Football: Bulldogs’ bite too sharp for Park

THIS proved another bad day at the office for Maesteg Park in the MacWhirter Welsh League Division One at Ton Pentre. Although the Old Parish side have met with much success at Ynys Park in recent times, it wasn’t to be this time around. They included recent signing Dan Nash (Grange Albion) in attack but three other new men – strikers Robbie Fowler and Ali Kaiyaga, and midfield man Rhys Owen – were unavailable. Centre-back Rhys Owen was also an absentee and Park endured a lucky escape early on. Andrew Pearson had the ball in the back of the net after only five minutes but it was ruled out for offside. But the Rhondda Bulldogs had their tails up and scored twice within a minute. Andrew Hughes netted on the half-hour mark, and the cheers had hardly died down when ex-Afan Lido striker Andrew Pearson beat goalkeeper Gary Wager. Early in the second half it was Maesteg who went at it hammer and tongs, and a goal at this juncture could have made a world of difference. James Hall played in Nash, who shot wide of Marty Ellacott’s goal while Lee O’Brien skied a shot over the top. But the game was all up for Park once Jonathan Kift made it 3-0 in the 55th minute. Ohene Na Quinhare shot tamely at Ellacott in the 70th minute, and five minutes later Ton were awarded a penalty.Wager brought down Kift in the box, only to escape a red card and he promptly kept out a penalty from Dale Price. Maesteg Park host Goytre United in the league this Saturday.

It's football, but not as the rest of the world knows it

you're an American football fan, you have probably been reading the website of 24-hour sports network ESPN. National Football League is the site's main focus, and it has been providing saturation coverage of Super Bowl XLII. But if you're a fan of the round ball version of the game, it's twelfth in line on the site, between golf and tennis. And if you're a cricket or rugby fan, you'll find them under the More+ menu heading, below Lacrosse and Mixed Martial Arts.
Motor racing provides another example of ESPN's parochialism. Nascar has its own menu item, while the other stuff gets bundled together: IndyCar, Champ Car, Formula One, NHRA ... Yes, that's the menu order. F1 is a bit more significant than NHRA drag racing, but not as important as Champ Car or, say, women's basketball. In sum, the site that bills itself as "The Worldwide Leader in Sports" isn't a leader in worldwide sports, just the ones Joe Sixpack follows.

Fantastic site

Having said that, ESPN is a fantastic site, and provides a huge amount of detailed information. Most American sports generate masses of statistics, and ESPN laps them up. It also throws in lots of photos and videos, comment articles, TV schedules, polls, podcasts and fantasy games.
The football - sorry, soccer - coverage is also comprehensive, and includes sections for the US, England, Europe and the Champions League. If you want to look up the results in the Dutch Amstel Cup or check the Belgian Jupiler League table, ESPN has them. However, that's mainly because ESPN bought Soccernet. Presumably someone realised that the home-grown coverage of the world's biggest game wasn't up to scratch, so they acquired a site that did the job.
ESPN also owns Cricinfo, which it bought in June 2007, and Scrum.com, which it bought in August. Both are great specialist sites, and could be integrated into ESPN, like Soccernet. Whether ESPN will buy sites that cover sports such as cycling, hockey, badminton, table tennis, volleyball or even sumo remains to be seen. It's one route to world domination.
ESPN's problem is that it is an American cable TV company - originally the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network - and it concentrates on the sports it broadcasts. It is now 80% owned by ABC, which is a subsidiary of Walt Disney.