|-- THE BEST SPORTS DEBATE IN BERMUDA --|

Smoking weed — the new national sport?

By Lionel Cann
Smoking dope has become the national sport in Bermuda.
If we really want to increase the number of players available for the national team and get guys to training, we need to do something about the drug problem in this country.
We’ve heard more talk this week about the number of players not turning out for the national squad and as someone who has been around cricket my whole life I can tell you the biggest problem is marijuana.
If we could stop people smoking weed we would have triple the amount of players available.
It’s a serious social issue and it’s something we really need to address. If you can’t give up marijuana to play for your country and reach the pinnacle of your sport then you have a serious, serious problem.
I know for a fact that there are a lot of players who won’t give up weed to play for their country. It’s crazy.
Kids as young as 13 and 14 are getting hooked on it.
If we invested money into educating people and stopping the country’s marijuana problem it would do more for sport than anything.
We’ve had this problem for years and we have turned a blind eye to it but we can’t turn a blind eye any more because it’s right there infront of us every day.
Every football match you go to, every cricket game you go to, you have the scent of marijuana.
You can’t hide from it because it’s everywhere you go.

Not feeling the love

Don Burgess
Tonight's big Bermuda tourism promotion at Shea Stadium may be washed away. It's raining here in New York and has been pretty much all morning. The Mets are supposed to play the Washington Nationals tonight at 7:30pm. Baseball is one of the few sports that actually has rainouts. I went to yesterday's Mets victory (over the Reds) so at least I got to see a game. They won't actually postpone the game until another day until after game time tonight.
3:20pm (BDA) The rain has stopped and everything's a go for tonight.
Everything turned out okay in the end. Well, mostly. We were under the impression it was Bermuda Night at Shea, but the big scoreboards said 'Asian Night.'
Dr. Brown was front and centre by throwing out the first pitch and helping with the countdown for the number of home games left at Shea.

Holiday Hiatus

By James Whittaker
I'm going to be off the island for the next couple of weeks, so posts will be less frequent.
Don Burgess will still be blogging, though. If you have any ideas for posts or want to start a thread yourself please e-mail him at dburgess@bermudasun.bm.

Recommended reading for Darius Tucker

By James Whittaker
I don’t always agree with Adrian Robson's Friday Forum in the Royal Gazette but he was spot on today when he called out UBP politician Darius Tucker and Premier Ewart Brown after they slammed the press for not showing up at the airport to greet the Under-19 World Cup team.
In what seemed like a cheap point scoring gesture, Tucker trotted out the old line about the press covering the negative stories and ignoring the positive.
All because we didn’t go to the airport to greet the team and denied him a photo-opp?
The photos we (and the RG) ran were of the players competing on the field and the stories were about their performances — not a disaster, but hardly a major success story.
The Sun always makes an effort to cover positive stories, particularly where youth are invoved.
Here’s some recommended reading for Mr Tucker, in case he wants to be a bit more informed the next time he decides to start a sports debate in the house:

Young footballers prepare for All-Star weekend

World Champ says Wilson could be very special

Coach says Perozzi has knockout power

Barnes knows the Formula to success

In recent weeks he could also have checked out our player-by-player profiles on the Under-19s before they went away, our weekly youth football column and our front page picture story on under-13 football champions Social Club.
And just to show we’re not biased, maybe he should dig through his back issues of the Royal Gazette and have another read of this story about… wait for it…

The under-19 cricket team’s one victory against Ireland

But really if the politicians want to debate something useful about sports they should read this:
Wilson’s dad sells off car, bike to help finance racing and work out how they can actually do something to help a young man who has genuinely proved himself on the world stage, instead of paying lip service with fatuous debates about the media.

The Monday Debate: Sports Funding

Every Monday on Talk Sport we'll be inviting you to be part of an open debate.
If you have an opinion, this is your chance to get it off your chest.
This week's topic is sports funding.
Should we be doing more to support athletes like young motorcyclist Toriano Wilson and boxer Teresa Perozzi who have made a name for themselves on the world stage with little or no financial support?
Or should we be spending the money to improve the infrastructure here on the island — improving the standard of coaching and facilities locally?
What about a sports academy?
We want to hear any suggestons you have about how Bermuda can get the best use out of it's sports budget.

Finish the National Stadium

Don Burgess
One of Government’s worst decisions ever was withdrawing from holding World Cup warm-up matches in 2007. Why? Because it would have forced Government to complete the centre core section of the National Stadium to meet the minimum standards of the Cricket World Cup. Instead we are left with a big hole in the ground and a facility that isn’t able to hold One Day Internationals. The completion of the centre core would have also given the trustees a venue where they would have been able to hold conventions and other meetings to raise revenue instead of taking it off the backs of sporting groups. Now work seems to have stopped and people are begining to ask: "Will they ever finish the job?"

Welcome to Talk Sport Bermuda

By James Whittaker
Welcome to the Bermuda Sun sports blog - the island's only online forum for sports fans.
Think Limey in Bermuda but instead of arguing about politics, we'll be shooting the breeze about sports.
There's a real appetite for debate right now with the fortunes of our national cricket and football teams dominating the conversation.
Politicians, news commentators, former players, taxi drivers, the man in the street — everybody's talking sports.
This is your site and your opportunity to get involved and also to help shape the debate.
We've launched today with posts from myself, from Lionel Cann and from Fred Barritt. I'll be posting regularly on local and international sport and we'll also have regular blogs from our Sun columnists and writers.
The site is still very much a work in progress and we'd appreciate your feedback on how we can make it better.

Let's salute some real Bermudian heroes

By Fred Barritt
As much as I enjoyed watching my New York Giants stomp all over the New England videotapers in the Superbowl, I'm not going to join the Government in saluting Antonio Pierce as a "Bermudian hero'.
It's not like we don’t have ACTUAL Bermudians who are ACTUAL World Champions. Malcolm Smith has won the Sunfish Sailing World Championship three times — 1994, 1998 and 2003. But apparently this feat is not worthy of celebration by the Bermuda Government.
They’d much rather throw money at cricket and football in the vain hope that we might actually get eleven people all drug-free at the same time and of sufficient talent that they don’t get completely embarassed in front of a global television audience!
We all watched the 20/20 fiasco against Guyana. Well I watched some of it — I flipped over to the Grammy Awards to see Rihanna sing and by the time she’d finished six wickets had fallen! Then the under-19 team lost to Nepal by 188 runs! Nepal! That’s in the Himalayas! There’s not enough flat land in that entire country for a cricket oval! How do they practice? By bowling “up-mountain”?