SO, a quiet weekend in the FA Cup with no real surprises, after all very few thought Liverpool would triumph at Reading – they were lucky to get a draw – and Leeds winning at Man U was, of course, routine.
You look at some of the highly-rated reserves in the Old Trafford squad and wonder how they can really compare with the millionaires at Chelsea, the costly bench at Tottenham, and the Arsenal youngsters.
Sir Alex Ferguson had to juggle his squad a
nd had injuries. He had to decide whether their fans might prefer the risk of losing to their old mates at Leeds or to another set of friendly rivals in Man City in the Carling Cup semi-final in midweek. So he picked his weaker side, including such as £30m Berbatov and £27m Rooney against the Third Division club and came a cropper.
Even Michael Owen failed to score in his 21 minutes on the field. If he had, the claims that he should be in England's World Cup party would have been deafening, so at least Leeds kept those demands down to a reasonable level.
The 9,000-plus Leeds fans deserved a win. After all, paying £41 and £51 to go over the top suggests somebody saw them coming. When West Ham had to plead for fans to turn up to watch their tie against Arsenal, the Leeds response was exceptional.
They have to fork out again for a little matter of a fourth round trip to Spurs and will again sell all their ticket allocation for a game sure to be on telly. What recession?
ALL those who felt rugby league was right to switch to summer – in their case summer lasts January to November – were proved correct over the holidays as numerous matches were hit by the weather.
The cold snap, which has so far lasted nearly three weeks and should please the struggling polar bears, especially the one we always see standing on that lump of ice, is beginning to revive memories of years past when Leeds RL club became one of the first sporting organisations in Britain to have undersoil heating in the mid-1960s.
Nowadays it isn't worth the cost for RL clubs because health and safety demands means all roads round the grounds have to be clear as well as the pitch. One Boxing Day Leeds were due to play Widnes and the pitch was perfect but snow swept to the sides of roads meant cars would have been parked almost in the middle so the match was off.
So no more playing on frozen grounds, just those made rock hard by the sun and nobody dares to call-off in August.
You would have thought in this day and age somebody would have come up with an idea for heating stands at grounds, then again they haven't done it for airport runways or major roads.
Remember when the M62 was opened it was described as 'the first all-weather motorway'. York City directors must have still been reading that when they decided not to spend money on an overnight stay near Stoke City and set off at 10.15am on Saturday. Amazingly they were held up by snow over the top and on the dreadful M6 and arrived a minute before three o'clock.
APPARENTLY we are approaching the time of the Winter Olympics, they could have held them at plenty of places round here in recent days. This has meant the re-emergence of Eddie 'The Eagle' Edwards, who was a British champion but a complete no-hoper at world level in the ski jumping.
Mind you it takes courage to hop off one of those jumps, far better to stay firmly in that little hut with a warming hot toddy, or better still don't leave the hotel.
