0

FFT.. what a gameplayer!

little bit magnanimous but then still manages to get in a 5 year old joke
to wind up Journeyman

Surely the stupid "sweaty sock" will have no comeback now :0

The grand total still remains at ...



















































0

just off for some beers down the Tar & Feathers

btw,

[b]NIL

canaryboy 19 Jun 19:59
nah the prices aren't far wrong

[murray's] the 2nd highest ranked player in the draw, he won every set at queens, didn't even need a breaker, and beat fed last 4 times so a decent match up these days.

imo murray and fed both have byes to the final

:0

[b]NIL

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/article-1194310/For-time-Andy-traitor.html

For the last time: Andy is no traitor

Wimbledon is upon us once again and, for the next fortnight, the nation will be immersed in its favourite summer sport - an England versus Scotland contest with Andy Murray as the football.

For the past three years the finest tennis player in the land has been mercilessly kicked from pillar to post in what appears to be a crossborder contest to find the country's least informed idiot and, unsurprisingly, there has been no shortage of contenders.

This is why you will still find Murray cast as either an 'anti-English traitor' who somehow offends vast swathes of Middle England by merely being alive, or a quisling who 'betrays his Scottish roots' with each and every declaration of his Britishness.

Although Murray might have a fabulous chance of emerging triumphant at Wimbledon this summer, pleasing the public is a contest he cannot win.

Sadly, I was instrumental in inadvertently stirring up a lot of this English-hating nonsense. And even as he unveiled his new Fred Perry tennis garb this week, Murray was still dealing with the fall-out from an interview he gave to me in 2006. Every year since I have returned to the subject at least to try to clear up some of the delusions and lies that sprang from that encounter.

Yet there are still people out there - I call them 'the hard of thinking' - who believe Murray still watches England's football matches wearing the jersey of whatever opponents they happen to be playing while muttering Robert Burns poems and plotting a Scottish takeover of Parliament (oh, hang on).

But, in what is now an annual tradition on this page, I will again seek to counter the myths I accidentally helped to create in the hope that Britain's best Grand Slam prospect in 73 years might get through a fortnight in London SW19 without having to deal with one stupid misconception.

Forgive me if you've heard this before, but before the last World Cup finals I interviewed Murray and Tim Henman together for the first time. Murray was late joining the conversation and dropped into his chair midway through a chat about the impending football World Cup.

Naturally, we immediately teased him about Scotland's absence from the competition. As Henman snorted with laughter, I asked Murray what he would be doing while we all watched the World Cup. Reading a good book, perhaps?

With the appropriate degree of sarcasm, Murray replied by saying he would be 'supporting whoever England were playing against'. So we mocked him some more and moved on. It appeared as a transcript in this paper, exactly as the conversation took place, and the entire exchange was obviously a joke.

Then another paper picked up the exchange a couple of days later, ran half-a-dozen paragraphs on a news page and from that point on the truth went flying out of the window along with any sense of perspective.

Murray received sacks of hate mail, his comments were debated on BBC Radio Four's Today show, grotesque figures like ex-MP David Mellor lectured him on how to wave the Union flag and an endless array of columnists have queued up to stoke the fires of animosity.

But last Monday Murray answered the anti-English charges for the umpteenth time: 'I get on great with English people. I've got an English girlfriend, my fitness trainers are both English, all the people I surround myself with are English, my best friend is English.'

Do you think that might have done the trick? Er, no.

A Scottish commentator sneered: 'Andy Murray's new best mates? The English.' The piece continued: 'Aye, but I bet he jumped with joy like the rest of us when Portugal knocked them out of the World Cup in 2006.' All of this appeared under the headline: 'He's one of us, not one of them'. And so it goes on. Us and Them.

'Don't let them hijack you when you win by draping you in a Union flag,' our Scottish friend added, possibly a little light-headed after blowing his bagpipes.

The cross-border enmity is usually harmless fun, but where Murray is concerned the joke is somehow lost and the whole debate is laced with a peculiar malice.

He's 'too British' north of that mound of rocks known as Hadrian's Wall, but not British enough according to the fearsome denizens of the shires.

One fabulous post to Mail Online declared: 'Murray definitely said of the rugby that he would support anyone other than England - that is what everyone remembers so well.' Thank you 'Jo from Berkshire' and I hope you find a cure for the amnesia.

Elsewhere, he is variously decried as yobbish or too aggressive. Some don't like his passionate celebrations (a 'werewolf snarl'); others complain he is 'too robotic'.

The conclusion Murray can draw from all of this is there is no pleasing people and to ignore every man jack of them, north and south of the border, while he continues his single-minded and spectacular progress.

Murray is a sensation. We should be proud of him. We should be cheering him to the rafters. He has come on in leaps and bounds with every year of his short career and he is now tantalisingly close to ruling the world in a sport where Britain has made a habit of failure.

Peer beyond Murray in the world of men's tennis and there is a void. It's an abyss of disappointment. The next player to show up in the world rankings is Alex Bogdanovic at 189. Then there's Joshua Goodall at 201 and James Ward at 224.

So Murray is single-handedly propping up the men's game in this country. And with Rafa Nadal plagued by troublesome knee injuries and Roger Federer feeling threatened by the Scot, there is a serious possibility that he could actually be the No 1 player on the planet within a couple of years.

Imagine that. And he's British, too. Yes, British. Get over it.

how many?

?

still zero app

still 1

1

[b]OEUF DU CANARD

1
+

=1

GSM ANDY MURRAY

Fedex 14
Nadal 7
Djoko 1

Murray ??