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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.

Bute Park Divers.

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

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.

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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.

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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.

Right over Mid-off.

~ bowlingatvincent ~ 3 Comments

Under a stony sky on that scuffed pitch

Flecked with the memory of hail

Where Elin still plays horses in Specsaver glasses

And the goal-line technology confounds,

My manly fingers dried out like winter veg

The games, despite the cold, went great.

The warm-up might have lasted years – perhaps it did?

Owain never grew above four feet.

But rarely has a test in Llandissilio been so… passed.

He bossed the thing and flailed that bat

Sword-like and reckless through the chilled swathe

Outside off-stump,

His cheeks flushed, hands numb.

I clapped and stamped and ooohed and aahed

With heart. To keep them happy – to keep me warm.

Calibrating this or that, according to the manual.

So cherish and celebrate this brilliant catch or stop,

The moment of some daft, uplifting grace or bouncing joy

For this or that non-sporty girl or boy.

A spiteful grab, mind, then mild rebellion

As, unsubtly, the littl’uns shirk their fielding job.

Relax. The focus comes and goes when you are eight.

And as it does, where else to look but up?

Distracted by some floating, fleeting presence

I might, in fact, forgive.

From Mid-off comes the call,

Sky-punchingly possessive. Barcud Goch! Barcud Goch!

I drop the ball.

I think we can share this, fellahs?

~ bowlingatvincent ~ 2 Comments

So Tsonga attempts a fairly unconvincing drop-shot carrying all the threat of a handbag assault by Michael Gove. Meaning it was lame and self-defeatingly unfocussed. Murray responds in a kindof Baconesque blur somewhere between Screaming Pope and Vengeful Jock Upstart – he did paint that, didn’t he? – featuring discernible, co-ordinated, near sadistically-expressed brilliance. Meaning a gathering of the apologetic ball into some Caledonian vortex before the suspiciously automatic catapulting of said furry sphere back at the central body mass of the now fearfully star-jumping French hulk. It hits him, venomously, deep into his bollocks. Cue Blues squirming, Pinks giggling.

That sickeningly sinking feeling. That Oh My God I Really Might Puke and Parp 3 lbs of Angel Delight-consistency Shite Out At The Same Time feeling. Cruelly familiar to every male member(?) of the population over the age of about two days but mysteriously absent from female experience. Weirdly funny right then to all but he, the recipient of that extravagantly piquant instant.

Tsonga really copped one hardcore style and he may even as I write be using that as part of his response to the queue of journalists wanting to ask that second question (about how his Todger feels) an acceptable period after Q 1 – the one, obviously, about how HE feels. (Because they’re separate, presumably?)

But I may be being flippant in a moment of alleged National Triumph. This being after all the first time since that prehistoric American (Fred Perry) in his Mod T-shirts dun so-o gud that a Brit… dun so gud. If I may though, I would like to proffer in a sense of keen – remarkably, vividly, ashen-faced-with-(k)nobs-on keen – brotherhood, two remembrances which er… resonate clangiferously in this seminal moment.

Was leaning over a rail fence aged about four when a deceptively doe-eyed but actually savage steed casually leant through and bit/plucked inquisitively at my nether regions. Think only the magnificent heaviness of my sixties-era cotton footie shorts prevented Emlyn Hughes-like vocal rearrangement. Blessedly, there are no scars RT-able and Oh Yeh Baybee the wedding tackle remains verifiably intact. Had more than one other goolaciously ghoulish event – including the obligatory winkie-in-zip rite of passage – but only one rivals the Tsonga Oof.

Football. Caught one right in the knackers having spun round to counter an incoming challenge from some early-shaving donkey from Chesterfield. He hoofed it in the manner characteristic of a cerebrally-challenged No 5  – soundly at Row Z –despite the fact we were unthreateningly mid-pitch. Meaning he really did hoof it. I lay there pretending to be unconscious for about ten minutes whilst the tears coiled behind flickering lids and the ache in my testicles persists 40 plus years after the event. So, Monsieur Tsonga I/we do understand. It happens to us blokes.

Whether this ball-on-ball incident conspired against the (surprisingly?) popular Frenchman today, who knows? Murray for me was tougher, more durable, closer to absolutely elite level tennis more often – though often the standard was good. Expect many though, to settle for praising the Scot’s cahunas.

Pray for petrol?

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The things that really get our goat tell us (or otherfolks?) a lot about where we’re at as people, right? As ‘individuals’. They give stuff away. Like looking your fellow in the eye when you talk to them whilst simultaneously trying to tell the minimum amount of the truth – or an outright lie I suppose – they represent a tactical error, a cheap submission of possession. So I should probably be somewhat circumspect before blazing into some further Vinnydiatribe about well… anything. But life would be less fun, eh, if purveyors of colour and opinion such as my good self let too much restraint and consideration get in the way of a good rant? Rants can be okay – both entertaining and cleansing even – if they manouevre or lurch accidentally into the lush territory of comment; real comment, where spite and spittle and punkydelic revelation bridle against dumbstuff. So, eyes a-swivel… here goes…

Let’s start as so often with the abstract; the felt. There is a direct correlation between my feelings for and about my Outlaws (which are mixed), their adherence to the gospel according to the Daily Mail and the panic buying of petrol. And by surreal but clearly imagined extension the demonization of single mums/chavs/gays/blacks/Asians/everyone who has not the fortune to be starchily anglo-saxon with-a-little money invested, is further enwrapped, infuriatingly, into this blue-rinsed(?) bundle. Meaning the wasps’ nest that is currently and indeed typically my head responds with a kind of spontaneous fury to linkages between What The Mail Thinks – or its obvious but sometimes unsaid manifesto – and what then actually happens in the wider world. Although – forgive my anarcho-pedantry here but I am loathe to view this particular landscape as in any sense wide – it’s surely arse-clinchingly narrow but let’s move on. It is, therefore often the machinations of the sub-Middle Class Right that get my goat.

The comb-over racists; the instant coffee-slurping homophobes; the blandly bitter; the church-goingly devilish, Jammy Dodger-toting entrenched. With their silver cars and silver spoons. Their white sugar. Their propensity to sound so one-dimensionally thoughtless whilst in Twenty Eight Second Deep Political Conversation Mode that you wonder if they might implode like some un-gay fairy at the culmination of their most killing observation that everything is because “All these people are getting all these things and we’re paying ferit!” Yup; luv them.

So the panic buying of petrol – which I don’t of course entirely blame on The Mail – has troubled me. In terms of the demographic of the slavvering topper-uppers it might be interesting to see who these folks are – even who they think they are? – but sadly anthropologists are otherwise engaged in (relatively?) lucrative projects in Dubai or Cambodia, I suspect. Allegedly, much of England – you poor poor loves – has been standstilled by these decently law-abiding and Minister-attentive folk. Only a heroic few have resorted to battling on the forecourt in defence of their honour and their right to dismember the opportunity of other, less aggressively responsible souls. Should their physical condition allow it – ie. if Gaviscon/Werthers levels have been sufficiently respected, these Defenders Of The Right To Get Absolutely Mental have launched themselves from their Renault Clios in lion-hearted response to some other’s hands upon the precious nozzle. I picture them, rolling around in the blotted sands of the forecourt; legs thrashing the unleaded air, flat caps awry, brogues still immaculately tanned but twitching out, violently, the death-throes of Moral Rectitude. For the good of this great nation; for the civilised world; for Biddy Baxter and Douglas Barder and yes! David Beckham. Then dusting down and finding that bloody Tesco Clubcard.

There is no strike, incidentally. And if there was all the Great Powers know/knew that a week’s notice had to be given, begging questions about the realness of any emergency. (In fact, probably wee-weeing all over any such notions at all.) Interestingly or not, fairly compelling cases have been made for this whole farrago of clunk-clicked politically-motivated or simply inept ‘statements’ being a sharp little number from the government to help swiftly massage income up at a time when unhelpful figures might bundle economic commentators into using words like Double Dip Recession (and stuff). Conspiracy Theory or Truth? As always the twitter/internet beast seethes with contradictory passions but queues down the road have made a comparative irrelevance of such unpatriotic sideshows.

Perception is nine tenths of the law. People have been led to believe those commie lorry drivers (who spend surely too much time in French travel-stops talking to their unwashed comrades?) are about to stitch us all up; best get our retaliation in first. The top man himself has even suggested it might be prudent to stock up. The paper says The End Is Nigh – right there, on page 1, 2 and 3, next to the stuff about George Wassuname and the other Scots peril. Salmon! No – Salmond! He’s a red an all! And now he IS trying to nick our petrol!! Best strike a blow for the family, for us, by filling right up; in the blurry understanding that this might even have the double benefit of denying some treble-chinned Jock or workshy other from dribbling 5 quid’s worth into his unroadworthy Escort. Why not? I’ve paid my taxes; bet they haven’t.

If I’m cruelly extrapolating or inventing well then so be it. Personal experience leads me to believe and to fear in this way. On the one hand I ooze faith in people; on the other their herdiness, their plodding dumbness and perhaps most offensively their selfishness is, to me, galling. How dare I? Well, having during the writing of this mal-focused reflection visited out of some honestly genuine – ie. diesel-deficient necessity – a fuel emporium in Haverfordwest, only to find it bereft of that syrupy elixir, the hackles are again rising. I am transported by the vogue for rage.

So don’t talk to me about pipelines or planning or tankers or truths; get me a club. For I am preparing, raging but prudently, for the next life, where karma ensures I now know that I fetch up on some snow-blown floe, icily bank-full of purpose, marching at some doe-eyed seal pup; a particular and hypnotically engaging one; wearing a flat cap and – admittedly bizarrely – brogues.

Dumb questions.

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Don’t know about you but I hate feeling excluded from stuff; whether it be (literal) entry to something or exclusion through snobbery, for example. For now, if we stop to reflect on all manner of political discourse (please, do!) we may find pretty early some obstructive force, some veil through which we feel we may or should not peek.

On times this will feel just ‘right’, the presence of some justifiable and even necessary filter, through which we have to earn passage, through understanding. Because we need to feel confident of a certain level of intellectual competence in Subject A before we run with it, debate it, unconstruct it. So essentially we fore-arm ourselves, against asking dumb questions, often by turning sheepishly(?) away from those things we ‘don’t know enough about’. Though I am guilty of it, I hate that.

My suspicion is that much of this self-denial of the cerebral joust (that might on reflection be regarded as a life-enhancing or defining stimulus) is more coerced than personally screened. We are made to feel inadequate. Pressures emerge from all levels of the sky-scraping beast that morphs into (or rises from?) say, the body politic/the fiscal gherkin/the evolved system. Us normal folks are lost or spun or misled by something in the constricting ether; something on the one hand rather rundown and bad-breathlike and on the other awesomely pervasive; powerful.

My instinct is to fight that stuff; to defy and to undermine it. This may mean pushing out beyond the ledge of my core subject expertise – that would be er… sport maybe? – and blowing a raspberry at the notion of received wisdoms elsewhere. Received wisdom often perpetuates myth, right? Is often grounded in smugness; may need the faux-oxygen of privilege or the cover of opaqueness. Perhaps mystery itself may be an outlier in this matrix of conformist gunk? And perhaps, therefore we need an occasional, demystifying blast of… punk?

Punk was wonderful for its moral zeal-with-a-mohican. Punk said – if you were listening – stop preening and start speaking from the heart. Stop twiddling those solo’s and tell me something real. It was magnificently articulate and magnificently necessary in that respect. Punk began unpeeling the facades of the worlds of art/music/politics because it seared angrily through; it was a focused mischief blaring wildly out for betterstuff. It may not have paused too long in consideration of the need for nuanced arguments but maybe that counts for urgency rather than in some cool deficiency column. Great punk(s) had no respect, other than that which was earned. Great punks did not understand, so they demanded answers.

John Lydon may have been the only great punk. ‘Metal Box’ from Public Image Limited remains a staggeringly discomfiting but articulate noise, an appropriate racket from which to launch an onslaught against (capitalist(?) drudgery—witness the “shallow spread of ordered lawns”. Something is being punctured or exposed or better revealed; a kind of hypocrisy, a kind of normalcy; a sad, bad intellectual thinness. There is poetry in these dumb questions. These questions might not have been asked… if we’d have just… behaved.

So though I do despair at how we still fawn before the current gods – for ‘growth’/some careering stability/the normalcy of sheepishness – those rib-progglers, those UnCutters, those Occupiers give me hope.

Et vives?

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The French must be bawling. Slumped on the fields of Alsace ou Normande, bitterly weeping out their heartbreak. Gawping in the cafe-bars of Biarritz, over the affaire discombobulatingly cruelle. Who could have foreseen it; the day when the English – Les Anglais! – usurped them as the great enigma of 6 Nations rugby? When the lily-whites, the ros-bifs actually actually appeared more difficult to read than the magnificently, enigmatically opaque Bleus. When England from 9 to 15 were that ludicrously French phenomenon, the Unlikely Lads. Or worse- the Unknowably Untested Lads. Or the Godknows What Will Happen Lads. But such is the current, anti-intuitive scenario.

France, of course are still reassuringly in pieces. Some bits toweringly, even tempestuously brilliant – Harinoduquy? Dusautoir? Whilst others others skulk and feint too easily in the traditional allegedly gallic manner. They are, therefore yet again likely to be consistently inconsistent, despite the swapping of guard following Lievremont’s departure preceding a comparative calming of the perception of changes perpetuelles. (If my taking of diabolical liberties with the French language offends, please send your complaints to P Idgin, Two Veg Row, Hampton le Cobblers, Dorset.)

For the arrival of Philippe Saint Andre – and his selection of a 30 hommes squad – seems to have been relatively quietly appreciated and indeed commented upon in rugbygossville. Notable picks are Beauxis, the Toulouse pivot and the returning Poitrenaud and Nyanga. Elsewhere the Yachvilis and Parras and Vincent Clercs give the thing a spookily familiar, if not (ever?) trusty look.

But when this is a side that recently featured in the World Cup Final, why wouldn’t it look familiar? What’s to be gained by too much faffing, now the Fiddle-Meister-in-Chief Lievremont has disparu? The fact that his charges were possibly the most unlikely and almost unbelievably ungraceful (and therefore unpopular) French side in memory that somehow woke up to find themselves in a WCF is interesting rather than seminal. They were actually shambolically crap; but they almost made it. Like France would. Now they must add structure and consistency to the engagingly, maddeningly French stuff. So there won’t be too many changes; unless Saint Andre can fashion some conviction and some unity; in which case they might win the thing at a canter.

Scotland have surely no chance of winning the tournament. Certainly not with just the two home games – England and France? Their contribution to and competitive streak in the tournament is, to their credit, gathering but the retirement of Paterson leaves them further adrift in the putting points on the board stakes, does it not? For all the recent highs – the heartening resurgence vol. XXlV – it just appears that that minor detail (execution from the backs) eludes them. I do not discount the achievements of either Edinburgh – sitting pretty ‘midst the Heineken Cup Quarters elite – or Glasgee – sitting pretty pretty in the pro12 – but who amongst the back division is actually going to score?

Ross Ford is a mighty and a proud wee leader of men I’ve no doubt, and the famed back row in particular may yet marmalise (in particular) the soft centre of their first, momentarily white-suited opponents. But the quality they have at 9 and 10 is rarely matched outside. Consequently the Cussiter/Blair/Parks axis either has to really make something very new happen, or energise the loose forwards towards more than the occasional or moral victory.

Andy Robinson – a man treated poorly I suspect by both players and officials at Twickers – knows all this and is no doubt icily smouldering for a win against the English first up. That’s certainly do-able. Given the genuine all-court progress Robinson has led, plus the inevitable key Mel Gibsonian roar of the sporran-touting masses, Messrs Hodgson/Farrell and co might be forgiven for pooping their Calvin Klein’s at the prospect. The Scots may not need any backs to win that one; which may be just as well. Paterson is scheduled to take a fond adieu in one of those cringingly orchestrated ‘farewells’ that pro sport does these days; before kick-off; against the English. He, like us, just won’t know which way that one will go.

The Italians, under new coach Jacques Brunel mirror some of Scotland’s shortcomings, only maybe in a hall-of-mirrors kindofaway. They are at times, more weirdly inadequate, especially as they approach the opposition 22. If they ever do. Cruel? Perhaps. But the Azurri, who battle bravely and with some efficiency at scrum and at breakdown – where the likes of Castrogioavanni and Parisse and to a lesser extent Bergamasco deny smug notions that they are there to make up the numbers – are… short of numbers. Numbers 10 to 15 typically. And maybe 4, 5, 6. Ish. Consequently, the feeling and the likelihood remains that they can’t quite compete. Not in more than one or two games. Not really.

There have been times when those of us who love the game and rate the Italian zest for it have chorused endlessly on the subject of kickers. The lack of which has been absolutely key to preventing the Roman hordes from further, more rewarding pillage. (Remember they did beat the French in Rome last time out.) The chronic shortage of place-kickers in particular has de-empired them before the legions have been dispatched. I have myself, on many occasions, volunteered to step up at time of need, having struck successfully for Italia on many occasions – I kid you not – in the Thunder Bay and District Midwinter Soccer League. (‘Nother story- let’s leave it.) I wouldn’t, believe me, have missed. Not like that.

Now, again, the question may be How To Stay In Touch with those who are just that bit better, that bit more likely to ‘execute’. Whilst watching another convincing flurry from scrum to about halfway, I, for one, will be wishing our Italian brothers well.

It’s all happenin’ boys…

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Is it just me or are there more real rugby stories about than usual; things that properly prickle the attention.  Like how about these, for example?

The Wales thing; i.e. the legacy of a pretty outstanding World Cup, where they corralled most of the goodwill a game can generate through outliving glorious Welsh stereotypes.  In other words they were often crowd-pleasingly brilliant and brought a dynamism that lit up the tournament.  Now they have to follow that.

The Kiwis thing; the laying of the albatross/monkey hybrid-demon thing, whereby the best team in the world finally gets to drink in the glory earned by generations of mighty All Blacks.

The England thing; where a recently utterly disgraced, stodgy but undeniably large and hairy beefcake begins to roll back its sleeves and get ready again.

The North American thing; where we hope shiny, happy and unself-consciously new peeps get seriously into this other oval obsession (man.)

And as babyplots, how about the Ashton Hairpulling Atrocity/McCaw Gouging Inquisition/Harlequins-Scarlets New World Order?

Living in Wales, forgive me for starting there.

Most of us are clear that Wales did bring something more than slightly wonderful to a relatively ordinary World Cup.  It was a particular belief as much as anything – a Brotherhood of Redness – a triumph for their coaching staff, who simply had the players brimful of uncluttered purpose.  They played almost without fear, knowing they were in magnificent condition, believing in the rightness of their boldness, drawing on tradition, emotion and gloriously disproportionate expectation rather than shrinking into easy conservativism.

Speaking as a coach from a laughably lower athletic stratum, it struck me that what Wales achieved was a kind of perfection in terms of expressing the wholeness that is team sport.  As well as propelling them irresistibly forward, this touched the hearts of the watching world.  One less toot from the referee and who knows – they might even have won it.

Now the trick is to sustain that aura and replicate that level of dynamism going into Six Nations.  Even the supreme Gatland/Howley/Edwards triumvirate may find that a stretch.  One argument says an expansive game is contingent largely upon pace on the ball, which needs… ‘a platform’.  Better rugby minds than my own have recently questioned whether Wales’s front five can or have generally delivered that sufficiently convincingly and express doubts about the looming 6 Nations.

Ideally Warburton and Faletau might tear teams to pieces once parity in the lumps is achieved and games are prized open.  However, I do wonder how things might look if say Jones and Jenkins and Wynne-Jones are either absent entirely or merely inconspicuous?  It’s just hard to play without the ball.  And teams – other teams – will chiefly seek to deny Wales the ball.

On the positive side, I genuinely believe that the presence of a truly competitive Wales team is hugely beneficial to the world game – and always has been.  Support for and understanding of the game in Wales is extraordinary.  Importantly and recently, neutrals around the world received a colourful reminder of what rugby means when the Brotherhood of Redness stepped out.

There are parallels between Welsh Fire and All Black Magisterial Pomp.  The nations are united in a profound link to the unique and mostly honourable physicality of the game.  If it is ever appropriate to talk of a nation’s psyche then something meaningful may likely be said of Kiwi or Welsh expression through rugby.  But it is better felt, or heard, in the national thrum that precedes glorious success.  The difference between the 2 mighty-mouse nations is arguably that the All Blacks are almost always the best side in the world; this dominance has not, however been registered at World Cup level.

So this home victory – the agony of it, the joy of it – was understood to be ‘massive’.  Kindof trans-generationally earned, it was not merely a triumph for McCaw and his fierce leonine posse; it was for all All Blacks – all those who deserved but failed in the 20-something lean years when they merely battered everybody out of sight, but failed to find that most significant of trophies lying at their feet.  I think the watching world understood that too – even or most especially the near-heartbroken Welsh.

England, following the kind of tournament that seemed previously to belong solely to their footballing equivalents, are, I suspect, gently gathering.  The new Temporary Coaching Combo (is that what we should call them?) of Lancaster, Rowntree and Farrell – apart from sounding like a trustworthy and long-established Solicitor’s practice from a pleasantly leafy market town – seems a decent mix.  Farrell and Lancaster have worked successfully together at Saxons, where it appears Lancaster’s talk complements the former league god Farrell’s walk.

Rowntree, the bull-like Forwards Coach is virtually the only sentient being to emerge unscathed – in fact, possibly even with reputation enhanced! – from the World Cup debacle. His understanding of the dark arts and his personal likeability make him central to any resurgence. I do fancy England might be reasonably formidable opponents sometime quite soon, as both Lancaster and Farrell have shown they can manage and motivate – something sadly Martin Johnson failed to achieve.

Lastly I was pleased to deal in some depth with the rise of North American rugby in my last blog.  Pleased because there is a sense of some likeable distant cousin arriving and joining in with one of ‘our’ games; and being pretty good.  And then persuading half his mates to give it a crack.  Before we know it we’re taking club tours to each others countries/watching them develop, excitingly quickly/watching them get a Pro game going/stage a flippin’ World Cup!  Crazy and wonderful stuff like that.

Yesterday a US 7’s side competed with some distinction in the ongoing IRB Sevens in South Africa.  A strong England side beat them reasonably comfortably but they ran a highly fancied Samoan side very very close.  ‘T was another stepping stone towards being competitive.

In passing it strikes me that Northampton’s Chris Ashton’s 4 week ban for stupidly re-arranging Alesana Tuilagi’s ample barnet (even allowing for the fact it sparked an unseemly brawl) seems harsh.  The McCaw story accusing the French of gouging and other ‘filth’ is unfortunate and possibly serious.  The resurgence of both Harlequins and Scarlets – my (reasonably) local club, however, I welcome!