The Rec Car Park - A Master Stroke

Car Park At The Rec
By Glen Leat
July 5 2003

Harley Quin is back and given that things are quiet on the rugby front we have allowed him to reflect on other sports as well as rugby for a change. As always he has his own take on the sporting world.

Hello folks, HQ back again.

* What a great letter to the Chronicle from Mike Canham: if you didn’t read it you missed one hell of a laugh. Basically Mike penned an opinion as ludicrously radical (but in the opposite direction) as those regularly written by the good citizens of Bath who know what is best for the Rec. He suggested that a horse-shoe stadium should be built to allow for a car park on the rest of the Rec – ha,ha you can just picture the bursting blood vessels of the NIMBYs at the thought of a new tarmaced Rec!!

But notwithstanding the tongue in cheek words of Mr Canham there is a serious message here too. Basically we don’t need to be radical either way but there is a solution that could meet most of the needs of both parties if only the worthy(sic) local folk would allow it.

* What’s this “Henmania” and “Henman Hill” all about? Here we have a bloke who has not actually won anything yet the nation goes crazy about him for two weeks every year. Yet we have real world champions in a multitude of sports who go unnoticed in the press and around the breakfast tables of England: alright I can’t name any of these people but rest assured they are there! Thank God he got knocked out is all I can say – “Henmanagedtogethimselfbeaten”.

* Does anyone actually follow the cricket these days? I remember a time when the whole of my summer was spent listening to Test Match Special and watching the game on the box. Then along comes Sky, nicks the cricket and hey presto no one watches it any more. I have more cricket books than you can shake a stick at in my study and I can tell you the stats of a variety of retired players but I know little about the modern day players.

Now don’t get me wrong about Sky Sports because I think they have done more to drag televised sport in to the 21st century than the BBC or ITV would have done had there been no competition but it seems that few people watch it.

I sat down the other day to watch England and all these lads I have never heard of came trotting on to the pitch, I thought they were South Africans until I saw them wearing blue pyjamas. Perhaps what is more worrying though is the new batsmen look very poor and if they are the best we can get then English cricket is in a sorry state!

Hey, and what’s this thing of calling batsmen “batters”, where did that come from? This reminds me of the appalling grammar of the average footballer and football manager in a “boy done good” or “he played excellent” type way. I’ve noticed that Mark Lawrenson speaks like this on the BBC, unlike his more refined partner Alan Hansen who does not (thankfully) use soccer-speak. The BBC have a pronunciation unit and I think they should brief all footballers before interviews on how to speak “proper like” or at least show sub titles of how the sentences ought to be structured.

Bye for now.