With two football finals watched this season, and a third inexorably sweeping into view, there’s always the temptation to have some kind of ‘review of a season’. Fortunately, I’m not succumbing to that sort of nonsense, so instead I’m just going to talk about the sport I’ve seen or followed over the last week. Without really talking about the ‘sport’ part of it.

Where to start?

Final game of the season, Newcastle’s 3-1 defeat to Everton. Well, as I didn’t watch the game, didn’t see MOTD and as I was travelling to Stockport for most of the game itself sans radio, this game was a bit of a non-event for me. Newcastle lost. Bugger. But as it had a pretty negligible impact on the season overall, it’s easy to shrug that one off…

Next, Rangers vs Zenit. I was half-watching this, and half taking part in the pub quiz, but from what I could see Zenit were playing the more attractive football and probably deserved to win the game. The fact that one of the Russian chaps had a name that only someone with a puerile sense of humour would laugh at was of course … vastly amusing to me. For those of you who haven’t come across the gentleman before, it’s Mr. Arse-Shavin’. Or at least that’s the way everyone seems to pronounce Andrei Arshavin.

I was also glad that I was no longer in the vicinity of Manchester, having seen mobs of Rangers fans appearing a little … erm … grumpy… in Manchester city centre on the telly.

We also have the play-off round up: Doncaster won (yay!); Carlisle lost to Leeds (boo!); Bristol City beat Palace (boo! because of my residual Palace supporting instinct drummed into me by sharing a house with a Palace fan, but I’ve not got anything against Bristol City); Darlington lost (yay! I think; I believe now that I have Hartlepool connections I’m required to dislike Darlington — I’ll have to look into the small print on the marriage certificate to check); Hull reached the final too (yay!). Oh, and I think Stockport were the other play-off finalists, although after trying a few minutes, I was still unable to develop an opinion about them…

…but as I’m going to be working in the vicinity, I suppose I’ll have to come down on the side of yay! as I don’t want to risk offending anyone I’m going to come into contact with! (or at least, any more than usual…)

Then, the mighty Durham cricket team took on Yorkshire in a monumental tussle at the Riverside. Well, I say monumental tussle, but in reality by half-way through the second day I’d already decided not to send sarcastic text messages to my Yorkshire-supporting ex-colleague as it was plainly obvious to me Durham were going to win that one, and I’m sure he was aware of it too.

From a faintly sporting point of view, it was also nice to see Durham remember how to win games as their start to the season hadn’t exactly been world-beating prior to that point…

Finally, we come to the test match. England vs New Zealand. Except in this case it seemed to be England vs New Zealand vs the British Weather with the British Weather coming out on top, and very little cricket actually managing to get played. Typical, even the bloody weather can’t get it right. It’s only supposed to wash the game out if it looks like England are about to lose…

And then we’ve got Manchester United vs Chelsea to compete for the Champions League Final. On the one hand, I’m delighted that the two best clubs in Europe this year are English. On the other hand, I’m hoping that Chelsea don’t win it as frankly their style of football doesn’t deserve to qualify as continental champions. On the other, other hand, I don’t want Manchester United to win either, as I’m sick of them winning everything. But I’m guessing that the final will be one by one of the two.

It’s probably too much to hope for that the game will be awarded to Newcastle by default…