Weekend Sports Diary: A Tribute to Ceefax

***THIS BLOG WAS ORIGINALLY POSTED BY ME ON THE DALE & CO WEBSITE***

———————————

Carl McQueen on life after Ceefax and the Paraguayan footballer who has come back to the sport after being shot in the head.

– It’s taken the Paraguayan footballer Salvador Cabanas two years, two months and twenty days to return to playing football after picking up a serious injury. This was no multiple leg fracture or cruciate ligament damage however. Instead, Cabanas has returned after being shot…in the head. He turned out for his local club, 12 de Octubre from Itagua, who compete in the third-tier of Paraguayan football last weekend after spending two years of fighting all medical sensibilities in order to play again. After being shot in a bar in Mexico in January 2010, doctors could not even remove the bullet lodged in Cabanas’ brain for fear it may cause more harm than good. Incredibly, Cabanas has not ruled out adding to his 44 international caps for Paraguay – the fact he’s still alive, let alone physically active, is enough of a miracle for most.

– Naturally, I ought to pay my respects to Ceefax, which has nearly all but passed away this week once and for all after years of being killed off by the great digital switchover. Created in 1974, millions of sports fans spent many an hour in front of the pixelated graphics to follow the cricket County Championship, or kept an eye on the 3pm Saturday kick-offs long before Sky’s Soccer Saturday arrived, or woke up and before doing anything else, checked to see anything big and newsworthy had happened over night. Arguably it was ahead of it’s time with it’s real-time feed of information way before the Internet and social media sites which now saturate our daily lives. We would sit there for several minutes, quite contently, before our team’s results and table would appear after all the scores came in after 5pm on a Saturday afternoon. Hours could be spent flicking up and down the sports pages (300 to 399 for those too young to remember, but seeing as I vividly do, there can’t be many of you who can’t!). Ironically, it’s service appeared to run quicker than the digital alternative which has been left in it’s wake. It will fully cease to be in October when the whole of the country is solely digital, but for the majority, the great analogue information service that allowed us to “see-facts” is now in TV heaven. RIP.

– Blink and you’ll miss this. Although thankfully the gratuitous uploader of this video has included the slow-mo replay. Say hello to drag-racer Matt Hagan who this week went up in flames, literally, when his drag-car exploded during a race in North Carolina. It’s not until you see the incredible replay just how lucky he was to walk away unscathed. Debris of the car flew for miles, but Hagan just walked away in anger, seemingly completely unaware just how close he was to serious injury.

– Hey, fear not, we’re going to win 56 medals at the 2012 Olympics! That’s according to the Sports Industry Research Centre this week who have conducted, unsurprisingly, some research and decided that’s the amount Team GB will receive when the Games finally role around in less than 100 days. This total will include an impressive 27 golds, which is 8 more than in Beijing four years ago, and we’ll collect 9 more medals in total overall. The BOA chief executive has naturally played this down and also distanced himself from the idea of it being a failure if Britain finishes outside of the top four countries, but so-called research like this will only hype the British public’s already inflated sense of expectance and their “right” to win medals just for turning up…in just over 100 days time, at least we’ll know if we should insist on the Sports Industry Research Centre next discovering a cure for cancer if their miraculously correct.

– After the shock death of the Italian footballer Piermario Morosini last weekend, a heart-warming tale to finish with this week – the midfielder was on loan at Livorno from his parent club Udinese – and the club captain of Udinese, Antonio di Natale, has this week vowed the club will take up the guardianship of Morosini’s severely disabled sister who he supported before his death. Both his parents had passed away, so he was solely responsible for her well-being. Di Natale went on record to say: “”As a team, the club, and Udinese for Life have decided to help her because she is in real need. It is essential to stay by the side of Piermario’s sister for her entire life. She needs us and we want to help, both for her and for Mario.” What a moving sentiment.