Matthew Chandler 
It’s easy in football. You just add one to the score every time your team finds the net. In rugby union you simply award five points for a try, three for a penalty or drop goal and two for a conversion kick. In cricket you need only count the number of runs scored and wickets lost by each time. All of which is pretty straightforward to get your head around. So, then, why is tennis scored 15, 30, 40? Why is it ‘love’ instead of ‘nil’? Why is it ‘deuce’ …
Back in the day, if a footballer had a night letting his hair down, nobody would bat an eyelid. Not so anymore. Just ask Wayne Rooney. The media storm that Rooney became embroiled in after being pictured the worse for wear allegedly gatecrashing a wedding party in 2016 rather epitomised the prism with which we view elite footballers nowadays. They are not just athletes, they are role models, paragons of virtue. Indeed, Ron Atkinson summed it up best when saying in the aftermath that the sport is “still very much …
Read moreAre Professional Footballers Allowed to… Smoke Weed? Drink Alcohol? Bet on Sport?
While boxing is arguably beginning to stagnate somewhat, one of its closest competitors, mixed martial arts (MMA) is one of the fastest-growing sports in the world. Perhaps benefitting from having one dominant organisation in Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) as opposed to boxing’s ‘alphabet soup’ of titles, MMA is one of sports’ biggest successes in recent years. But what are the differences between the two? Is MMA ‘better’ than boxing? And in a UFC vs boxing ratings match, who would come on top? Differences between MMA and Boxing First and foremost, …
For a football league confined to only one country (or two when Swansea or Cardiff are in it), it underlines how much of a commercial success the Premier League is and has been that it attracts a global audience of roughly 4.7 billion in 212 different nations. By some distance, it is the most-watched sports division in the world. A quick jaunt around the world will make this easy to see why. For instance, even though hey may dub it ‘soccer,’ bleeding the ears of many Brits in the process, …
September 2010. 12-year-old me has gone from slumping in my seat miserably to frantically jumping around ecstatically, as my beloved Everton score two goals in stoppage time to draw 3-3 with eventual Premier League champions Manchester United. Fast-forward to December 2012, as history repeats itself as the Blues enter the 90-minute mark 1-0 down to Tottenham, only to emerge 2-1 winners. Pity the friend of my grandad, who took the clock turning 90 as his cue to exit that day. In a sport where narratives can be ripped up and …
With English football returning on June 17 after more than three months of pandemic stopping play, the Premier League will take a largely different format in the remaining games of this elongated 2019-20 campaign. Here are the many ways in which the top-flight will look rather unusual during the Project Restart era: How Many Premier League Substitutions Are Allowed During Coronavirus? Rather than the ‘normal’ allowance of a maximum of three subs being brought on from a bench of seven, Premier League clubs can now name nine players on the …
