My weekend was set to be pretty quiet as of last Tuesday or Wednesday when a buddy sent me a message asking if I would like to take up a spare ticket he had to go see the Toronto Raptors play on Friday night. My answer of “yes” was as instinctive as it should be coming from a sports obsessive, and regardless of the fact I have never considered myself a big basketball fan. Then, with Friday booked, I decided to delve further into my new found interest — Lacrosse — by snapping up a ticket for the Toronto Rock’s home game the following night. With plenty of hockey and a little FA Cup football on the TV throughout the weekend it more than set me up.

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The NHL season is getting down to the nitty-gritty. It’s reaching that stage of the season where games become “must win’s” and become “more important than earlier in the season” despite the fact the same amount of points remain up for grabs. What that expression tends to relate to is teams that have meandered their way through the season and now find themselves desperatlely needing wins to cement their place in the playoffs.

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Winter testing is underway as the various teams up and down the pit lane rev their engines and get ready to go back into battle once more. The testing has been taking place down in Jerez, as per usual, though it’s never much use looking at any of the times that come out of these sessions due to the fact you can never really tell how a car is setup and what specifics they might be testing.

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The idea of watching anything for thirteen straight hours might sound awful to a lot of people, but not when it’s sports related, and in particular hockey related. This past Saturday was Hockey Day in Canada on the CBC, starting at noon and running through until the wee hours of Sunday morning. Following a shift in the gym on the Saturday morning to eradicate any element of guilt about sitting around watching TV all day, I plonked myself on the sofa and got ready to enjoy a day that would include three live games intermingled with features on the sport of hockey from within various small communities from across Canada.

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Anyone else fed up with this rubbish?

Unless you seen the Manchester United, Liverpool game on Saturday you would never have known a game took place. There was little to no mention of the result afterwards or any talk of the performance by either team. Not even the referee got a look-in this week. No, unless you seen the game take place you would have assumed that both teams turned up at Old Trafford, lined up for a handshake and then went home again.

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How convenient. Fabio Capello resigns as England manager on the day the prime candidate to succeed him — Harry Redknapp — is cleared of tax evasion. You think Capello would have resigned today had a guilty verdict come down on Redknapp? The cynics amongst us would say no. But here we are, four months before another tournament and England are without a manager, without a captain and without a chance. Though the later we always knew about.

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I don’t mind the NFL but I must say that I need to have my iPad, a book or a magazine in hand in order to watch a game in full. That allows me to fill the massive gaps of down time. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes a sport with all those gaps and stoppages can be good if you have other things going on at the same time or just want a power nap, but the reality is that the tedium of the distorted commercials to play ratio exposes the frailties of the sport.

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