What A Weekend!

Well, that was quite a weekend for top sporting action. The big event was Super Bowl XLV and the game certainly lived up to the hype - so much so, in fact, that I stayed up to gone 3:00 a.m. to see the climax of the whole thing.

The Vince Lombardi Trophy, Uploaded on flickr.com by user "pkeleher" [CC-BY-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Congratulations must go to the Green Bay Packers for a tremendous 31-25 win over the Pittsburgh Steelers. But, as with most sports, the result doesn’t even begin to tell the story of the match, which ebbed and flowed throughout. The Packers led 21-3 at one stage early in the game, but a tremendous comeback from the Steelers got them to within 3 points of their opponents, and with the momentum on their side the Championship was definitely there for the taking. But, the Packers regrouped and found the determination to score again and deny the Steelers a third Super Bowl victory in six years. For me, it was an excellent contest and the destination of the Lombardi Trophy was up for grabs right until the dying seconds. Sport at its best.

Elsewhere, the Premiership did their best to try to outshine the showpiece occasion on the other side of the pond. A breathtaking weekend of action, with some amazing scorelines, produced the greatest total of goals on one day – 41 from the 8 games played on Saturday. A stunning comeback by Newcastle Utd saw them recover from 0-4 down after 26 minutes to grab an unlikely 4-4 draw in the last few minutes. That is the first time a team has recovered from a 4 goal deficit in the history of the Premiership. And that was by no means the only sensation of the day, with previously unbeaten Manchester Utd succumbing to bottom of the table Wolves and slipping to a 2-1 defeat.

There were also 8 goals at Everton, in a game that swung one way and then the other, and back again. 7 goals at Wigan, 5 at Stoke and 4 at Aston Villa all managed to push up that record total. The expected titanic clash of Chelsea and Liverpool on Sunday was very mild in comparison and Fernando Torres was kept extremely quiet by his ex-teammates before being substituted in the second half. A 1-0 victory for the visiting side has now realistically ended any hopes that Chelsea may have had of winning the title this year. In fact, they may well be looking over their shoulders at Tottenham and Liverpool themselves in the battle for a Champions League place.

As I mentioned on Saturday, this weekend was also the start of the Six Nations and there were victories for England, Ireland and France. Those latter two teams will meet each other at the Aviva Stadium, Dublin on this coming Saturday, whilst England will play Italy, and Scotland will host Wales.

All in all, it was a very eventful and exciting sporting weekend. May there be many more like it ahead of us.