Online Sport

For all my trumpet blowing about the many advantages of living in the the south of France - the sunshine, the food, the wine, the entire, relatively (to London) stress free life - there are, naturally, some drawbacks compared to life back in the land of hope and glory.

Yes, I know, it all sounds so fabulous as I describe it, but I have never said that I don't like London or England, or that I am not English to the core - I most definitely am. I miss bacon sandwiches and cheddar cheese and my wife's green curry and a proper pint of Guinness (a London pint of Guinness is 10 times better than a French pint of Guinness but, admittedly, it's not a Dublin pint of Guinness). Most of all I miss not being able to watch decent sport very often.

Obviously you can watch top class rugby. It is shown on French terrestrial TV and on the TV of every bar in town. We are in the middle of rugby country in France - it is a way of life - it is 'de rigeur' - there are more people walking round this town with 'cauliflower ears' than there are chou-fleurs in the market on a Saturday.

But that is it. Everything else pales by comparison with the sports coverage in the UK. The French football, Ligue 1, is all on cable (Canal+) and it's French football. It doesn't have the intensity, the speed, the excitement, the crowds or the personalities of the Premiership - the fact that Gerard Houllier manages Lyon, who have won the league for the past 5 years and are 15 points ahead this year, sums it up - it's dull.

If you shout 'handball' in France everybody thinks you are talking about an obscure game played indoors where teams of either sex seem to jump up and down and generally leap about with a small ball and throw it at great speed at a poor defenseless goalie with no protection who's only job seems to be to stand about waving his/her arms as if they are drowning and then pick the ball out of the net from behind them if they were lucky enough that it didn't hit them full in the face to begin with. Remarkably, the daily French sports paper 'Equipe' gives this nonsense a whole page to itself every day.

The real problem, right now, is how much coverage 'Equipe' and the TV channels are giving to the cricket world cup which is taking place in the Caribbean at this very moment. As you might expect the answer is "What cricket world cup?" or, in fact, "What is cricket?" There is no coverage, no reporting, not even the scores listed. France calls itself a fully fledged member of the international 21st century community. Hah! - even the Dutch play cricket and have a team taking part in the West Indies - so c'mon France, get your act together and find the Eric Cantona of cricket and we will respect you all the more for it.

In the meantime, I am forced to watch sport on the interweb thingy. Even that is not as good as it might be, because 'contractual obligations' stop the BBC transmitting live commentary or video to anyone other than UK users and somehow they seem to know that I am sat looking at my computer in France - angry, exasperated, frustrated, confused and thoroughly pissed off - what difference does it make what country I am in if I am logging on to the BBC website?

So I sit here, staring at my computer screen - 'this page automatically refreshes every two minutes' it says - and time passes ever so, ever so slowly as I wait to see what was scored off the next delivery or whether Bolton have conceded a goal (you always think the worst when you support Bolton Wanderers) and my mind drifts back to days sat in English football grounds when the ball hit a player and in unison the crowd shouts 'handball' and we all knew what we were talking about.