Fair Play: Kapuso vs. Kapamilya and DepEd’s torture
MANNY Pacquiao has jumped ship from GMA back to ABS-CBN, less than two years after going ober da bakod the other way.
As expected, the network war got lively again.
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John Dykes: Uefa Quarterfinals
“John Dykes is the lead presenter of the Barclays Premier League, and host of ESPN’s Football Focus, Football Up Close, and First Edition. For more of John Dykes’ columns please visit www.espnstar.com”
Even as the UEFA Champions League quarter-final draw is made in Switzerland Friday, post-mortem inquests are still being carried out in Italy and Madrid into their Euro-representatives’ exit at the hands of English clubs. This week also brought a reminder of another once-great European football power which these days can only dream of representation in the Champions League’s later stages.
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Mcmahon: A European night on Merseyside
By Steve Mcmahon
“Steve McMahon, former Liverpool midfielder and England International, is a resident football pundit on ESPN’s Football Focus and Football Forecast. Catch his predictions on www.espnstar.com”
European nights are special and there is nowhere like it other than Liverpool’s Anfield.
I was lucky enough to be on Merseyside to witness their game against Real Madrid.
You can go all over the world to watch football but there’s something about Anfield on a European night that makes it extra special.
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UV fan saves Fair Play
MY MIND took an impromptu vacation the past few days and a heavier than usual workload meant I couldn’t think of a topic for today’s column issue.
However, a check for reactions from previous posts in my blog saved me from a non-appearance today. Here’s from someone who identified himself as Visayanian (minimee@hotmail.com) and guest100 (guest100@yahoo.com). I’m just including excerpts and have edited some parts.
Fair Play: Cesafi boxing and a wacky pitch for Sir Jack
SHARAPOVA should be today’s topic, but I’ll start off with reactions to the punch in Cesafi football and a new Team Cebu City
Here’s a reaction to the punch from “Ronaldo,” a regular visitor in my blog even before I got this space: “The punching incident happened between the fullback and the striker at the UV side of the field. There were other UV players nearby. The ongoing play was at the center of the field on the UC side and not on the sideline….It’s difficult to believe the claim of the linesman that he did not see anything. But then, many referees and linesmen are biased for this particular team. Everyone in Cebu football knows that…”
Fair Play: The punch and goal that never happened
BY ALL accounts, it was a punch that would make Freddie Roach proud—the taller and older guy connecting to the face of the smaller and younger foe.
But it wasn’t boxing. It was the University of the Visayas football team captain against a UC striker in Cesafi football.
Fair Play: Joavan’s mismatches and mismatches
WITH all the attention and luck Joavan Fernandez is getting, I think, it is about time Talisay City’s First Son considers taking up sports. Besides, getting plastered in the back pages of a paper is better than hitting the front pages everyday.
It would also do his city proud, and should he engage in sports, it won’t only be his dad who would be paying and praying for his endeavors. The whole city will.
Fair Play: Why NSAs need Pamet and safeguards
ONE of the first national organizations I got to know as a kid was Pamet. You know, the one that endorses the “soap with a conscience.” I never really knew what Pamet really does, but since then, whenever I hear “med-tech,” I always see this guy-or-girl-in-a-lab-coat holding a soap.
When I first got into sports, national sports associations (NSAs) were unheard of, unlike Pamet.
But now that I’ve got a chance to learn about NSAs, I long for Pamet’s girl in the lab coat and the conscience too.
Fair Play: How Pacquiao defeated De La Hoya on Dec. 6
YES, you read it right. This is no typo error and you read it here first.
The match is still three months away, but judging from the texts in the sports forum, it’s three months too late.
So what better way to end the speculation than to publish results of the fight, now? This way, I can also up the ante against sports analysts. They predict. I report.
So, like any modern-day quest for information, I scoured the Internet. And after hours of googling, I finally found this curious little website, www.futuresultsnow.com.
First Fair Play Column: Spare the Kids
(from http://sunstar.com.ph/static/ceb/2008/09/10/sports/limpag.spare.the.kids.html)
ALAS sais na is one of the most unique phrases of encouragement or slogans in local sports and is a signature call of Francis Ramirez and the Abellana National School (ANS) boys.
“It means to hustle,” Ramirez once explained to me while I was still handling the football beat.
At the Cebu City Sports Center, ANS is only allowed to practice until 6 p.m., before the bulk of the joggers take to the oval for their nightly exercise ritual.
A bunch of boys, football, and joggers don’t mix, hence the 6 p.m. limit.
Alais sais na means to give everything before the final whistle.
And ANS players, like most of the top teams in Cebu, do give their all in the crucial stretch.
However, for the rest of the year, ANS will have no need to hustle anymore after the team, and their coach, was ordered suspended by Mayor Tomas Osmeńa for not asking permission from the Department of Education when they joined the Philippine Olympic Festival and for representing Cebu Province.
Ramirez and the ANS principal has since admitted their mistake, though I think the coach was quite creative in explaining the oversight—he couldn’t have known on the eve of the event that he was to represent Cebu Province when the team already had Ciudad de Cebu as its sponsor—he did right by asking that the kids be spared from the suspension.
Kids shouldn’t suffer for other people’s mistakes.
Players play where the coach tells them to play, even more footballers. With the lack of tournaments, the question footballers ask is “why are we not playing in this tournament?” and not “why are we playing?”
ANS will miss the Cebu City Olympics and with that, any dreams of Cebu—not just the city—winning the secondary title in the Palarong Pambansa is dented.
Even if ANS won’t win the Cebu City OIympics title, some of the players are virtual shoo-ins as reinforcements for the champion.
Unless a team is from Barotac, no reinforcement-free school has the chance to win the Palarong Pambansa title. But with ANS’ suspension, the pool of players the Cebu City champion team gets to choose just got a little bit shallower.
The bigwigs at DepEd Cebu City, instead of showing up only in the opening ceremonies of sporting events to give their speeches—which nobody really listens to save for reporters—should show up in championship matches to see first hand what drives athletes like ANS to go that extra mile after a simple phrase like, “Alas sais na!”
Ramirez’s suspension also puts the Cebu Football Association in an interesting position, not one any organization would envy.
The suspension was only for DepEd-sanctioned meets, and since the Cebu City Olympics and the Milo Olympics, have never recognized its authority, CebuFA could not honor that suspension.
Or it could show leniency by allowing the players, but not the coach, to play in their tournaments.
But that means going against Mayor Tomas Osmeńa.
And that isn’t something a group of private individuals can take lightly.
***
In case you are wondering what I am doing in these pages, I regret to inform you, that, I’d be here regularly from now on. (Feel free to embellish—or enhance if you will—the picture, my preferred add-ons are a pirate’s eye patch and a curling pencil moustache.)
Thanks to Atty. Pachico A. Seares, the Editor-in-Chief of the paper, for allowing me to join noted columnists John Z. Pages, (he digs Maria Sharapova too) Jingo Quijano (a lawyer with a great right hook, deadly combination), Karlon N. Rama, Edgar Chiongbian, Boy Pestańo and Noel S. Villaflor (If he ever finds his way back to a PC and resume his column).
(mikelimpag@gmail.com)
