Myslik Madness

TigerBlog has been meaning to share something with you since his time this summer in England. 

What is it? Well, it's the funniest exit sign he's ever seen.

As you probably know, in England you drive on the left side of the road, with the steering wheel on the right side of the car. Adding to the challenge, TB's rental car, er, hire car, as they say there, was a manual, which means he had to shift with his left hand. 

Try that on one of the roundabouts there.

Roundabouts? Roads in England are divided into highways, which are called Motorways, and then next-level roads, secondary roads and lastly those roads that only have room for one car at a time and are surrounded by huge hedgerows. 

There are very few traffic lights, but there are lots and lots of roundabouts, which are essentially small traffic circles. You always yield to the right, and you have to downshift while you change lanes, otherwise you'll be driving in circles. TB's record for going around a roundabout is three times.

The Motorways are numbered. The M25 is like the Beltway outside DC, as it 1) circles London and 2) is never without traffic. 

The M3 takes you to the South, but first it goes past three fairly unrelated landmarks — except that someone decided that they needed to only print up one exit sign for all three. That would be this:

 

Seriously? You couldn't have made a separate sign for Windsor Castle? It needed to share with Legoland and a racetrack, even if it's a snooty one? 

What was it that Eliza sang to Professor Higgins at the end of "My Fair Lady?" "Windsor Castle will stand without you; Legoland will be grand without you?"

Having said that, the three biggest things in English sports this summer since Wimbledon ended have been the Ashes cricket matches, the Women's World Cup and the start of another English Premier League season. 

For the life of him, TB does not understand the lure of watching cricket, but the English love it. They also love the EPL; stories about the coming season dominated every newspaper and sportscast, even with it was still a few weeks away. 

The big topic? The expanded amount of stoppage time that will be added at the end of each half, to correspond with the time that teams are not playing, including goal celebrations and such. In preseason games, this went up to as many as 13 minutes in a half. The players, who were not consulted, are not happy.

As for the women's soccer, the Lionesses, as they are known there, took down host Australia 3-1 in the semifinals Wednesday, setting up the World Cup final between England and Spain Sunday. It starts at 5 am Eastern time; everyone who woke up early for the Royal Wedding in 1981 are required to watch.

The Lionesses are huge in England, especially after they won the European championship last year. Their success comes in a soccer-mad nation that has not won a men's World Cup since 1966. If England wins (or as they say in England, "if England win"), the entire country will erupt in celebration.

As with the men, the women have the same format, which means two 45-minute halves and then stoppage time. In the event of a tie in the knockout rounds, teams then play two 15-minute periods (regardless of whether someone scores or not and then go to penalty kicks if it's still tied.

American college soccer has better rules in both of those instances. First, why would it be so hard for the referee to stop the game clock by signalling to the clock operator, therefore making the time on the scoreboard accurate and official? It works in every other sport everywhere.

Also, PKs are incredibly dramatic, but they're also a terrible way to decide a game on that stage. Why? Because teams can play to get to the PKs and know they can win without ever having to score in the run of play. TB isn't quite sure what to do about it, because you could end up with incredibly long games with exhausted players (which raises the chance of injuries), but he does know he hates the PKs.

Is that enough for today? What's that? Oh yeah, there was nothing about Princeton. Duh.

Princeton women's soccer opens its season a week from tomorrow at home against Monmouth on Myslik Field, which will host six games in the first 10 days of the 2023-24 athletic year. Again, that's six games in 10 days on Myslik Field.

Here is the schedule:

Aug. 25 - women vs. Monmouth
Aug. 27 - women vs. La Salle
Aug. 31 - women vs. Rutgers
Sept. 1 - men vs. Rutgers
Sept. 2 - women vs. Army
Sept. 4 - men vs. Duke

The two Rutgers teams will be itching to play an Ivy League opponent, or maybe not. Both the Rutgers women (Brown) and men (Penn) lost their first-round NCAA games against Ivy teams a year ago.

That's a lot of home soccer in a short time, and each one of those games — and all regular season games — are free of charge. 

Plus, they play with the right rules.