On The Sniff

The Hound finds plenty to chew on in this week's edition, ranging from vampiric presenters to Natalino's neuroses.

Failure of the week

On the Sniff is a big fan of lists, especially when they start with the words 'worst ever'.

So imagine the Hound's delight upon reading the Daily Mail's list of the 50 worst ever England international footballers and coming across a wonderfully familiar face.

Taking up the number 36 spot is none other than SuperSport presenter Gary Bailey.

"The Manchester United goalkeeper will be remembered for playing up until what seemed like his thirties in the under-21 side.

Bailey was given two opportunities in friendlies but conceded in both and won the nickname 'Dracula' due to his inability to deal with crosses."

On the Sniff has called Gary plenty of names over the years so it's nice to see others joining in.

Freudian slip of the week

During On the Sniff's weekly journey through the world's soccer media there are some jobs that are just that bit dirtier than others. Anything over five minutes on Goal.com usually results in the urge to shave off all my fur and take a bath in industrial bleach, but it is always worth it when one finds gems like the following:

"If is left to be seen whether the team will insist on going ahead with the Muslim Ramadan fasting, during which devour adherents to Islam go without food and water for most of the day."

Devour indeed.

Non Football story of the week

'A Durban company is highlighting slow data transfer speeds by setting up a race - between Telkom data lines and a carrier pigeon.

'The Unlimited is a kwaZulu-Natal company that needs to get data from its 11 satellite call centres every day in order to monitor quality of sales, listen to voice logs, and verify call costs - basically, to do all the key quality and data checks required.

'However, it's found that the current solution of downloading the data from one server to the next via existing infrastructure is not efficient from a time and cost perspective. And it's also unreliable due to an unstable communications backbone.

'And so it decided to put a theory about carrier pigeons to the test.

'The company decided to load 4Gb of data on to a flash disk, attach it to a homing pigeon and send the data back from Howick, load it on to the server and compare that to the data that they are bringing back using their ADSL infrastructure.

'Initial tests indicate that it could take two days, two hours, six minutes and 22 seconds for a 4 096Mb file using the existing infrastructure, whereas loading 4Gb of data onto an external drive, and sending it via the pigeon, would take about an hour-and-a-half, with the transportation taking 45 minutes of that.

'The Unlimited plans to demonstrate its theory on 9 September, when the two transportation modes (pigeon and ADSL) will be pitted against one another.' - Mediaupdate

Ramblings of a madman

On the Sniff wishes there were more coaches like Jomo Sono in the PSL. If the Black Prince tells you it's sunny outside it is always best to take an umbrella.

"I'm not here to compete for the league tittle. I don't want to lie to myself, I'm not going that route," Sono said a few weeks ago.

"We are still fresh from the jungle for me to think about the league would be childish," added Sono.

He said Arrows fielded a "B" side because they were worried about Cosmos' approach.

"They were scared of Cosmos because we are known for kicking. They were surprised to see that we were not kicking. We'll never do that. We are here to play football and we want to survive," concluded Sono.

Just one week later Mpumalanga Black Aces midfielder Sandile Zuke found out that, contrary to Sono's protestations, Cosmos certainly do hand out the odd kicking or, in this case, broken leg.

Deluded fool of the week

"In my opinion we did well in the last two matches and mind you these were away matches.

"We controlled the proceedings against Ireland and created many chances but we failed to finish them off, something we need to work on in the upcoming games before the World Cup."

Joel Santana shows why a career in politics might suit him better.

Show some respect dammit!

On the Sniff can't stop giggling at the irony in the follwoing report from the Oxford Mail:

"A Football match was abandoned, and police called, after supporters invaded the pitch and attacked one of the goalkeepers.

Yesterday's game between Beckley United and Bicester-based Highfield Old Boys, in division one of the Banbury District and Lord Jersey league, was called off five minutes before full time, with Highfield winning 4-3.

It is understood the Highfield goalkeeper was assaulted by a spectator brandishing a pitchside banner highlighting the Football Association's Respect campaign, which urges players to follow the advice of referees."

In this case the advice was probably: Run like hell boys.