Scunthorpe 1 – Ipswich 1
It was not a good match and who’s to say it wasn’t down to the cold.
Glanford Park
Interestingly, Glanford Park istill a ground with a standing terrace and they are getting a campaign together to save it. In my view, they need completely closed terraces with some form of heating.
A Welcoming Coffee
I’ll say one thing for Glanford Park though! The Douwe Egberts coffee was good and it warmed me up.
To be fair, all the stewards and staff seemed to be very welcoming.
A Waste of Police Budget?
As I sat getting even colder on a bench in the car park eating my salmon sandwiches, nibbling at the cold salad and drinking the even colder smoothie, I noticed a large Police truck appear, which on closer inspection was a horse-box.
Police Horses at Glanford Park
As everybody knows, Ipswich Town fans have a reputation. They seem to turn up in larger numbers than most and perhaps this is why the Humberside force decided to bring in the cavalry!
But what a waste of money! Unless it was some odd method to keep the horses warm on such a cold day.
Incidentally, you don’t often see Police horses at Portman Road, because the Suffolk force doesn’t have any. And neither does Norfolk or Cambridgeshire.
But thinking back, I don’t think I actually saw the horses outside the box, so perhaps it was too cold.
A Taxi to Glanford Park
As the bus was still nowhere to be seen, I got a taxi from the station to the ground about two. The driver, Raz, was helpful and I booked him to pick me up at 4:30, as I really felt that to spend more time than I wanted in the town was not a good idea. Especially, as I was getting chilled to the bone!
At least by the ground there was a large Tesco, so I suspect, I could have got something there, but as you can see from this picture, the various eating places were not renowned as being coeliac friendly.
Eating Places at Glanford Park
Edward Elgar and the First Football Chant
This may seem surprising, but it’s reported in the local paper.
A Good Phrase
Rahul Tandon was on the BBC this morning talking about the Commonwealth Games in Delhi. He used a Hindi phrase “Athithi Devo Bhav”, which he translated as “We treat our guests like God”
It all fits with my experience of India, where I’ve never had anything but good service.
Let’s hope they sort the Games out!
Backing for Lighter Evenings
I have always believed that we should be on Central European Time for reasons of business with Europe and to give more light in the evening.
Now it would appear from this article, that major sporting bodies including the FA and the ECB are backing the proposals of the Lighter Later Campaign, which will culminate in a Private Member’s Bill in the House of Commons on December 3rd.
I doubt it’ll be accepted as it will mean we’re on Central European Time, which is a no-no to many MPs.
A Strange Law
This comes from Wikipedia.
According to The Strange Laws of Old England
by historian and author Nigel Cawthorne, it was against the law in Newmarket to blow one’s nose in the street and a person or persons going about the street with a head cold or distemper was liable to a fine. This law was introduced to protect the horses rather than the citizens of the town.
I don’t think it applies today.
What is a Selling Race?
Several of my friends today, have asked me to explain what a selling race is in horse racing in the UK. I did try to find an explanation on the Internet, but everything was just too technical or only gave the basic facts.
The concept is simple, in that it is basically a horse race, where the winner is sold at auction. The auction is very little different to a typical auction at the local furniture saleroom, except that if you are the ownerof the winner, you can bid yourself. If you succeed, you are said to have bought the horse in. Just like in the saleroom, the auctioneer or in this case the racecourse takes a proportion of the sale price.
As yesterday’s race was a stakes race, the weight the horses carry depends on their age and sex. Free As A Lark carried eight stone four pounds as she is a three-year-old filly. The winner, Prince Apollo carried nine stone and a pound because he was a five-year-old gelding.
Other selling races are handicaps, where the better horses carry more weight according to their official rating.
So you may argue what is the purpose of a race, where if you win it, you lose the horse in the auction? Especially, as the prize money in selling races is not very good. But then as they are the lowest level of horse racing , the entry fees are low.
I’ll give two examples of when we have run horses in sellers.
C once bought a yearling filly at the sales for just a thousand guineas, despite being extremely well-bred. But Infant Protege, as we called her, was very small and to put it mildly, just a tiny bit nasty, fully living up to her nickname of Sybil. We needed to get a run out of her, so that she knew what racing was supposed to be about. The trainer put her in a not-very-good selling race at Brighton with an experienced jockey who could get the best out of her. It worked and she ran properly for the first time to be third. In the end she won a race at Haydock and was second in another in quite good company. At the end of the season, she was sold at Tattersalls, for a price that gave us a small profit!
In Free As A Lark’s case, because I still own the brood mare, it would have been nice to get a win out of the filly, so that the pedigree looked better, when any other progeny are sold. There was also the subsidiary reason, that as she was in effect C’s last runner, it would have been nice for it to be a winner! But you shouldn’t let sentiment interfere. I don’t think C would have!
There are other reasons, the biggest of which is probably betting. If a trainer picks the race right, then the horse will have a better chance of winning. So putting a better horse in a poor selling race may almost guarantee that win. But remember that all form and ratings are open and fully published. So you may well get the win, but the odds would be so short, that you won’t make much money, if any!
I’ve also known that horses have been entered in sellers, because the trainer is owed money by the owner and wants to see if they can get some of their money back.
So essentially, as in many things in life, it all comes down to money! Whether it be concerned with breeding, prize money, betting or debts!
But you have to throw in the fact that a win is a win and it is very good feeling to be a winning owner and/or a breeder.
Liverpool Get A Good Kicking from the Cobblers
There is nothing better than to see one of the big four teams of the Premier League get their come uppance from a lower league team in the Cup.
Northampton Town, a.k.a. The Cobblers, did just that yesterday when they beat Liverpool on penalties in the Carling Cup. I just wish I could think of a better headline for this post. I also hope that Liverpool’s American owners were there to see the match!
Liverpool were not alone either, in that they were joined in their failure by Everton, Chelsea, Tottenham, Manchester City, Blackburn, Bolton and Sunderland and Fulham
The Anonymous Widower 