultimatum on DVD - seeing as that’s still in theaters, he must have a pirated copy.

The editor did remove Altidore’s remark, but he forgot to remove the user comment, too, which notes it ironic that Jozy himself wrote:

After a year under the spotlight, I’ve learned that you have to conduct yourself in certain ways and watch what you’re doing because you don’t know who’s watching.

Like the MPAA, for example. Those delusional bastards think movie downloading is a much more heinous crime than bank robbery, and anyone who “steals” a movie who should do hard time. Never mind that all those claims are bogus. According to Hollywood, Jozy Altidore is a dirty pirate who is costing them billions of dollars. Billions! Goodness, he might as well be soccer’s answer to Michael Vick!

Whatever. The kid lives a busy life, and if he wants to watch a copy of the new Bourne flick — which one of his teammates probably got from Landon Donovan, who probably got it from his wife Bianca, who’s a working actress who knows people in the biz (most movie torrents come from internal studio leaks, y’know) — while riding a train, big deal. The biggest crime here is that a Major League Soccer team is riding Amtrak. Seriously, can the Red Bulls not afford to buy a team bus or something?

Most fans of American soccer missed this, but Tom at Pitch Invasion didn’t. The Portland Timbers, a USL First Division club, drew 15,833 fans to PGE Park for a regular season match against the Charleston Battery last Thursday, topping the stadium record of 15,376 for a Timbers v. Sunderland friendly two years ago.

That’s a huge turnout for a USL-1 match. This is a league which had an average attendance of 4,667 for regular season games last year. Wigan can’t get 15,000 paying customers on a weeknight. Only two first-round Carling Cup matches had five-digit attendance; predictably, those were home games for Sheffield United and West Bromwich Albion, two Coca-Cola Championship clubs. That league drew an average of 18,221 paying customers last season.

However, Portland still fell well short of the USL attendance record of 25,515, set by the Seattle Sounders at Qwest Field in 2002. PGE Park only holds about 20,000 for sporting events, so it can’t top Seattle’s record.

Obviously, Portland and Seattle are natural rivals here, and that also applies to their hopes of landing an MLS expansion club. Given the buzz that Seattle got from MLS watchers after drawing a mere 6,619 for a U.S. Open Cup match, you would think that Portland’s buzz would be even bigger now. On the other hand, MLS will be up to 14 franchises in 2008, and it’s only planning on expanding to 16. With Philadelphia and St. Louis also launching strong bids as expansion cities, it seems very likely that either Portland or Seattle (or both) could be left out.

My prediction — if the Open Cup semifinal match between the Sounders and FC Dallas pulls more than 10,000 people, Seattle has to win out over Portland. They’re a bigger media market with a much bigger stadium, and Seattle has a better-quality pedigree when it comes to major sports.

That’s not a knock on the supporters in Portland, though. The Timbers Army deserves its props for backing its local club so well. If MLS bypasses Portland, it won’t be because there aren’t any soccer fans there.

(Photo by Allison Andrews of SoccerCityUSA.com.)

I know it’s hard to get excited about a punter in a preseason NFL game, but seriously, did you see how far Sav Rocca kicked that ball? And did you hear how hard Al Michaels worked to sap that moment of any ounce of excitement? Thank you, Mr. Monotone.

Officially, it’s a 59-yard punt, but from where Rocca was standing to where Willie Reid caught (and dropped) the ball, that thing flew a good 72 yards. The Eagles have a weapon here. If they cut him for Dirk Johnson, they deserve the crappy field position they get all season.

(Spotted on FanHouse.)

If you live in America and you’ve ever been curious about the Australian Football League — and really, if I haven’t fueled your curiosity by now, clearly I haven’t done by job — get yourself to a pub that carries Setanta Sports on Saturday night. Assuming their satellites don’t get hit by meteorites again this week, Setanta will be showing the Geelong Cats v. Port Adelaide Power match at midnight ET on Sunday morning, or 9:00 PM on Saturday on the west coast.

Geelong has one 15 straight and clinched the Minor Premiership (i.e., the regular season AFL title) last week, but they’re being verbally harassed by a Port Adelaide team fighting to clinch a Top 4 bid. Both teams are approaching this as a statement game, which might have big implications for the Finals Series, which begins in two weeks. You’re going to see Aussie rules played at a very high level here.

By the way, a Geelong win means the West Coast Eagles, who climbed over Port into second place after beating St. Kilda last night, will clinch a Top 4 spot heading into the Finals Series. The Eagles managed this without Daniel Kerr, who may be lost for the season after undergoing hand surgery this week. That’s a rather huge blow for West Coast, a team that knows something about blow.

Other AFL games of note:

Brisbane Lions v. Adelaide Crows. The winner of this one will leapfrog St. Kilda into the 8th and final postseason spot.

Collingwood Magpies v. Sydney Swans. Both these teams should make the Finals, but the winner of this one could have a legitimate shot at the Top 4. If Sydney wins and Hawthorn beats the Western Bulldogs this weekend, the Swans and Hawks will square off for the final Top 4 spot in the final regular season game.

Of course, that assumes the Kangaroos don’t beat Fev-less Carlton by about 150 points. Hey, it’s been known to happen…

The good folks that brought you soccer blog Who Ate All the Pies have just launched their latest project, Scrumbag, a rugby union blog, and they’ve already dug up a winner in this old video highlighting the early days of the All Blacks’ famed haka. Suffice to say, they didn’t quite have it down back then.

Rugby blogs are a rare species, even this close to the Rugby World Cup, so show the gang at Scrumbag some love.

Michael Vick makes me glad I became a soccer fan.

Actually, no, it’s not so much Michael Vick as it is the wall-to-wall coverage of Michael Vick. Cable news channels have this nasty tendency to latch on to a sensational story, no matter how inane, and run it into the ground, because they have 24 hours of programming to fill, and dammit, they’re going to fill every last minute of it with something that will grab people’s attention.

A superstar quarterback getting caught running a dogfighting ring, complete with illegal gambling and cruelty to animals? That sure sounds like an attention grabber, doesn’t it? That grabs even more attention than a talented cornerback with a posse that shoots up strip clubs, or a defensive lineman that gets drunk, gets behind the wheel and gets someone killed.

Perhaps it was okay when sensational stories like that involved actors or politicians, because then it would be confined to CNN, MSNBC, Fox News and other channels that I don’t bother to watch. Now, however, the 24-hour coverage mentality has infiltrated ESPN. They beat the Pacman story to death, and now that Vick has admitted guilt and will go to jail, they’ll beat that story to death, too. Everyone will chime in with an opinion — former players, columnists, legal experts, etc. — and they won’t stop chiming in, because it’s a big damn story, and everything else about the NFL has to be put on hold until the day after he goes to prison.

Then in three months, he’ll be interviewed in prison. Then in 12 months, when he finally gets out and ends up at some halfway house with two armed robbers and a crack whore, they’ll drag it out again, and all those pundits will return and talk about whether he can actually return to the NFL — all this attention for guy who hasn’t proven that he’s anything more than Kordell Stewart with a better agent.

You can’t talk about the NFL right now without talking about Michael Vick. And I want to talk about something else.

I want to talk about Manchester United’s inability to score a goal, despite being clearly quicker, more agile and more talented than any team they’ve played so far. I want to talk about Man City’s incredible start, or Reading’s incredible defense, or Jens Lehmann’s incredible ineptitude in goal.

I want to talk about last Saturday’s crowd at Giants Stadium, which hasn’t been that full for a soccer game since Giorgio Chinaglia was boinking his teammates’ girlfriends while high on coke at Studio 54. I want to talk about how Beckham’s arrival may help Jozy Altidore become a superstar. I want to talk about why there are no quality strikers in American club soccer, and why the U.S. Open Cup should mean as much here as the FA Cup does in England, even though the importance of winning the FA Cup appears to be in rapid decline.

I want to talk about things happening on the field. That’s why I became a sports fan in the first place. These games are supposed to be pleasant diversions from our drab everyday lives. They’re supposed to be play. We envy those who play these games for a living because we wish we could play, too, rather than being stuck in some cubicle all day, trying to make enough to pay the rent and keep our families fed and clothed. People who spend their lives at play seem to have the right idea.

According to ESPN, however, the only play in the NFL right now is a morality play, and even when the games start, the talk won’t stop, because that’s how our national media works. Michael David Smith says he’ll miss Michael Vick, but you can’t miss someone who’s never going to go away. All those pundits fear soccer because they fear it might somehow replace our gridiron game? They need not worry. Michael Vick took care of that already.

I haven’t paid much attention to the Canadian Football League this year, perhaps because other things happening on our football planet — the AFL, the NFL, the Premier League, etc. — have been dominating my time, and also because the Toronto Argonauts are 2-5 but would make the playoffs if the season ended today.

Still, this made me smile just a little.

Montreal running back Jarrett Payton is the CFL’s offensive player of the week after leading the Alouettes to a 30-18 win over the Calgary Stampeders in just his third game in the league.

Payton rushed for 160 yards and a touchdown on 20 carries last week. His performance included a 35-yard run in the second quarter that was capped by an eight-yard score.

It’s impossible to root against Jarrett Payton, whose father was truly one of the all-time greats and was taken from us far too soon because of liver problems. Walter’s son showed flashes of his father while he was at the University of Miami, and many sports fans were hoping that Jarrett would find a spot on an NFL roster one day, but he was cut by the Tennessee Titans in 2006 after being way down on the depth chart for them in 2005.

So far, Jarrett’s biggest football accomplishment was leading the Amsterdam Admirals to a World Bowl title in the now defunct NFL Europe. A small part of me hopes he can lead Montreal to a Grey Cup, and that he scores the touchdown in that game that his dad never got to score in Super Bowl XX.

Good on ya, Jarrett. I know you’re trying to live up to an impossible legacy, but we’re rooting for you just the same.

(Spotted on FanHouse.)

Things are a little tense between the Australian Football League and Gaelic Athletic Association these days. The GAA scrubbed this year’s International Rules series after last year’s on-field brutality, and AFL clubs are responding by luring the best Gaelic footballers out of Ireland. At least one club, however, thinks this shouldn’t be a footballer raid, but a footballer exchange.

Richmond will investigate an ambitious proposal to launch a footballer exchange program with Ireland. The Tigers could provide players, who don’t reach the top AFL level, to Ireland’s Gaelic Athletic Association. …

Tigers football director Greg Miller said yesterday the provision of Australian players to Ireland could ease some of the tension. “At the moment it’s one-way traffic, but it could change if Australian players were going to Ireland,” Miller said.

So basically, Richmond wants to offer GAA teams a few hired guns in exchange for some of their brightest talent, and while the Irish players will likely be the best of the best, the Aussies will likely be guys who have been playing on junior squads who can’t quite crack an AFL roster, and they’ll be asked to give Gaelic football a try, even though they won’t get paid for it. I see a few parties here that might consider themselves aggrieved by such a system, but hey, at least they’re trying something.

It’s interesting that Richmond is offering the hired guns, given that they’ve been shooting blanks most of this season. They could stand a talent infusion, Irish or otherwise.

(Thanks, Simon!)

Apparently, someone in Baltimore declared open season on Australians — I’m looking at you, Ray-Ray — and rookie linebacker Antwan Barnes answered the call with a cheap shot on Saverio Rocca. Barnes should have gotten penalized for leading with the helmet, which is punishable by fines in the NFL, but Sav’s been toughened by AFL hits, so he got through it okay.

Have I mentioned that I loathe the Ravens? Yes? Well, I still do. Bastards.

(Spotted on FanHouse.)