Last two standing. For the muddied oafs of winter, this is the cruellest week. So near, yet…. Defeat in a semifinal, they say, is the hardest to bear. There are a lot of them about. Today soccer stages its two FA Cup semis. In the European Champions’ League, Arsenal played the first-leg semifinal this week, the second next; ditto Middlesbrough in the Uefa Cup. And at rugby union, the European club game’s defining Heineken Cup also stages two momentous semis this weekend. Death or glory, relief or jubilation — and cruelty. For neutral students of (in equal measure) both round ball and oval — they do exist, I can testify — I suppose the two most resonantly clamorous confrontations are today, in each instance between the red and the blue: at soccer, the sensitive should look away now as Premiership champions and champions-elect Chelsea meet champions of Europe Liverpool; and across the water at rugby, the inter-Prov turf war between Munster and Leinster will rattle the rafters and curdle the blood in Dublin.
Cup an ear eastwards from auld Lansdowne Road, mind you, and I daresay the din of the donnybrook there could well be drowned out by the reverberating tumult at Old Trafford, so-called ‘neutral’ amphitheatre for the day.
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