DAVIS CUP 2012 - E-A Zone I - GBR v Slovakia - 10-12 Feb

lynne wrote:Please let us know if you receive an e-mail back from the lady(cough!)have you tried tweeting Steven might be quicker!!!.......Good Luck Maureen!!

Cheers Lynne...will do. Will wait for Steven and see if he can help before I round on "the lady".

Just came on here trying to work out what you were trying to DM about!

Since the start of last October, Andy has played 91 matches in total (according to ITF, i.e. including DC and Hopman Cup but not pure exos like Kooyong):

72 singles matches (W 56 L 16)
17 men's doubles matches (W 11 L 6)
2 mixed doubles matches (W 0 L 2)

Those figures exclude the walkover win against Cilic at Queen's and the walkover loss against the Americans in Hopman Cup but include matches where his opponent retired after the match had started.

Of course, that's a lot more matches than most footballers play in a year and they only play 90 minutes at a time (I doubt many of Muzz's matches were that fast), with 10 other players on the pitch to share the load.

Having said that, I think all this talk of strikes is going a bit too far, though the media has of course blown Andy's comments about that way out of proportion.

I agree that the players do have a very good point and it would be great if they and the powers that be could get together and agree some improvements that might help extend the careers of everyone, not just the top players.

However, there is more than one side to the story and Rafa in particular seems very inconsistent and not very constructive in his arguments at the moment (i.e. all moaning and no solutions), though that may be because his English isn't quite good enough to express himself clearly about complex stuff like this and with luck he's a bit more coherent in private.

Having said that, this really isn't the thread to be discussing all this, so I might try and find the right thread for it, copy this post to it and delete it from here!

Thanks Steven. Amanda Platell claimed that this year 2011 Andy has played 87 matches which averages out at one and a half games per week. Before I send an e-mail to her wanted to know if a)what she has said is correct re matches in 2011 and b)if one and a half games per week is accurate. She is a particularly nasty journo who mocks mercilessly the Royals, Andy and other celebs. Please include every match Andy has played since Jan 1st as I really want to sock it to her.

Glad you mentioned the footballers Steven. The top ones get ridiculous amounts of money whch they receive whether or not they play or however rubbish they are on a particular day. Neither do they have to spend a great deal of time travelling the world between different time zones and living in hotels. And they dont have to play seven matches in a over a period of two weeks in top tournaments.

And I read the other day that a top golf tournament pays a top prize of $10 million! I don't know if that's true, but even if it's a tenth of that it's a lot of money for a lot less effort than tennis.

I have never heard of Amanda Platell, and hopefully will never encounter her articles, wherever she publishes them.