When I was a kid, there were two things you did on Saturday mornings.
You watched cartoons – that’s obvious.
You also watched Soccer Saturday.
Graham Leggat was the host. He was a friendly Scottish fellow, and somehow he had all the scores from all the games in all the leagues.
Vic Rauter and Graham Leggat in 2000.
Seriously, all of them. We’d get scores from the Czech league, where they played in the snow and used orange balls as a result.
He’d have a feature match of the week, which even then was already most likely to be from the English premiership. How that must have pained a proud Scotsman like him. He spent 8 years at Fulham in London (after 5 in Aberdeen), so he obviously didn’t have any disrespect for the English game.
He also seemed to always be full of belief. Soccer was the best, you could tell he thought.
Graham Leggat died on Saturday, aged 81.
He lived more than 40 years in Canada, first as a coach but most notably as a journalist. He did commentary during Canadian national team games, partnered with Vic Rauter.
In a statement released by TSN, Rauter said of his long-time colleague and friend: “It was a great honour to travel the country alongside Graham 20 weeks a year for six years of the Canadian Soccer League.
“Graham loved the game, the people who played it, and those who watched it. After all those years, he always said there was nothing like the smell of the freshly cut pitch prior to stepping on the field. To him, it was truly the beautiful game. He was loved and will be missed.”
On with your Morning Skate…
The Home Team
Things remain quiet on the Canucks front, though there were a couple small items over the weekend.
First we wrapped up our Canucks All-Time Playoffs series. Team Botchford-Gallagher faced down Team Chapman-McDonald in the final series. The teams were drafted earlier in the summer and we’ve run the showdowns throughout August. Botch stepped up to do the imagining of what a series between those two teams would look like…
Meanwhile, on Friday, word came out on what the Canucks’ 2015-2016 ticket structure would look like. They’ve added a couple new categories of tickets, and have added a twist: dynamic real-time pricing for single-ticket purchases.
What about those Reds
That didn’t quite go how the Whitecaps wanted on Saturday. Yes, they were always going to be under the gun, what with it being the third game of the week, with travel mixed in and the need to rotate the squad a bit.
But both Kendall Waston *and* Matias Laba facing down double-yellows? Both will miss the next match, which doesn’t come for another ten days.
There’s plenty of time to discuss what that means for the team.
Marc Weber has taken a look at the Whitecaps’ path to the playoffs, and while they could have found themselves in first place on Saturday with a game in hand, they still have a game in hand and could still overtake LA for first place. Five of their final seven games are at home, by the way.
Sign this fellow up:
Kanye causes a stir
Yes, it’s a chance to bring back ol’ Strombone.
South Africa is not a happy sports place
Despite what you might have taken from Invictus, South Africa is not a happy place. Racial troubles still run rampant. There are many, many people working to cure the country of what ails it, but there’s a long, long way to go.
News today that an group is seeking to block the Springboks from travelling to the U.K. ahead of next month’s opening of the Rugby World Cup has eyebrows raised around the globe.
The team isn’t diverse enough and head coach Heineke Meyer could have picked non-white players who are better than some of the white players he did pick, so the claim goes.
At the same time, the country’s leading trade union has come out in support of Meyer after earlier criticizing his selection policy.
New Blue Jays Boss
Mark Shapiro is set to join the Blue Jays as the new president. That’s a helluva hire. He’s done great things over the years in Cleveland. It’ll be interesting to see how the dynamic between him and Alex Anthopoulos plays out. AA has had quite the summer, so the Rogers folks would be smart to make sure he’s happy – they can’t be willing to let him walk, can they?
The Toronto Sun’s Ken Fidlin figures one of the appeals of Shapiro could be that the Rogers Centre is in need of refurbishment and the now-former Indians president oversaw huge renovations of Progressive Field, Cleveland’s ballpark.
As for the current Blue Jays enthusiasm, it all reminds Ed Willes of a team gone past; no not the 92 or 93 teams.
Limping Leos
LU took a few days off last week, just like the Lions. Both are back in action – for now anyway.
Sunday morning, the Lions made it official: A.C. Leonard is out. There are also likely to be changes on the defensive side of the ball. “Another necessity for a team still projecting the worst numbers without the ball since Brian Mulroney was prime minister,” he writes.
Brian Mulroney stepped down as PM in 1993, if you can’t remember.
Dream Chaser
Most of us aren’t as good at tennis as Matt Seeberger. But he’s still a lesson to us on not giving up.
This was a fun story to put together – it just fell in my lap, really. Seeberger’s wife, Kelly, is someone I know from way back, from when I was at UBC. She’s proof of why sometimes it’s a good idea to just keep people connected to you on Facebook: I wouldn’t have spotted the news that she and her husband were in Connecticut, hoping to make the US Open.
They lost, but I sent her a note anyway, thinking it would be a fun little blog post, or maybe a fun item for the Morning Skate. “Local couple makes crazy, fun run to doorstep of US Open” I thought might be my little headline.
The story turned out to be so much better.
Last Lap
Borussia Dortmund invited 220 Syrian refugees to their Thursday evening Europa League match vs. Norway’s Odds Ballklubb.
This is more refugees from the current migrant crisis than Britain has accepted – in total, the Independent notes.
Oliver Sacks was a wonderful public scientist. His book The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat offers fascinating insight into the mad miracle that is our brain. It’s very sad to see he’s died.
This story about Phil Kessel being spotted at one of Toronto’s best (many will insist *The Best*) burger joints is pretty fun:
This is a lot of dough:
To sign off, a look in with my favourite Twitter account, and I wasn’t even born in the 70s!
All folks, have a great rainy Monday!
J-Mac’s your man tomorrow.
