I've managed to get through three full posts without mentioning Brexit, but it couldn't last a fourth. Does anyone actually know where this is going to end up? Our Prime Minister evidently doesn't, nor indeed any of the other political leaders. On Thursday morning I'm going to a Brexit seminar in our office to hear Andy Maciver's thoughts on it all. We work closely with Andy and he is a first class, hugely entertaining speaker, as well as one of Scotland's top political analysts; you may have seen him on various Scottish news outlets. I doubt Andy knows either but it will be fascinating to hear his views on the various scenarios, and how they will affect the political environment here in Scotland. Once I find out what's happening I'll let you all know.
Almost as contentious as Brexit this week has been VAR. For those who do not follow football, VAR stands for 'video assistant referee' and has been brought in to the English Premier League to reduce the number of errors made. Unfortunately it is not working very well. Brighton were awarded a penalty in their game against Everton which baffled everyone except the people who were operating VAR. The penalty was awarded when Brighton were 2-1 down, and helped them to go on and win 3-2. I've seen the incident about six time and still don't know why it was given, and I used to be a referee, albeit in the Ayrshire Amateur League rather than English Premier League. Using video evidence to review decisions seems to be working fine in the Champions League, and it has worked very well in rugby for a few years, so perhaps the issues lie with the way the English Premier League is using the technology, rather than with the technology itself. An analogy for life itself, perhaps.
Today is Tuesday which means it is intervals night at the Meadows. I coach this session each week at 6.30pm for my club, Harmeny AC, with normally between 5 and 15 runners coming along. I don't tell anyone what the specific session is going to be until we are ready to start - I simply tell them it will be 'good'. I have still to decide what tonight's 'good' session will be, but as we are now in to the darker winter nights I will be reminding the group of the old running adage 'winter miles make summer smiles'. Not sure they will be thanking me for that wisdom after half an hour of running at close to threshold pace, but I'm sure they will in the long run (no pun intended, of course...)
No comments:
Post a Comment