Honestly devastated after that result.
Leading up to the game and even for 45 minutes during it I was quietly confident that this could be our year. Some silverware that we so badly desire.
A win against a Liverpool side weakened by keeper suspensions would have booked our place in the final, and provided us with a European spot; which in turn would help with necessary exposure and finances.
However that same goalkeeper frailty that should have made the daunting task a little easier, quite simply remained untested. The few balls that were sent across the face of goal were not dealt with calmly, but this was something not capitalised on by our Everton side.
Our goal came from a comedy of errors on the edge of the Liverpool area with a miscommunication meaning both Carragher and his colleague left the simple clearance to one another, and after much bobbling the ball was finally sliced clear into the thigh of Tim Cahill, who helped it on it’s way into the path of Croatian striker Nikica Jelavic, who cooly finished past Liverpool’s third choice keeper Brad Jones.
After taking the lead Everton had a strong 15 minutes, with the support in full swing, and then in an all too familiar fashion the fans saw the team sitting back resting on the 1 goal advantage.
As is ever the case this was not enough as Liverpool came out of the blocks in the second half raring to go and dominated us for the best part of the second half. Our support was silenced after a calamitous back pass from Distin was far too weak to reach it’s intended target, gifting a great opportuinity for Luiz Suarez to open the account for his team. After this break cracks started to emerge in the Everton team, but didn’t fully crumble until a rash challenge from Seamus Coleman; that quite frankly the young Irish lad was lucky to stay on the pitch after. The resulting free kick was whipped into the area and connected with Carroll’s ponytail and ended up nested in the back of Tim Howard’s net.
A long journey home for both sets of fans, although the red half of Merseyside is bound to have enjoyed their trip alot more than myself and the Everton support. Another game thrown away, it’s a bitter pill to swallow, but we have noone to blame but oursevles and must brush ourselves down and concentrate on our final league position.
I happened to stumble upon a great artist whilst shopping in Southport, walking along Chapel Street I heard the familiar strum of a guitar, but much to my suprise was the addition of talented vocals a far-cry from what I have come to expect from buskers in the town. Song after song I was captivated, after listening for over half an hour I mustered up the courage to approach, asking for his name, Matthew Fearon, as he is known on stage.
Moving into December we see the release of two albums, one Christmas album, Matthew Fearon’s Almost Acoustic Christmas featuring 10 covers of popular Christmas and one original song. The other album titled Acoustic Sketches consists of 16 tracks, many popular covers and also including 4 lyrically brilliant originals.
Both are available to Pre-Order now over at http://www.matthewfearon.fourfour.com/discography where you can also see the full track listings for both albums. For a sample of the fantastic talent check out http://soundcloud.com/matthewfearonmusic
Matt can be seen live in Southport and the surrounding area, his facebook fanpage can be found at http://www.facebook.com/matthewfearonmusic for updates on when and where these are taking place.
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A contender for game of the year.
As I’m sure most are aware a contender for game of the year has recently been released worldwide, in the form of Battlefield 3. The game developed by DICE has been released across various platforms and has received over 60 awards.
Could this be the game that finally knocks Call of Duty off of its FPS throne?
In my opinion no, and then maybe. The no stems from the console market, I feel that the CoD series has such a following and brand name it will be hard to displace, it has after all become a household name. I do have to admit that this isn’t an arena that I am particularly concerned with as consoles are experiencing good growth at the moment, as is their competitive scene as demonstrated by the MLG and the like.
My preferred platform and therefore area of focus is the PC. Whilst certain titles are prospering within eSports on the computer, namely Starcraft 2, First Person Shooters are having a hard time holding themselves above water. This saddens me as they are the games which I grew up playing and made me become interested in eSports in the first place. My history being in Tactical Ops (UT mod), r6:Raven Shield, Joint Ops, Battlefield 2, COD4 and CSS to name but a few, you can see where my desire for a new and competitive FPS to take the lead stems from.
The keyword in the above sentence is competitive. The current leaders in the eSports FPS world are Counterstrike 1.6 and Call of Duty 4:Modern Warfare, both great titles don’t get me wrong. They are however, dated, this is to be expected due to them being released in 2003 and 2007 respectively.
Obviously there have been other games following up from both titles, with CS1.6 having Counterstrike:Source and COD4 having multiple installments MW2, Black Ops and BF3′s contender for game of the year, MW3 following shortly. Now that’s not to say any of these games are bad, on the contrary, CSS is one of my favourite games, or at least it was until recently. It however struggled to pull many of 1.6′s highly loyal and competitive players away. For the two call of duty games it was the same, neither game had the competitive edge and were accused of being too strongly based around public play, overpowered kill-streak rewards and downloadable content.
Having given BF3 some play time I do thoroughly enjoy it, and graphically it is one of the best FPS games out there, with the Frostbite2 engine impressing. If given a chance I do feel this could help FPS based games grow in eSports, as the high level of detail provides great watching from a spectator point of view, unlike the older and blocky CS1.6, for example.
For me personally the game not only looks good, but it also feels good. Even if the game doesn’t itself make it to be a top competitive title within the eSports scene then I can at least hope that it acts as a benchmark; and that it provides a warning to it’s competitors who can perhaps be accused of resting on their laurels and hoping that it would be their brand name that sold copies, and not quality nor substance.
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