Ken Gargett

love the guys at crasto. they make some stunning stuff. stayed with them for 3-4 days a few years back. amazingly hospitable people. they have an infinity pool at the very top of one of the hills, overlooking the douro. might just have the best view from any pool on the planet. i remember one afternoon, after a swim, on the couch overlooking the river with a great book (LOTR, if i recall), an old port and an SLR DC. does not get much better.

yes, it has been a recurring suggestion by the 'lesser' fans of Team. roadkill was another. i suspect that the generals won more games in the last two decades than the old skins.

they have made it clear that it is a long process and that this year, they are the Team. i'd go "America's Team", just to piss off dallas. most likely is washington red wolves. no chance of generals or seminoles or anything linked at all with native americans.

would that be a problem?

fuzz, this attitude is where the tall poppy syndrome came from. that said, i do rather envy people like yourself - when the revelation strikes, it is a wonderful thing.

bugger. did not notice. thanks. i thought i had added Backstreets. still, the new one good enough to hear twice. hope this works better. okay, this is really weird - perhaps there are ghosts. i have put the link to backstreets in three times and every time, it comes up ghosts???? and yet when i put it in an email to send, it comes up backstreets. how is that possible?

we'd watch pretty much any sport. they would televise the superbowl every year - had to get up about 3am to watch it in those days. when i lived in london, the place had a number of americans so i got to see a bit more and learn about it. then i moved to DC - back at the time of that last great superbowl winning skins team and have followed them as closely as i can ever since. i thought, at the time, that they would always be a serious contender, have great defence, stars like darrell green (still my fave player), a trio of stellar WRs, the best coach and win a heap more superbowls. i could not have been more wrong.

as good as he was in tests, i think he might have been an even better one day player. brilliant fieldsman as well. always love the story about border telling him to get off so we can get a queenslander in (everyone in qld simply nodded in understanding). that almost killed him. ended up in hospital from it for quite a while.

no wonder you got out of the watch business.

new bruce. and if this video doesn't leave you smiling then you might need to check your pulse. and while we are at it, why not an all time classic.

a real shock. one of a kind. great to watch him bat. listened to him at a lunch at the gabba once. very entertaining. RIP.

there was a stat i recall from those days. if the NFC won the bowl, the stock market went up next monday. if not, down. it worked but the problem was that the AFC won so few, it was hard to tell whether people just felt good and bought on the monday or if anything else behind it. when i first followed the skins and the NFL, it was a given that the NFC East would win the bowl, with an occasional appearance by the 49ers. i miss those days.

jim kelly. at least for the one that they played against the glorious Team. mind you, while the bills had some big name stars, the redskins, as they were then, were just a wonderful unit across the board. my fave skins team of all time. i can remember some of the week before. skins were treated like they were there to make up the numbers (despite only losing two games and those by a point or two, if i recall, and only at the end when resting starters - one loss to the last placed cowboys i think, which hurt). bills acted like it was in the bag. and for someone like thurston thomas to lose his helmet before the start of the game and miss a few plays was unforgivable. to me, it said that their heads were not right (very much like the 2003 afl grand final when a couple of the pies players were seen in a tanning salon the evening before because they wanted to look good on the victory stage - which they only made to collect their runner-up medals). i think thurston - was he MVP that year? - got all of about 12 yards running. it was a very different NFC East in those days.

thanks guys. always fun to do.

they don't start when people are comfortable.