I’ve been listening to Radio Roland Garros this week, as per usual, and really loving the descriptive commentary of matches. I’ve opted not to got access to watch this year so am relying solely on the radio for coverage. It reminded me of a quote from Chris McCausland’s excellent autobiography about watching football versus listening to it. As someone who gradually lost his vision, Chris has experienced all variations of …

I know it doesn't seem like it because I've spent quite a lot of time talking about Wrexham AFC, but I'm not a big football fan. It's not a sport that particularly grabs me and although I can admire the set pieces that deliver incredible goals, they are so few and far between that it's not always an entertaining ninety minutes for me. What I do like about all sports, …

There’s always an odd feeling as you head towards the end of a Welcome to Wrexham series. You know what the result is going to be, and yet somehow, are still drawn along for the ride. The editing is extremely good to ratchet up the tension even when the events have long since taken place and everyone’s moving on to the next objective. But I have to say, this third …

I wrote about Welcome to Wrexham after the first few episodes, gushing with love and admiration at a great series - particularly one about football. That all stands up now that the series has completed, it only served to get better and better. The stakes got higher, the emotional rollercoaster more incredible, and we cheered and cried along with everyone involved. Fantastic. It’s coming back for a series two and …

I am so in love with Welcome to Wrexham, currently airing in the slightly odd pattern of two episodes a week on Disney+. I usually try and wait to the end of a series before writing about it but there's been so much good stuff packed into the first six episodes, we're going to have to do a part one, at least. First of all, as many people have noted, …

The second season of supremely popular comedy Ted Lasso came to a close yesterday with the final episode wrapping up lots of open threads but also derailing everything for a cliffhanger to lead us into season three. I loved this series just as much as I loved the first one, but it can’t be denied that they are two very different beasts. As I mentioned when I wrote about the …

I, like many many people, thought that the Ted Lasso series wasn't going to be anything special. I was vaguely aware of the character, designed for a one-off sketch, and yeah, that fish-out-of-water trope can be funny. But to bring the Southern American football coach to the UK to manage a Premier League team seemed ripe for sub-par comedy. I was expecting there to be a lot of jokes at …

Football is still mostly a mystery to me, but I occasionally find matches on TV and leave them on so I can soak it up via osmosis. This weekend, the Champions League final was on TV, and we watched Bayern Munich - the only German team I have heard of - play another German team. At one point I recognised the name Schweinsteiger but that's about as far as it …

Back in August, I wrote about my new enthusiasm for being a football fan, after my first visit to a match earlier in the year. At the end of summer, I was all excited about following along at home - checking in with the app, catching up with Match of the Day, and trying to keep up with the scores. I figured now was as good a time as any …

You'll remember that earlier in the year I went to my first (and probably only) football match, and somehow became an Aston Villa fan. I vaguely followed what they were doing for a few weeks, and then sort of lost touch until the season ended. Mr C and I watched the occasional Match of the Day update, but even then only if we happened to be in the right place …

A couple of weekends ago, Premier League football had one of it's best weekends. Record-breaking numbers of goals were scored, matches with eight goals altogether, penalties, men sent off, that kind of thing. Mr C and I figured that although our taste for football is still vague, we didn't want to miss the highlights of an epic day. So, we sat and we watched Match of the Day, and it …

As with most of my Life List items, if you'd told me I would be doing them a year ago, I would have thought you were crazy. On Saturday evening, I found myself in a stadium with more than 37,000 other people, cheering on Aston Villa as they scored the winning goal. Well, they might not all have been cheering for Villa, but you get what I'm saying. A football …

Ah, so that's it, it's all over. Done and dusted. The World Cup 2010 is complete. Wait a minute... that was it? I am left feeling slightly confused and bemused by the whole World Cup thing. The first two weeks were brilliant. Football overload. Matches starting all over the place, lots of great teams and fun player names to laugh over. There were barely any tactics, because a draw was …

I was skeptical about watching the 2010 World Cup There was no doubt that England would mess the whole thing up For five long weeks, flags everywhere. Football's all that matters Inevitably our heroes left the nation's hopes in tatters The countries kept on playing though, while our boys were sent packing The quality of game increased, goals no longer lacking And there he was, a shining light, a fabulous …

This is terribly self-indulgent, and really just an excuse to post a graph, but I wanted to share the Wordpress stats for the last couple of weeks: The big spike at the beginning was my World Cup post, and the second spike in the centre was all about Wimbledon. The two medium spikes on the 19th and the 27th are for the first and second parts of the Doctor Who …

The most read item on the BBC as I type this is stunning. TV star Declan Donnelly was amongst hundreds of football fans in London who missed England's all-important World Cup goal after a power cut. "We were watching the game in a pub in Kew," Donnelly told the BBC news website. "One minute before the goal, the power went." Hey, you know what? I didn't get to see any …

I tried to avoid it for as long as possible, but eventually I had to write today's World Cup post over on Sidepodcast. I have watched more of the games than I imagined I would, and enjoyed even more of them. A lot of that has to do with the live comments, as it's fair to say I have a lot to learn! On that subject, I wanted to note …

I'm afraid I'm going to be one of those rather annoying people who only pays attention to football when the World Cup is on. Come on England and all that. Thankfully, I wouldn't dream of being one of those annoying people that puts flags on their cars, so I think the two balance each other out quite nicely. I know very little about football. Really, really little. I used to …

I was watching the football last night - Argentina vs Holland was promising to be a fantastic game and yet there were no goals whatsoever, how disappointing - and I suddenly realised how much sport I watch these days. When I was a kid, and I was a little bit plump, and PE was hell, and they turned my school into a sports college which was my worst nightmare and …

A few days ago Wayne Rooney kicked a football. Yesterday, David Beckham got on a plane. Today, Frank Lampard drank some water. This is what constitues news at the moment? World Cup fever has seriously gripped everyone. There is no escaping from it. It's in the news. It's on the television. It's in every single advert ever. An advert break on television now may contain only one advert that doesn't …

We went to the pub to the watch the footie - something I have never done before. I'd always been a bit nervous of the idea of hundreds of people yelling at the television. But where we went was surprisingly empty, a group came in at half time with their faces painted, and we sampled lots of nice beer, so I learnt that it can be fun. Of course, I'm …

Although it is simultaneously amusing and heart-warming to emerge from a shop and find a sea of England Flags filling the car park, please could everyone make sure they are attached properly. I was driving behind someone who's flag fell off (I'm still not sure how that can happen - aren't they attached to the windows or something?) and as it flew up and over my roof, it gave me …