You Snapped What? Ooh That Must Have Hurt

Those of you who know me have probably heard about my achilles tendon injury, for those of you who don't, I 'm going to tell you anyway.

Allow me to elucidate, it happened playing football in August last year I'd just sent a pass upfield then went to run up the pitch and bang, it happened. I thought someone had kicked me in the back of the ankle, ouch, but when I turned around to punch whoever did it there was nobody near me, my leg just gave way, I couldn't bear any weight on it. The other players were wondering why I was on my knees.
I knew what I'd done, I'd seen it happen to someone before, the pain was indescribable, I can only liken it to having a shopping trolley crashed into the back of your ankle. I started to crawl off the pitch being watched by my team mates who thought I was being a drama queen, one of them Dave, helped me off and then the duty PTI came over with an icepack and the accident book, very efficient I thought. To keep my spirits up he kept telling me I hadn't snapped my achilles tendon but probably torn a muscle, but I had self diagnosed the injury, I knew it had gone.

A quick phone call to my girlfriend and within thirty minutes I was in QA with an orthopaedic surgeon pulling at my foot asking, "does this hurt?"... "only a lot" says I.... "what about if I do this?" says the doctor... "arggggggggggh" I replied..... "yes it looks as though you have ruptured your achilles tendon" I could have told him that. So began ten days in a plastercast right up to the top of my thigh, it weighed a ton but it kept my foot pointing straight down which relaxed the tendon and stopped any further damage. Ten days of getting to grips with crutches, one legged shaving, washing, tea-making and pulling the curtains down were highlights. There are two ways of treating achilles tendon rupture, one is conservative the other is surgery where the tendon is stitched together, I was told I would be treated conservatively.

This cast was removed when the bruising and swelling had subsided then I had a scan which showed the damage was up near the calf muscle which thankfully for a scaredee cat like me meant they couldn't go down the surgery route. I was put in a "pot" a cast from below the knee to the toes with my foot in the equinus or ballerina position for a fortnight to allow the tendon to knit back together. Two weeks later another cast with my foot being moved to halfway and another cast two weeks after that, I chose purple for the first two casts which isn't as much of a talking point as this latest pink one.

So now I'm in the neutral position and it was quite sore after they bent my foot up and the pot went on but it calmed down after a couple of days. The worst of it is having to use crutches to get around, I can't put any weight on the injured leg and I would recommend not leaving a bank statement in a plastic wallet on your living room floor, see through plastic wallets and crutches don't get on, luckily for me the tv set was in the way to stop me flying or I'd have been back up to A&E. I've learned a few useful tips such as wearing cargo shorts means you can carry stuff around from the kitchen to the living room, flasks of tea and bottles of wine especially.

So thats where I am, I've been off work for six weeks so far and probably another six to come, thank god the Olympics was on for the first two weeks and for sports and documentary channels keeping me occupied, I've also been learning guitar but it's slow progress. I wasn't going to let it get me down, even though I'm very active, walking, cycling and rugby are a big part of my life but I accepted what has happened to me in the first week, I told myself I've just got to get on with it and get better, my girlfriend has been fantastic and my friends have all rallied round, work have also been brilliant, they haven't pressured me to come back even if I was able to.

Guidance about my recovery was vague, I had to do a lot of fact finding for myself, there was no information from the hospital or my doctor. I have a good friend Ian who is a climber and outdoor activity organiser for Sheffield Council he had the same injury last year, he was able to give me loads of advice and put me on to a website forum http://www.marfell.me.uk/ where other ATR sufferers can share their stories and advice. This has been invaluable for me and I'd thoroughly recommend anyone who has this injury to trawl through the site and glean the information from it.

There have been disappointments, I missed out on the company sportsday in York something I'd been part of in the planning stages and I had to cancel a hill walking week in the Lake District so that will be a definate trip I'll rearrange as soon as I'm ready. It will be a long road to full recovery, months of physiotherapy will follow, I'm back to hospital on the third of October when they tell me I'm getting an Aircast Boot, it looks like a leg from a Star Wars stormtrooper and hopefully will mean I can bear some weight on my leg and learn to walk again.

Slow but sure will be my mantra.

Value For Money

The Help For Heroes rugby game from Twickenham on Saturday was fine entertainment, a host of former England and Wales internationals were on parade, Lawrence Dallaglio, Colin Charvis, Scott Gibbs, Will Greenwood and Martin Johnson to name a few.

A match to raise money for soldiers injured in Afghanistan and Iraq was never going to be taken lightly, add to that a crowd of more than 50,000 and the scene was set for a cracking game. The rugby was quality and so was the pre-match and half-time entertainment.
At the interval electric string quartet Escala kept the crowd spellbound. Escala are the four young ladies you may have seen on Britains Got Talent or more lately the Sky Sports Premier League football trailer. Their instruments may look like something from a Science Fiction movie but are in fact two electric violins, a cello and a viola.

It got me thinking as to when I last saw any half time entertainment at a football match, in fact I can't recall there even being any at the FA Cup Final in May but I was so nervous I wasn't really paying attention to the pitch at half time. In the past I can remember the occasional parachute display, brass bands, drum majorettes twirling and dropping batons and kids in penalty shoot-outs. I presume those two spoilsports Heath and Safety have a lot to do with it. Burnley recently had a parachutist who got caught in the roof of the stand and one parachutist actually hit the roof of the stand at Villa Park nine years ago and was severely injured so I can see why that particular avenue of entertainment may have been curtailed. Nigel Rogoff was one of several RAF skydiving Santas descending into Villa Park in blustery conditions. Aston Villa fan Robert McEvoy continues the tale: "This gentleman hit the stand, and was promptly dragged off by his parachute, landing on the track in front of the Main Stand. To say the ground went quiet was an understatement, the worst bit, apart from watching a man fall approximately the height of two houses, was that there were six other parachutists behind him, and the man on the PA system was shouting for them to land elsewhere. As Villa Park is surrounded by terraced houses and the M6, they had little choice but to land on the pitch. Parachutist Number two had seen his mate hit the stand, and in trying to avoid that he missed the opposite stand by inches, as everyone in the stadium held their breath. The other five landed in goals, on corner flags and anywhere but the cross in the middle of the pitch."
Rogoff lost his leg in the accident but has since made a good recovery and even married the nurse who cared for him in the months after.

I remember a very amusing incident three seasons ago at Dean Court when covering an AFC Bournemouth match. The Royal Marines from Poole were giving an exhibition of unarmed combat, six mats were put out in the corners and on the halfway lines then six teams of four Bootnecks took it in turn to knock hell out of each other. An interested onlooker was Bournemouths mascot Cherry Bear, who was looking somewhat closely at the action, after a while he went up behind a Marine and swung a huge furry legged kick at the marines' backside, down he went and then all the Royal Marines went for the man in the oversize ursine head. Cherry Bear dispatched the rest of the Marines with consumate ease using a selection of throws, kicks, punches and a swipe with a baseball bat that left his assailant gasping for breath. The pitch was littered with fallen Bootnecks and the stands were full of people falling about with laughter.

West Brom had a race on Sunday between some of the west midlands teams mascots, the five participants had to run one width of The Hawthorns' pitch. Ladbrokes had been taking charity bets in the run-up to the race and raised £2,204, all of which will go to the BBC West Midlands Kidney Kids Appeal, Wolfie the Wolf saw off the challenge of Villa's Hercules the Lion, Albion's Baggie Bird, Walsall's Swifty and the BBC WM Wonder Moose, who finished second through to fifth, respectively.
That was good value for the paying customer but these days all we get is a kickabout by some of the fringe players or the reserve goalkeeper having a bit of practice. Not what you'd call "worth the admission fee" which being £38 at Fratton Park you'd feel a bit mugged by not getting anything other than deafening music and incoherent announcements. The officialdom gets in the way of entertainment too, referees are very quick to punish players who "over-celebrate" scoring a goal, surely this is what the punter expects to see, a goal a celebration it's what they pay for?

Come on football clubs give us a brass band at half-time, a shoot out, a hit the crossbar challenge or maybe even a Police Dog Display team, they were always good value. The cost of a weeks shopping is what it takes to go and see a football match these days and that to me is not giving value for money for ninety minutes football (plus added on time) and no unarmed mascot combat.

The Truth Is Out There

The Large Hadron Collider was switched on last week amid lots of ill informed speculation and scaremongering from those claiming that the end of the world is nigh, the use of the web to spread fears that flicking the switch on the LHC could create a Black Hole that could swallow up the Earth was of concern to inventor of the internet Sir Tim Berners-Lee. Okay so the switch-on did happen to coincide with earthquakes in Iran and China but thats all it was, coincidence, in fact both stories were hardly reported. I found out about the Iranian quake by text message as it was happening from a friend in Dubai who had to leave her office block when it started to shake, the tremor was felt right across the Gulf States.

The Worldwide Web is the catalyst for wrong information, when Sir Tim invented the web I bet he hadn't reckoned on Wikipaedia for instance. A great idea in concept, someone posts a definition or an article about a subject or a famous person and anyone, yes anyone else can go into that article and add to it or embellish the definition. Many entries have found to be false, thus making the whole thing a website of misinformation, I have been told by a senior lecturer that some university students have actually copied and pasted wikipaedia extracts into their coursework. Thats not to say Wikipaedia is all bad, the majority of information in there is valid but some is wide of the mark.

There are also plenty of conspiracy theory websites out there, full of circumstantial, anecdotal and photographic evidence but how can we the web users separate the truth from fantasy? As the web evolves the user needs reassurance that what they are reading is factually accurate. When making a purchase online the safety certificate and the "padlock" logo both give you the signs that it is safe to use that site similarly a certificate or logo from the Worldwide Web Consortium could give a credibililty grading to a site, stars out of ten perhaps? The BBC getting nine and the Daily Mail with three, you get the picture? I found a story where John Terry was the FA spokesperson for a Respect Referees Campaign, surely some mistake?

Many millions of people use the web for information every day and the not so well developed countries are in the early stages of using the web, for an African schoolchild logging on and finding a site that claims the HIV/AIDS virus is manmade by the CIA could be potentially harmful to a developing society.
The most popular conspiracy theories at present are The US Government planned the 11th September attacks, Princess Diana was murdered by the British Royal Family, The Apollo Moon Landings (my favourite this one, as I don't believe the Americans actually landed on the Moon). Global Warming or Climate Change was invented by scientists when the Cold War ended so they wouldn't lose their funding, and most unbelievable of all Arcadi Gaydamak, the Jerusalem based Russian-Israeli businessman, has said for the first time that he, rather than his son Sacha is the owner of Portsmouth Football Club. He claims that the club are up for sale for £300m and that the new stadium will be built in conjunction with the Dubai Royal Family (£300m! a tad overpriced?)

So we'll wait and see where the Hadron Collider takes us, it may be that the Cern scientists will discover free renewable energy from their LHC experiments and pass the benefits onto mankind, now then that's a conspiracy theory that I'd like to start.

Getting The Timing Right

While watching the Coventry v Newcastle Carling Cup tie earlier this week, a Coventry City equaliser was headed in the ninety-fourth minute. Newcastle manager Kevin Keegan was berating the fourth official, pointing to his watch and shaking his head wondering why when the board showed three minutes at the end of the ninety yet the game still progressed beyond the three extra minutes. It is all down to the referees discretion, hardly the way to run a multi-million pound sport where the referees discretion could be all thats between one team being in a cup final or another being relegated.

This discretionary timekeeping is an all too common scenario at football grounds the length of the country every week, why is it that in the twenty-first century the FA havn't addressed this area?

Football can learn a lot from Rugby Union, the current dalliance in football with the "Respect" campaign has been lifted from rugby, in which only the captain of the team can approach the referee to "discuss" on-pitch matters. The press conference was held with probably the worst offender for dissent, John Terry as the Premier Leagues' figurehead in this attempt to stop the disrespect so often show to refs and linesmen. The difference in rugby is that respect is instilled at a young age, at grass roots. Referees are called "Sir" and if you are penalised by the ref you accept the decision (he's not going to change his mind) and retreat ten metres. Football is not at all like this, the referee on giving a decision against a premier league footballer will be called a choice name, definately not "sir" and once the arguing is over they will form a wall some seven yards from the free kick.

The timing of Rugby Unions top level domestic and international matches is taken out of the referees hands, all he has to do is speak via his microphone headset to his timing official if there is a stoppage for injury and say "time off", the clock is stopped until the ref says "time on" again. Simple? yes it is and it ensures that there is no ambiguity, how many times have you been at a football match when the fourth official holds a digiboard up with 4 minutes on the display, thought to yourselves "hang on, where did that come from?" All the Football League and Premier League refs are "miked up" these days but for what purpose? One use of this technology should be to stop and start the clock, all stadia have digital clocks these days so why not use them? Substitutions when the player going off makes his way to the furthest part of the pitch from the dug-out can eat up the clock but all that is added is thirty seconds for each substitution. The laws of the game state that any time lost is to be added by the referee at his or her discretion, hardly the way to continue in such a success orientated sport.

Football should take all the advice it can from rugby, which continues to be a sport enjoyed by millions of people because of the respect for officials by the players and because the watching customers knowing exactly what is going on, the referees decisions are explained fully to all and the accurate match duration ensures there is no ambiguous discretion causing controversy.

Ping-Pong is Coming Home

Ping-Pong coming home? According to Boris Johnson it is, his speech at the Olympic handover party in Beijing was superb, he pointed out that Britain had invented and codified every sport there is and to further strengthen his argument he said "Ping-Pong was invented on the dining tables of England, or wiff-waff as we called it, this is what sets us apart from other nations, where the French saw a dining table they saw the opportunity to have dinner, we looked at a dining table and saw an opportunity to play wiff-waff". "I say to the Chinese People, I say to the world....Ping-Pong is coming home".

With Lord Coe almost in tears and Colin Moynihan behind him barely able to breathe due to hysterical laughter this was exactly what the occasion needed, not some serious speech about funding winners by a politician all too eager to associated himself with our triumphant athletes and surf the wave of goodwill generated by our gold medal winners.

Boris is not the buffoon that some parts of the media portray, he is a highly intelligent, witty and downright straight talking person who knows how to play an audience, lost in admiration for Team GB, Boris mourned the passing of ancient Olympic events such as "The Pancrateon, whose finest exponent was Milo of Kroton, his signature performance was to carry an ox the length of the arena before killing it with his bare hands and devouring it in a single day, I will be asking Lord Coe to bring this event back for 2012".

Maybe that won't be on the 2012 list of events but Badminton will be, did you know that the code of laws and rules of Badminton was drawn up in Southsea? a quite interesting fact, also we all know that Association Football was invented here in England but why can't we have a British football team in the Olympics? With four seperate Football Associations in Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and England there are some barriers to us entering a Great Britain football side.

Lets hope it all gets sorted out and hopefully the team will be managed by a character like Harry Redknapp instead of the gum chewing incoherent Alex Ferguson, did you hear his comment when his United team arrived at Fratton Park last night, mumble mumble "rabbit hutch" he said as he walked down to the dressing rooms, sorry Sir Alex not every team has the wealth behind them that a club like United has, Pompey don't have over a hundred million people worldwide and in Surrey claiming to be supporters and all helping to boost the coffers and create a stadium that holds seventy-six thousand people.

The chant of the season so far goes to the Fratton End, last night they silenced the "travelling" United fans with "we support, we support, we support our local team".

Wit and ingenuity.

you can see Boris's speech in full here http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7580165.stm

Gold Rush

I am enjoying the Olympics on BBC and thanks to the red button I can get to see everything, although some sports on offer are not exactly my cup of tea I've watched them anyway.

I'm not sure mens beach volleyball has a place on the small screen, ladies yes, it seems quite correct to my one track male mind. What I do object to is dressage, now I've never been an equestrian fan apart from horse racing, you know where you are with racing, start point, finish point, winner and places. But dressage? The commentators, at every opportunity talk about "expression", a horse jigging from one foot to another is deemed to be “expressive”. What, exactly, is being "expressed"? I've logged an hour or so viewing dressage now and I still havn't reached a conclusion.

Rob Walker of the BBC commentary team continues to be a source of pleasure and amusement, he absolutely oozes enthusiasm and eagerness sitting in a tiny rubber dinghy smiling and gripping his microphone as he gets tossed into the air by the swell of the sea as Ben Ainsley streaks by on his way to another gold.

The amount of gold medals we've won has re-ignited my Britishness and to see us winning more gold than Australia is extremely gratifying.
More medals today for Great Britain to follow on from the successes in the cycling, rowing and sailing as well as Lewis Smiths fantastic performance on the pommel horse to get a bronze medal in a gymnastic event, the first in eighty years. I'm hoping maybe we can get some success on the track, Judgment Day is almost here for Christine Ohuruogu. Tomorrow the British runner will line up against the American, Sanya Richards in the 400m, Sarah Claxton runs in the 100m hurdles also Tasha Danvers has got herself in the 400m hurdles final. For the men Marlon Devonish and Christian Malcolm are in the 200m final with Usain Bolt, good luck lads.

A big disappointment has to be Paula Radcliffe, her twenty-third place in the marathon just goes to show that you can't come back a couple of weeks after a stress fracture and expect to win the ultimate Olympic event. But if we were disappointed with lame Paula spare a thought for the Chinese people who are in a state of shock, disbelief and mourning that their golden boy Liu Xiang is out of the games.
He seemed to suffer an injury in his 110m hurdle heat, pulling up almost as he set off. The injury is said to be a ruptured tendon in the foot, he must be a tough cookie, he went back out to the track and took a couple of hurdles and his face showed the pain his frustration overflowed as he kicked his injured foot into a wall inside the stadium. I felt for Liu Xiang, I am currently in plaster myself after rupturing my achilles tendon playing football, if I put any weight on my bad ankle you can hear the scream for miles, this guy must be some kind of superhuman to try and continue in his event.

Xiang won't get another shot at a gold medal until London in 2012 but it seems that Michael Phelps can win medals on a daily basis, therefore I cannot classify him as the greatest ever olympian, I reserve that for Carl Lewis or our own Steven Redgrave.

Hugh Porter the cycling commentator is clearly enjoying himself in the velodrome but a warning for all BBC interviewers here, Rebecca Romero our gold medal winning cyclist was asked for her thoughts after beating fellow Brit Wendy Houvenaghel in the individual pursuit. A four minute slightly cringeworthy rhetoric then ensued where Rebecca talked about demons and the dark side and how she was new to cycling and has such a drive to succeed "I would have been absolutely crushed to have won silver again,” Romero said. “To have medals in two different sports — I’m so proud of myself. It’s been my goal to be a great athlete, to be a great champion".............“If I hadn’t done it today, I don’t know where I would be,” she said. “Probably on the floor, dead somewhere. It’s been so hard, I can’t explain. I was totally believing in myself, but it’s the ultimate.”

glad you asked?

Madeira, Cake and Beer

Following quickly on from walking Hadrians Wall which got our knees into hill mode we took ourselves off to Madeira, the intention of dividing the break into a few days walking and the rest loafing around in the sun drinking ice cold cerveza por favor.

Madeira sits to the north of the Canary Islands in the Atlantic and despite being created by a volcano is lush and beautiful with a vast array of flowers growing practically everywhere. You'll need strong knees and a head for heights on some on the paths that run alongside the levadas but the views will be a fair reward for the effort. A levada is a small channel sometimes made of concrete or in older levadas hewn straight out of the rock, these water channels bring water from the wetter northern part of the island to the drier sunny south where it's used to irrigate the banana plantations among other crops. These channels run for miles all over the island, providing water for hydro-electric plants as well as the other types of edible and floral plants.

If you are staying in Funchal where most of the hotels are situated it's possible to take the yellow town buses and get up pretty high, the buses are frequent and don't worry about missing your stop, when there are no locals left on board it's the end of the line and time to get off.

A good idea is to take along the "Sunflower" Madeira walking book by John and Pat Underwood, this has walks, maps local important advice and essential bus information, it's all you need to get yourself out into this beautiful islands most stunning areas.
You could hire a car but this is quite pricy on Madeira, buses are freely available as are taxis and with this mode you don't have to worry about getting back to where you left the hire car after your days walk.
There are several firms on the island which specialise in walking tours on Madeira and they will collect you from your hotel and take you in a mini bus to your start point and pick you up when you've finished, an experienced guide will take you on some breathtaking walks hopefully without a group of over-excited Americans.

We set off on our own for our first walk from Romeiros to Camacha, the route took us along the Levada dos Tornos passing two tea-houses on the way, my tip is to go for the Hortensia Tea Rooms where the cake is fantastic and a must have energy boost when walking all day. If you get time on this route use it to stop off at the beautiful gardens at Palheiro Ferreiro.
Along the way you'll pass wild geraniums, agapanthus, mimosa and eucalyptus trees among loads of other plants. The islanders make use of every bit of space for growing crops, you'll see runner beans, peas, cabbages, garlic and by one small house an enterprising local had left a bowl of ice filled with bottles of the excellent island beer "Coral", a bottle opener and a tin for the money, most welcome on a dry hot day. As far as equipment goes, you'll need your boots, day pack and a waterproof jacket as it can get a bit damp on top of the mountains and on the plateau. Leave your vertigo behind but you'll need to take a torch for walking on Madeira as a few of the levadas cut straight through the mountains and some tunnels can take ten minutes to walk through.

If you want to get further inland and higher up then one of the guided walk options is a good idea, the Pico Grande and Pico Ruivo are the highest points but some of the valleys are extremely beautiful and the walk from Rabacal (1500m) to the twenty-five fountains and back through the Curral Valley is especially nice although you will need a head for heights here as the path is only a foot wide in places. The fountains are morelike mountain springs but it's a lovely spot for a picnic and if you're lucky a chaffinch will help you eat it.The authorities have now gone a bit "health & safety" mad and all the dangerous areas have a grab wire alongside the path. You find yourself walking along paths which have so much vegetation alongside you don't even realise there is a sheer drop just metres away, you appreciate this when a viewpoint opens out and a sheer cliff is visible where you have just walked from on the other side of the mountain with a valley 100s of metres deep below your feet.

Madeira is a relatively safe place to holiday, the only danger being the odd insane taxi driver and as it has no beach or clubbing culture it's free from the lager lout element, in fact it's more "Saga Lout" with gangs of retired Brits and Germans in their uniform of beige and sky blue roaming the main strip looking for a meal deal or a bar with tv and football. Madeira is a fantastic place for a walking holiday but equally good if you just fancy lazing by the pool, beaches are not plentiful as this is a rocky volcanic island but lush gardens are, the Jardin Botanico above Funchal is a must see and if you make your way up to Monte the Tropical Garden at the Monte Palace is delightful. Along the coast from Funchal is Calheta which has a manufactured beach with golden sands shipped in from the Sahara but the best thing about Madeira for me is the mountains and the lazy levadas where you can walk for miles in total tranquility.