Latest news with #MichaelBridges
BBC News
23-05-2025
- Sport
- BBC News
'It's about who handles the occasion'
Former Sunderland striker Michael Bridges believes that Sunderland's play-off final against Sheffield United on Saturday (15:01 BST) will be decided by which team can cope with the pressure of the 46-year-old thinks that boss Regis Le Bris will play a large part in how his young squad react to the final."It's about who is going to get down there and handle the occasion," Bridges told BBC Radio Newcastle."As soon as that whistle blows and the white line fever kicks in, all the noise switches off. You go back into your world."I think from Regis Le Bris and what we've seen from the lads this season, everything that has been thrown at them, they have handled."Le Bris might be a quiet man but I think the lads have been nurtured in the right way and that's why I think they are geared up to do something very special."However, Sunderland have the youngest starting XI across the entire Championship and Bridges admits that inexperience played a part in his own play-off the 1997-98 season, Bridges reached the First Division play-off finals with the Black Cats; however then boss Peter Reid chose not to include him on the substitutes' bench."I was really nervous when I got to Wembley for the first time and I was a youngster as well," Bridges added."As much as I loved entertaining, I think the pressure got to me and Peter Reid recognised that and I had to sit that one out."Listen to the full interview and more on the Total Sport podcast.
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Yahoo
Cyclists gather to take part in Ride For Silence in Beaufort
BEAUFORT, N.C. (WNCT) — The annual Ride of Silence is an event taking place worldwide to honor cyclists who have been killed or injured while cycling on public roads. In Beaufort, a big group of locals got together to ride through the historic downtown and backroads all on bicycles. 'Years ago, I was involved in an accident riding my bike and it had taken quite a toll on me,' Outsiders Bike Club Member and Ride for Silence Organizer Patrick Kelly said. 'But here I am today, still riding and trying to advocate for people to be safe on.' The ride was also to help drivers remember to share the road with cyclists. 'For promoting that advocacy is key for safety, for not only our riders but also our drivers too,' Outsiders Bike Club Member Michael Bridges said. 'You got the town involved, town police escorting us through. So, that's really showing the presence of the bike there and then people like paying attention to that with like kids, older folks and, you know, all different types of people that are out riding.' For people who have been impacted by cycling injuries, rides like this can be emotional but they are important for increasing awareness to always be on the lookout for bicyclists on the road. 'Happy feelings. There was sad feelings. People here were thinking about people they know who have been in accidents,' Kelly said. 'One lady shared that she knew someone that was killed in an accident riding their bikes. So, you know, we had all the feelings tonight, but most importantly, there was a really good group of people out there enjoying themselves and we were sharing with the cycling community.' The ride through Beaufort was 4.7 miles and ended with drinks and fellowship at Fishtowne Brew House on Turner Street. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
New York Times
18-03-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
Why I Joined The Athletic: From falling in love with Sunderland to the fascinatingly messy world of football finance
On the face of it, my first game of football was a roaring success. Sunderland won 1-0 and six-year-old me watched the match without getting distracted. My dad had been clear that if the proceedings were of no interest to his son, he'd not be trying again for a few years. He needn't have wasted his breath. Advertisement My memories of that trip to Roker Park are blurred, a mixture of my own and those embedded in me through endless rewatches of that season's end-of-year review on VHS. That I just about wore out the tape chronicling a season in which Sunderland got relegated should be evidence enough of how strongly this new obsession took hold. I loved football instantly and, looking back now, I loved the sport's embrace of something that leads me to this very piece today: numbers. That was a time before digital scoreboards, and discovering the half-time scores in matches being played elsewhere required a little extra effort. On the back of the first matchday programme I ever held were that day's selected games, each one assigned a letter. On the manually updated scoreboard were those same letters, the half-time scores appeared on little cards next to them. I couldn't now tell you the other games happening that day, much less the half-time scores, but the memory of excitedly working out the various scorelines — then immediately dictating them to my dad — has never left me. It was probably around then that he realised he'd created a monster. Never having taken the slightest notice of football before, now I was smitten. Ten weeks after that home game in 1996 came a first away trip: Everton 1-3 Sunderland, Craig Russell and a Michael Bridges brace. A first defeat at Roker then followed a week later — another brace, this time from Wimbledon's Efan Ekoku — and with it came the realisation that, actually, Sunderland might not go unbeaten until the end of time. No matter. I was in it now, hooked for the long haul. This new obsession manifested itself in strange ways. I'd go to my grandparents' house armed with little more than a dice, a notepad and a pen, running through entirely made-up tournaments with glee (who knew there were so many 6-6 draws at the World Cup?) I gorged on results on Ceefax, waiting patiently for the page to flick over to the next set of scores. An uncle of mine christened me 'Statto' on the way home from that Everton trip. I'm in my thirties now and it's a nickname that still gets used today. Advertisement Life events are remembered by their proximity to key footballing dates. I'm not going to say I'd ever forget my anniversary, but it helps that Sunderland signed Jack Clarke on the day we got married (thankfully, the marriage has lasted longer than Clarke's time on Wearside did). On at least one occasion where a break was needed at an old workplace, my future wife (first meeting: two days after a 3-1 home win over Stoke City) and I 'entertained' a colleague by her throwing out fixture dates from Sunderland's 1996-97 season for me to respond with the opponents and result on that day and, more often than not, the goalscorers' names, too. Craig, if you're reading this, I promise we don't pass the time like that anymore. Please return our calls. Football was an early love, numbers alongside it, then writing sidled into view at a point I can't really remember. I'd always been a reader and at some stage, I turned my hand to jotting down my own stuff. Naturally, football was the first port of call. Efforts at converting it all into a serious venture were stilted; I opted instead for the security of an accountancy qualification, getting myself chartered and picking up scraps of scribbling where I could. In 2017, I wrote a book on Sunderland during my fleeting spare time (rather hurriedly, if I'm being honest) and that reignited the flame. Since then I've sought to marry the two worlds as best I can. It helped that interest in the finances of the sport has never been greater. PSR's march to join the likes of HT, FT, OG, xG and MOTD at the top of football's abbreviation stakes continues untrammelled. I found myself once more obsessed, this time with the money swirling around the game (though certainly not at every level of it), and set about building a database chock-full of financial facts and figures. I spotted a job opening at The Athletic, applied and, lo and behold, here I am, ready to serve as our first designated football finance writer. Advertisement It's a huge career shift for me. It's not without risk. It's also one of the easiest decisions I've ever made. It was in an article I read recently, lamenting London's lack of a daily newspaper now the Evening Standard has moved to weekly publication, that I stumbled across the perfect anecdote for why — and I say this without ego or hubris — I could only have made this shift to a small array of publications. In that piece, the author highlighted an instance of a single writer at a well-known daily in another British city filing '29 stories in two days for the paper's website… a story every half an hour'. That struck me as both a crying shame and wholly unsurprising. The number of outlets that invest in both their writers and their audience is slim and thinning. As a reader of The Athletic, you'll already know they are a staunch member of that dwindling group. Joining the staff means joining a publication that commits time and effort to bringing you the best of modern sportswriting, with insight and a level of quality only achievable through giving writers the best resources available. It means being able to hook into a network of journalists who excel in their field. And it means being able to give you, the reader, the detail and nuance a hurriedly written sliver of clickbait could never hope to achieve. When writing about the increasingly messy topic of money in football, there's little scope for dumbing down. These are, at least in a sporting context, increasingly important matters. On that note, this isn't just an opportunity for me. There'll be a necessary adjustment period as we figure out what works in this new area of coverage and what doesn't. That's where you lot come in. If there's something in the burgeoning field of football finance you can't believe nobody is looking at in sufficient depth, tell us. If there's anything — anything at all — that you think is a story in need of telling or investigating, let us know. You can do so in the comments below or you can send an email to cweatherspoon@ Advertisement We start this week with deep dives on some of England's largest clubs. There is intrigue to be found across the board, from Manchester United's much-publicised financial woes to Manchester City's seemingly unstoppable growth, from Arsenal's return to the game's top table to Liverpool's attempts, liked or loathed, to be as sustainable as possible. All of it will be covered in the coming days. Beyond that, the world really is our oyster. The 'top' clubs get plenty of eyeballs but in football, where money is involved, there are stories aplenty. Many of them are tales of woe, though not all. Brighton & Hove Albion and Brentford are the Premier League's good news stories, but there are plenty more below and beyond. Nor will the focus fall solely on individual clubs. We'll look at the lot, from FIFA on down, reaching into the often murky depths of football finance and pulling out the stories that matter, the ones that help shape the sport we all know and, for better or worse, still love today. I can't wait to get stuck into it. I hope you'll enjoy the journey with me.
