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Articles by Jon Swift
California legalizes Jaywalking #mayorkoch #quincypolice
Quincy Quarry News Police Scanner Snippets – 2022 goes out with a bang in Quincy, lots of them actually …. – News about Quincy Massachusetts from Quincy Quarry News. Quincy Quarry’s City Editor has finally confirmed adequately reports of problematic doings in Quincy on New Year’s Eve heard by Quincy Quarry New’s Citizen Police Scanner monitor..
Why Kalani Sitake added 8 new roles to BYU football support staff
Estimated read time: 6-7 minutes PROVO — BYU's football staff grew again Monday as head coach Kalani Sitake prepares the program for its forthcoming move to the Big 12 in two years. Three months after adding a handful of on-field support staff, Sitake brought in eight new additions and staff promotions to fill out a staff that will be led by new football chief of staff Jon Swift.
Where is the beauty in the game?
Watching the Fifa World Cup unroll like a damaged manuscript for on-pitch anarchy, the question which hangs heavy in the Russian air is simply: What is so beautiful about the fabled game of football? At best, this is an own goal launched by as iconic a personage as Edson Arantes do Nasciemento, the revered Pele, the man who popularised the phrase, while other sources attribute it to Didi, a certain Waldyr Pereira, the same nom de guerre he carried in the colours of Real Madrid.
McEnroe aces Martina in Wimbledon pay only
It is impossible to argue that The All England Championship, the tournament the world knows as Wimbledon, is not special from the rest of the Majors. The courts are seeped in tradition, traditions like consuming expensive strawberries and cream or quaffing an equally expensive Pimms Cup or glass of champagne. And of course, it is played on grass. Martina Navratalova won £207 000 in 1990, the last of her record nine Wimbledon singles championships.
Thank goodness for cricket not tossing out history
It is the very quirky traditions inherent in the longer form of the game of cricket which many would argue encapsulate its charm and have exposed some of its weaknesses. The rise of the rapid-fire nature of T20 – encapsulated in the continuing success of the IPL – does lend some weight to the argument espoused by the late comedic genius Robin Williams that traditional cricket equated to baseball on Valium.
Can Saru’s Mark Alexander cough up, please?
What he has accomplished shines with a radiant pride spread across the young man’s open features. Tapiwa Nyamayawo had been selected for the Under-23 national baseball team scheduled to go to Nicaragua.
Australian cricket reaches crossroads with coach Langer
There are, at this juncture, more questions than answers about the appointment of Justin Langer as the new coach to a national cricket side riven by self-doubt and nursing a serial hangover from the humiliation of an amateurish ball-tampering debacle. The aftermath has honed a toxic blade which has been both plunged deep into the sense of Aussie pride and the much-hyped reviews – but yet to take formal shape – into cultural, organisational and governance issues.
Paula Radcliffe’s legacy under fire at London Marathon
There is far more to tomorrow’s London Marathon than the ironic quip by a British comedian that he hated the event because it was racist. Why, he was asked? “Because there are 40 000 runners chasing five skinny Kenyans around the city,” was his whimsical reply. Perhaps that is a slightly flippant view of one of the planet’s major road races, a running extravaganza that means many different things to many different people.
The IAAF’s treatment of Caster is unconscionable and patently unfair
The ethereal concept of fairness in sport is far too subjective in reality to fully quantify … what is fair to one side is off the chart to another. But surely the targeting of 800m World champion and Olympic and Commonwealth Games gold medallist Caster Semenya by a world athletics body seemingly determined to pigeonhole the 27-year-old from Polokwane as something approaching a freak cannot be either right or fair in any accepted sense of the word.
McGregor so far beyond the pale it’s frightening
It has become increasingly evident in the aftermath of Conor McGregor’s crazed attack on the bus that long-term rival Khabib Nurmagomedov was travelling in that a prerequisite to preeminence in the world of cage-fighting is to be a head banger. For a brash, trash-talking Irishman who is reputed to have earned $100 million for taking on the peerless boxing champion Floyd Mayweather Jnr, even this latest stunt is so far beyond the pale it is frightening.
Rugby beyond him but he’s still a patriot
There was no faulting the patriotic gesture which underlined the strong strains of his Caledonian upbringing in the steel town of Falkirk, the replica jersey with Scotland proudly emblazoned across the chest was displayed front and centre.
Aussies knew how to get under KG’s skin
He would be the first to admit that he has enjoyed the Australian concept of mate-ship – as well as being partial to a few of their frosties – during his frequent trip to the land down under. But, in a incendiary sense, this does not extend to Mike the Mechanic having the vaguest tolerance for how the Australian national cricket side go about their business and the current tour of South African has had him positively foaming at the mouth.
Rassie must look at lessons from history
But he is also deeply serious about studying and analysing the game, bringing a wealth of knowledge to rewinding what has immediately unfolded before him and an understanding of the past, a delicate balance in anyone’s dictionary. Having watched a Lions side truly emasculate the Bulls 49-35 in their Super Rugby derby at the Pretoria stronghold in front of the stunned Loftus Versfeld faithful, the Hooker stroked his head, always a hint that he had something to say about the result.
Nowhere to hide from these verbal bouncers
The Mechanic is, you must understand, passionate about sport and one of those South Africans who proudly carry their patriotism on both sleeves. It might be mentioned at this juncture that when his team loses – and spread across a backdrop of dismal rugby and cricket results of recent history – his language becomes both forceful and of the variety more than likely to scare the children and the horses.
Wanted, a Tasmanian Devil for Proteas team
This was a double celebration of the captain’s birthday and a celebration of a notable win on the field fought out on a hot Highveld afternoon in February – hard graft in anyone’s scorebook. At this juncture, it has to be admitted that the two protagonists in the confrontation between bat and ball are unlikely to be troubling the national selectors though in the circumstances to follow, who can state this as a certainty?
The Special One puts cricket’s failures to rest
“I canna git ma heid roun it … tha krikut,” he said of a game he had little exposure to while spending his younger days corralled behind the confines of Hadrian’s Wall. On reflection, he was not altogether alone in this, with both the South Africans and the touring Indian side struggling mightily to live up to expectations on pitches which seemed to have minds of The Special One puts cricket’s failures to rest their own.
Local battle for foreign honours doesn’t add up
The instinctive hunching of Dave the Silent’s back into a kind of resigned bow shape gave ample proof that he was fully aware – if not of the intended specifics of where the Arithmetically-challenged One had taken aim – at least the general direction it was headed. The Silent One was not disappointed as the self-styled expert opened with a broadside. “I don’t see the point of the Cheetahs taking on the Kings at Bloemfontein in the Pro14,” he opined loudly.
Less cricket, more wine in wake of weather
Such was certainly the case as the clouds rolled down the sides of Table Mountain on the scheduled third day of the first Test against India, turning Newlands into an uncomfortably damp stretch of expensive Cape Town real estate rather than one of the world’s iconic cricket grounds.
The thought lingers: what about the Welsh?
It is a well-established fact that the Arithmetically-challenged Golfer – so named because of an inability to balance his scorecard against either his handicap or the number of strokes actually aimed at the golf ball yet still a self-proclaimed expert across the sporting spectrum – would have something to say in the wake of the Springbok victory over Italy in Padua.
Here’s hoping the win is not a false dawn
Even Dave the Silent, a firm Bok fan even if he admits to have no deep knowledge of the game legend tells us started in 1823 at Rugby public school in England by William Webb Ellis – horror of horrors – picking up the ball and running with it under his arm, had taken a serious knock. The Silent One tends to accept most results with a stoicism that would earn the envy of a granite block, had shown that of late he could likely become cross, angry and also more than a touch annoyed.
The chaos theory as applied to Sun City
Into this atmosphere, the Demented Irish Miner descended like a thunderclap, dispensing his own, unique brand of the chaos theory which largely dictates his approach to the rest of humanity’s attempt the hold a level keel through the tumultous oceans of being alive. The Miner has fairly recently decided to go upmarket in selecting his watering hole, something that has been greeted with mixed sentiments by the assembly.
Kwagga too small? But what a big heart
This was a sure sign that he had weighty matters on his mind and a near certainty that this would involve his beloved sport of rugby. In a South African context, he subscribes to the line of thought espoused by late Liverpool managing great Bill Shankly that “winning or losing is not a matter of life or death; it’s much more important than that”. But it was another issue entirely which the Free Stater had on his mind at this juncture.
Gladiators are ready to rock MotoGP
There is, for true petrolheads, no comparison between the sanitised computerised world of Formula One and the seat-of-the-pants skills and sheer bravery of the boys astride the big bikes of MotoGP.
Forget the rugby, Fireman had eyes on EPL
But he sagely nodded acquiescence at the points being quite forcibly made by the Arithmetically-challenged Golfer, tacitly giving a nod to the Golfer’s self-promoted status as the expert on anything of a sporting nature – or for that matter of a non-sporting nature too.
It’s time to rethink the Currie Cup
Let us settle the arguments once and for all before the first whistle marks the start of today’s Currie Cup final at Kings Park: the best teams in this year’s competition rose to the top. That might not please all the fans out there, but it is difficult to argue with the realities of win-loss statistics – and that is how most competitions are judged, after all.
Amateur boxing boss faces knockout
The attempted ousting of Wu Ching-kuo, the Taiwanese chief of amateur boxing’s governing body Aiba, may have been halted temporarily amid a deluge of legalistic red tape. But the palace coup gives strong pointers to the way the Olympic sport is endeavouring to realign itself.
‘Rugbay no for me, I’ll stick wi fitba, goff’
The Arithmetically-challenged Golfer, the self-styled authority on all things to do with sport, was attempting to explain to the Incomprehensible Scot, the reasons why the Springboks came up short against the All Blacks in Saturday’s Rugby Championship encounter at Newlands.
Parallels of sport and politics
Six-time Grand Slam champion Boris Becker put tennis into perspective when he famously said: “I haven’t lost a war. No one got killed. I just lost a tennis match.” But despite the racket-throwing, tears and tantrums, tennis has always had a veneer of prosaic gentility about it. The same cannot be said about soccer.
A damning indictment, but some do agree
Bok defensive coach Brendan Venter’s remarks that “if winning is all you see, stop watching”. But even more damning was the indictment of head coach Alister Coetzee. “We will prepare to win, but the reality is that people who believe the Springboks can beat the All Blacks in Cape Town, after just over three months together, are living in a fool’s paradise,” Coetzee said.
Valentino Rossi is very brave or simply barking mad
There can be little doubt among the serried ranks of the certifiably sane, that racing motorcyclists are consumed with the kind of mind-numbing madness which surely makes the sporting gods hide their heads. If there was any more certain proof of this it is Valentino Rossi’s decision to race in this weekend’s Aragon Grand Prix, just 21 days after suffering a double fracture of the leg. This, you would surely have to agree, is not normal behaviour.
Hammer blow final nail in a week to forget
The Fireman, a regular member of the usual gathering, had gained the “fearsome” tag more for the flash spontaneity of his cracks than any inherent aggression, had been dealt a full house of spades in the poker game of life. First up was a slip at work that, while painful at the time, had not seemed that serious until he was overtaken by a breathlessness and a stabbing pain in the rib cage, started causing him some discomfort and concern.
Drug body Wada needs to fight fair
Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin, might have more pressing problems to centre attention on – a certain nuclear-enabled despot in East Asia and a growing impasse with a Mr D Trump spring to mind – but it would be interesting to plumb the thoughts of the po-faced modern day Tsar on the volte face enacted on banned Russian athletes.
No place for amateur boxing
Amateur boxing remains the biggest anomaly in Olympic sport; and the fractious International Amateur Boxing Association (AIDA), which claims to administer the discipline, has been shrouded in controversy since 1946 when the body was founded in London, taking over the functions of the Fédération Internationale de Boxe Olympique, founded in Paris 26 years earlier.
More on their minds than a tarnished trophy
Such was undoubtedly the case for the Western Province Currie Cup outing against the Sharks at Newlands; the Timber Technician had come to watch the Streeptruie, the Travelling Thespian to root for the Sharks.
It’s still Wayne Rooney’s world
The boy from Liverpool’s Coxteth – where legend would have it, the cops only patrol in threes – has come home, back to the Merseyside club he followed as a kid. And by all indications, multimillionaire footballer Wayne Rooney is revelling in the rebirth of his game from the years since the 2002-2003 season, which he had spent in a Manchester United jersey after being snapped up from Everton by Alex Ferguson in a £25.6 deal, thus becoming the most expensive 18-year-old player on the planet.
RIP Pinetree: they don’t make them like that now
It was one of those poignant moments in time that typifies the comradeship of the game of rugby union that the death of Pinetree Meads would cause such a sad hiatus in the discussion of the merits of the 37-15 victory the Boks had registered over Argentina among the usual gathering.
The game is always the biggest star
There are many views of exactly where Cristiano Ronaldo stands in the stellar firmament of soccer superstardom. He has achieved global fame with Manchester United and Real Madrid – who set a world record transfer fee at the time – and is ranked by the influential Forbes magazine as the highest paid footballer on the planet.
Super Smous red-faced, but he’ll keep his jersey
The large man who always seems to have a deal of some sort in the offing arrived as a welcome addition to the ranks of the usual gathering, proudly sporting the colours of the Cheetahs for their tilt at their Griqua neighbours. “These are my boys,” he said proudly thumping the badge on his breast. “They are unbeaten and top of the table. The Griquas might just as well turn round and go back to Kimberley.
Matter of time for Spieth
Golf, at any level, is a game that is always going to beat you somewhere along the line; the most perverse sporting mistress any unfortunate can ever have an involvement with. “Competitive golf,” the great Bobby Jones so famously noted, “is played mainly on a five-anda-half-inch course… the distance between your ears.” He caught perfectly the essence of the game legend would have was foisted on an often unwilling world by the Scots.
There was a ray of sunshine on a dark weekend
Clearly he was not his usual self-promoting, self-appointed expert on all sporting matters and had some momentous things on his mind as he glared balefully at the members of the assembled company. “They say that the fortunes of sport are measured in split-second moments,” he started out, mouthing a truism which most of the gathering could identify with.
Boks have a lesson to pass on
There is an increasingly obvious need for Bafana Bafana coach Stuart Baxter to draw some lessons from the Springboks and a compelling argument for new Proteas coach Ottis Gibson to consult with the national rugby team. From the outside looking in, it becomes increasingly evident that for our pampered soccer and cricket stars, things have become too easy in this country. We are talking about team sports.
Ney, maar they pay big bucks
Individual salaries in professional sport have reached proportions which would bail out a goodly number of this country’s failing municipalities and rescue them from their own profligacy. Clearly there is no billing crisis in this particular strata of sporting mega-finance.
Never underestimate the never-say-die Lions
It is little wonder that the Ferocious Fireman – so named for his biting sense of humour rather than for any innate violence in his normally placid nature – that gave the go-ahead to take the mickey out of Dave the Silent’s pre-match predictions for the Super Rugby semifinal against the Hurricanes at Ellis Park.
Mind is willing but flesh is weak for top tennis players
Sport is, by its nature, a transitory phase in the life of a protagonist; no one ever fully escapes the onset of age and the dimming of prowess, no matter how finely honed. And if you accept that top professional sport is progressive by its nature, that the search for new boundaries there to be broken are forever presenting themselves, it should be little wonder that the attrition rate is commensurate. In short, the wear and tear is insidious and the injuries begin to mount up.
Nae spring chikun, but Roger played like one
“Ah luv mah tennus,” he proudly proclaims to anyone who will listen, and has backed this up with a ritual pilgrimage to Wimbledon. But the Incomprehensible One could still not get over the five-set loss by fellow Scot Andy Murray to Sam Querry in the quarterfinals. “Ah ken tha’ Mooray wa’ plain’ on one laig,” he said. “He couldna pley tha’ last twa sets. But he give that Yank tha’ respec of pleyin’ tha’ match oot.
Dropping Joe twice the Root of all evil for SA
The former is middle-aged and blocky – though still extremely fit. Rabada is a lithe 22 years old and developing into a world-class player.
Allow Welsh fan to gloat if only for a lil’ while
This is not to say that this is his fault; merely a geographical quirk of his deeply ingrained heritage, which sees him support the Llanelli Scarlets, Wales and the British and Irish Lions, which, though he refuses to be drawn, are more than likely ranked in this order. So it was with a euphoric smile almost as wide as Llanelli’s historic Stradee Park, that Big Mark basked in the afterglow of the Lions running out 24-21 winners in Wellington at the weekend.
Sagan is cycling’s top gunslinger
The dust over Slovakian world champion Peter Sagan’s expulsion from this year’s Tour de France will take some time to settle. The injudicious elbow cocked by Sagan put Mark Cavendish into the crash barrier – and ultimately out of the Grand Boucle with a cracked shoulder blade – in the furious last 100m of the sprint finish in Tuesday’s 207.5km stage from Mondorf-les-Bains to Vittel. The unhappy ending to the stage points directly to the very nature of cycling’s top sprinters.
Only stars can save athletics
Track and field has enjoyed what can only be described as a spotty history over the past decade.
Up the Irish and Afghans
There are pros and cons to the perennial argument that the ICC, the body which rules world cricket, is little more than a self-serving old boys club which has stubbornly clung to the status quo.
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