PITCH IMPERFECT
Given the astonishing amount of knee-knack which blights women’s football, you could be forgiven for presuming the World Cup organisers would go out of their way to provide participating nations with adequate pitches upon which to train. Leah Williamson, Fran Kirby, Mallory Swanson and Janine Beckie are among the household names missing out on the tournament after jiggering their knees, while the England captain’s teammates at Arsenal, Beth Mead and Vivianne Miedema, will also be tuning in from home. Forced to travel without their star player, it is perhaps understandable that the Netherlands have spat the dummy over having to train at the Bay Oval in Tauranga, which cricket fans will remember as the scene of Jimmy Anderson’s four-wicket haul for 18 runs when England battered New Zealand back in February.
Five months on, the pitch is still more suited to bowling bouncers than practising defensive drills and the conspicuous presence of a massive, rock-hard rectangle in the middle of what is being used as a football field has prompted the understandably unimpressed Dutch manager to go full Roy Keane. “We have raised concerns about the cricket pitch previously, we were promised things and now we are very disappointed and angry,” fumed Andries Jonker, who has resigned himself to being unable to have any full-pitch 11 v 11 training for fear of the damage his players might do to themselves. “We want to play a good first match against Portugal here, we want to have a top preparation, a top tournament and we also consider ourselves a top team. This does not fit. This fits with amateurism of the highest order. If you fall on it with your knee or your shoulder, you could have a problem. If you sprint from the grass to that pitch, that is also not good for muscles and tendons that are already under tension.”
Unlike Keano, the Dutch have decided to make the best of things instead of telling Fifa to “shove it up your bollix” and have been doing what rondos and set-piece practice they can in the outfield at deep backward point, extra cover, long stop and fine leg. “There were two other options,” seethed Jonker. “We could go to Dunedin earlier, but then you have to re-arrange hotels, flights and everyone is on the wrong track. There was also the suggestion we go to Hamilton but that’s an hour-and-a-half drive. That sounds easy but then you are on the road from 10am to 6pm for one training session.”
Meanwhile in Brisbane, England’s preparations for Saturday’s opener against tournament debutants Haiti have been comparatively serene. Rank outsiders and available at odds of 125-1 to win the game, let alone the tournament, Haiti don’t appear to have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting a result but do have an unpolished diamond to enjoy in their 19-year-old superstar Melchie Dumornay. Speaking before the potential mismatch, England manager Sarina Wiegmann was pleased to announce she has a full squad to choose from following the recovery of skipper Millie Bright. The Lionesses’ captain will start the game and wear an official Fifa-approved “Unite for Inclusion” armband, perhaps in an effort to show that criticism of any training pitch, wherever it might be, just for being “different” just isn’t cricket.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“Fair to say I am not relaxed about it! I think, for everyone concerned, we don’t want to be doing it for too long. I don’t think that is good for anyone. I don’t think it is good for Harry, I don’t think it is good for the club, because as laser-focused as we want to be, you end up sort of repeating yourself along the way” – new Spurs boss Ange Postecoglou is getting a crash-course in being Spurs boss, courtesy of the Harry Kane transfer saga.
FOOTBALL DAILY LETTERS
In looking for news of the Women’s World Cup kick-off, I was shocked to see the headline on Big Website: ‘Lioness believed to be on loose in Berlin.’ The opening words were even more ominous: ‘Residents on the south-western outskirts of Berlin are being urged to stay indoors after overnight sightings of a “loose, dangerous animal”, suspected to be an escaped lioness.” Having just finished reading about Mary Earps’ righteous indignation and truly justified anger at the FA and Nike for making it impossible for her fans to purchase her goalkeeper’s kit (yes, I am a former keeper, why do you ask?), it made me wonder if Earps somehow slipped on to a plane in Brisbane” – Peter Rehwaldt.
Your wholesome news about Saudi Arabia’s PIF ‘buying’ Allan Saint-Maximin from Saudi Arabia’s PIF (yesterday’s News, Bits and Bobs, full email edition) confused me. I mean, how do you buy something you already own? And then I remembered all those wheezes the UK government have come up with over the years, offering us the chance to buy utilities I could have sworn we owned. The Saudis are just playing catch-up” – Colin Reed.
I can truly relate with what Sheikh Jassim bin Hamad al-Thani is going through with the protracted Manchester United takeover (yesterday’s News, Bits and Bobs, full email edition). It just befuddles me when I go to the store to try to buy Tin. The line is often long and slow-moving. Then you get up to the clerk and they have to run to the back to get something. When they get back to the counter someone else approaches the clerk, cutting in front of you to ask a question and initiate a transaction they think will take seconds but invariably seems to take hours. And don’t even get me started about trying to pay cash and the time it takes to get proper change. Yup, poor me and Sheikh Jassim; two blokes just trying to buy something they want” – Steve Mintz.
Send your letters to the.boss@theguardian.com. Today’s winner of our prizeless letter o’ the day is … Steve Mintz.
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