Decision time. Over the past month we've received over 300 submissions for our Big Blogger 2008 competition, with a prize of a paid commission for guardian.co.uk/sport for the winner. It was fantastic that so many of you entered, commented and voted — and even if you weren't shortlisted we hope you found the experience worthwhile and not too frustrating. Below are the five finalists' blogs, and our comments on their entries, followed by the winner. If you have any thoughts on how we can improve the competition next year, please let us know.
Blog A: villasupportgroup on Canadian football
When I was thirteen, I went to Toronto's Varsity Stadium to watch a World Cup USA warm-up friendly between Canada and Holland, my first soccer match. I don't remember the game, though I wish I did; Bergkamp, Overmars and Van Basten apparently all scored in a 3-0 drubbing.
What I do remember was the sea of orange that greeted me in what was supposed to be Canada's national soccer stadium. Where were the Canadian supporters? I asked my companion. The reply, familiar to Canadian soccer fans all across the country, was brief – "Soccer just isn't a Canadian sport."
Throughout my life I've had little reason to suspect this wasn't true. Ice hockey has long gripped our collective imagination, and Canada takes pride in producing the best players in the world, from Lafleur to Lemieux, Gretsky to Crosby. We dominate international tournaments, and Canadians make up about 60% of the National Hockey League roster.
Meanwhile, the Canadian Soccer Association limps from budget to budget. We qualified for the World Cup once in 1986, threw a parade to celebrate and no one showed up. Last year the CSA chartered a ferryboat for a friendly in Martinique and didn't even bother to record statistics from the match. Our pre-World Cup qualification friendly was played in a snowstorm in Estonia, presumably to prepare us for playing in countries like Honduras, Jamaica and Mexico. With grim predictability, Canada bowed out of qualification for South Africa 2010 with an 0-2-4 record, an event that barely garnered a single headline.
It's therefore hardly surprising our star soccer players often choose to play for other national outfits – Calgary-born Owen Hargreaves chose to play for England by way of his father's citizenship, while Toronto's Jonathan de Guzman opted to play for his adopted country, Holland. Perhaps he was at that friendly at Varsity Stadium and heard the same answer: "soccer just isn't a Canadian sport."
Yet history holds an incredible secret – Canada was once on the verge of becoming a footballing power.
In the 1880s, a Canadian-born teacher, player, and coach by the name of David Forsyth helped put Canada at the forefront in the development of association football. Among his accomplishments: defeating the US 1-0 in 1885 in what is considered one of the earliest international football matches played outside the Home Nations, and winning the Olympic Gold medal in the 1904 Games in St Louis.
Most remarkable however was Forsyth's tour of Great Britain in 1888, when his team of players largely from southwestern Ontario drew Glasgow Rangers, beat Sunderland, Middlesbrough and Newton Heath, the future Manchester United, and finished with a record of nine wins, nine losses, and five draws. As the London Sporting Life wrote at the time, "… considering the formidable opponents [the Canadians] have met over here, they have made themselves a deservedly high name as all-round exponents of football."
It took a long and bloody war to halt these early advances. Soccer was among the most popular sports in Canada until the Great War wiped out a generation of young Canadian footballers. In their stead came an influx of British immigrants in the early 1920s, picking up where Forsyth's young men left off. Soccer was eventually considered the game of outsiders, hockey the more 'indigenous' sport, an evaluation that persists to this day.
Outside of providing a historical 'what-if' scenario, Canada's soccer history reminds us that we need not be destined for international notoriety in any one sport. Hopefully, as football's profile in this country continues to grow with the surprise popularity of Toronto FC in MLS, so will interest in our football history, currently the reserve of dedicated North American historians like Colin Jose. David Forsyth's name and story do not appear in most official histories of the game; he doesn't even have a Wikipedia entry. This must change. History reminds us soccer is indeed Canadian, and can once again become a vital part of our national heritage through proper funding and consistent leadership. I still hope for the day when I can visit our national stadium to join the sea of red and white chanting, "there won't be only one David Forsyth".
JUDGES' VERDICT: A good piece this, fresh and informative. But it seems better than it is because it tackles an obscure topic. There are real weaknesses in the argument. 'Soccer just isn't a Canadian sport … and was eventually considered the game of outsiders.' Really? According to Fifa there are more registered football players in Canada (841,466 adults) than there are ice-hockey players (545,363). The 2007 U-20 World Cup was held in Canada, and attracted more spectators than any other tournament in the competition's history. In total 1,195,299 people attended, making it the largest single-sport event ever held in Canada. The piece would have been much stronger if it had dealt with these points.
Blog B: cjfthistle on Craig Levein
I was at that game, and if Mr. Levein thinks he can get away with that kind of talk, he's simply wrong. I am, essentially, a fan of the Dundee United boss. I think he may have a point about refereeing in Scotland. I certainly believe that he is a good manager. But he can't expect to get away with slagging off other teams.
I was there; I saw the whole sorry scene unfold. Hamilton Academical (say it aloud! Doesn't Scotland have the best-named football teams? Queen of the South, Heart of Midlothian, Gala Fairydean) were in the lead, against the run of play, after eight minutes through Richard Offiong.
Never mind, my friends and I thought: United are the better side, they will score a couple. 3-1 seems like a fair result at this stage. Instead United decided to try and show their superiority to these "First Division Rejects" as someone called them – surely the best/worst heckle for a newly-promoted side ever – by challenging them to a game of Third Division football. This ancient sport recalls the very origins of the Beautiful Game and consists of running very fast towards a football and kicking it as hard as you can at the player nearest you. This causes, more often than not, the ball to float high in the air off the shins of an opponent. At this point, players rush, frothing, to where they think the ball ought to bounce and oof, sickeningly, into each other, elbows and knees everywhere. The referee will then award a free kick to one or other of the teams at random, who then have the chance to pump the ball to the opposition keeper. He catches it, kicks it back into the middle of the park and the whole sequence begins again. This is the sort of encounter that Johnny Foreigner doesn't fancy. Not on a cold Dundee Saturday in November, I can tell you. O ho ho no!
Now, it seems that Levein doesn't fancy that sort of game much either. It's not football, he says. Well, Craig, it is. It is, and what's more, it is a sort of football that has been the foundation of careers of players - like oh, maybe, Craig Levein? – for generations. It isn't pretty, certainly. It's not like watching Brazil. Eric Cantona has not chartered a plane and flown Umberto Eco and Brian Sewell to New Douglas Park. But to complain that Hamilton are not set up so that Sandaza can sand dance his way round them is petty, at best.
"When a team sets up 3-6-1, that's disappointing." No, Craig. That the people of the Middle East can't find a lasting peace, that's disappointing. It's disappointing that our government took us into a war that we weren't willing to fight. It's disappointing that my breakfast was not served to me on a doily by a roller-skating panda. That Hamilton Academical arrived for a tricky away fixture, wanting their first win in 10, finding themselves bottom of the league, playing against a team who want European football next year, is entirely predictable. The fact is that your team, United, seemed unwilling, or unable, to get past a belligerent, bellicose Accies side who, let's not forget, scored first.
Maybe it's the modern way of interviewing that is leading to so many managers stamping their little feet in rage at the injustice of teams who are refusing to play the game the way they like it played. Personally, I like reading their statements rather than hearing or seeing them, because then I get to imagine their faces going gradually redder and then purpler at the unfairness of it all, as they begin to boil their internal fluids into a fine jus, while –hack! wheeze! – coughing up their own sense of superiority to those who DON'T PLAY FAIR! with their tactics and pressing and all that.
Perhaps the last word should go to Billy Reid, who, and you can hear him Cheshire Catting it up his sleeve as shoals of journalists collapse in giggling heaps, has his own theory about why Levein is so mad. 'We've taken four points from six against them this season.'
JUDGES' VERDICT: Well written, but lacking much substance. Point boils down to "Manager is wrong to moan about the opposition playing ugly football" which is familiar enough. Stranger still all Levein said was "it's disappointing" which is hardly outrageous stuff. The Middle East and the war in Iraq riff is over the top, but there are some decent jokes and a good pay-off.
Blog C: StevenIrelandsgranny on Roy Keane
And so we bid yet another weary adieu to Roy Keane, his continual cycle of emotional retirement followed by a surprising comeback leaves him in danger of becoming football's decrepit old aunt, who leaves after Sunday dinner and returns time and time again after dodderingly forgetting her glasses, her tablets and her keys, until eventually your father decides its time she moves in, and you end up sharing a room with your brother for the next four years.
The reasons for Keane's latest departure are typically oblique but, unlike his other exits, this one seems to be entirely of his own making. He leaves a Sunderland side struggling in the relegation zone, after two seasons of unfettered spending, where Sunderland was often mentioned as an ideally ran club following Comolli-gate.
His transfer dealings were erratic, and towards the end, just plain daft for a man who valued character so much as to say he would like a squad full of Phil Nevilles, he turned this on its head by signing Cisse, Diouf and Chimbonda, players who were widely known as troublemakers at their myriad previous clubs.
The image of him as Walter Sobciak is coming to mind all too readily when imagining him at the Sunderland training complex, ranting and railing against players who he signed, who weren't able or willing to follow his instructions, much like my old aunt, who complained incessantly about how uncomfortable modern chairs were, never once considering the effects that her ample frame was having on the sub Ikea-engineering that was my parents' taste.
The issue is not just the obvious — why do great players not always necessarily make great managers? But it is, as always with Keane, more complex. Keane was never a great player in the usual sense of the phrase, he didn't have the skills to inspire awe and amazement, it was nigh on impossible to replicate his game on the playground without a lengthy spell in the principal's office. He was no Beckenbauer or Cryuff.
Instead, Keane's greatness was a private excellence, it came from an unstinting, unbreakable desire to give his very all, to not have to answer to anyone else — or most importantly, himself and the ultimate, at this stage almost clichéd expression of this was the way he played Man Utd into beating Juventus after receiving the yellow card that would rule him out of the side for the final in the Champions League semi-final of 1999.
While it is obvious Keane aped the coaching style of Ferguson, and perhaps more pertinently Clough, it is my contention that Keane was the kind of player who never needed managing himself, outside of his very early years, and perhaps he never absorbed the man-management skills necessary in today's hyper-sensitive, molly-coddled Premier League.
Keane's lifelong goal was always to become the best player he could possibly become. From the time he was writing letters to every club in England to take him on for a trial, to the minute he hung up his boots, this was always his aim.
His foray into management was never undertaken with the same zealous fervour, it smacked of the action of a man who was looking for a replacement for his life's passion. Why else would he accept a job offer from a man whose hand he refused to shake on the field of play?
Keane's commitment as a player could never be called into doubt, but his management never quite showed the same level of dedication. Keane was the man who derided players for refusing to move to the North East because of WAG culture and vanity, but it is a telling fact that he never moved either.
Keane is still only 37, and remains one of the most compelling figures in soccer today. After a break, and if that old Keane desire and commitment are back, who knows — like the banal novels that my aunt used to read and now take pride of place on my father's headboard as a reminder not to let him lose the run of himself ever again — perhaps Roy's story is yet to have its fairytale ending. After all the Forest job looks like the ideal redemption tale.
JUDGES' VERDICT – Good piece on a well-worn topic, which makes an effort at proper analysis of Keane's character and provides some original suggestions as to why he was a failure as a manager. Some clumsy phrasing, and the jokes involving his aunt are a little hard to follow at points.
Blog D: Justy on Roy Keane
So Roy Keane has walked away again. For those of us who supported him during his infamous bust up with Mick McCarthy this is bad news. Of course we are well aware that he did not walk away in Saipan, he was sent home, but for his detractors this latest act will be seen as further proof that when the going gets tough, Roy gets going.
Without wanting to open old wounds it should be noted that what happened in Saipan was different. Roy didn't leave because he didn't think he was the right man for the job, he left because in his eyes he wasn't being allowed do his job, at least not to the professional standards that he had come to expect from his club football. The feeling that he could walk away at any time in the lead up to his resignation at Sunderland had its genesis in Saipan and was cemented by his sudden departures from Manchester United and Celtic, but this belies the fact that for the majority of his career he was settled at one club. Furthermore this instability, whether perceived or actual, has in all probability already damaged his prospects of managing at the very top level.
For Roy Keane this means Manchester United and there are a number of former United captains with their eye on the job. As Paul Ince and Mark Hughes are finding out however, just staying in your job in the premiership to be around when that vacancy finally does appear is hard enough. Great players don't necessarily make great managers and success with the Blackburns and Sunderlands of this world may be all they can hope for given how rarely the top jobs come up and the quality of the candidates when they do.
With that in mind perhaps Roy Keane would have been best advised to hang on a little longer at Sunderland. He does the club a favour by quitting rather than being sacked as they won't have to compensate him financially but Sunderland are undoubtedly the losers in this. When Niall Quinn spoke of bringing a world class candidate to the North East prior to Keane's appointment, it was hard to see how exactly he was going to pull that one off. On announcing Keane it became clear that his personal relationship enabled the appointment of someone potentially world class if entirely unproven. They will be lucky to get that again and if the names being linked are anything to go by (Curbishley, Allardyce) even Keane's more destructive eccentricities will be sorely missed in a sea of mediocrity.
In fact, Keane will be missed for as long as he is out of the game. More like Oasis than Marmite, you may neither love nor hate him but chances are you have an opinion. Roy was never short of an opinion of his own, let's not forget, and certainly not shy in coming forward with them. This was heaven sent for the media; his Friday press conferences were often a welcome antidote to the mundanity of the usual managerial guff but also saw him labelled "rent-a-quote" by the author of his ghosted autobiography Eamon Dunphy (no stranger to the practice himself).
So what next for Roy Keane? He has already dismissed a career as a pundit and a return to football after a short break seems the most likely option. Despite his outspoken nature job offers shouldn't be too thin on the ground given his achievements, bringing Sunderland up to the Premiership from the foot of the Championship as champions in one season and keeping them up there the following season. At his time of leaving they have more points than at the same stage last season. Not a bad record for a manager in his first job. In fact if he hadn't walked away so suddenly his record would have spoken for itself, but then that wouldn't be Roy Keane.
JUDGES' VERDICT: Solid review of Keane situation, but little original insight and lacks colour or supporting quotes/evidence.
Blog E: Tomsk on Torvill & Dean
Sport and national pride have always been inextricably linked. And I think that's fair enough, if we are talking about proper sports. Brazil has football, India has cricket, New Zealand has rugby (and God knows, they need it). Eastern Europe used to have women with penises throwing the shot putt. All very simple and effective ways to improve your standing in the world.
But are we taking it too far? In this Olympic year we have been asked to feel good about ourselves simply for sharing an island with top exponents of sports with an appeal more 'selective' than late Spinal Tap. All of which begs the question - is there any sport or sporting event so idiotic and meaningless that even the great British public could manage to maintain a sense of perspective in the event of success 'on the international stage'.
The answer, if you needed telling, is of course "no". The evidence is all around us, and for truly conclusive proof we need only travel back to Valentine's Day 1984, when 24 million people lost their collective marbles, sat down in front of their television sets, and watched the United Kingdom take gold in what is by any measure the most laughable 'non sport' of the lot.
Yes, Torvill and Dean, already Britain's most famous frozen double act since Scott and Oates (not to be confused with Hall and Oates, who are neither British nor frozen), managed to whip the nation into a veritable frenzy by gliding around in purple frillies to a bit of bowlderised Ravel. People who had never previously expressed any interest in dancing on ice, and never did again, were suddenly enthralled. Why? Because we were winning.
Did it matter that we were 'winning' in an event that would be hard to classify as a sport, and even harder to pretend the rest of the world gave a damn about? Certainly not.
Now I understand the fact, and I might say this is a fundamental truth - one that has held true for all humanity and throughout recorded history - that if something is worth doing, it is worth making it slightly more difficult by doing it on ice. But don't try and pretend it's a sport just so we can run the flag up the poll, crank out God Save The Queen and give Johnny Foreigner a metaphorical poke in the eye.
With the benefit of hindsight we can see that this hysteria surrounding Torvill and Dean was just a sad indication of a once proud nation in terminal decline, a nation 'ardent for some desperate glory'. I have nothing against the skaters themselves of course, clearly their skill and artistic grace cannot be questioned. More power to them, if that's how they want to spend their spare time. But let's be clear about this. If, as a country, you are getting excited about ice dance or similar, you are in serious trouble.
Because if international sport really is "war minus the shooting", it is perfectly reasonable to ask what purpose, if any, is served by a man and woman dancing about on the ice. Can it be plausibly argued that high marks for artistic impression were really an effective riposte to putting a man on the moon or a May Day parade in Red Square? Hardly. In celebrating 'triumphs' like these we bring shame on ourselves.
And the disease is not restricted to Britain. It infects us all and there is no cure. In Ireland, to give just one example, an open-top bus parade was seriously considered for Cian O'Connor – winner of an Olympic gold medal in 2004 for jumping over some fences on a horse. Fortunately a drug scandal managed to avert what could have been a day of infamy to rival Paul Harrington and Charlie McGettigan's victory in the 1994 Eurovision Song Contest.
Another competition, incidentally, now dominated by Eastern European women. Not sure if they have penises or not.
JUDGES' VERDICT: This piece split us down the middle. The piece is well argued, funny and strident. However the line "in celebrating triumphs like these we bring shame on ourselves' is too over the top. And there are two too many gags about women with penises.
And the winner is: It was a toss up, in truth, between villasupportgroup and Tomsk. But taking their pieces from last week into consideration, the nod goes — just — to Tomsk. Congratulations, Tomsk, we'll be in touch shortly.
This article has been changed to correct the authorship of blogs D and C
