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Harry Kewell
Harry Kewell looking young. Photograph: Tom Jenkins
Harry Kewell looking young. Photograph: Tom Jenkins

Our favourite things this week: from La Liga's smallest club to prehistoric fishing

This article is more than 9 years old

Featuring the award-winning Harry Kewell, Eibar v Barcelona, Ireland’s greatest athlete, the future of the Six Nations and the noble world of autograph hunters

1) Gone spearfishin

It’s stating the obvious, but not enough websites are like the New York Times. While so many other publications are busy chasing each other’s tales in a race to the bottom, the Times go a little off-piste and dig out interesting and fresh stories. Last week they gave us a short film about the greatest bowling story ever told and this week they have brought us a picture gallery about spearfishing.

Every year a group of fishermen in Wisconsin take to the water with their five-prong spears hoping to nab a sturgeon, a species of fish that has been swimming in those waters since the dinosaurs walked the earth. In the picture below, local fisherman Steve Krueger shows off his catch of the day.

If you're fishing for dinosaurs, a rod won't cut it. You're going to want a spear. Photos: http://t.co/o4aCajJcj1 pic.twitter.com/I3Nkip0hAr

— Jeffrey Furticella (@jefurticella) March 20, 2015

2) This Is Eibar

Eibar are the smallest club in La Liga. They have the smallest budget, the smallest stadium and are based in a town that is home to just 28,000 people. To put that in some context, the Camp Nou can hold 99,354 fans. Barcelona exist in a different stratosphere, but the two clubs met at Eibar’s stadium, the 5,250-capacity Estadio Municipal de Ipurua, last week. To mark the occasion Copa90 produced this short film charting the unlikely rise of Spain’s newest and most loveable underdogs.

3) How Portsmouth FC came back from the brink

And, in a similar vein, this is Portsmouth:

4) It’s time to reward rugby’s risk-takers

A lot of people took last Saturday’s remarkable Six Nations finale as proof that the format of the competition is in fine health and should not be changed. Matt Williams, the Australian rugby coach and Second Captains contributor, sees things differently. Throughout the tournament Williams argued that, if the northern hemisphere teams want to win the Rugby World Cup later this year, they are going to have to beat New Zealand or South Africa, and to do so they will have to play running rugby and score some tries. But the Six Nations tournament does not encourage teams to play with the ball in hand.

In the first four rounds of Six Nations fixtures coaches played it safe, prioritising their defences, as they had no incentive to run up a lot of tries. Last Saturday’s unique situation, with Wales, Ireland and England having to chase their games, gave the teams a proper reason to pick up the ball, pass it around at pace and test themselves as attacking entities.

The teams were given a taste of what they will face against the southern hemisphere sides at the World Cup and Williams thinks it should nudge the Six Nations organisers towards introducing bonus points for tries in future competitions:

The points-scoring system of the Six Nations has not changed since the 1800s, so in previous rounds there were only two points on offer. The coaches had little to gain from playing attacking rugby, so they risked very little. On Saturday, with the trophy up for grabs, the two competition points were irrelevant. Scoring points was essential. In Rome, London and Edinburgh, there was the proof that running rugby in Six Nations games can be wonderful to behold. The style of rugby played was equal to anything in the south. To all of those who have been haranguing me with their excuses on why in Six Nations rugby you cannot possibly play running rugby – because of the weather, the tradition, the games are too tense, the referees are different – the weekend’s games proved that those excuses are a crock of lies. So all of you burdened and weighed down, with those ancient feelings of northern hemisphere guilt and inhibition, you are now free to cast off your yoke of a kicking game. Brothers and sisters of the northern hemisphere, you are saved. You are free to love the running game. Go forth and spread the good news about the game they play in heaven.

5) Where are the PFA young players of the 1990s now?

Lee Sharpe playing for Manchester United in 1990. Photograph: Bob Thomas/Getty Images

The PFA honoured eight burgeoning footballers with their Young Player of the Year award in the 1990s. Three of them played for Manchester United; two played for Liverpool; one played for Newcastle; one played for Arsenal; and one played for Leeds United. Sam Dunning of Eight by Eight magazine has the details.

6) Spartak Moscow help their oldest fan

When Spartak Moscow heard that Otto Fischer, their 102-year-old fan, had been robbed of his life savings, they organised a whip-round to help him out. The pensioner, who had been saving up his money for his great-granddaughter, was the victim of a particularly cruel crime. A man pretending to be a local social worker knocked on his door and asked to come in. Fischer welcomed the stranger into his house, from where he stole 730,000 rubles (£8,500). When the club and other fans heard about Fischer’s troubles, they started fundraising. “We immediately called the person looking after Otto Fischer and asked him for his bank account number,” said Oleg Semyonov, head of Spartak’s fan club. “Then we published it on various football fan sites, and supporters – not just of Spartak – were invited to take part.”

102-летний болельщик московского *Спартака* Отто Фишер. pic.twitter.com/BZeBsqDtDF

— Григорий Дроздов (@DrozdovGrigoriy) March 22, 2015

7) Inside the weird, noble world of autograph collectors

If videos were supposed to have killed radio stars, then surely selfies will spell the end for autographs. That logic might appeal to Shane Warne but collectors are not fond of being rebuffed. John Stillman met a few of them for Vice Sports. They are an intriguing bunch. By way of introduction, here is his first paragraph:

Brian Flam has spent a good part of the last 30 years sending letters to relative nobodies and toting cartons of baseball cards from his Maryland home to cities up and down the eastern seaboard in pursuit of scrawls legible only to a select few. By all relevant accounts, Flam is a master of the craft of autograph seeking, known within the field as graphing. The roughly 150,000 signed cards, filed into 5,000-count boxes that line the walls of his home office, testify to this distinction. Aspiring graphers seek his counsel on topics such as his preferred pen (the Staedtler Lumocolor, fine-point, blue) and canvas (ideally an officially-issued trading card, but the 3.5” by 2.5” “Autograph Card” of Flam’s own engineering works in extenuating circumstances). Flam focuses on Minor League Baseball but not to the exclusion of the big leagues. He collects the signatures of Hall of Famers on two separate balls, one for “real Hall of Famers” and another for “scrub Hall of Famers,” a material distinction he explains by posing the question: “Do you really want Bruce Sutter touching the same ball that Mickey Mantle signed?”

8) Lost Destinations

These might look good on your walls.

Highbury
Highbury. Design by Dorothy.

9) Vox in the box

Sid Lowe talks to The Set Pieces about football journalism, academia and how having a PhD in history can be useful.

10) Ireland’s greatest sportsman has retired

A few years ago Brian O’Driscoll was asked if he is Ireland’s greatest ever sportsman. His reply probably confused the gathered press: “That would be the hurler Henry Shefflin,” said O’Driscoll. “This guy has been an absolute phenomenon for the last 12 or 13 years. He’s won nine All-Ireland championships with his county and they’re not easy to come by.” Shefflin now has 10 All-Irelands. As Tomás Mulcahy puts it in this piece for RTE, his greatest attribute was that he had it all.

11) Where sport meets climate change

Regular Guardian readers will have seen our new keep it in the ground campaign. Climate change is not the most accessible topic but the professional ice climber Will Gadd makes a very simple and effective case about how the planet is suffering in this sitdown chat with Vice Sports:

“Everywhere I go in the world, it’s warmer. People say: ‘We used to have six months of winter but now we have three.’ I was in Ilulissat, Greenland, where they are building a skateboard ramp for the kids because now they get five months of skateboard weather in Greenland, where they used to get two. I don’t need reams of scientific research; I can just look. In my world it’s dead clear that things are radically changing.”

A sitdown with Will Gadd

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