An amazing day’s rugby in the English Premiership, though sadly it seems that all the wrong teams are winning (at least from my point of view). Thankfully Bath are still in the playoffs, though if Stevens and Mears are seriously injured I don’t fancy their chances. Will, you must be gutted. I know I am, and I’m not even a ‘Quins fan.
Why does Zemanta think I’m writing about Aussie Rules?
May is an absurdly busy time for sports. Here’s a quick round up on things I’m following.
In rugby Leinster have won the Celtic League with a victory over the Dragons. Cardiff look to place second. The English premiership is wide open, with my local team, Bath, emerging strongly at the end of the season and currently topping the league, with one game to play (though teams below them have games in hand). I won’t say too much about the Super 14 as I know Kevin has matches from this weekend downloaded to watch, but the ‘Canes do seem to be having a good season.
There’s not a lot of cricket in England due to the rain, but Somerset did score a notable victory yesterday, chasing down 286 to win an one-day game against Hampshire. Their one County Championship match vanished into the Manchester rain.
The Snooker World Championships are on TV, but I don’t have time to watch them. I gather Ronnie is in awesome form.
And much to my surprise, the Sharks are still alive in the Stanley Cup playoffs. Game #6 tomorrow in Dallas, and another must-win.
Sorry if all this sport is boring people, but I’m much too tired to write anything that requires rational argument.
So, the question you haven’t all been asking yourselves is, “what did Kevin get me for my birthday?” Well, it was a DVD of a rugby match. But not any rugby match. It is 1973, at Cardiff Arms Park, and Gareth Edwards leads the Barbarians all-star team out for a match against the mighty All Blacks. The game will become legendary, and the style of play exhibited will serve as an ideal to which rugby administrators (outside England) will aspire for decades to come.
As well as Edwards, the Barbarians team includes many members of the famous 1970s Welsh side: Phil Bennet, JPR Williams, John Dawes, John Bevan and Derek Quinnell, to name but a few. It also contains giants of the Irish game: Mike Gibson, Willie John McBride and Fergus Slattery, plus possibly the greatest ever English rugby player, the mercurial David Duckham. This being the 70s, the All Black side sports the unlikely facial hair of Sid Going and Grant Batty. To be honest, the speed and aggression are not up to the standard of the modern game, but considering that these guys were all amateurs it is very impressive indeed.
Nice job boys, this makes up for the Heineken Cup embarrassment (though really you should have won both). Now how’s about sorting out that Magners League position, eh?
Well, that was a fun evening. As Kevin reports in comments on his post, the Consul-General has a very nice house near the Presidio just a few doors down from Diane Feinstein’s place. It was quite a small gathering, and it wasn’t full of venture capitalists as I had feared, so I actually got to talk to the Vice Chancellor a bit. I was delighted to hear that my former colleagues in the Department of Oceanography now have proper research vessels and can swan off the to Seychelles to do their research rather than have to bob around on small boats on Southampton Water like we did in my day. There are also some interesting new developments going on. All I’m saying for now is that one of the things that the VC mentioned perked my interest and the first thing I did on getting home was to email Cory.
Oh yes, and it turned out that the Consul-General is a Welsh rugby fan and as soon as I get back to the UK I am getting a copy of this.
Suddenly I have a reason to go to Paris. A 21 foot long giant squid has arrived in the French Museum of Natural History. And it is a real squid – caught off New Zealand, and with its innards “plastinated” to prevent it from decaying and ponging, and allowing it to be displayed outside of a formaldehyde-filled jar. The squid is called “Wheke”, which is short for “Te Wheke o Muturangi”. That’s not a Hurricanes war cry.
Yes, it is St. Paddy’s Day once more. The green beer will doubtless be flowing in pubs around the world. Having seen what passes for “Irishness” in Australia and America, I’m rather relieved that St. David’s Day doesn’t get the same treatment. However, not everyone goes in for the Celtic Cuteness thing. John Scalzi does a pretty good job of representing Irish culture. In a similar but related vein, here are a few things he missed.
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Wow, that was a busy one. There will be more posts coming today, but for now I just want to do a quick comment on sporting stuff. Obviously I’m still on cloud 9 over the Welsh Grand Slam, and I expect to be there for some time to come. However, congratulations are also due to the England cricket team for starting to get their act together in New Zealand. It looked messy at times, but a win is a win. Congratulations also to Lewis Hamilton for starting off the season in fine form, and to the seriously cute Nico Rosberg for his first podium finish. If Melbourne is anything to go by, it will be a great Grand Prix season.
That’s my boys! 🙂
Wales 29-12 France. Five wins out of five. Normal service has been restored, and all is right with the rugby world.
Not that I actually saw any of it. It isn’t available on TV over here, and anyway I was stuck at a conference in Berkeley all day. Kevin kindly kept an eye on the Internet for me, and txtd the result to me. Fortunately we’d just broken for lunch, though the other people at my lunch table did wonder why I suddenly left up and punched the air. Weird people, these Brits.
Work, jet-lag, weekend conference to attend, SF in SF reading, BASFA, off to ICFA. And of that wasn’t enough, there’s the cricket (thank you, Auckland, for helping Jimmy Anderson get match fit), the rugby (Welsh Grand Slam on the way?), and the start of the new Formula 1 season. I need a clone.
Wales went to Ireland today more in hope than in expectation. The Irish are a top-rated side whose performances over the course of the tournament had shown steady improvement. They would also be playing at home. Most of the pundits, therefore, predicted an Irish win.
For the first 20 minutes it seemed as if they would be proved correct. But from the point where Mike Phillips wrestled Shane Horgan away from the try line, preventing what seemed like a certain Irish score, Wales began to boss the game. And they continue to boss it even through having Phillips and Martyn Williams sin-binned for silly professional fouls. A little bit of magic from the twinkling feet of Shane Williams was all that was needed to secure a very confident and professional win. We all know that this Welsh side can play, but it seems like they now know how to keep their collective heads as well, even if the occasional hot-head loses his.
Ireland 12-16 Wales
Bring on the French.
In Edinburgh we saw what happens when two side with no imagination or ambition and little talent get to play each other in dreadful conditions. Still, congratulations to Jonny Wilkinson for becoming the leading points scorer in international rugby history (even if he did have a dreadful game) and to Scotland for giving the English a taste of their own medicine.
A few weeks ago I talked about the rampant inconsistency of citing commissions in rugby. I’m afraid it has happened again.
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47-8 That will do nicely.
Even more so because in some ways the Italians played better today than they have before. That lad Marcato has promise. I’m pretty sure that they will win one game this year.
Meanwhile, lots more TV to come. I’ll be back.
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Almost Six Nations time again, and we can look forward to a couple of titanic cross-channel bouts. Italy visit Wales, and England travel to France.
One thing you can say about our continental cousins, they never let a little thing like a game of rugby get in the way of the serious business of sex. Consequently, if you want to be one of the glamor boys who plays for Stade Français in Paris, not only do you have to wear pink, you also get asked to pose for their annual nude calendar. Wow, do these guys have muscle.
And if that stuff is to your liking you might want to check out this blog. The English and French versions appear to have different content.
I missed the first 15 minutes of the game because Liz and I were shopping in Covent Garden. This meant that I missed all of the good English play. From the half time replays they seem to have scored two good tries. There was no sign of them being able to score any more in the rest of the game. The second quarter was about 50:50, and Italy bossed the second half. Fortunately for England, the Italians had no penetration either. The one try that they scored came from a horrible Cipriani mistake (Will Greenwood will make Stuart Barnes life insufferable on Rugby Club next week, I suspect). Still, with the score at 19-23 with 5 minutes to play we were set up for another frantic finish. Credit to England for not going to pieces they way they did against Wales.
Having seen Italy play twice, I’m reasonably confident that Wales can beat then. They showed very little penetration in both games. They continue to give away silly penalties. Their lineout is vulnerable. And I got the impression that their back line is sometimes reluctant to go into contact. Time and again I saw them pass too early and allow the incoming England tackler to follow the ball and close down the move.
England, I think, are just about good enough to beat the hapless Scots, but will get cut to pieces by Ireland and France unless they improve their game a lot.
Well, a win is a win, and 30-15 is a pretty comfortable win. However, Wales still need to improve. They did score some good tries (even if one of them was slightly dubious) and they defended well. Scotland never looked like scoring other than through Patterson’s boot, but Wales should never have given him five opportunities to kick goals. Their discipline needs working on. And they should have scored several more tries. Execution needs working on as well. Still, it was good to see Peel and Jones come on and take control when it was needed. It is always good to know that we can tighten things up if the need arises.
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Is pretty much as I expected. Alix Popham will doubtless be a bit upset, but he does need to work on his discipline at rucks. I’m not sure what it is that Mark Jones did wrong, but I’m trusting to Gatland and Edwards on this one. Gareth Delve is a very promising player, and I’m pleased to see him getting a chance. I’m also delighted to see Dwayne Peel on his way back from injury.
Over at Crooked Timber Michael Bérubé has Joe Buck and Troy Aikman debating what it means to be off the field. It is hilarious.
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Well, no. Other people have made the baseball joke already. It was a great game, but compared to other events of the weekend it was nothing to sing about.
When the BBC asked their pundits to predict the outcome of the tournament Keith Wood made a comment along the lines of it being hard to make predictions until you have have seen the first round of matches. He’s right. It is a short tournament, and you never quite know how the teams will shape up coming into it. Now, however, with the first round of games behind us, things are much clearer.
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