KEY POINTS:
A good week for ...
It's a good week for you! SuperShorts generally doesn't get tangled up in the murky world of reader giveaways (we usually just keep the best stuff for ourselves), but this offer from the people at Nokia is too good to turn down. They're putting up two prize packages.
First prize package: A whizzbang phone (a Nokia N96) with Fifa'09 on it, a football, a 1982 home strip for the All Whites and a Manchester United shirt signed by some bloke called Wayne Rooney.
Second prize is just the phone, none of the other stuff. So say thank you to Uncle Nokia and post your entry (one each!) to: Nokia draw, SuperSport, PO Box 3290, Auckland. Or you can email us at supersport@nzherald.co.nz (one each! duplicate entries will be kicked out, so play nicely!).
For your chance to win, simply visit www.n-gage.com and find the answers to the following questions:
1.) Which men scored New Zealand's only goals at a World Cup?
2.) How many players can you select from in Fifa'09 for N-Gage?
Entries close Wednesday, December 31. Good luck!
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It's been a terrific week for peeking into the finances of uber-wealthy footballers. Wayne and Colleen Rooney have had their expenses splashed about in court as the pair are being sued for unpaid bills. Wayne does alright (NZ$245,000 per week for hoofing a ball around and shaking his fist at the supporters, a further $4,065,000 a year in image rights and $14,900,000 annually from other sources) but Colleen is the shrewdest.
Despite a having a talent for little more than marrying Shrek-like footballers, the uber-Wag pulls $113,000 a month for a column in OK! magazine $35,000 for the monthly TV spot Colleen's Real Women and - best of all - $13,500 a month for a column in Closer, the bitter rival of OK!. So there's her other talent: an eye for a buck.
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A bad week for ...
Bad enough being sacked as manager of Real Madrid, but check out the insult to Bernd Schuster's injury. The coach was given the axe on Wednesday. His replacement? Step forward Juande Ramos. Touche...
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How did Chicago Bulls rookie Derrick Rose get those 10 stitches on his arm? He'd been slicing an apple on his bed, went to get a glass of water and, forgetting the knife was lying there, flopped down on the bed. The 20-year-old guard, who was the first selection in June's NBA draft, said: "It was a silly accident."
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He's groped Gazza's jewels and once bit the nose of a journalist after a good old-fashioned soccer riot, but Vinnie Jones' tough-guy reputation has been dismantled in a bar room brawl in the American Midwest. Guy Ritchie's favoured cinematic thug got into a scrap over a game of pool and an argument over his filmography.
The brawl in Sioux Falls, South Dakota erupted after a patron asked Jones if he was "that guy from X-Men". "He got offended by that, and he started pushing my other friends around," Juan Barrera said. "He said he's been in so many other movies or whatever." Clearly That Guy From X-Men is, like many thespians, concerned that the full extent of his canon of work be appreciated. For his troubles, he had a beer glass smashed over his face and was put on his backside after taking a swing at Barrera as he emerged from the toilet.
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You know the credit crisis is hitting hard when Robinho (annual salary $380,000 a week) is using public transport. Manchester City's Brazilian import has been riding the buses rather than buying a car - clearly he's never heard Margaret Thatcher's comment about public transport: "A man who, beyond the age of 26, finds himself on a bus, can consider himself a failure."
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It takes a lot for SuperShorts to be singing from the same songsheet as Rodney Hide, but here goes: the Auckland Regional Council deserves a kicking for its ill-considered Beckstravagnaza. The irony is that the ARC denied Auckland a brilliant sporting venue in the waterfront stadium. Instead the space where the stadium would have gone is used to store bananas and that council of idiots sinks money into a celebrity training run in Penrose.
* Send your Good Week / Bad Week items to supersport@nzherald.co.nz