Sporting Madness

Yesterday morning saw Manchester United see off Southampton rather easily [ ESPN Soccernet ] in the third round of the F.A. Cup. They were helped by the sending off of Saints' striker Matt Paterson in the first half and a questionable penalty call, but the class divide between the two teams was still striking. United started two players who have barely seen any first-team action this season( Jonathan Evans and Danny Welback ) as well as several others whose minutes have been limited of late ( John O'Shea , Nani and Gary Neville ), and the Red Devils also brought on rarely-used Darron Gibson and Rodrigo Possebon as substitutes, but these lesser lights still had little trouble with the Saints. It's interesting how quickly things change in soccer. Southampton has a long history of good, if not great proportions; they won the FA Cup in 1976 (reasonably recent by English soccer standards) and they reached Division I for the second time in 1978 and stayed there until 1992, ...

David Shoalts has a very interesting piece in today's Globe and Mail that certainly opens with a bang. As he writes: "NHL governors are talking informally about placing a second hockey team in Toronto alongside the Maple Leafs, The Globe and Mail has learned. 'Why shouldn't we put another team in the best and biggest market in the world?' one of several NHL governors who spoke with The Globe anonymously said of the Greater Toronto Area. According to this governor, one idea floated is for prospective owner Jim Balsillie to be rewarded with an expansion team in Toronto after helping to restore financial ballast to the Nashville Predators. 'I've heard this exact scenario,' a second governor said." This is a very interesting idea, and one that certainly hasn't been floated very much relative to the idea of putting another team in either Hamilton or Kitchener-Waterloo. Toronto could sustain two teams in my mind, given the hockey-mad population, t...