Topic: Sport
+Anonymous A — 10 months ago #67,981
IRISH GO FOR BOLD TO WIN BULG BATTLE
REPUBLIC OF IRELAND boss Heimir Hallgrimsson has urged his players to be more assertive if they want to complete a Nations League play-off victory over Bulgaria.
First-half headers from Finn Azaz and Matt Doherty secured a deserved 2-1 comeback success in the first leg of the promotion-relegation decider in Plovdiv.
Ireland responded well to the shock of Marin Petkov's sixth-minute opener, but offered little attacking threat in a stop- start second period.
Hallgrimsson's men hope to finish the job and remain in League B when Bulgaria visit the Aviva Stadium in Dublin.
"I don't think we have to change many things, but we obviously need to be a little bit less passive like we were in the second half," he said.
"We gave them a little bit of initiative in the second half, which we should not have done. We need to fix that and improve for the next game. "Maybe because we were winning and we haven't done much of that lately, you automatically tend to get a little bit more passive than we should and we need to correct that."
Victory in front of 1,000 travelling fans at a sparsely-populated Hristo Botev Stadium was a third in seven games since Hallgrimsson was appointed last summer.
The Icelander masterminded wins home and away against Finland during the group phase, but his team failed to score in their other four fixtures. including a 5-0 thrashing against England at Wembley.
"There's not been many wins and not many comebacks." Hallgrimsson said. "I'm pleased with the character and discipline we showed.
" I knew if we would do what we talked about in planning and training that we would have a good game.
"First half we did that: second half we didn't do it as well."
+Anonymous B — 10 months ago, 1 week later[T] [B] #673,954
+Anonymous C — 9 months ago, 1 week later, 2 weeks after the original post[T] [B] #674,165
Woeful Suns show Budenholzer the door
BY DAVID BRANDT
The Phoenix Suns fired coach Mike Budenholzer following one dismal season that featured a fast start before a maddening slide out of postseason contention for a high-priced roster that includes Kevin Durant, Devin Booker and Bradley Beal.
The Suns made the unsurprising announcement Monday, one day after they finished with a 36-46 record that put them 11th in the Western Conference. The Suns lost nine of their last 10 games and failed to qualify for the play-in tournament.
"Competing at the highest level remains our goal, and we failed to meet expectations this season," the team said in a statement. "Our fans deserve better. Change is needed."
Budenholzer, 55, was hired in May, replacing Frank Vogel, who also had a one-year tenure that ended in disappointment. Budenholzer, an Arizona native, won the NBA title with the Milwaukee Bucks in 2021, beating the Suns in six games in the Finals, and the hope was he could bring a title to the desert.
He didn't even come close.
The season began with optimism after the Suns started 8-1, but Durant went down with a calf strain that knocked the team into a tailspin. Even after the 15-time all-star returned a few weeks later, Phoenix was never able to recapture its early momentum. Budenholzer couldn't seem to settle on a regular rotation, with rookies Ryan Dunn and Oso Ighodaro playing big minutes one night before being benched the next. Center Jusuf Nurkic had an awful start to the season and complained about a lack of communication with Budenholzer - before being traded.
Booker and Durant stayed relatively healthy, but Beal had constant injury issues and missed more than 20 games in the regular season for a sixth straight year. The Suns tried to retool at the trade deadline, but Beal's no-trade clause and the team's salary cap status made major moves difficult.
Budenholzer has a 520-363 record (.589) over 11 seasons with the Atlanta Hawks, Bucks and Suns.
- Associated Press
+Anonymous D — 5 months ago, 4 months later, 5 months after the original post[T] [B] #676,344
TO HEAR
The Big Five-0 Live
Cold Chisel fans who cherished the band's powerful 50th anniversary tour last year - or those who missed out - can now experience the musical magic with this CD, vinyl, and DVD release, recorded at Melbourne's Sidney Myer Music Bowl last November. There are 28 songs from the band's rich catalogue - hits and a few deep cuts - and the DVD also features interviews with all the band members along with archival footage from their stellar career.
off the Mediterranean, and a navy-and-white-striped Chanel
+Anonymous E — 2 weeks ago, 4 months later, 9 months after the original post[T] [B] #678,531
SPOTLIGHT: NFL
Harbaugh poised to be Giants' next coach
BY MARK MASKE
John Harbaugh is headed to the New York Giants, with the first move of this NFL hiring cycle involving one of the most prominent coaches available.
The Giants and Harbaugh were working Thursday to complete a contract, according to two people familiar with the deliberations. Barring any last-minute complications, Harbaugh was expected to land with the Giants as the successor to Brian Daboll, the coach they fired in November.
Harbaugh, who was fired last week by the Baltimore Ravens, visited the Giants on Wednesday. He left without an agreement in place and was set to interview with other interested teams. Instead, the contract negotiations intensified late Wednesday and overnight. The two sides were still "working on it" Thursday morning to complete the deal, according to one of the people with knowledge of the discussions, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because no announcement of the hire had been made.
A meeting between Harbaugh and the Tennessee Titans that had been scheduled for Thursday was canceled as he worked on the deal with the Giants, according to the other person familiar with the talks.
Harbaugh spoke to each of the NFL teams with a coaching vacancy. The Titans and Atlanta Falcons appeared particularly interested. The Falcons said they interviewed him Monday.
But the Giants always seemed to be the favorite to get Harbaugh. They're a flagship NFL franchise located in the shadow of New York City, with a dormant winning tradition their next coach must recapture. Co-owners John Mara and Steve Tisch are well respected within the league. The Giants also have a core of young talent on their roster that includes quarterback Jaxson Dart, who just completed a rookie season in which he provided glimpses of stardom but also an intensity and exuberance that too often bordered on recklessness.
The Giants retained Joe Schoen as their general manager when they fired Daboll. It was not immediately clear whether they will make any front-office changes to accommodate Harbaugh's arrival.
Schoen did well in last year's draft. The Giants selected pass rusher Abdul Carter third overall and then traded back up into the opening round to get Dart at No. 25. Dart took over as the starter in the season's fourth game.
His play temporarily energized the team and its fan base. But his scrambles from the pocket too often were punctuated by him lowering his head and taking on a tackler rather than sliding safely.
Harbaugh, 63, moves on to the Giants after 18 seasons with the Ravens in which they reached the playoffs 12 times, won six AFC North titles and reached four AFC championship games. They won the Super Bowl title in the 2012 season with Joe Flacco as their quarterback. Harbaugh beat his brother Jim, then coaching the San Francisco 49ers, in that game.
+Anonymous F — 2 weeks ago, 2 days later, 9 months after the original post[T] [B] #678,598
Everybody sucks at first. As bad as you or worse. For a long time. The trick to getting better is to stop playing to win, but to play to learn, to enjoy hitting very small self-set goals one at a time, to enjoy all the losses along the way, and to recognize that not winning does not mean you are not improving.
We are conditioned by other video games to be used to winning all the time and being told how great we are that it becomes the assumed value of the experience every time we pick up a controller. But in fighting games the goal is not to win, the goal is to try to win, fail, and do your best to understand/remember why, and just try it again. Ask questions, share replays, watch others play your character, take notes, try stuff. Set small goals and FOCUS on them one at a time, recognize that you cannot practice one little thing and try to win the game at the same time, therefore you lose more and lose harder when you are actively improving. Sounds weird but it's the truth.
And it's not a fast process; many of those small goals will take hundreds or thousands of attempts. But that's why it feels so good to pull it off, and why it's so cool to watch others do it. It's supposed to be hard. Failing is not bad, it is necessary to eventually succeed. If achieving a small goal is leveling up, then failing is racking up experience points. It gains you familiarity, you recognize the mistake faster, you get quicker and quicker at realizing the mistake, closer and closer to your hands doing what your brain is telling them to do. There are dozens of little steps for every little thing and situation between not knowing what to do at all and doing that thing consistently. It's not yes/no, it's a matter of invisible measures. And it's all about that familiarity, feeling the situation in your hands and seeing/hearing it on the screen. So every single failure is actually good. When you turn the game off, pat yourself on the back for putting the time in - that time is always contributing to your improvement in small ways even if you can't see it. It's like losing weight, you're not gonna notice every pound dropped. If you need proof, save your replays, go back once in a while and watch a replay from 1-3 months ago depending on how frequently you play. It's always so easy to keep looking at the top of the mountain that we forget to stop, turn around, and look back at how far we've climbed.
Find a game that's fun to lose at. Find a character you love to just move around and hit people with. Enjoy the vibes, the music. Put on your own music if it helps (it helps me). Find people to play with who will chat with you and help you and tell you when you're improving, and take their word for it. Playing fighting games alone will only make you miserable and get you trapped in your own head.
The vast majority of us lose more than we win, and go on thinking we suck no matter how good we get. Odds are you are better than you think you are too. But nobody cares how good you are. They are on their own journey. Enjoy yours because there is no final destination.
And even keeping all this in mind is easier said than done. These games force us to practice presence, positivity, patience, and self-compassion. Even improving your mindset in one of these ways can be its own goal. Remind yourself before/after/during every session as often as you have to.
Hope this helps. It might all be stuff you already know but we all have to be reminded from time to time. Just keep having fun and you will be there before you know it, stop caring about "being good" and you will ironically start improving a lot faster.