Author: bowlingatvincent

And now… only in America…

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I’ve been cruising websites and earwigging certain individuals in Canada and the States… so the tone of this piece cannot, repeat cannot be cynical.

Judging from reliable sources (let’s get the contradictions in terms in early) rugby in North America is on the burst.  Or perhaps more exactly the attack coach is making a convincing case to The Girls for a stunning three-quarter move.  Or he’s rehearsing what he might say later, when the guys get in after school/work.   Because it’s an amateur game, right?

No, dude.  The first Pro contracts have just been agreed for Eagles Rugby Sevens – a huge step.  Beyond this, a confirmed bid for the Rugby World Cup 2023 is beginning to shake its ass; a cusp of something approaches, another frontier presents itself…and America engages.

Olympic money – rugby 7’s becomes an Olympic sport for Rio 2016 – has been shovelled in to fund 23 professional (7’s) contracts at USA Rugby.  And this month CEO Nigel Melville, formerly of Wasps and England has talked openly of discussions aimed at bids for either Rugby World Cup 2023 or 2027.  Bids which may be joint efforts with Canada, where both Vancouver and Toronto are seen as viable bases.  NBC is also now covering the Collegiate Rugby Championship to be played next June.  All of which is brilliant news that should be universally greeted by whoops and yankeedoodles, yes?  Well nearly.

NBC’s involvement is clearly major, enabling a hike in the profile of the game nation-wide.  But that also means that TV-related issues clump into the foreground.  So, for example, NBC have authority to guide choices not just about how things might look, but about which teams get invited to participate in the showdown.  As a consequence, certain college teams have been omitted to accommodate those with a higher (existing) sporting profile.  Currently, this is no meritocracy – brands being more important than well… anything.

This has of course led to proper disgruntlement amongst some proper fans of proper teams.  Interviewed in RUGBYMAG.com Collegiate Championship Director Donal Walsh admitted as much but spoke of the need to build towards genuine qualification(s) over time:

“If we bring forward marquee brands at this stage of the tournament, it validates everything we’re doing to promote the sport”.

Therein lies a central difficulty; how to get recognition and acceptance of a magnificent game in a continent where scale is huge in every sense and where TV effectively controls or chooses nearly everything.  But despite issues around levels of purity, grinning excitement of a kind familiar to most of us surrounds the charge forward.  @LineoutCoach a friend, mentor and purveyor of first-hand insights into a very dynamic scenario has bullet-pointed certain essentials.  Given that he is a fully-paid member of the illustrious Hickie family from Old Ireland – now coaching at Belmont Shore RC, Los Angeles, California (how easy it would have been to conclude with the phrase “Lucky bastard!”) I am inclined – nay obliged – to listen.

Sir Gavin of That New World says effectively this;

  1. The advent of Sevens contracts is key to generating participation/momentum/awareness.
  2. The appointment of a ‘marquee’ Head coach for the international side would be more than just a statement; it would facilitate further growth.
  3. In time the domestic game must find a structure that is funded to build and to compete – whether that means ‘City Teams’ or regions.

Sitting at my laptop in West Wales, I can feel that particular gentleman’s enthusiasm and belief in the rightness of this game, at this time, in this new place.  In particular there is a feeling that the exhilarating athleticism and scope of Sevens might be an appropriate fulcrum from which to catapult the game towards an altogether higher arc.  The proviso to this infectious groundswell may be that it may be essential to combine patience and solid organisation with this precious froth.

There are those who don’t get it – possibly many who never will.  I can hear the Pretty Informed Actually But Mebbe Touch Cynical snorting thus

“Short of a change of code from D Beckham Esq, what’s to draw people?  Who they gonna want to see?  Where’s the qualidee?”

So is it going to work?  From this distance – geographically and in terms of time – we can only speculate.  But yeh.  A long run at a 2023 World Cup?  I can see that.  And good luck.

Speed is almost everything

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As someone who has recently wittered on about a personal and much regretted disillusionment with football, I find myself struggling to enthuse too heavily or convincingly over say… the Euro 2012 draw made recently.  (Two of the groups are hugely competitive/England will fail to impress, probably from the very start against France/then they will go out with pretty much a whimper.)  Even the FA Cup draw – once I swear an extremely big deal in our little footballing household – pitching Manchester United (for whom ahem, my grandfather played) against rivals City drifted distractedly by.

But in mitigation there is something that overshadows; the as yet unexplained death by hanging of Wales manager Gary Speed.

The ‘full’ international side in Wales has sadly limped through an extended period of low morale and low achievement, during which apparent disinterest or less than full commitment from key players has contributed to a sink into uncompetitiveness. Even lack of fire – unforgiveable for a celtic side? – inveigled its way into the table of shortcomings.  No wonder the fans, as the cliché goes, ‘stayed away in droves.’

Then in one of those winningly predictable upswings of fortune, after a gently worrying start, a young, new manager began to make a difference.  Speed.  By being calmly authoritative and (I am told, in a long conversation with the esteemed Ian Herbert of The Independent) just substantially more people-shrewd, organised and critically suss than previous incumbents, the former Premiership skipper changed things.  Firstly in training then, invigoratingly, on the pitch.

In the last handful of matches, Wales have looked a threat to middle-ranking European teams in a way that has not been the case for many years.  With the alarming pace and confidence of Gareth Bale on the left flank and Aaron Ramsay a coolly-aspirant Spaniard in central midfield, a significant transformation is now in progress.  Or was?

We cannot know how things may be – and it probably offends decency to contemplate the matter ahead of further tribute to the man – but suffice to say that Wales under Gary Speed were a) improving immeasurably b) winning c) some way to reinvigorating support for the national side.  In footballing terms, given the clear correlation between Speed’s gathering influence and results, the man was on a roll.  Which rather dumbly begs the question why?  Why, Speedo, did you…?

There are apparently no suggestions of depression or problems at home.  Or – more exactly – friends and likely confidants(?) have stepped up to the mike and been universally sure ‘nothing was wrong’.  It’s a tragic unexplained suicide.  This dashing, handsome, modest and room-changingly engaging man; this only recently outstanding specimen of model pro’-dom; this quietly heroic skipper for his team and country, this man arguably absolutely at the height of his powers/influence/sporting pomp has confounded all this wonderful but meaningless sporting momentum in a single spine-chilling act.  Unreally and really, we break the news to fellow sportsfolks, Gary Speed is dead.

Personally (though I never met the man) I was shocked to the core; that amorphous and often fickle bunch the football community was shocked to the core – responding with rare grace through the most heartfelt and dignified of tributes.  Some laid wreaths, some sustained flurries of appropriately neutered applause.  All were touched deeply and were respectful of the nature of Speed’s contribution to the game.  He was honest, he was all-action but never bullish, he sprinted/covered/’gave’ and then sprinted some more.  He had and he reflected a true understanding of the game.  So better surely to remember the man for his genuineness than to allow fears of some cheap revelation to creep?

We have lost Gary Speed, and we are right to note the passing of an outstandingly complete sportsman.  To us fans, he was a top player.  To friends and family, it transpires, he really was almost everything.

Shane you wonderful manchild you

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Real rugby news seems to be swallow-diving out of obscurity and into our living rooms.  And maybe it’s about time.  But given that much of the news has been either unflattering to the game or downright bad, we the rugby-sympathetic don’t know whether to continue hiding behind our hands or devour it for signs of better things.

In the UK, Shane Williams, the all-smiling shim-meister has provided a focus for goodwill and good humour – as he always has – during the last scuttle towards the tryline of his international career.  It barely needs me to add my ill-informed tribute to those already being spontaneously lobbed like roses into the horse-drawn cart of his Special Day but frankly, I’d like to.  And it may or may not be appropriate to begin with a non-rugby matter but… tough… here goes.

A close family friend suffered Sudden Death Syndrome i.e. he unaccountably collapsed whilst playing rugby and stopped breathing entirely.  I believe he was 16 at the time.  The coach and others splendidly came to his rescue during and after the deathlike state but inevitably he was hospitalized for some weeks.  I am reliably informed that the thing that gave him and his family most cheer at a time of unimaginable stress – raw fear even – was a bedside visit from Shane Williams.

I am aware that sportsmen and women do these kind of things but it will make utter sense to everyone who has ever either seen Shane play or heard him talk that the one man most likely to raise the spirits of an ailing lad would be Shane Williams.  He is a compendium of bustling, smile-inducing energies.  He defies all that is depressing or cynical.  His sporting gifts are predicated on a ludicrous and liberated enjoyment of his instincts; they in turn are irretrievably generous in the sense that he has always chosen to fly, to entertain, to dance through the dull matrix of negativity or doubt.  This is why he is loved as well as admired. He is Shane.

In Wales – and his particular brand of invincible pride, ‘step’ and community-driven dash could only be welsh – Williams looms disproportionately large in the hearts of everyone. Clearly he might be Housewife’s Choice anywhere (forgive the political naivity of the phrase) for his impish cuddleability.  But the meaning of Shaneness has implications it seems in the lung-busting, whole-nation nature of celebration gathered around him now/when he dives over/always.

People know here that he is allegedly far too small to compete with these other, bone-crunching giants. They are specimens of Transformer, surely, escaped from some 3D action epic, trampling through the conscience of the sporting world.  Witness the 17/18 stone wingers – the Banahans, the Lomus, the Nearly Everybodys clumping across the landscape in a shirt bearing 11-15 in recent years.

And yet the relatively diminutive welsh left-winger (what a teasingly evocative phrase that one is!) has been astonishingly productive in terms of tries scored.  59 in 87 games represents a sensational haul in an era when defences have become massively more watertight.

Williams is generally somewhere between 2 and 4 stones lighter than his opposite number.  This we have to respect.  It appeals also to widespread notions of doggedness under challenge or oppression, notions understandably generally held to be viscerally central to welsh self-image.  This is not to say that Shane is enjoyed mostly as some politically charged symbol of defiance; it’s simpler, lovelier than that.

He is at once a spectacular and a modest man, a talent wonderfully expressed.  He is that sparkling contradiction – the Charming Rebellion.  Welsh or otherwise, we just love to see the bugger run.

But has he got talent?

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I’m not a big fan of what we might call the celebritization of our lives. In fact the notion that we should prostitute ourselves for fame – or more exactly TV fame – offends me deeply. So why all these auditions? Why am I, without any ironic context, being invited to the ritual humiliation of poor misguided singer A, or frankly delusional comic B?

I flash on the telly in all innocence – and generally some degree of mindlessness – to be confronted by another clodhoppingly tension-pregnant drumroll-heavy PAUSE… and my tired heart sinks. Everywhere there’s somebody awaiting a VERDICT. Was their singing ‘good’ enough? Was their dancing good enough? In the tabloid-stoked view of the great British public, do they look too fat/dodgy/chippy/chavvy/pervy? In the shlockingly coiffured opinionated opinion of The Judges are they, do they look The Part? Oh and can they sing or dance?

The faux meritocracy of these brutally engineered scenarios is the family fodder of our time; begging the question “What does that say about us?” Well (Oh Martian god of Universal Anthropology) it says we are (in an appropriately inappropriate word) mental.

And now, we have the announcement of candidates for the BBC Sports Personality of the Year. Is that the same cheap trick I wonder? Arguably not; witness a kind of historical precedent sentimentally loaded with some authentic respect, going back (I think) to my black-and-white childhood. Or so it feels.

For aeons the trusty Beeb has backslapped the testosteroned ones, fulfilling dutifully the role of foot-bather for footballers. Or, given the comparative lack of Brit footballing worldbeaters, athletes more generally. I think I remember David Hemery being coronated. Likewise Henry Cooper, Daley Thompson/Alan Pascoe? And surely George Best.

There’s a realness to these characters and to the tribal banter they so modestly – so black-and-whitedly? – exchanged with Coleman/Carpenter etc. that somehow legitimises the thing. They were proper sportsmen (and occasionally women) and I don’t remember the wholescale devaluation of human dignity being a pre-requisite for the evening’s viewing. There were bad speeches – do I recall a nervy Paul Gascoigne? – and bad choices – none of which included any members of the royal family. It wasn’t perfect but it seemed like perfectly good (sporting) family fare and we watched it religiously, year after year.

More recently I have to say the smarminess factor seems to have increased; or at least there’s been an upshift in the image-consciousness of a) the event b) the protagonists c) the guests. It’s not so much innocent Sunday Best suits and “I ran as hard as I could” as designer-sharp, platitudinous billowing. Does this mean the essential decency of the affair has been twothousandandelevened? Possibly. I’ve found myself avoiding the programme in much the same way as I swerve a broad swathe of Awards Shows. But the quality of my (mild) distaste for Gary Lineker’s sports-chic uber-grooming doesn’t compare with typical feelings against Cowell’s ouevre. Simply put Sports Personality does have some of what it says on the tin and is markedly less intrusive, less exploitative than the Got Talent/X-factor genre, in which personality seems to be largely confused for profile.

This year’s candidates for the unchallenged Pretty Much Most Singular And Respected Sporting Wotnot include – unlike most years – several genuine contenders. The full list is as follows;

Mark Cavendish – cyclist

Darren Clarke – golfer

Alistair Cook – cricketer

Luke Donald – golfer

Mo Farrah – athlete

Dai Greene – athlete

Amir Khan – boxer

Rory McIlroy – golfer

Andy Murray – tennis player

Andrew Strauss – cricketer.

Meaning there are no women. Which is almost certainly a disgrace but I’m not exactly sure … who might…

Easier by far is the whittling down from the seriously good but outflanked by the others (Strauss/Khan/Murray/Donald); to the second rankers, who might have won in a lean year but… (Farrah/Greene/McIlroy(?); and finally the real contenders – Cavendish, Clarke and Cook. It’s a good line-up. I favour the alphabetically advantaged trio particularly because it has felt like their year this year.

Clarke may be the housewife’s favourite, his extraordinary Open triumph being submerged in a vat of deliciously beery poignancy. He may even win it if the papers fill again with his ‘story’. Alistair Cook, by contrast, is a less demonstrative sort with only his genius with the willow to declare. He lacks perzazz but the boy is an opening bat! Frankly, I can’t see him winning it but he has shown a historically significant mix of quality and temperament to reach totals amongst and beyond the immortals of the game. However for me Cavendish should top the poll.

‘Cav’ is a god amongst cyclists. He is the torpedo after the exhausting stalk. As a sprinter in the wheelers union it’s his job to grab glory at the death, meaning that after a typical 80 miles in the saddle, he must burst through the very notion of hyper jadedness (after many hundreds of miles on the major tours) and then sprint away from the cursing pack.

Cavendish has done precisely this again this last year – better than anyone in the history of cycling. His record-breaking tour de France was an almost literally staggering tribute to his utterly exceptional wheeling-power and indeed his willpower. The proud Manxman knows that as the premier force in professional sprinting he is targeted race after race; he is proudly and hugely generously aware of the responsibility he has to his domestiques or support riders to ‘finish the job’. He is that special thing the monster sportsman (though gregarious) and indisputably the pack leader.

Cycling is a minority sport. It may be that because comparatively few understand the tactical resources expended or even the extent of the raw bravery necessary – particularly during the rampage that is the bunched sprint – the serial Green Jersey Man is overlooked. But he is different class, a true icon; loved and worshipped for his talent, his affability and his titanic shouldering of the burden. The winner, really, has to be Cavendish.

Come on and hold me tight

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There’s a line in a Bunnymen song where Ian McCulloch, the lanky singer with the anarcho-adroitly teased barnet drops into smoulderingly deep and meaningful mode.

What he actually sings is “Come on and hold me tight / I can’t sleep at night”– so it’s not the single most original dollop of poetic insight in the history of popular music. It is, however both memorable and in a defiantly heart-on-sleeve kindofaway affecting. (Footnote/Falsenote; I used that word to describe Amy Winehouse in a blog some time ago, suggesting I am slightly unmoved by her voice. This just isn’t the same.)

It’s ludicrous to compare the two and I don’t; I do or did however feel the infectious charge of the Bunnymen carrying me off to a place where sustenance itself is pared down – or inflated? – only to a kind of crystalline belief. McCulloch tossed that mane of his with a quietly scouse (if that’s not a contradiction in terms) luminosity, lassooing in the process some hazy profundities.

All of which sounds like a recipe for fakery and pomp that might surely have brought derision or a phlegm-soaked drowning in the late seventies. But when the guitars chimed and the coke was snorted, an electrically relevant and contemporary world was projected to the far wall – one that we recognised, one that lifted us.

I loved McCulloch for his utter sureness, his inviolable belief that it was okay, ‘natural’ – cool even – to express himself as a man in dour straits in search of poetry. I still feel his colours as a necessary and transformative energy; an antidote to cynicism, to meanness. When depressing realities threaten to intrude – hey, let’s be honest, look around! – this is how I fight them. Is it mad to confess that the more sport, the more political debate I see consumed by conservatism or bullishness, the more I revert to the defiant colours of this song?

It felt great to be an Echo and the Bunnymen fan. If I never did the hair thing, being too punky, the amorphous Oxfam overcoat plus badge – entirely workable for a Gang of Four/Joy Division Overlap Scenario – spoke volumes re the necessary anti-fashion non-statement department. Oh the joy of being so obviously outwardly joyless whilst singing with lungbursting force inside. Together we were preciously aware of our individual power.

After all

Where’s the sense in stealing / Without the grace to be it?


Anybody else drifting?

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Five Live on and the thrum of news and noise and oohs and aahs. Snippets tumble and actually – following late night(s) and some devastatingly wholesome fresh air via The Beach all morning – fall in time with … my eyelids. And briefly, the sleep of the just. Or rather a luxurious snoozette, reflecting justifiable knackeration and also some degree of meandering of interest away from the allegedly beautiful game.

If pushed I could establish in some depth the atvincent pedigree in terms of closeness to and understanding of that extra limb, that family member we grew up calling footie. Then, we had or wanted or were aware of little else, it seems.

My authority in the subject is however sentimentally deep rather than encyclopaedically Motsonesque. I forget dates but remember Saturdays or Wednesday nights at Forest/Derby watching United/Everton and The Happy Hammers. I remember pink Football Specials – on one occasion with a front page feature welcoming a Dad down from Grimsby with his clutch of sons to watch Clough-era Baseball Ground action. Back even further, I remember late-vintage Best/Charlton/Law skitting unreally beneath the floodlights, with Foulkes/Crerand/Byrne patrolling like red minesweepers.  And Dave MacKay there, pigeon-chestedly bustling through a throw-in, in order to reduce my appearance fee on MOTD.  These are indeed memories of a convoy-on-the-horizon kind; almost monotone perhaps, but nevertheless poignant.

Family life nowadays seems more cluttered; there are obscene and wonderful multitudes of distractions whirring noiselessly or insidiously close. Running off down the park is not the dumb-heavenly default position it once was. Many more things blink and shine and probe for the burnished weaknesses to break the surface; the needs for the new; the needs for the cool. The story can never be languidly innocent again it seems; and it’s ‘clips’, not a story.

But ludicrous to imagine otherwise. How could the context for anything remain unshifted in times characterised by rapaciousness/superficiality/dynamism of the tail-chasing sort? Why would footie remain untouched by all this stuff? It hasn’t.

Let’s swerve to the positives – of which there are always mercifully plenty (too.) The pre-eminence of Spain in world football marks perhaps a once-in-a-lifetime triumph for skills over functionality. The current gorgeous irresistibility of David Silva amongst the often unhinged limbs of the Premier League is likewise something to be treasured. Arsene Wenger’s magnificently imperfect but idealogically Invincible tenure at Arsenal is similarly inspiring, if a small degree of separation from the need to win big is negotiated. Levels of inclusion and even anti-racism are massively improved. And yet I drift.

I drift because of many things – some of them impossibly beyond footie’s remitt or control;

  • the competition from rugby and cricket
  • the indescribably absurd amounts of dosh being shovelled around, generally in the direction of pretty modest talents
  • the cynicism of many in or around the game, exemplified by the typical forward -Oops, striker!- thinking only of drawing a foul or penalty when breaching the box, rather than instinctively bursting the net
  • the shameless faking of injury or contact
  • the foul abuse of referees/officials
  • the fact that only 2 or 3 teams could actually win the Premiership.

The tsunami that is Manchester City epitomises many of these concerns. Funded remorselessly, they have spent the last few seasons proving that great individuals don’t make a team, whilst their fans foamed with expectation and United and Chelsea trod the ammoniated waters, fearfully. For an age their Mancunian galacticos teetered on the brink of implosion, such was their incapacity to win.

Now, things have changed, results-wise. But this is still a club attempting to smother a terrible secret – the Tevez affair. The Argentinian may have entirely refused to step on the park when called upon by the manager Mancini, or he may have not. He has, however brought shame upon the sport through a series of defections and mercenary switches of non-allegiance; metaphorically kissing the arse as opposed to the badge. Serially.

This insensitivity to the essence of the thing is both unforgivable and sadly infectious in the modern era and it therefore reflects an important truth. That football may have more dead souls, more non-sportsmen, more Show Ponies than is viable for a world-important game.

Whether the plusses tippy-tapped out by our Spanish brothers can either mitigate or make amends entirely for the mouthy the ungrateful and the undeserving is open to question.  Watching Rooney – brilliant though he is – face contorted with Shrekian rage, assaulting a ref or TV camera by way of expressing his dark but manicured frustrations invites recoil towards less offending alternatives.  And so I drift, unsure of whether to hope.

Ingerland – you must be joking.

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There are many precedents for hoofing England sides when they’re down; players and managers having frequently felt the pointy end of a brogue/doc marten/baseball boot/Manolo Blahnik (delete according to choice of accessories or date.) For those blessed with responsibility in the high profile sports – I’m thinking men’s football, rugby, cricket in the main here – judgement lurks cruelly close.

Currently one hypothesis, supported by hugely influential figures such as myself, suggests English football and rugby are still critically enmeshed in post-World Cup trauma; but that cricket is on a significant high. Capello and Johnson presided over such epically lurid debacles that their ability either to motivate or to proactively act seemed paralysed. In contrast, a certain Zimbabwean-born England and Wales cricket supremo has brought direction, unity, discipline and success to his side. Management, it appears, is massive. Perhaps especially when it makes comment superfluous?

Perceptions inevitably link results to the performance or authenticity of managers as well as players; thus Harry Redknapp, a ‘proper football bloke’, good former player and now demonstrably an inspiring coach is admired and respected precisely for the realness of his understanding of the game. Encouragingly, this implies judgements beyond mere (acknowledgements of) rates of success – a belief in genuine quality, no less. Would that we could sustain such generous worldviews.

Paralytically conversely, memorable custard pie-plus moments have surely included the tide of puss emanating from the tabloids towards the unfortunate Graham Taylor – a decent but not, arguably, a brilliant enough or sophisticated enough man to be at the helm of a national side generationally in skill-deficit rehab. Sven, McClaren and indeed now Capello have, on occasion, likewise felt most of the full force of press and public contempt. It –as they say –goes with the territory. Martin Johnson, whilst leaving, accepted that – almost nobly.

The fabulous diversity of opinion over teams we think represent us prevents the meaningful construction of a graph following median/mode/mental views of a particular manager’s status during office; there are, for example, wildly divergent views of Capello’s performance even when England have been cruising through qualification for the majors. (These range from the jingoistically buoyant to the cerebrally disturbed. Just when is he going to sort out Lampard/Gerard/Wilshere, Johnson/Walker?) Certainly the Capellograph would have to twitch alarmingly, as though reporting back from Etna rather than say, The Emirates.

Fabio, like a whole host of previous incumbents, may be in the process of being reconstructed by fluky inheritance. Recent friendlies against Spain (where they were outclassed but won) and Sweden (where they showed little but won) have thrown up sparks. Whether Phil Jones manages to continue to make absurdly serene progress towards a central place (literally?) in the England side whilst shouldering Duncan Edward’s comparisons may now be influential. Whether the likes of Rodwell/Walker/Wellbeck, through a kind of swifter natural expression of their talents come to Capello and England’s rescue may be… influential. The truth is, Capello has found them chiefly/only after

a) injuries to seniors

b) depressing performances by seniors.

My last word on the Italian is that having presided over such a shocking World Cup, having failed utterly to inspire or change a visibly desperate side, he should have been gone.

Martin Johnson has. With that familiar mixture of churlishness, largeness, restrained vitriol and … almost some emotion, he jumped the ferry before being escorted down the plank. England RUFC, having hugely overachieved at the previous World Cup under a player-undermined manager, appointed Johnson hoping for quiet, broodingly Churchillian leadership. He couldn’t do it. In his absence, there now ensues a near-interesting and even mysterious phase of non-appointment, featuring a non-Mallett but lots of clattering in the background. As with the football scenario, a sea-change in direction as well as personnel may trip or bumble towards us, either obstructed or otherwise by the RFU furniture. But given that Shaun Edwards has stayed righteously in Wales, it seems too much to hope for radical improvement.

It may be, therefore, seasonally unfortunate for all of us that we are denied much-needed sporting cheer due to a current lack of England cricket -that being by some distance our most upliftingly successful game. Suddenly, it seems, we have a worryingly stable and consistent crop of outstanding players. And a generally brilliant team ethic. This has not happened entirely by chance – although the contemporaneous emergence of top individuals (Strauss, Cook, Trott, Swann, Anderson…) clearly helps, cool and authoritative leadership off the pitch has been critical. To the point where the following notion bounces in.

Surely numbers stricken by Seasonally Affected Disorder could have been hugely reduced by heart-warming exposure to the further exploits of Strauss , Cook et al this winter? Contemptuously tonking all-comers at Test Level would plainly be markedly beneficial to the national psyche so, why on earth did the government fail to act on this? Couldn’t somebody have rigged up a few Tests/few big screens in shopping malls and…

Back to cool and authoritative. At a time when crises of management or certainly leadership run rampant over our whole lives(!) some contemplation of what works might seem appropriate.  (A yes for cricket, no and no for footie/rugby.) But, sporting opinion and contemplation being mutually exclusive, maybe I’ll bawl with the rest of them… Just who is running this ship, anyhow?

Edwards

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Edwards… Edwards to Barry John… Edwards the Baabaa, diving over… Edwards again, in his own right (Shaun, I mean!) at the vortex of another monster hit. TOUCH PAUSE CONTRACT -ENGAGE; not with Twickers, as feared and imagined but with and by Wales-in-my-arms. A kind of poetic justice. In the now buffering pantheon of Welsh rugby Edwards will remain a name to conjure memories and expectations – dreams even. Only the current version is, as half the world knows, a bullish English Skinhead with attitude plus.

Certainly The Province (yuk) is dreaming again. Now that the bristlingly brilliant defensive guru has shaken on the deal to keep him in Wales – or at least primarily working here until after the 2015 World Cup – the excitement rumbles on. After a World Cup hugely enriched by Welsh verve and spirit, this medium-sized signature richly supercedes the limitations of mere contract; it is, alleluyah, a sign.

A sign of the following

  • that Edwards has understandably been Touched by the feeling that there’s something exciting (and honest and true?) about how Wales are developing
  • that he understands and feels (surely) the coaching triumvirate of Gatland Edwards Howley are casting something of a spell
  • that a competitive or even gallivanting Welsh side is massively good for the world game
  • that clearly the current crop of players – Warburton/Faletau/Roberts/North/Halfpenny perhaps most obviously – are young men of some considerable talent
  • that maybe he fears England may remain in a constipated Crouch?
  • that of the combination of factors – money/challenge/enjoyment/hwyl? – the most significant point straightforwardly back to Cardiff.

Many of us view this as a near-mushy triumph for Love over Money. (We know it’s not that simple but please allow our indulgence; it’s kindof refreshing.) For here the obvious antagonism between Wales and England has been simply slam-dunked by (it is felt) a kind of big-hearted loyalty to real rugby. Twickers with its pen-pushers, snobs, embarrassment of riches but disgracefully poor and cynical expression of the game has been snubbed righteously by the boy Edwards; who sounds Welsh. Who understands – as did the world – that the sport’s richness derives chiefly from doing brave, comradely stuff quickly and with flair. That’s how it seems from Tredegar/Tywyn/Ty Ddewi.

Welsh rugby has manifestly taken big strides forward of late. If, as now seems likely, the coaching set-up – which we can only imagine is enjoyed, largely, by the players – now looks forward to a stable period of further development, then lookout boys. But there are no guarantees. I even see England as a major threat going forward – if they ever do. For now though, the Brotherhood of Reds is pumping claret; proudly.

Let us know, people

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

I know it’s something of a minority pastime but I’m gently, distractedly, coolly fixated on the England Manager Thing. And whilst I have – when prompted – plenty to say about S. Capello, I’m not talking footie.

Rugby; that magnificent drunk-with-honour but recently wreckless bundle; the one where real blokes dismember each other then hug. Though the World Cup may have peeled away some of our romantic certainties, it remains clear I hope that top level rugby reaches the places football, for example, dare not pretend to. Extreme physicality without too many grudges; utter selflessness and routine courage; obedience and generally even respect for the ref. These feel important in a world where international footballers routinely dive or fake contact and shockingly berate the call of authority. (I say this in full knowledge of the weakness of the inferred link between two massively different games and the obviousness of these dubious comparisons. And I grew up in a football household.)

So let’s not pretend things are perfect with rugby. Verbals have increased; behaviour is more prima donna-like; sensitivity/decency failure seems to have become an issue, most famously and recently within the England camp in particular. In this context, the reported £25,000 fine for Tindall is a sharpish riposte to creeping naughtiness and one which perhaps we should applaud – if only for the momentary relief it may provide for the RFU hierarchy, who must surely, finally, urgently be working their sweat-tingled socks off to gain control of a) the game b) the England side c) public perception of same.

Though I cannot condone the ‘antics’ of Messrs Tindall/Ashton/Tuilagi etc. – they provided an appropriately depressing ground for the drab watercolours that were English performances at the Rugby World Cup – the sense is of minor distractions snowballing. In terms of performance and image, players presumably let relatively loose let their team down. However – mighty big ‘if’ enter stage left – IF England had performed with flair and imagination and success, how many punters might be smiling at say, Tuilagi’s youthful exuberance? (I did anyway.) In reality crap ‘behaviour’ settled quite nicely against crap performances in the games’ psyche and its profile. I personally am more offended by the nature of the rugby England played than the alleged general malaise in conduct; although it’s close.

England Rugby is in a mess. Despite huge resources every which way and a deepish pool of talent we need look no further than the word embarrassing to describe performance levels – arguably not just at the World Cup. I have been and will remain critical of Martin Johnson – as long as I’m out of earshot. He was a totem, a titan, a tower and a coolly fearsome opponent as a player but as a manager he has, in the modern idiom, sucked. (Am I still out of earshot?) There has been a consistent chronic lack of direction and inspiration on the pitch. Aware, authoritative and yes inspirational managers would have addressed this, either with a hairdryer, or a quiet word, or some Churchillian rhetoric. Instead it’s rumbled on, this infectious lack, this fumble.

Contrast this with the recent Welsh resurgence. When it mattered, Gatland, Edwards and Howley had their posse fizzing happily and with just the right mixture of aggression and liberated zeal. Rarely has the full expression of collective talent seemed so uplifting. It felt like the game itself joined in with the dynamic swell as Warburton’s (should that be The Coaches?) Mob railed unquietly towards the People’s Final. ‘Til something intervened. We can be sure that a good deal of good management played a vital part in the Welsh enterprise – enterprise in every sense. Disappointingly the concomitant paucity and tightness of the English game has to be laid at Johnson’s door, along with Ford/Rowntree etc.

Only those privileged to have been close to the poop-spraying equipment may truly know which of the coaches deserve to remain, finger on fan. Excuse the further malodorous pun but I suspect a major clear-out may be in order. And yet we wait. We speculate. Those of us in Wales (I think) generally fear the announcement that Edwards has deserted, believing passionately that the GEH triumvirate had something special in the offing. (Shaun, I know you’re listening, STAY AND ENJOY THE FUN! They won’t understand you!! They won’t let you be you!!) Those in England presumably wonder what kind of combination will lie ahead.

I’ve wrestled with the Possibles. Without NOTW style surveillance, it’s difficult to know which of the following have been seriously or serially canvassed. Nick Mallett/Jim Mallender/Graham Henry/Shaun Edwards/Clive Woodward/A N Other/ Me? As already covered under A Poisoned Flagon, I’m going for a combination featuring Edwards and I know not who.

But what about the skipper? Harlequins captain Chris Robshaw has hurtled into Possibles-plus type profile, having been touted convincingly by the likes of Phil Vickery. A new management team, culling fearlessly would increase the scope and likelihood for all manner of changes, perhaps even including inviting young Mr Lawes to step forward. But is that as fanciful as imagining Ben Foden as skipper? In other words… it’s still messy. So I’d just like to know now please; just like to feel like something’s been sorted. Know what I mean?

What is it with us blokes?

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

My son is expending a huge amount of energy on being cool/being in; being safely ensconced in the little mob. I understand that. The not particularly appealing truth is that compound pressures – shockingly cheap ones – insist that as a young bloke (at school) you have to avoid the perception of ‘gay stuff’. So if you are ‘bright’ – and what a loaded word that baby is – or in some other way may be seen or suspected to be spookily other to the durable surfy or sporty norm, you have to do stuff. Chiefly, you have to trip other blokes up and laugh, or wrestle, or join in the chorus of grunts aimed at individuals who either fail the informal Cool Exams, or who appear immune to the essential trends, poor dumbo’s. It really can be a jungle; a jungle with fringes you have to casually flick.

So, barring haircuts/degree of undies exposure things apparently haven’t changed much since I was a kid. I kindof oscillated between being something of a little mob leader and teetering on the brink of gaydom. Because I was almost painfully skinny and brainy; because I was (thank god) bloody good at sports; because I made the guys laugh. Otherwise who knows? I saw very little overt physical bullying and guess that remains at similar levels – again, who knows? I am pretty sure, however that pressures to have the right clobber and do the right things have multiplied as awarenesses of products (as much as anything) have exploded. I suspect there’s a lot of quiet heartbreak going on.

The fact that much of this is centred upon a brutally stupid contrast between fashionable conformities and individual expressions of self make it all the more deplorable, all the more poignant. For cheap macho values to have taken such a hold so early is massively harmful. But it has, I’m seeing it every day. (I repeat) The black and white of it for me was that

a) because I could only dream of being ‘wiry’

b) because I kept coming top

c) because I actually could sound a bit French in French

I apparently deserved to die a slow painful death. Unless the following qualities intervened in my favour;

d) I was the fastest

e) I was tasty on the footie/rugby/cricket pitch

f) (unbelievably) I was kinda… funny.

Intervene they did, largely.

My schooldays, like my sons, were generally good. In fact – and this may be unflatteringly contradictory – I am clear that the ‘ordinariness’ of my education (at Matthew Humberstone Comp. Cleethorpes, if you must know) was the making of me in many positive ways. Ways that I actually cherish. I literally grew up with guys (mainly) who aren’t now reading The Guardian. They are in workshops/on ships/in difficulty as well as in schools or offices. Some were academically ‘hopeless’ but on a sports pitch they were transformed from footie hooligans to bundles of skill and expression – of intelligence even. Such is the roughness of the macho diamond; would that we could dig it from the dungheap.

So what do we do, as parents, as blokes? I have laboured the point to both my kids that everyone must be valued. That this is paramount. I have forewarned my son – wrongly perhaps – that he has nothing to fear (in being brainy) because he is a good honest, sporty lad, insulated from meaningless grief through his ability to clump people on the rugby pitch and smash cover drives. How much more satisfactory would it be to be able to say nowt, or feel comfortable that he could be fearlessly weedy/geeky/gay as he liked, if he needed to be.