World of Sports

It was a very disappointing final, Stephen Hendry said it was a very poor standard and singled out only Robertson as playing any real form. It seems that that excellent form deserted him in the final and as a player myself I do understand how you can be playing good all week only to have that form disappear on you.

Still, roll on snookers most exciting event come April and i can only hope that Ronnie O'Sullivan will come out of his self imposed exile and defend his crown.

Right team wrong score

I only had mild interest as my choice of teams would have been Minnesota and San Diego. Did you know that they charge four million dollars for a one minute commercial, yikes.
Tom

It is covered over here on Eurosport but I always forget about it.

After great success yesterday in the ski WC, today has been somewhat of a disaster for Norway. The cross-country events went without medals, and we had to suffice with silver in the combined relay.

For the hockey fan the Chicago Blackhawks are certainly special. A record of 18-0-3 is a phenomenal feat.

It seems like you'll get your wish! I guess it was an easy call for him as he's placed immediately due to winning it last year, and I hope he can repeat that as it would mean an extra level of excitement and difficulty for the opposition

Snooker world championship at the Crucible started today.

Defending champion Ronnie O'Sullivan is playing first, he's 9-4 up on Marcus Campbell, it's surely only a formality before he crosses the line needing only one more frame.

I didn't think I'd ever see the day where a thread about sports contains more discussion of snooker than of football.

And by "football" I mean real football, the kind they hate in America because the game has actual flow to it and the TV channels actually have to go 45 minutes without ads.

I have seen only some early frames of the O'Sullivan match, led me to believe that he would win it easily, BUT I detected some annoyances and lapses in his play so he definitely isn't showing full range for the moment, still early I know. Just watched some of the Dott/Ebdon match and there was a tactical frame with lots of flukes for Dott and difficult snookers, very enjoyable; I'm not the biggest fan of Ebdon's snail play, but you can tell he got irked and returned with some great shots to 'own' Dott. I've set my digital tv recorder to record everything

I used to watch snooker avidly when I was a kid.

Only the World Championships though (and the TV show Pot Black). It happened when I should have been studying for exams, so the snooker was very appealing.

I have never played a game on a full-sized table.

Compared to pool a snooker table is very intimidating, I'm not bad at it and have a highest break of 96, it should have been over a 100, I had an easy pot on the pink but fluffed it because I got too excited at the "fact" I was about to make a ton

Wow, what a surprise win for Thai snooker player Dechawat Poomjaeng, great final frame decider but how quirky is this player around the table? Almost like an Asian Columbo trying to bring the opponent of his game with silly reactions and not to mention he keeps his mouth open when he strikes the cue LOL. That said I saw some of the best and inventive shots played by him, hope he gets far! And another heavy weight Maguire knocked out as well. Good tournament so far.

Yeah, there really don't seem to be any paths past Bayern in German football this year. And that annoys the crap out of me. I mean, they've always been dominant, but it has been so clear the whole season long who's going to win the league that it's been supremely boring to watch. And now they're buying Goetze and are trying to get their hands on Hummels...great.

On the other hand, I'm happy for any German teams that do so well internationally. Fingers crossed for a Bayern-BVB final, but sorry Volker, if that happens it'll be yellow-black that I'm rooting for.

On a side note, what an absolutely appalling turn by the refs yesterday (and throughout this CL season in general). Two of Bayern's goals shouldn't have counted, and they should have gotten at least one, if not two penalties for Barca's handballs. Why the FIFA is so damn obstinate about not allowing video replays is beyond me.

Bremen's always been a fun team to watch because of their traditional focus on the offense (often at the cost of the defense - not to slight Bratseth or anything, he was a bit before my time ). Their games are more entertaining than most because of it. A few years back they won 5:4 against Hoffenheim, which was one of the most flat out insane matches I've ever seen. I don't think more than two or three minutes passed in that game without something spectacular happening! Unfortunately their fortunes seem to have taken a bit of a downturn in the last few years.

My team's Hertha BSC Berlin, who have been going through a very rough phase in the last few years as well...a couple of relegations, a rotating wheel of unsuccessful coaches and I hardly recognize any of the players anymore, but at least we're climbing back up into the Bundesliga next season. I don't think there's any other country in Europe that doesn't have their capital city represented in the first league (hell, London teams account for half of the Premier League). Kind of embarrassing, really.