Findcate

John Terry’s bravery has brought him concussion, broken bones and painful wounds, but nothing as painful as the emotional trauma he suffered last night when, having stepped up to take the penalty that would have won the Champions League final, the Chelsea captain slipped and shot wide, off a post. As the tears flowed stronger than the Russian downpour, he looked inconsolable. He was a man in grief.

Avram Grant, the Chelsea first-team coach, has a perspective on life because of the traumas his family suffered in the Holocaust, but even he was struggling to find the words to ease the pain of Terry, who was white with shock.

It is hard enough for any player to miss a penalty, but the pain can only have been heightened for Terry, brought through at Chelsea, their captain, their leader and a man who had been deeply hurt by three semi-final failures in the Champions League.

The sympathy will only heighten at the revelation that Terry was not meant to be among Chelsea’s first five takers and would not have been had Didier Drogba not been sent off for his gentle but idiotic slap of Nemanja Vidic, the Manchester United defender, in the second half of extra time.

“He was not supposed to be in the first five,” Henk ten Cate, the Chelsea assistant manager, said. “John stepped up when he wasn’t supposed to. It’s unbelievable it happens to him. He slipped. We practised penalties so much all last week and he was very confident. We were all very confident. Penalties is a lottery and we got the short straw.”

We associate the English with a woeful lack of nerve when it comes to penalty shoot-outs, but it appears that it is only in the national colours. Liverpool won the Champions League in Istanbul in 2005 from the spot and there was a high quality last night, including from those Englishmen such as Michael Carrick, Lampard, Owen Hargreaves and Ashley Cole.

Indeed, the only miss before Terry’s left ankle turned over, Beckham-style, and he slipped as he took the kick had been, remarkably, from Cristiano Ronaldo with United’s third effort. It was an awful penalty, his stuttering run confusing himself rather than Petr Cech. The Chelsea goalkeeper held his nerve and Ronaldo’s shot was saved by the Czech Republic player, diving to his right.

Edwin van der Sar knew that he had to pull off something special and he thought he had done so with Chelsea’s fourth, from Ashley Cole. “I had been close to one or two, especially that one,” he said. But it was not skill that thwarted Terry. “It is our luck that he slipped,” Van der Sar said. Sir Alex Ferguson, the United manager, felt a rush of good vibes at that moment. “The slip from Terry gave us an opening and I felt from there we were going to win it,” he said.

Anderson scored United’s first in sudden death, Salomon Kalou struck back for Chelsea. Then Ryan Giggs, on the night he broke Sir Bobby Charlton’s record of appearances, stroked his home to leave Nicolas Anelka needing to score to keep his team in it.

Tags: ashley cole, avram grant, broken bones, cate, champion, champions league, champions league final, chelsea, downpour, emotional trauma, englishmen, extra time, henk, john terry, lampard, left ankle, manchester united, michael carrick, national colours, nemanja vidic, owen hargreaves, painful wounds, penalty shoot outs, short straw, sir alex ferguson, team coach, ten cate, traumas

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%26quot;Well, no, actually,%26quot; says Collingwood resident Nicola Basham, who formed an anti-plastic bag campaign group with friends Victoria Davis, Hazel Pearson and Alison Ramsay in November 2004.
%26quot;People used to collect their dog poo in newspaper, which works very well. They also used to wrap their rubbish in newspaper, and buy their meat from the butcher wrapped in newspaper, too, all of which are far better than plastic, because newspaper rots away in landfills, and plastic bags don%26#39;t.%26quot;
The four women formed the Golden Bay Bag Ladies to lobby for the eradication of plastic shopping bags, initially in their own back yard on the northwestern tip of the South Island, but hopefully, in time, throughout the whole country. They were alarmed to discover that the 5000 residents of Golden Bay use around one million plastic bags every year, while the entire country uses around 1.2 billion shopping bags in the same period.
%26quot;It became clear to us that the free plastic shopping bag is not really free at all. It has a substantial cost to retailers, to the environment, and to customers who pay extra on their goods to cover the cost of the things. Not only that, but we really don%26#39;t need them at all. There are plenty of sustainable alternatives.%26quot;
The Bag Ladies%26#39; website (www. plasticshoppingbagfree.org.nz) calls plastic bags %26quot;a frivolous emblem of our wasteful society%26quot;, pointing out that they use precious fossil fuels, fill up landfills, contribute to litter problems and harm livestock and wildlife when they are ingested. And during the 500 years they take to break down, nasty chemicals leach into waterways and into the food chain.
But how to beat the bag? The Bag Ladies decided to take a creative and constructive approach. Rather than merely petitioning bag importers or picketing bag-happy supermarkets, they tried to emphasise the positive aspects of people using their own containers.
Strategies included a stall dishing out free cloth bags to residents and visitors as they drove down the main road into the bay, a %26quot;Good Green Fairy%26quot; who dispensed donated prizes to those spotted using their own containers, a %26quot;Bag the Habit%26quot; poster campaign, and a cloth-bag painting competition in all of the area%26#39;s schools.
Then, after much lobbying, a triumph: in August 2005, the Bag Ladies%26#39; nearest shopping precinct, Collingwood, population 400, became the first town in New Zealand to become Plastic Shopping Bag Free.
%26quot;Collingwood was the first town in the country, and we%26#39;re very proud of that, but sadly, it%26#39;s still the only New Zealand town to have taken that step,%26quot; says Basham. %26quot;There are people trying to do similar things in Kaikoura, Devonport, Waiheke Island and Wanaka, but it%26#39;s a slow battle.%26quot;
Basham is positive about the current Sunday Star-Times campaign, in which shoppers at Foodtown, Woolworths and Countdown receive a free cloth bag when they buy a copy of the paper, because %26quot;every little bit helps%26quot;. But, she says other countries have far more progressive policies than here. In some places overseas, plastic bags are banned outright. Elsewhere, use is discouraged via levies.
%26quot;Germany, Switzerland and Holland have been plastic-bag free for 10 years or more. If you want a plastic bag in those countries, they charge you for it, so most people bring their own.
%26quot;Ireland is the same. They started putting a levy on plastic bags in 2002 so you had to pay about 10c for each one. Almost overnight, that reduced usage by 95%. People are quite happy to accept anything they think is free, but once they have to pay for it, they start to think about whether it%26#39;s worth the money or not. With plastic bags, most people decided to bring their own instead.%26quot;
Basham notes that the New Zealand government instigated a voluntary packaging accord in 2004, encouraging supermarkets to make a 20% reduction in plastic bag use within five years, but believes it doesn%26#39;t go far enough.
%26quot;Australia asked their supermarkets to reduce use by 50% over two years, and they achieved it! China has banned the manufacture of carrier bags from June this year, San Francisco put a levy on bags six months ago, and the UK has about 50 towns that are plastic-bag free now, since the first town did it last year.
%26quot;The fact is, a plastic shopping bag is only used for about one minute while you pick your things up, put them in your car, then unpack them at the other end, yet that bag will take 500 years to break down.
%26quot;That%26#39;s an environmental disaster. People might kid themselves that they%26#39;re doing the right thing by using those bags to pick up dog poo or line their rubbish bin, but really, they%26#39;re not. It doesn%26#39;t matter how many extra times you use it, your plastic supermarket bag will still end up as either litter or landfill in the end.%26quot;
* The bag ladies suggest:
Use cloth bags, baskets or cardboard boxes when you go shopping so you don%26#39;t have to accept plastic bags from retailers.
When you get your shopping home and unpack it, put your reuseable bags back in the boot of your car so they%26#39;re ready for next time.
Line your kitchen rubbish bin with newspaper, bread bags or potato bags rather than taking supermarket bags home for this use.
If you forget your reuseable bag, ask the retailer for a cardboard box. Encourage your local supermarket to make boxes available at the checkout.
Encourage your local supermarket manager to come up with incentives for customers to bring their own bags. For example, one Takaka supermarket allows those who bring their own bags to go into the draw for a free grocery voucher, and the Tesco supermarket chain in the UK gives extra points on customer loyalty cards for using their own bags.
Put your money where your mouth is. If you know that a retailer is plastic-bag free, support that store by buying your goods there.

Tags: extra time, Food, zeal

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