Author: bowlingatvincent

marathon boy

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who were we running for or from

when we could run?

who?

in our endless unstockinged feet

with that endless dizzy lope towards the tape –

the tape that drew us and wrapped us like mummies.

who ran alongside?

was it a lifelong friend who carried us through

their heart transporting ours?

or a stranger – or twenty thousand – who twinkled their encouragement?

i can’t remember.

there was the race –

my pop PB-ed, i think

but unconfirmed.

then, before we know it,

tightly, the pull-string

on the rucksack of my heart

is tugged.

and i think

i think a cheer goes up.

i can’t remember.

A kind of ugliness?

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Before…

Chelsea – or as we in either our pomp or our provincial density call them ‘Chelski’ – have long been a symbol of metropolitan arrogance; we’ve hated them for that for yonks.  Way before the Putinesque assassin with silencered WOMP secreted about his black leather jacket wafted poisonously in.  We hated Chopper Harris – with some moral justification.  We hated Peter Osgood for his flashy bird-pulling brilliance and whiff of Kings Road boutiques.  Less obviously, we even hated David Webb for his (surely fake?) stolid yeomanhood, believing that to be the sole preserve of Northerners like er… Nemanja Vidic.  Chelsea were and are, easy to hate.

Man City are more recent arrivals at this general bile-fest.  Traditionally they had been pretty close to admirable, what with their perennial hopelessness just very rarely – like Once in a Blue Moonish, actually – spoiled by the classy shimmies and undeniable running of a Colin Bell or somebody.  (Rodney Marsh did complicate this other half of Mancunian experience by coming over all gaudy Landun The-attah on us at one stage – but this is simply a historical aberration; clearly he should have moved across to The Bridge, not Up North.)  No, City are a 21st century horror; one created entirely out of The Prem’s seduction by ‘Arab (or somebody Other’s) Money’.  Suddenly, we’re all lost in a sandstorm where the barchans are made of banknotes; where the origins of everything are unknowable; where there really is no foundation.

Chelsea got there first – before City, anyway – with the money thing.  Abramovic bought success and stuck around, presiding in a fashion we can only speculate about, his degree of control/interference/dictation being (again) unknowable.  The club has been his though.  Championships and even a turgid but triumphant Champions League campaign have followed, with (in my view) shockingly little dissent from the fans over his utterly amoral metier.  Managers have been brutally hoofed in a way that suggests Abramovic is indeed both a brute and a geezer ‘oo don’t knar ‘is fackin’ futtee.  Eventually and quite possibly ironically he has a frazzled, destabilised Benitez somewhere near the helm.  The club has gone from flash to kindof sordid, has it not?  You could only be proud of Chelsea, as a fan, in an aggressive/defensive kindofaway; not proud of how the club is.

In this respect City have come towards Chelsea.  The cheap blitz of wealth and acquisition now having passed through that anschluss/honeymoon phase into something truly hollow but still competitive.  Players who clearly owe negligible allegiance to the City Cause – but Big Name players.  Factions.  Noises off.  A kind of ugliness, symbolised (and I attempt to reflect the cruelty and bad taste of the average opposition fan here, perhaps foolishly) by the unattractive fizzog, as well as the unattractive activity of the boy Tevez.  City as some brash new ego-maniac brand; sometimes sparkling, sometimes depressingly disappointing; a metaphor for the new age in and out of the game.  For all these reasons, today’s cup semi is no popularity contest.

After…

The game was nearly fabulous.  Certainly exciting, with a coronary-inducing openness and that familiar stamp of a footie match where defenders often looked like they simply could not be arsed to defend.  (Surely this is weirdly and maybe disturbingly characteristic of the current Premiership?)  Unfortunately this was not the only stamp of note – Aguero two-footedly clumping Luiz in a fashion that should have seen him dismissed – he wasn’t.

It would, however,  be churlish to overstate that moment of callousness in a game that had much to recommend.  From the opening, City were bright and penetrative, bristling with ideas and running power; Chelsea were simply overrun.  Out wide and central, where Mikel was displaying either the nerves or the qualities of a rather ordinary player (you delete…) the disciplinarian structuralist Rafa’s posse were ragged, whilst the faux-bully classicist-fascist male-model Mancini’s unruly horde were impressively ON IT.  So no surprise – indeed predictably – that symbol of thin undeservinghood Nasri (see earlier gripes/continue at will) bundled through with some good fortune to notch a goal; for himself mainly… but also his estranged team… and yeh, the supporters.  I didn’t see Mancini’s reaction; I suspect a shrug and a turn away.

It took Chelsea a good half-hour to turn up.  By then we had seen frailties all round the park, including the obvious thing around there being too many diminutive ball-players in midfield – an alarmingly counter-Rafa state of affairs that continues, rather charmingly.  Notable I thought was Azpilcueta’s discomfort; with like everything.  The Blues (in black) did need Ramires and Mikel to enter meaningful contact with the game.  They continued to refuse all offers, though they did come, for City – with Milner again in infuriatingly one-paced and wasteful mode – were far from perfect.  ‘Twas one nil at the break and this seemed about right.

I have been known to air my displeasure at City’s striker’s greed around the box, as though this was in some way emblematic of yaknow, their selfishness and the shameless humbug that is free-market egonomics.  This persisted today, for me.  Tevez and Aguero seemed as likely to square one to each other for a tap-in as Arthur Scargill is to read the eulogy at the #Thatcher funeral.  Whether this single-mindedness (stroke greed) is coached at City I can’t say.  It suits my purposes, I guess, to continue to use it against them, in an unlicensed moral fury, until they grow up and jolly-well pass to each other. The point is this game could have been over had they showed any public-spiritedness of the sort that tends to form an essential part of a sports team; not at City, apparently.

Aguero, as if shut up folks like me who maybe under-appreciate his brilliance, scored with a header.  Then Ba, on the half-turn, following poor defending, got Chelsea back in it.  There followed a period where City, in their turn, drifted and sat, giving Oscar and co the chance to create and me the time to indulge reservations about the clunkiness of Barry as Oscar and co breezed past him.  (Couple of years ago both Barry and Milner looked proper England players; now they could barely be more limited, more uninspiring; what happened?  Oh – they’re England players!!)  On the plus side this meant the match was pretty close to exhilarating at times, as Chelsea poured forward for the inevitable equaliser.  It never came.  City won.

Many of us have mixed feelings about football being in the hands of people who don’t know the game, or worse still could never convince us they want to listen to our understandings of its daft joys.  In that way there are parallels with capitalist politics, yes?  (He asked, absurdly.)  Maybe I’m a pompous arse but I am not entirely able to untangle my feelings about these clubs/this match from the crassness and delusion and cynicism at the heart of the contemporary game.  Chelsea FC and Manchester City FC, as well as having some of the world’s significant footballing talents to call upon, represent now a lot of stuff that ain’t good.  I don’t say them alone… but they are the apex of a crappy Premiership triangle; or maybe polygon; or maybe something bit more insidiously amorphous.

Things aren’t simple anymore; the exposure is so massive, the intensity so SO unreally high definition that we are being invited to pay homage rather than view.  This troubles me.  Odd to be so dissenting of a really pretty captivating match?  Perhaps.  Perhaps.

Stand Down Margaret.

~ bowlingatvincent ~ 2 Comments

So she finally did step down from that jewel-encrusted carriage; her head dizzy with accolades, with glorious confusion, the baying crowd perceived as purring kittens to her leonine, English majesty. She descended smoothly, unaided, to some lavender field – it should be stiff with barley? – in that singing niche of her memory that for her, forever, might be if not Ingerland, then Grantham. And as she walks, from that shop, from that street, into the butter-cupped facsimile of that rural idyll, the parting crops do then draw up to attention… and the birds stop… and the limp sun stills above the willow. Because (she thinks, or somebody thinks) something major has happened.

And maybe it has – unless I dreamed it? Maybe there was an event as well as a death. Maybe we have to concede that? And then… in what way do we rejoice?

A rake of us – a simmering multitude with every bit as much gumption and fight and ‘conviction’ as she – many of us recoil from both that faux English idyll and the idolatry, the (in our view) slightly weird, slightly perverse adulation for this woman. A woman we link to some blanched – or maybe that should be scorched? – Englishness. A brutalist and therefore hugely uncultured (opposite of) outlook. A leadenness too; dull and grey and introspective in the worst of ways – bigoted, actually – reeking memorably of contempt for the most fundamental human rights in say… South Africa, as though Apartheid itself was some acceptable province of this Way We Were nation. (Mrs Thatcher, remember, led when it came to propping up the dying racist regime in the pre-rainbow nation. Should we celebrate the memory of that, I wonder?)

Even those of us who happen to be blokes, who think it was kindof great that a woman got to be PM are denied the possibility of respecting this woman. Most of us knew already, pre the coiffured barnet, accent and manner that Thatcher’s obvious bitterness, that vile and one-dimensional and utterly hypocritical (no apology for labouring this one!) ‘conviction’ against the trackie-wearing classes, The Immigrants and The Homosexuals would make many of us squirm with shame or rage. The fact that she blew a historic opportunity for Britwomankind by being an utter and malevolent donkey in the role of PM has almost passed us by, such was the magnitude of her dislocating pomp.

She was sexless and yet quasi-regal, love-fodder for the dumb fawners and the prejudiced. The Mail invented her surely – she must have been pressed out of a centre-page special entitled Ideal Dictators? I can’t explain her any other way. The thought of her (and I know it ain’t jus’ me because we’ve been talking, right?) simply does my head in.

She got at us personally, I suppose, one way or another. In my case, we were yeh… close. Having been born and spent the first twenty-odd years of my life in Grimsby, I moved to London to work as a photographer’s assistant in what is atmospherically describable as The Thatcher Era. I had no money and shared a room in a rundown, terraced housing association gaff with one of my brothers. Hilgrove Road. It was great yet completely crappy in a way that we didn’t mind but that made parental visits unthinkable. Stepping outside the door though and walking the couple of hundred yards up to Swiss Cottage was a revelation to this particular smalltown boy. I had never really seen posh motors – Porsches, Jaguars, Rolls Royces – down here it was crawling with them. How did that work?

Now I know this car thing may not stand up as anything other than duff anecdotal opinion but it had real meaning for me, it was true – it became truer, in fact – that there was money here in a way that had never remotely been suggested Up North. Moreover as this admittedly crass osmosis of the divisive character of Elite Southness became better enriched by my experience/observation, so my political and I think philosophical oeuvre cobbled itself together; directed (if cobbling can be directed?) by Thatcherism. It became obvious that the most humungously cynical fix was going on; put simply, that the Tories were fixing it for The South. Because it didn’t matter in terms of votes or constituencies or voices how much mithering The North got up to… the South, under Thatcher won out. A massive and indeed overwhelming number of safe Tory seats in the London area effectively farted in the face of the rest.

We all knew that was what was going on. Politicking of the rawest and most unsophisticated kind. Parliament entrapped. Toffs and Tories flicking a superior brand of the V’s, whilst busloads of Home Counties-returning coppers flashed their wage packets at incandescent miners. It was deeply ugly; a legacy I was reminded of last night when a friend, having howled when the subject turned to a possible State Funeral, suggested a burial more appropriate, in her view.

Sling the old witch down a fackin’ mine-shaft. (And yes, for the record, my friend is an Essex girl. And yes, she would be right in wanting me to point out that I AM AWARE poverty and discrimination existed in the South too during this period but I stand by my identification of a very real North-South divide – construct or function though that may have been of a regional and possibly parochial standpoint. And she is with me and I am with her on the notion that Thatcher quite deliberately set us against each other… and incidentally, what does that remind you of?)

Recently (and here I’m not speaking of any reactions to the death – I’m avoiding media on the subject pretty entirely) there appears a rather sickening fashion for appreciating Mrs T’s determination and commitment to things she believed in. I’m not having that. Why credit the prejudices, the immoralities in fact, of a world leader in bulldozing folks apart? My most crucially politically-formative years were spent in a great city-state which barely acknowledged the existence of Another Country out there. Or more exactly knew all about it but didn’t give a toss. Because an allegedly strong woman was making allegedly tough decisions. I came to see her then and over time as a shrill weakling; a brittle, thin-blooded creature who plastered on thick the slap of bravery and ‘conviction’. I never believed a word – and I still don’t.

My/your Cricket Club; Junior Coaching – a proposal.

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The bigger picture: I’m in the market for slinging ideas around and would be happy if those triggered pretty much any kind of response. This is a friendly challenge – even if you reject it in a patronised huff.

So there is no suggestion here that the My/your club ‘model’ is necessarily broken, merely (like everything else) we can maybe improve it. We can and should challenge ourselves to do better… and before the cries go up, this is not remotely the same as ‘being too serious for our lot’.

One of the things we might do better, for example, is to INCREASE the amount of fun/entertainment we offer. More than anything, perhaps, we should look to avoid DRIFT; preparation and reflection can help us do this.

Our responsibilities as coaches/cricket people are what? Amongst many other things…

  • To develop players towards excellence?
  • To animate and enthuse?
  • To ensure everyone remains healthy and safe.

To achieve these things what do we need? All 3 demand some planning; whether or not this is back of a fag-packet stuff or immaculate tables of options and measurements. Do something that works for you. I know what time pressures are all about!

My general proposal is that we become better focussed and more dynamic by setting out our objectives – perhaps our individual sessions? – significantly more clearly. Far from ‘putting young players off’, I think that we will retain and entertain our young players if we offer them something that leads them somewhere, something other than just a hit, a throw, a bowl. Statistically, we are losing players from the game in the mid-late teens; I think this is partly because coaches let sessions drift. So it’s difficult to avoid this notion that we need to plan things. As an example if we ask ourselves what (broadly) we might need to cover with our young players, we might suggest

  • Core skills
  • The generic game – an understanding of what you do
  • Team needs

Then we need to address how best to offer up these skills. I’m suggesting a flexible coaching plan (weather!) where ideally we set out OBJECTIVES for individual sessions and for the season, with age-appropriate, challenging drills. Think through percentages of time spent on the three chief disciplines; think about how – and how much – technical information you give out. Think about maintaining energy and focus throughout sessions in particular – think about how you can minimise drift. As coaches I’d suggest that an important part of what we do is both an assessment of how players are doing… and how well our sessions have gone… and relationships (the link, if any) between the two things. Plus is there a way that we can support each other on what we do? Should we be having a monthly pow-wow to keep up to speed with player’s progress and our own delivery? Is a sort of hierarchy unhelpful or helpful in all that – who’s ‘judging’ who? I think we come back to that word ‘supporting‘ here, hopefully? Nets. Nets are the obvious example of where most clubs underachieve; we do! Far too often some bloke gets padded up and smashes through the ball for twenty minutes before somebody else does the same. Meanwhile bowlers bowl too much/too casually/without any real commitment. This must change. We need (and I would argue that the young players need)

  • less nets/better nets
  • clear objectives set by the coach – specific shots/specific gaps?
  • a considered and challenging environment which seeks to replicate match conditions
  • in other words, FOCUS
  • better attention to SAFETY ISSUES.

We need cones to mark out where fielders are, we need two batsmen who actually run, we need CHALLENGES and DISCUSSION and LEADERSHIP from the coach. We need reasons to be doing what we’re doing. I think this is a really good cricket club and I’ve always felt privileged to be involved; that doesn’t mean, unfortunately, that the status quo here is good enough. Whether we like it or not, we are facing all sorts of challenges – financial/competition from other clubs or sports/apathy amongst players and the general population(?) All these are arguments for improvement – for change. With this in mind I am asking those that are comfortable with the idea to firstly consider what their best contribution to the coaching of their allotted age-group might look like, then produce a plan for 4 weeks of coaching. Simple and short as you like – a brief outline for 4 sessions – meaning a paragraph or 2, that we can discuss and maybe share. If you want to go on and offer a longer view for the season – great. I think that would be a real step forward. This is not us getting too boring and serious; it’s us being more dynamic – really adding value to what we do – whilst bumping up the energy, the entertainment.

Understandings.

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Is it just me that thinks that Rio – in his admittedly low-voltage kindofaway – appears to want to give off both something of the guru and the gangsta? (And I ask this in the awareness of the danger of slapping stereotype upon racial slight or slackness here.) He’s got a certain power in that low-geared, almost ambling style of his that diffuses itself into ‘projects’, some of which conflict. Is he, for example (or is anyone else, mind?) really an anti-gun/knife, pro pro-empowerment-thru-education, unfaithful metro-renaissance man with what appear to be occasional flashes of lefty intelligence, who identifies with black urban music and an oppressed worldview… and produces/approves films/music with a worryingly confrontational dynamic? If so how does that all work? And why am I wondering that?

It’s partly, of course, because I’m a white geezer who really doesn’t understand or know the territory – I accept that. But it’s also because we are, right now, by his centrality to the England selection fiasco, pretty much bound to wonder at his integrity – maybe at his level of maturity (even) – given the undeniably childish way this Hodgson/Terry/Fergie/Rio/Qatari/Spinal Rehabgate thing is unravelling. In brief the er… highlights;

1. In a previous life, Hodgson foolishly chooses Terry over Ferdinand

2. Rio sulks but continues to radiate that god’s-gift sweeperaciousness whilst nonchalantly easing round the park…

3. so as to make ultimate re-selection an inevitability.

4. When the call comes, Rio snubs…

5. And Hodgson shrugs…

6. And ‘statements’ come out…

7. And they all sound like cobblers. Embarrassing cobblers.

8. Essentially, Rio has apparently done everything to exact a kind of revenge upon Hodgson, the FA, and the universe. It’s garbage – all of it. Sez yer average fan.

Now might be the time to say that Rio Ferdinand – even allowing for the debilitating injuries (particularly, I imagine the back injuries) – has been close to the best centre-back England has ever produced. If he had remained free from pain and boundlessly agile, I think he may even have been England’s finest player all round. He is one of few who can stop people playing whilst caressing the ball about the place. He can head, tackle, read the game at a level far higher than most; then he brings in that composure, that comfort on the ball and his peers – let’s say like John Terry – look quite quite ordinary by comparison. Fit, he would have been the best centre-half in the world, as Ferguson said he might be on the day he signed for United. For emphasis, I want to repeat that he’s been pretty damn close to the best centre-half in the world whilst playing hurt for years; he’s that good.

But now this. The potential for yahboosuckery has been there for some time. Without being party to the (entirely normal, actually?) clique-making proclivities amongst the Engerland FC elite, it’s been clear that Mardy-Bums lurk. Ferdinand – wow, I realise that this is such a contentious thing to write about him – appears to be an individual (amongst several – black and/or white) – with a chip on his shoulder. Therefore unlikely to accept the vagaries of a new gaffer’s policy on this or that should it clash heavily with his own needs and indeed self-image. I imagine Ferdinand can’t stand any of Hodgson, Cole or Terry and these feelings are likely reciprocated. What is a wee bit tiresome here is the fact of Engerland’s Need.

Egos. Mountainous and cavernous and generally all-round large and hairy interveneth. And it clangs against our – the punter, the fan’s – sense of what is good and right about Playing For Your Country, however dodgily old-fashioned (or not?) that concept may be. A big lump of the universe thinks that playing footie for his/her country really is an Ultimate. Yanking up those formerly Umbro socks, trotting out to wave at an openly weeping cluster of friends near the Royal Box, ritualistically parping mucous out the nozzy as the ref counts down the seconds. Ultimate. So what… what’s happened to those standards, those understandings? Given that Rio is still, currently, our best centre-back?

There is an assumption that few modern players appreciate the import of these classically traditional/tribal feelings in the way that Stanley Matthews or even Stanley Bowles did. That yes or no from the England Boss meant a huge amount. Dads did blub; mums did flutter with a pride that wasn’t all nationalistic mania; it contained or described even a kind of love. It may well still be out there, in fact; it’s just that we feel overwhelmingly that such is the absurd and cosseted and raw self-important nature of the average Premiership beast that these things typically just don’t matter like they did. (Whether this in itself is a phenomenon to regret or to celebrate, by the way, is another fascinating, quasi-political matter – but one for another time.) Certainly the modern elite pro’ doesn’t need to care about much; he is either rich or obscenely rich; there are no worries about security or profile; when every need is so luxuriously taken care of a certain smugness surely sets in. (Generally.)

Footballers are not known for their sensitivity or intelligence; though the game has changed, the prevalence of gambolling youff or over-coiffured senior – now with ‘people’ – has persisted. Rio is not one of the Grade A posers, being quietly cool rather than fawningly fashion-conscious. He’s grown out of a fair amount, moving further towards that genuinely exclusive club where players who are held as true exemplars draw the phrase ” Aww, he’s a player he is”, (or similar) from supporters home and away. He’s class and that’s been obvious for ten or twelve years. But this England thing ain’t classy.

Certain papers will have a field day with the trip to the Middle East to spice up coverage of the England game. Considering the allegedly stringent requirements of Ferdinand’s Injury Management Schedule, Rio could hardly have been taking the piss more effectively had he first run to Qatar, then scored the winner for Montenegro on the way back. That’s a YAH-BOO-SUCKS of a fairly exaggerated quality. It’s hard not to equate this with a turning his back on England, as some unfortunately very public tit-for-tat effort unworthy of too much of our attention. But gor blimey look how much attention it’s gonna get…

How we wish to calibrate this on the rebellionometer will naturally depend on where we sit on the issue of nationalistic fervour-as-community spirit(-ometer.) Whilst not understanding (and certainly not knowing in grim detail) half the nuances of half the Fergiesque mind-games that have been played out in the last few days, I do understand the following concept, arisen like a bedraggled moggy where there should be three lions; disappointment.

 

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Six Dimensions.

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Through that haze of beer and banter the single most memorable thing about Wales’ outstanding defeat of England is simply that it was a fabulous sporting occasion. Whether you were there, in the pub (like me), or at home flying miserable solo. I have little no doubt that even you residents of Billy-No-Matesville found the telly-throbbing energy of the thing compensating pretty entirely for your (on reflection) shocking absence from Cardiff itself. Meanwhile in the er… Six Dimensions of the pub I can tell you it was fierce and joyous and fun.

This is a unique fixture anyway – we all know that. Ludicrous or not, the hairy-arsed oval-ball diehards and the clean-cut and the metro-sexually svelte amongst the Welsh would pretty uniformly trade failure elsewhere in order to win this one. Because it’s England. The argument that this seepage of energy in a single direction may effectively undermine more serious campaigns against (for example) the Tri-nations elite barely penetrates the national consciousness here. Blame Owain Glyndwr or Dylan Thomas or Ivor The Engine if you will. Or watch Alun Wynne-Jones (that’s Al-leeen, by the way) sing ‘Mae hen wlad fy’n hadau’ then just go with the irresistible flow of it – the Taffness of it – because the scope of this one is not, in fact, to be described. Only to be felt. It felt extraordinary yesterday.

What you don’t see outside the principality is that huge numbers of ordinary Welsh people – old/young/sporty/non-sporty – get their red kit on and join in. There is a kind of post-Boyceian National Grid running off the generally good-natured but admittedly fast-twitch-fibrous boozy nationalism centred around the capital. On days like yesterday, with England in town, with the roof closed, with Everything To Play For, the Millenium Stadium itself does generate something special. The word ‘atmosphere’ falls short; this being something simultaneously cathartic and communally-shared, inspiringly epic and piercingly, soul-searchingly intimate – for players and crowd. So deal with that, England.

Pre-match there was speculation around the relative inexperience amongst Lancaster’s side, specifically the lack of Millenium experience. It was one of many sub-plots to the contest that alcohol-fuelled or fuelling cod-psychologists such as myself raised with our glasses. Who might be brave enough to be calm in such a maelstrom? Farrell? Possibly. Young/Launchbury/Marler/Goode? Who knows? Clearly there was an advantage for the homesters – might this really tell? Within about six minutes, it had.

Wales absolutely de-stroyed the English pack at an early scrum… and then again… and the pattern was effectively set. A retreating England reverting to conservative type (understandably) but crucially feeding the glowering opposition possession, via more or less aimless kicks from Goode, Youngs and Farrell. Kicks which fell either deliberately or accidentally several yards beyond any follow-up chase. If the policy was to hoist and sit back and defend resulting charges with composed resolution, both the law of averages and the intimidating scenario mitigated against success. Wales (or anybody else half-decent) will hurt you if you give them 70% of the ball. Most likely, kicks were nervously over-hoofed.

Wales dominated every area and as the game grew, so did that domination. Robshaw started well but was ultimately swamped under the outstanding Welsh back row – where Tipuric matched at least the excellence and ferocity of Warburton. Wood and Croft seemed near-irrelevant. Likewise Tuilagi, the one possible source of loose canonry from the whites. The most natural of the English runners took his eye off a perfectly catchable pass half-way through the first half and was never seen again as an attacking force. Ashton – who quite frankly had no right to have set foot on the park, given his desperate contribution to the tournament – made only a further decisive grab for the individual wooden spoon, as worst player in the #6nations. This the most obvious error by the England management.

Beyond that, Lancaster and co sat back and went through their full, eighty minute grimace routine. The irresistibility of the Welsh was to most a thing of some wonder… but not, I suspect, for the watching Rowntree, Farrell Senior and Lancaster himself. Rowntree will know he has to take a long hard look at himself and his forwards, post the mangling they received in every facet of play. The fly-half’s dad will not either have enjoyed much of what he saw. His son stood up to be counted with a huge second half hit in midfield that momentarily stemmed the flow but even that defiant clump counted for little. Remarkably, Wales were not just winning the championship, they were absolutely rampant, with Cuthbert scorching in for two tries as the scoreboard went into Cymro-dreamland.

The tempo of the Welsh game, upped from the outset by a re-energised Phillips enabled an unthinkable demolition of a previously doughty English defence. Momentum is maybe the word of the sporting decade; here Wales had it in spades, in lorry-loads; they were mining it. After maybe five minutes of parity, at no time in the game did England threaten. But think on that. Even when looking an effective side, they have looked somewhat toothless, have they not? Goode and Brown seeming competent or composed often enough but rarely menacing. As chirper-in-chief Austin Healey has said, they still lack magic.

At the Millenium, with Barritt looking a solid defender but little else and Tuilagi as absent as any white from the line-breaking stats, Wales indulged. Roberts finally found some form, making headway for the first time for aeons. Davies ran with belief and both Cuthbert and North cut through. Wales – the team and the nation – could barely believe its luck; full-on and wonderful indulgence followed. It looked, sounded and felt spectacular; like top, top international rugby football does.

It’s unwise I know to use words like ‘massacre’ in the sporting context. But that was what we were saying, in the pub, when the screen said 30-3. You wondered, looking at good English players being repeatedly over-run or out-flanked or out-fought by this Brotherhood of Redness, whether the occasion had swallowed them, or had their limitations been simply found out? Or more exactly I wondered that – the rest of Wales was bouncing now, in (and I don’t mean this critically!) dumb euphoria at a win against the English.

Afterwards and later – yes – the ifs. Principally, ‘If Wales had turned up in the first forty against Ireland… blahdiblah’. They didn’t. As England were here, Wales were simply blown away that day – that one half – by the passion and the belief and the pace of the opposition. Otherwise, obviously, a Welsh Slam. That both the Irish and the French should have such crushingly disappointing tournaments – such bad ones – maybe does reflect the ordinariness of some of the fare. Perhaps this #6nations did need a carnival farewell ? Thank you for that to Wales and the Welsh.

 

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Bute Park Divers.

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I walked that millennium way

My hurry a commonplace in the eye of the border

And the riverbank

My breath in unison with the joggers and the students,

The bud-killing cold some amber glory

But the stands as silent as the fish.

The whistle of that city bustle no doubt stilled

After the game that swallowed him

For no man in its dream of Jonah or of Jaws

Drunk well on its remembering.

I bounced on,

Drawn to the bridges.

The flush of youth is here

Craning for trout, or bikes, or signs

The students in their lycra shoals

Miked up to saccharoidal bliss,

Found within their luminous buzz.

Who is lost amongst the cityfolks?

Distracted, scarfless in the permafrost.

Is it cold, cold in there

Where the tiddlers dream who won?

Not traipsing off to Ely or to Eden

By foot or boozy mini-cab

I flank the water.

I wasn’t close – and yet I was.

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

Because some dumb people still aren’t getting it…

bowlingatvincent's avatarbowlingatvincent

Encouragingly, this sport thing won’t go away. As both a political argument and a philosophic one it’s stayed present because like some shirt hoisted into a euphorically-stacked crowd, it draws loads of us. Our instincts kick in around it. Essentially, we’ll grab a hold, thank you very much and we’ll pull as hard as we need to establish our part – our ownership maybes.

Young and old, man and woman. Think of those around you, think of the things that animate them, that light them up with either joy or fury or the most hilarious disproportion; probably sport. The lines blurring magically over whom, exactly, is taking part; everything coalescing around some need to play or join or represent.

I know not everyone gets it. (Shame.) At a time when we as a nation have greater need than ever for obesity-reducing running about the place, we can easily side-step fears…

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Catch.

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

That soft sphere clasped in her blind ‘basket’

Those four eyes handling.

The adrenalin shaking out its fur.

She goes again.

Through that matrix of fraught failure,

Dry-lipped and unexpressing

This little girl is nearly smiling.

Again.

Airborne – she and the tiny earth together

Palmed out towards the radar

Of her own blurred universe.

She grabs; it falls.

By now the room is watching.

Again – a hopeful exhortation

From Dan and Jack and Rhodri bach –

Again.

They know this is not rocket science,

They know that it’s not luck

That coaxes or coordinates such things.

But I’m the coach. Not pre-disposed I hope

To seek for epic confirmations, lightning bolts.

A gentle word.

With barely a flicker, she raises hands.

We lend our focus and the ball… lands.

Proper grand.

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

So they got beat. Two blokes in the world think Nani’s dangle was dangerous – Roy Keane and the Turkish ref – and that was that. Madrid go through. United’s chorus of howling dissent and ‘moral’ outrage means nowt against those figures on the ole scaw-bored; 1-2. (2-3.) As Brucie might have said; ‘Alex – you’re my favourite – but I’m sorry you have to leave us.’

Pre the unsatisfying, water-treading, lop-sidedly engineered finale however, this one did pulsate nicely. In the manner of a proper big cup match, the much-criticised atmosphere at Old Trafford seething with real support as well as a respectable dollop of Real support. ‘Twas an occasion, eh? Personally, I’d been scurrying around all day in a heroically faux frenzy so as to engineer that essential headspace/sofa-berth for The Entire Thing – so difficult that one, given the cloying inconveniences of …well, life. But it just had to be done, right? In my case this meant going ballistic on the work front then simply absconding from every domestic responsibility presenting itself; or getting it done rapid. So it was in splendid familial absence that I entered that glorious bubble just in time to see team news flip up on twitter. It was then (doctor) that the pulsations first began.

Ferguson had unsurprisingly surprised us. In that (come on, be honest!) raw, deeply perverse Scottish psyche-to-trample-on-all-psyches (of his) he’d er… pulled out a plum… or a peach, or something fruiticiously quasi-triumphant and maybe whiffing of claret. A team selection all of us had to read four times before saying o-kay through a plainly discombobulated pseudo-reflective fug. A team-sheet so left-field it seemed likely that Muammur Gadhaffi – allegedly farter-in-chief at the Union of Farting Weirdos – must surely have parped it out Fergiewards from the sidelines in the sky, through a series of inspired, presumably Glaswegian cloud-symbols. A nominal midfield of Nani, Carrick, Cleverley, Wellbeck and Giggs. And Vidic ahead of Evans. And RVP up top solo… and no Rooney. Fabulous, mind-contorting stuff for the watching world but on reflection – for Fergie – simply a game plan. One without the ruggedly rugged one.

My personal nervy perusal of the line-up went pretty much as follows, in fact; WOW – Nani in; WOW, Vidic, not Evans!! The Rooneything did not, entirely, surprise me, given Ferguson’s occasional need to Firmly Establish That The Club Is Bigger Than Anyone and the player’s patchy form. Incidentally, I loved and respected the with-holding of Giggs from the Norwich game to allow a fitting and world-wide doffing of caps in this magnificent moment. Being no fan of Arbeloa, I could see the thinking (ish) re the call on Nani… but thought and think it was muddled – irrespective of the freakish red card issue. (Nani is sometimes unplayable but for me, he is too often absent – simply lacking the backbone for the big night.) Brave calls aboundeth, I thought, but before we give him the hair-dryer let’s take a second or two to rate and respect the amount of faith Sir Alex was necessarily displaying in the likes of Welbeck and Cleverley in particular. Top stuff. Pity they lost.

They lost because a tremulous winger in the tradition of lightweight, tricksy non-tackling mediterranean Pat Nevins was deemed to have crossed the threshold of what is acceptable in terms of raising your boot against an opponent. Nani, in following an aerial ball across his body in anticipation of ‘bringing down’ said ball, raised his right foot 4 foot 3 and a quarter as he pivoted. Either he was completely unaware of the approach of Arbeloa or he wasn’t. If the latter is the case then it is conceivable he knew –and indeed intended to make contact – or not. The various possibilities, let’s face it, are likely to be sieved through our own prejudices for and against the player/the club. As a player you know what you mean to do but as a spectator upon this one… difficult. I am clear that it was a yellow because it was not sufficiently dangerous or spiteful to be red, accident or no.

However, this conception of mine that there is a relevance to any ‘degree’ or sufficiency of danger may or may not be extant in the rules. As with seemingly every other high-profile transgression, we’re into this minefield of how or whether things can be judged ‘consistently.’ For me – they can’t. We aim for consistency of course but the dull MOTD chorus around this needs… needs to grow up, actually and think. We need good decisions on a million subtly different fouls or challenges or abuses of the laws. Scenarios which are as varied as the opinions upon them. It makes no sense then to simply bawl about consistency (from referees) when offences are manifestly not the same in degree of intent/violence/seriousness or otherwise. We need a referee who will discriminate well – an intelligent judge – over one applying some ludicrously crude and limiting letter-of-the-law. Let’s hope that we get lots of these kinds of refs, who can make and articulately justify such decisions, because then we will have consistently good football justice. So – even if there was a flicker of cowardly dangling or fishing with the foot by Nani – yellow!

Twenty-four hours after the event several things still fascinate. Firstly the notion that United, in playing a kindof retro-Brit longish, quickish, possession-negligent way, sitting alarmingly deep in the manner of an England side at a World Cup, invited the opposition to a) to get comfortable in the cauldron b) play. Consequently, while the home side scurried and scuffed and lashed the ball aimlessly forward in the first 30 minutes in particular, Real picked their passes. Ronaldo and co, without capitalising, did receive the ball in space around the box or out front. Maybe United got off rather lightly, early doors, as the initial pattern of the game was for Madrid to enjoy it whilst a wasteful and possibly tense United got it over with.

Surely United needed pressure? By all means play with pace but also with control? Get the crowd in there with you. Crucially, really test the Real back four – which ain’t (arguably) that special.

Time flashed past but there was little in the way of coherent passing movement from the reds. Undoubted positives included the mobility and willingness of Welbeck and the in-out dynamism and comfort of Cleverley. If the former ever turns goal-scorer (which sadly I doubt) he will be a near complete player. Giggs grew and got more vital as the game turned against him – a tribute in itself to his fitness, ability and love of the club. He hit more outstanding passes than anyone on the park. Van Persie, cruelly for United, has just hit one of those inevitable dips at utterly the wrong time; he looked quite like an ordinary striker. With things hardly fluent, that tendency to hurry or snatch a little remained.

Defensively United may have gotten away with this drop off and let them play thing if 11 men had persisted. I did think it was an error to play Vidic and Ferdinand together against such a fleet-footed and imaginative opponent but in truth these two elite stoppers were reasonably comfortable until Nani departed. But when United were reduced to ten and continued to sit deep, they were ruthlessly exposed. Ronaldo’s cute reach and Modric’s emphatic hit were in their separate ways, expressions of a high order.

One view of the game – not a popular one, or an easy one to take, perhaps – might be that Real’s composure was markedly and obviously better than United’s and that therefore their regal whitenesses represented some truly elite level of the game that United could not stretch to.(?) Overall they may be the classier – the better side. However I doubt we would be saying that had Nani stayed on and the beginnings of a Red Surge gathered towards irresistible home victory – something that seemed quite possible around the fifty minute mark.

A shame that this proper-grand and evocative sports-drama was undermined by a single issue. United lie 12 points ahead in the Premiership and will certainly be champions – so back next year. Back with the energy of Cleverley and the still-developing cool and quiet authority of Carrick. Plus the lethal brilliance of Van Persie and who knows… maybe that Rooney lad? Expect acquisitions front and back and a renewed purpose; Ferguson will want another thrash at it, methinks. They will be a force again.

This year, despite their near-unseemly dominance at domestic level, I have rarely thought the Red Devils good enough to win the Champions League. Real Madrid though, may be that good.