Latest news with #enthusiasm
Daily Mail
22-07-2025
- Sport
- Daily Mail
Joey Jones obituary: The Liverpool legend had fists that pumped up the Kop and a challenge that could stop a tank, writes DOMINIC KING
The shake of his fists — that's what it was. Joey Jones only wanted to show he was doing his best but, unbeknown to him, he was creating a legacy. You only had to look at clips of him thundering down the left to understand what made him part of a team that conquered Europe twice. You only had to speak with him for a few minutes to appreciate why he was universally adored by those with whom he shared a dressing room. Jones, you see, played football with the same enthusiasm as those who came to watch him for Wrexham and Liverpool, for Chelsea and Huddersfield and for Wales, who capped him 72 times. He was blessed with rare gifts but knew how blessed he was to have a rare opportunity. 'I was very lucky not to be sent away to (an institute) for young offenders at one stage because of some of the things I got up to back home,' he once said. 'We weren't robbers or nothing like that, we'd just have punch-ups! I didn't need drink to get me going. I was nuts anyway.' So after those lung-bursting surges or those challenges that could have stopped a tank in its tracks, Jones would shake his fists to the Kop as a sign he was doing it all for them. So popular was the gesture, a connection between pitch and terrace, it followed him long into retirement. 'I get embarrassed really,' he once told 'Why did they like me? It's not going to be because of my football skills, is it! All I could do was give 150 per cent for them, not 100 per cent. 'But it's nice to be remembered for something. I've never professed to be anybody I wasn't.' That's what set him apart. Jones, who died aged 70 on Tuesday after a battle with illness, was the boy who grew up in a council flat in Llandudno where he had pictures of Liverpool players on his wall. One day he was idolising them from afar, the next he was training with them at Melwood. Jones, who signed for Liverpool in July 1975, became so popular during three seasons at Anfield that before their first European Cup final, a particularly witty banner was unfurled in recognition of him. 'Joey ate the frogs legs and made the Swiss roll,' it proclaimed, to acknowledge defeats of Saint-Etienne and FC Zurich. 'Now he's munching Gladbach.' 'It doesn't matter if it's Liverpool fans, Manchester United fans or whatever — they all remember the banner,' said Jones. 'It was the ultimate compliment, really. They made a banner like that for me? That meant everything.' So humbled was he by the gesture, Jones kept the banner at his home in north Wales — the area he loved so much he could never move away, not even when Chelsea signed him in 1982. He and Mickey Thomas, his best friend, would either commute to London on a daily basis or, occasionally, sleep in the fitness room. Most people wouldn't last three months doing that but Jones did the journey for three years, helping Chelsea win the Second Division in 1984. Thomas, who stayed by his side throughout, described himself as being 'heartbroken' that 'Sir Joey has left us'. The grief and emptiness is felt far and wide. You could not fail to be swept up in Jones's enthusiasm. To listen to him talk about games in which Wales had beaten England at the Racecourse Ground gave you shivers. Jones played in 1980, four days after England had beaten reigning world champions Argentina at Wembley, when Mike England's side obliterated their neighbours 4-1, and again in 1984 when a Mark Hughes goal settled the contest. 'The best way to describe the game was a 1-0 hiding,' Jones told me, chuckling down the phone. 'I'll tell you now, the celebrations were something else!' There will, in time, be a celebration of his life and rightly so. Jones, known as 'Mr Wrexham', made the first of 479 appearances for the club against Chester in 1973, with his last coming in 1992. He will be commemorated with a statue outside the Racecourse Ground. It will ensure, just like his shaking fists and that banner, that he will never be forgotten.
Globe and Mail
29-06-2025
- General
- Globe and Mail
Your lookahead horoscope: June 29, 2025
What level of success will you be aiming for over the coming year? Your birthday chart warns if you overextend yourself you could end up with a lot less than if you had aimed just a little bit lower. You don't need it all, that's just being greedy. Do something different over the coming week, something that disrupts your routine and forces you to come up with new solutions to problems that have been with you for quite a while. And remember, rules are there to be broken. There is always something higher to aim for in life and your priority for the coming week must be to set yourself targets that take you above and beyond what you thought you were capable of. Ambition plus enthusiasm equals success. Speak up and make sure your voice gets heard. There is a lot of background noise in your life at the moment, so stand on a chair and wave your arms about until you get everyone's attention. Then tell them all a few home truths. The most important thing now is that you do the right thing even if it costs you financially. Principle is way more important than profit, so don't count the cost of being honest, because in the long-term it will work massively in your favour. You may be in the mood to make a few waves but the planets suggest it might be best to keep a low profile during the early part of the week. The less you draw attention to yourself now the more room for manoeuvre you will have later on. Mercury, your ruler, is pretty active at the moment, and its link to power planet Pluto means you would be wise to watch what you say when dealing with people in positions of authority. If you come across as too critical they will hold it against you. Do you stick with what you know and trust or do you try something new and put your reputation on the line? Cosmic activity in the career area of your chart means if you don't make a move now you may regret being too timid later on. You may be tempted to call time on a project of some kind but why would you do that when so much is going in your favour? If you focus on the good stuff over the coming week you may find the bad stuff isn't so bad after all. The pace of life will heat up a lot over the coming week, so prepare yourself mentally and physically so you can get moving at a moment's notice. You won't get advance warning of when things start to change, so you've got to be ready. If something you have been working on for weeks or even months no longer inspires you then drop it and start something else. You are under no obligation to keep plugging away at a task that bores you so much you find it hard to stay awake. You will need to make a serious effort not to upset people both at home and at work this week. Even if they make the kind of mistakes that really annoy you, getting mad about it won't change a thing. Grin and bear it, for now. You may take pride in what you are doing but not everyone shares your enthusiasm. If other people's performance fails to live up to your high standards all you have to do is cut ties with them the first chance you get, which will be soon. Discover more about yourself at
Times
26-06-2025
- Business
- Times
‘Fine, get rid of the non-doms, but what's the plan to generate wealth?'
I n my working life lately I feel rather like a cast member of a failing West End production, desperately trying to get bums on seats, sell the play to uninterested punters and generally try to inject a sense of enthusiasm or, dare I say it, 'theatre' into the proceedings. I look at our white board (which lists the properties we have for sale, ranging from £2 million to £40 million) and know we've got some real corkers, sensibly priced too. We are coming to the end of the May and June 'season', historically the busiest and best time to sell as the international market is drawn to London. It's the time to be in the mix before summer holidays takes the wealthy and social away. But we've hardly had any viewings, and the conversations I'm having with clients are not feeling optimistic.
