Mary Hannigan TV ViewRecently enough, young Turkish engineer Mete Kural won a prize for creating a "Concentrating Spectrum-Splitting Solar Photovoltaic System", infuriating those of us who intended inventing the same system but never quite got around to it.
While Mete collected his prize "must finalise CSSSPS plans" remained on our "to do" list on the fridge door. Gutted.
Bitterness aside, that's what you expect engineers to do, to devote their time to inventing useful things like wheels, popcorn makers and Concentrating Spectrum-
Splitting Solar Photovoltaic Systems, stuff that will enhance our lives. Dr Matt Carre of the University of Sheffield should, then, take a leaf out of young Mete's spectrum-splitting book, put his energies to better use and turn down requests from ITV documentary makers to use his mechanical engineering brain to analyse the flight of footballers' goal-scoring free-kicks.
Footballers' goal-scoring free-kicks are things of unrivalled beauty and shouldn't be mathematically dissected, they should just be enjoyed, in a "whoooooah, jeeeeez" kind of way. They are, after all, the highest form of art.
In the loveliness stakes: Roberto Carlos's curly-wurly effort against France in 1997 v Verdi's La Traviata? Sorry Verdo. Thierry Henry's free last month against Charlton v Michelangelo's David? Apologies Mikey. Denis Irwin's one against Belgium in the 1997 World Cup play-off v Van Gogh's Starry Night? No offence, Vinnie. (Psst: one ear). Sorry: no offence.
"When David Beckham took that free-kick," Dr Matt told the makers of Beckham's Body Parts last week, "it left his foot at 72 m.p.h., he put 400 r.p.m. of sidespin on the ball, it flew through the air going sideways to the left and entered the goal a second later at 51 m.p.h." By Dr Matt's calculations, if Beckham was "one per cent out" the ball wouldn't have gone in.
Several conclusions can be made here. (1) Please, please, please, never sit us beside Dr Matt at a football match ("if David Connolly's shot had been 99 per cent more accurate it would have tested the goalkeeper there"). (2) The day football and statistical analysis of this nature become comfy bedfellows is the day the rest of us will switch our sporting allegiances to croquet. (3) Dr Matt? Bin the calculator, chill out. It's football, for gawd's sake.
The primary message delivered by this programme was that Beckham has a first-class right foot, a pretty face, a girly voice, several tattoos, hair-dos and hats, isn't an intellectual and is tremendously rich. ("Go 'way," said the audience).
Ekow Eshun, who you might know as the most pompous man ever to appear on BBC2's Late Review, said as much, in that sneery way that has Germaine Greer sharpening her knuckle-dusters every time they're on the same panel.
"Beckham's Achilles' heal is his voice," said Ekow, a contention that had medical people scratching their heads (which, by Ekow's reckoning, must be located on the tips of their left elbows). One was tempted to point out to Ekow that when he achieves as much in his profession (which is?) as Beckham has done in his he'll have earned the right to snigger.
The Guardian's Vivek Chaudhary dismissed Beckham as "a one club golfer, essentially he is an average footballer", echoing George Best's appraisal of the same player: "I don't think he's a great player. He can't kick with his left foot, he doesn't score many goals, he can't head a ball and he can't tackle. Apart from that he's all right."
One of these days they'll get the balance right: Beckham is very, very good, but he's not very, very great, a la Best. The extremists, either way, are becoming yawn-inducing.
Who is very, very great, in his own inimitable field, is George "the first" Hamilton. "They've eked this one out, like coal miners mining the seam until they finally reach the surface with their precious black gold," he said of Arsenal last week when Ashley Cole won them their Champions League game with a goal scored mere seconds after the viewers began joyously singing "bye bye Gooners, Gooners bye bye". At which point European football's Cole miners struck gold.
At least the week ended on a happy note, with Liverpool being denied the most blatant penalty in the history of, well, blatant penalties. "It wasn't a pen," said Sky Sports' guest Glenn Hoddle, thus confirming it was. Hoddle, after all, is the man who once declared "when a player gets to 30, so does his body". Hoddle was a fine player, but as a pundit he's hardly in the Concentrating Spectrum- Splitting Solar Photovoltaic System class. Whatever the hell that means.
