A look back at the best bits from the past week. You can check out previous editions here.
Having briefly looked capable of ending their long title drought, Arsenal have reverted to type of late. Arsene Wenger’s side now look unlikely to fight for the Premier League, and were knocked out of the FA Cup last weekend. Tom Goulding has taken a look at their online super fans, Claude and Ty, to see what they can teach us about football supporter psychology.
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Both Claude and Ty will always go to every game, and it looks like Arsenal will continue to always be Arsenal, and so it’s not clear if their feud of optimism vs. pessimism will actually ever end. While victories seem to prove Ty somewhat right while defeats support Claude, they respectively appear to talk most sense the other way round: Ty’s pragmatism in defeat and Claude’s realism in victory both serve as a moderate, realistic counter-balance to what’s being shouted, such is the atmosphere of blinkered tribalism.
Sticking with the Gunners, Callum Hamilton tells us why French striker Olivier Giroud is emblematic of their continued unreliability.
Giroud is everything Arsenal are about – looking far better on paper than in reality and the relentless flat-track bullying help to divide the fanbase from week to week, just as as his combination of good looks and spinelessness inspire wildly alternating feelings of sexual lust and utter hatred.
One team not starved of silverware are Nottingham Panthers, a heavyweight of the British ice hockey scene. Scott Oliver has taken a look at what makes the city such a success story in a sport rarely associated with British participation.
A 15-minute walk past the UK’s sole surviving Hooters, there is an ice hockey team that this season have drawn an average crowd of 5,717 to their 7,500-capacity home. In recent years Nottingham Panthers have won six Challenge Cups (2010–2014, 2016) and three Playoff Championships (2011–2013). These represent two of British ice hockey’s majors (the third, the Championship title, has only been won twice in the club’s 70-year existence).
Check out the full article here.
The 2016 Formula One season kicks off this weekend against a backdrop of negativity within the sport. Nevertheless, we’ve put the bad vibes to one side for 1,000 words to praise something grand prix racing does get right – its season-opening race in Melbourne.
Australia seems like a natural place to start. They like sport over there, see. Do it pretty well. And to a European or American audience, many just recently exiting the freezing winter and still slowly thawing, Melbourne’s early-autumn sunshine looks positively tropical. Sunshine! Green leaves! It adds to a feeling that the world is heading for longer days and warmer temperatures.
In this week’s Cultural Relatives, Toby Sprigings draws comparisons between former Manchester United captain Roy Keane and NFL legend Tom Brady. On paper, neither looked set for the heights they would eventually reach – and perhaps that is what drove them so far. Dan Evans handled the illustration
For most sportsmen, their mind is something to use a bit of; any more than a light touch and someone like Lee Bowyer probably just short-circuits from overthinking. For Brady and Keane both, you feel they use a lot of it. And end up living both amid a dark enemy and a force harnessed to defy any limits.
Local derbies are one of the best things about football, but the bitterness between non-league sides Chester and Wrexham has exposed some of the uglier aspects of the modern game. Joseph Marczynski looked into this sometimes bloody feud, with illustrations by Adam Menzies.
Derbies give feelings of inadequacy and fear a name, a badge, and a shirt. In the case of Chester and Wrexham, the derby allows the Welsh to unite over a hatred of the English; it allows the dedicated fans of each club a night of tense, spectacular entertainment; in the case of a small minority, it lets them channel the unfair hand life has dealt into a banner or chant celebrating the death of a stranger – all in the name of fifth-tier football.
In this week’s edition of The Cult, we looked at the grand prix driver David Purley. Though little-known for his on-track career, the Englishman is remembered as a hero for his attempts to save a fellow racer from a fiery accident. Dan Evans handled the illustration on this one too.
When David Purley pulled up, sprinted to Roger Williamson’s car and attempted to save his fellow driver, he did so alone. Given that a man had died in a fiery accident three years earlier, it seems incredible that the marshals were wearing shirts and sports jackets, making it impossible for them to tackle the flames. Purley tried desperately to turn the car over, to give Williamson a fighting chance, but it was all to no avail. He was eventually pulled away, furious, heartbroken, shoulders hunched in desolation. Williamson died in the car.
In this week’s history column, we marked 20 years since the demise of the strange (but sometimes beautiful) Anglo-Italian Cup.
Football’s greatest attraction is its incredible simplicity, but this was not on the minds of the new cup’s organisers. For 1970, teams were split into three four-club groups consisting of two English and two Italian sides each. They then played their foreign rivals home and away, but did not play the team from their nation. Two points were awarded for a win, one for a draw, and one for each goal scored; these tallies were used to decide a pair of six-team domestic tables, with the winner of each progressing to a grand final. Napoli emerged from the Italian side, and Anglo-Italian superpower Swindon sealed English honours.
Check out the full article here.
This week’s combat sports coverage from Fightland included Jack Slack looking at the rear naked choke – mixed martial arts’ most deceptive finishing move.
They call it the ‘king of chokes’ and it is clear to see why. Of the sixteen submission victories in the UFC through 2016 thus far, nine have been rear naked chokes. If that doesn’t seem like many, consider the vast variety of positions a fight moves through and the dozens of submissions which are now mainstays in mixed martial arts.
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