ENGLAND FAILED TO break down 10-man Honduras in Miami during the final World Cup warm-up. One of the only pleasing aspects, from a game England boss Roy Hodgson says he hopes he soon forgets, was the lack of serious injury to both sets of players.
England, however, were not happy with some of the wild tackles and rough treatment handed out to several of their stars. Daniel Sturridge and Ross Barkley were among the English players targeted and the Liverpool striker was on the receiving end of two indiscretions, in two seconds, by Emilio Izaguirre.
The Celtic player tripped Sturridge after he was wrong-footed and proceeded to boot the ball into his mid-section [to use a WWE parlance] from point-blank range.
Sturridge did well not to react but England captain Steven Gerrard was quick to slam the incident in a post-match interview with ITV. He said, “I thought there were some horrific tackles for a friendly. I got caught with a bad one.”
Gerrard added, “I don’t understand refs seeing balls slammed into players’ chests… It’s a clear red card.”
Honduras defender Brayan Beckeles was sent off for leading with the arm when contesting a header with Leighton Baines. England’s three best chances all fell to Sturridge but he failed to find the target each time.
GAA don’t care about anything but the airgead
The CPA proposals are not realistic. The month of April for Club fixtures? 1. It’s right in the business end of the National leagues. 2. Clubs aren’t and shouldn’t be ready for championship at that time of year. The finals are not until October.
The club finals work well on St Patricks day. It gives them the publicity and spotlight that they deserve. The alternative as proposed is to play them in late November/December. That’s not acceptable imo.
@Tim Dawson: club leagues should be started in early/mid February and ran off every week (or pretty much every week) which would have most leagues ran off by the end of April. Semi finals and finals to be ran off and completed by May/June. Club championships can then be started in April, not sure why you think this is too early as every club will be training since January? Not sure why if you start a champing April you couldn’t have it completed early August at the latest, which would allow provincials and all ireland series played out before the end of October.
Have a rigid fixture list in place and lose this nonsense of having 3/4 week gaps between games.
@Robert Callaghan: hem! Because there is also the intercounty league and championship and clubs will not play without their county players. The national league is played in April. That’s why you can’t have club championship then. Or are we now talking about punishing the county player for being better and flogging them to death?
@Tim Dawson: grand, start it in May then, or move National Leagues to March and get rid of the O’Byrne/McKenna cup preseason comps to freely time. The General point being that we have less gaps between games and a rigid calendar. The whole thing from intercounty down needs to be restructured because it’s broken.
Are you happy then to leave the fixture system the way it is and ignore the overwhelming opinion of club players? For what, because the club championship final has to be played on St. Patrick’s Days because it always has?