Referees Hate England

A scrappy win for England Rugby away at Stadio Flaminio in Rome, and one that was in the balance right up to final whistle as Italy bowed out all guns blazing.

Fair play to the Italians, they fronted up and played some great rugby. They never dropped their heads even as England were stretching away by the end of the first half. In the second half they gave it a lash.

But only because they were allowed to.

Here are some stats for the second period:
possession - Italy 68:Eng 32
territory - Italy 62:Eng 38
penalties against - Italy 3: Eng 15

Eh?

The referee is, in essence, saying that Italy were so good that England were reduced to cheating to keep them from scoring. Yet the match was not like that. Furthermore, these are Premiership players with bags of experience. They don't do it in the league so why would do they do it in the test arena?

The answer is they don't. The answer is a lot of international referees secretly hate us.

Today it was Irishman Alain Rolland's turn. A twerp with a chip on his shoulder he's got form too. For it was he that almost lost us the World Cup 2007 quarter-final against Australia when England's forwards were shitting all over the Australian pack yet we got given nothing.

This is happening too many times for it to be a coincidence. The most notable occasion of course being André Watson's almost surreal non-performance that almost cost us the World Cup in 2003. Our scrum in that match was clearly, obviously, 110% the dominant force yet he kept on not only nullifying it but actually penalising us for, in effect, bullying the poor Australian front row.

It's time someone spoke out about the celtic and antipodean bias against England. We're getting royally screwed almost every game we play. We have to play twice as well as the opposition just in order to win by a couple of points. What's the matter with these people? Did they get bullied when they were young? Do they have mental issues with the success of our fair isle? So what if they think we're arrogant? They're still supposed to play by the rules. Our arrogance or otherwise is irrelevant. I note that the refs who give England the fairest shout are the Frogs - whose own sense of arrogance is such that they're above having a chip on their shoulder.

Enough! Grow up and get over it colonials. You owe it to the game.

Spain vs England UEFA U17 Final

Just finished watching the final of the UEFA U17 Cup Final. Spain won 1-0. Probably deserved but there wasn't much in it. If anything, Spain deserved it most for being the most positive. Not in the sense of positive play - both teams tried to attack and play good football. No, positive in the sense of general attitude.

Now, I know we are dealing with 15/16 year olds here, and that with all those hormones raging it's a period in a young mans' life where sulking and depression is the norm, but come on chaps. You've made it to the final of the UEFA Cup. You're considered one of the best players in your country, with luck you have a pro football career ahead of you and, most importantly of all, you get to wear the glorious white shirt with lion rampant. You could smile a bit. Look a bit excited. The Spanish chaps were (and I mean before they lifted the cup). But, with the exception of our excellent left-back (sorry dude, didn't catch your name), our players were all surly, aggressive, frowning and with heads constantly bowed. They had the whingeing to the ref bit perfected. They spat a lot. They sauntered around casually for throw-ins and free-kicks. They were, in short, 'always cool man', 'looking for respek', 'not wanting to be dissed innit'.

What a bunch of tossers.

Lads, lads, lads, you need to cheer up a bit. The psychology is all wrong and needs to be fixed. Remind yourselves that you made the finals of the UEFA Cup, which is a great achievement. You have great futures ahead of you with Ferraris and groupies and international travel and 'loads of respek innit. Liberate yourselves and your football will be even better. Uncle Soren can show you the way - and my fee is most reasonable. Drop me a line and I'll give you the existential psycho-cure.

Club Vs. Country

This week I got into a debate in the comments section of the Daily Telegraph rugby blog (hosted by Mick Cleary, that paper's rugby correspondent).

The subject was club vs. country in the wake of yet another injury to Super Jonny Wilkinson. Below I reproduce my original comment:

"I was born in East Anglia and was brought up in Cambridge. We have no Premier League rugby. There's North Walsham in Norfolk, who are quite strong, and Bedford is just down the road - but I've never bothered to watch them. Indeed, the only team I watch regularly is Delia's NCFC in the round ball game. But my one true love in the sporting arena is England Rugby. I go mad for England playing rugby. It sets my heart racing like no other game. I was brought up by my father as a rugby player and the annual 5 nations tourny was the focus of the year - now the 6 nations. I've watched England play in Australia, Italy, France, Cardiff and at HQ. I never miss a match and have gone to enormous lengths to watch them play in remote places on Saturday and Sunday afternoons. Several wedding receptions have been disrupted by my zeal to be in front of a box for a game. The days when England are playing rugby are the most important days in my calendar. Oh, and I'm a big fan of the Lions too. I couldn't give a monkeys about the Premier League. I may tune in to a Heineken cup semi or final but ultimately I have no connection to these regional teams. I find their bleating about damaged goods shortsighted since without a successful England rugby team their clubs are worth less - much less. Notwithstanding my own feelings about Premier League rugby, it is surely true that the national team's success directly reflects on the popularity of the game as a whole. And I sometimes feel as if they don't recognise this. The only point I feel in favour of the Premier League teams is that possibly England play too many games. Combined with the 4 yearly Lions matches we spread the players too thin. It's a brutal game rugby and we're burning the players out. The number of England matches needs to be properly limited and planned out well in advance."

Woof! And what a response I engendered. However, none of the freaks who said club was more important than country had any new arguments and most simply whined about how their clubs had to pay the hospital bills for players injured playing for their country. Pah! It should be the other way round. When Jonny W got injured YET AGAIN playing for Newcastle in the week before the England vs France match it struck me that Newcastle should be paying us - England Rugby supporters - for stealing our Jonny away from HQ.

Consider this as well: The best supported rugby teams in Europe have smaller crowds than 3rd Division football teams. My own club, Norwich City FC, averages over 26,000 spectators for league matches - that's more than any other rugby club in Europe. However, when England play a Six Nations match the domestic audience averages between 5-6 million. And you can add another 4-6 million when incuding live worldwide viewers.

The RFU needs to stamp down on the clubs now and show them who is boss. All clubs should be 100% subservient to the national team. If the clubs choose to employ players who are in contention for a place in the national side they need to account for that in their planning and alter their wage structure accordingly. There are 6 million supporters out there who want a winning national team. Why should the 1 man and his dog who support club rugby therefore dictate to us?

It's Always Handy To Have A Jonny

As my dad used to remind me when I hit late teenage years and started going out with girls - always keep a jonny in your back pocket, just in case. Brian Ashton, newly installed England Rugby coach, must have given the same advice to his own sons and taken heed himself of this excellent advice. Re-introducing Jonny Wilkinson to the England fold for this season's match vs the Scotch was in many ways a risky choice. With only 42 minutes of rugby under his belt this season, and precious little time on any rugby field since his last-minute drop goal to win the world cup back in'03, many were the critics of this bold decision. The fall-out if Jonny had got injured would have been horrendous. Or even if he had performed badly and let the Scotch gain momentum in the early stages of the game you knew the press, the slavering wolves of hackdom, would have slaughtered Ashton.

But the England supporters were all for it. Jonny W was their talisman. The key to the lock. The little engine who could. The atmosphere at HQ was totally changed from that last, horrible outing vs the Boks. Tension was absent, pre-match beers were sunk in hope rather than dread, the chat was upbeat. They agreed with Ashton.

And then... Oh boy and then. 70 minutes later, with 27 individual points in a total over 40, blinding breaks, creation of tries, a full-house of scores (try, conversion, penalty and drop goal) the hero was substituted to a standing ovation. Jonny was back. England were back. All was well with the world.

A quick mention must also be made of Jonny's teammates who also came good that day. Jason Robinson returned to the national team after previously retiring - and scored a try. Andy Farrell (or 'Faz' as the League boys insist we should call him) played solidly and was a great foil for Jonny. The forwards finally looked like English forwards should -frightening. Harry Ellis at scrum-half was magnificent (my personal MOTM) and the new chap at full-back, Olly Morgan (who attended my alma mater - Millfield School), acquitted himself well too.

God how I love international rugby union. No other game makes me so revved up. It takes true courage to front up in this game. It makes me laugh when football commentators talk about courage before a match. Don't get me wrong, I love footy, it's a brilliant game requiring many athletic skills - but it doesn't require courage. Vinny Jones wouldn't have lasted 2 minutes on a rugby field. He'd have been found out for the bully he is before he could grab anybody's nuts. No, international rugby union is the toughest team sport on the planet and all the men who play it - yes, even the Welsh - should be lauded as present day gods.

They Think It's All Over - It Is Now

Bloody hell! That was quick. Only fifteen months after possibly the geatest Ashes series of them all (or maybe second greatest if, like me, you think 1981 was fun as well) the Australians reclaimed the little urn. And they did it with complete dominance winning 3 out of 3 matches by massive margins.

There can be no complaints about the results. No bad umpiring or dodgy tactics took place. We have been simply thrashed off the park.

What this series has done, however, is throw into relief the reasons for England's success back in 2005. Firstly, the captain and engine is Vaughan and without him we're underpowered. No Vaughan and no Tresco at the top of the innings leaves us very brittle. Secondly, Jones the Quick is vital. He gets just enough movement off the pitch to make his undoubted speed seriously dangerous - and he's so boneheaded he's not the sort to get troubled by Ozzie sledging. He probably doesn't even understand what they're saying. And thirdly, even when firing on all cylinders, we still needed a slice of luck. Because, let's face it, to beat this frankly awesome Australian team requires everything to go your way.

Still, it's not all doom and gloom (no, actually it is all doom and gloom, I'm just plucking at straws here) and there is hope for the future. Cook is good, and may become great, but he's still finding his way. Monty is a genuine international spin bowler. Vaughan has some good years left in him. Simon Jones may yet get fixed-up (we can rebuild him). And apparently there are some dynamite young 'uns coming through the junior ranks. So, chin up chaps. The Ozzie Bosch haven't done for us yet. In the meantime just grit your teeth, strap that smile to your face and congratulate those whiney, chippy, semi-educated, half-baked abo convicts for playing so well. There, that wasn't so hard was it?

Well Goodbye Mr Robinson

You know, life used to be so much simpler and days more carefree. Once upon a time, the England rugby team would turn up at Twickenham in nice clean white shirts, run out on the pitch, catch the ball, stick it up their jumpers and roll remorselessly towards the opposition try line. We in the crowd would shout 'Heave!', Brian Moore would punch a Frenchman when the line-judge was unsighted, and two hours later we'd be in the car-park quaffing champers and munching on mum's mini-sausage rolls discussing yet another victory.

This tactic was so successful that with a few modifications (adding kicking machine Jonny Wilkinson and getting someone else to do the punching of the Frenchman bit) it eventually led to a World Cup.

However, this wasn't good enough for new broom Andy Robinson, a man who I'd amired on the pitch but could never get my head round accepting as England manager. Apparently, winning games of rugby was no longer the point. No, what we had to do was play the super expansive southern hemisphere type game, with lots of running about, girlie backs crashing into each other somewhere in midlfield, rugby league type scrums and cricket results for final scores. It seems that this is what 'new' rugby union was all about. Each game should feature at least twelve tries, each one accompanied with a burst of 'rock' music from the tannoy, fifty substitutions, cheerleaders with pom poms and 'zonal' defensive systems. Now this is fine for NZ or Ozzie types I'm sure, but this is not the English way. For generations we have played rugby a certain way - fat boys hog the ball and bully their way forward, very occasionally allowing the fly-half to kick for position and maybe three times a match spreading the ball wide to a suitably lank winger who would make a spirited dash for the corner. It was simple, it was effective, and above all, it was fun. We, the English crowd, enjoyed it. Even when England lost at least we knew that the opposition had had to pay some blood for their triumph. And make no mistake, triumph it was because England used to be the one match they all wanted to win the most.

There can be as much, if not more, enjoyment taken from an 8-4 scoreline as a 43-24 try-fest. A more 'rugby-sophisticate' eye can see the battle of players as the core of the watching experience rather than just watching the tally. Indeed, at 8-4 a match can still go either way with just a few minutes left on the clock, whereas the high-scoring games are usually all but over by half-time. There is as much art and invention in a good rolling-maul that takes two minutes to move ten yards as there is in a bunch of crash-ball touchdowns. It's bitter vs lager, John Rutter vs Backstreet Boys, Jordan vs Britney Spears, err no, scrap that last one. Anyway, you get the drift.

But Andy didn't get the drift and got re-drafted. England have now lost something like 8 out of 9 games but it could be more - I lost tally. Several of these were at HQ. One of them was to Argentina. It's been a long and desolate road to this expansive rugby heaven and frankly I want to go back to mortal earth where England is the one match they all want to win again. Because right now, I don't think that's the case.

No Width, No Invention, No Goals, No Beckham

The signs were already there - I was just too much of an optimist to read them properly. The nil-nil against Macedonia (at home, if Old Trafford can be called 'home') was pretty poor, but the 0-2 capitulation to Croatia was worse. No width (3-5-2 formation eh? great call Mac), no invention and no goals, unless you count the comedy own-goal by Muppet brother number one.

And why drop Beckham? The guy is world class, plays for the second best team in the world (after NCFC, of course) offers width on the right, always works hard, takes wicked free-kicks, and, most importantly of all, top class crossing. Consider, you have Peter Crouch in the team, standing some ten feet tall with clouds hanging around his head, and you drop the best crosser of a football the world has ever seen. And this is great management is it?

I give Maclaren ten more matches and then he'll start getting the root vegetable photo-shop treatment from the currant bun.

Hair Play

"There is no doubt of the racism and hatred that the British have towards the Muslims and especially Pakistan." - email to http://content-uk.cricinfo.com/engvpak/content/current/story/257299.html following the bizarre ending of the 4th England vs Pakistan Test at the Oval on August 21st.

Woah! Hold on there Mohammed. The English didn't precipitate this farce. The umpire who made the decision, Mr Darrell Hair, is Australian (backed up by his co-umpire from Dominica) and the team that refused to play on were the Pakistanis. Leave us out of it matey.

Yes, one can understand the emailer's frustration. A cracking test match was heading towards an exciting conclusion. A dominant Pakistan were six wickets away from winding up the English second innings and were still 30 runs ahead with 20 overs and a day to play. Collingwood and Bell, the last recognised batsmen in the England line-up, were plugging away trying to set up a defendable total whilst Kaneria was finally getting some serious spin from the pitch and Asif and Gul were hitting line and length. It was fascinating stuff. And then we had the 'protest' with Pakistan refusing to come out and play because their 'honour' had been impugned by the accusation that they had tampered with the ball. What a let down. But how do you get from this to accusation of 'British hatred and racism' is beyond my ken.

If the angry emailer had bothered to read any comments from the English press, fans and cricket authorities he would have seen that the vast majority were pro-Pakistan and very critical of the ball tampering decision. The (English) TV commentators Nasser Hussain, Gower and Botham were as one in their support of Inzie and their critique of Darrell Hair. The ECB officials made strenous efforts to get the match resumed. If this is 'racism and hatred' then I'm a Dutchman. So try this Mr Angry. You, Mr anonymous Pakistani muslim, have a sensitivity issue which you need to address. You need to grow up and learn to count to ten before you shout your mouth off with unsupported wild allegations. The only racist hatred being espoused is yours and you do your country a grave disservice by espousing it.

In Harmi's Way

Three days of fast balls, high bounces, blows to the head, arms, legs and loins and England had wrapped up a superb Test victory versus Pakistan. Andrew Strauss, our fill-in captain for the fill-in captain Flintoff who was filling-in for Michael Vaughan, called it 'almost the perfect match' and he wasn't far wrong. To knock over a batting side like Pakistan in under three days, even on a hard, pacy track like Old Trafford, is going some and we should salute Harmison and Panesar for their 18 wicket haul. While the Durham paceman was notching up a ten wicket haul through speed and intimidation, Monty was pinning down the other end with some first-class spin bowling of variety and confidence. If the Pakistani's weren't getting bruised at one end they were getting bamboozled at the other. An absolute delight to watch. Can England keep it up?

Opposed to this joyful stuff we had news of Floyd Landis' positive urine test - positive for the male sex hormone testosterone that is. I'm not a cycling man so I don't know how 'unusual' his stunning come-back ride was during the winning of the 17th, Morzine-Avoriaz, stage of the Tour de France on July 20th, but it would be a real shame if it's going to be cancelled out. As he pulled away from the peloton and the clock started to show his time advantage increment it was quite a heart-pounding period. Maybe it's all the lycra, or else the podium babes at the days-end prize presentations, but it was so exciting for me that I'm not sure my own epitestosterone levels were not a little crazy that evening. The wife certainly thinks so and if it results in a boy I may have to consider Floyd as a middle name. Anyway, we await the result of his 'B' sample, and if it confirms the first test that would make three busts of three winners of the three main cycle-races this year. This is a sport with a severe problem and the authorities need to act quickly.

The Quality Of Mercy Is Not Strain'd

So, now it's official. Violence, in the form of a butt to the chest, is only marginally worse than insulting someone's sister. The self-serving football gods who sit in Zurich have pronounced on Zidanegate and the result is that the violent thug Zidane gets a three-match ban (he's retired anyway so I presume that means he'll have to rule himself out of the family kick-about at the beach this summer) and a Euro7,000 fine, while Materazzi, nipple-tweaker and sister-sledger, gets a two-match ban and a Euro3,000 fine. A ridiculous judgement in light of what it signals to the footballing world. Mind you, what should we have expected, coming from an organisation who's chief thinks that women should be made to play the game in skimpier shorts?

It also begs the question about what is the sliding scale for similar but different offences. If an amateur footballer cuffs someone about the head in response to an insult about his auntie, what does he get? If multi-millionaire ZZ is worth Euro7,000 for a head-butt then I'm estimating it's a £5 fine and being made to stand by the corner flag with a dunces hat on for the Sunday parks player.

In a more civilised part of the sporting world, England put up a good show vs. Pakistan in the cricket. Notching up a creditable 500+ runs and a first innings lead of 90, ultimately a draw was always on the cards when they couldn't raise the run-rate in the second. Only the diamond-stud earring'd one Pietersen had a strike-rate suitable for creating enough time to bowl out a very long batting Pakistani line-up. When they put their minds to it they can bat for months these Pakistanis and I expect this to be the dominant theme for the next two tests.

Finally, great amusement was had in our house last weekend watching TV coverage of the NZ vs. South Africa Tri-Nations rugby. After the Boks humiliation in Sydney the week previous everyone was expecting a Pakistani batting-score in New Zealand but instead it was reasonably close and the South Africans put two tries on the All-Blacks when going down 35-17. The NZ commentators could barely believe it and spent the whole game belittling the ref, since clearly he could only be the reason "The World's Greatest Team" couldn't put the Boks away. If you thought US Olympics coverage provided the most biased TV coverage in the world, listening to NZ rugby commentators would soon put you straight. Nothing the opposition do right is ever credited whilst every decent move from a man in a black shirt is greeted with an orgasm. As far as New Zealnd rugby commentators are concerned only one team in the world actually play rugby while all the rest of us simply cheat or don't know the rules. (Rule number 1. You never beat NZ, you can only score more points than them). Someone needs to remind them that New Zealand have only won the World Cup once - and that was on home soil nearly twenty years ago.

T&T Had The Nicest Shirts

One week in to the World Cup and incredibly England have already qualified for the second round. We normally leave it to the third match creating angst and headaches all-round but we decided to break with tradition. In another change to the normal schedule, England actually managed to score in the second half of a football match, something that hasn't happened for a loooooong time. In this case it was in the 80th minute versus Trinidad and Tobago (or T&T as the locals say it) as Peter Crouch finally got the better of his marker and headed in from 8 yards. Phew. What a relief. Until that point it was a 0-0 bore-draw and it was looking like a classic case of an ex-colony getting one over on their ex-masters. How the colonies like to beat us. It spurs them on like nothing else, except possibly essence of monkey glands in the tea. As the goal went in you could almost hear a collective sigh from the chippy colony north of the border and I'm not sure what made me happier - the qualification that Crouch's goal confirmed or the knowledge that the Scotch wouldn't be able to wind us up for the next month.

In truth it was a boring match, as had been the previous one-nil over the Paraguayans, and the English team do not look like world beaters. The second best moment in the T&T match was not Stevie G's follow-up goal in the 90th minute, but instead Dwight Yorke's painful 'groin injury' as the TV commentators delicately described it. "The islands’ hardest-working body part received urgent physiotherapy" as Ben Hoyle in The Times put it, when Stevie G smashed a shot right in his knackers. He was down for a good three minutes after that and you couldn't blame him. It took two bottles of water down his shorts and a consoling head massage from the team-physio before he could resume, but like the good soldier he is he did resume and played on 'til the end. Before the match Yorke had said that "It will be a special moment for me," and I'm sure it was - and his own soldier will remember that special moment for a while as well.

Murulalalathitaradadooronron Destroys England

After just three and a half days of test cricket, two of them during the balmiest days of the summer so far, Muttiah Muralitharan took 8-70 as Sri Lanka thrashed England at Trent Bridge to draw the three-Test series 1-1.

At one stage it looked as if the evil-eyed genius was going to get all ten English wickets when he was seven-fer and just the tail to come, but Matty Hoggard decided to rain on his party by running himself out - a cunning strategy to forestall the long-named one joining Jim Laker (in 1959 vs the Half-baked Abbos) and Anil Kumble (in 1999 vs Pakistan) as the only test cricketers to make a clean sweep. In a way it was a shame because Murali (as the TMS commentators eventually settled on calling him) would certainly be deserving of joining a holy trinity such as this. At least we (the English) took it on the chin, with the Nottingham crowd correctly hailing him as he left the pitch. When he was destroying the Australians with his box of tricks some years ago the only answer they had was to call him for chucking. So 1-1 was the eventual score and England will be sorely disappointed they didn't make the 1st test count when they had the Sri Lankans on the ropes and couldn't finish them off.

Elsewhere, an England team were showing better form, with our chavballers pitching in with a six-nil thrashing of Jamaica in their last World Cup warm up match before jetting off to their schloss in Baden-Baden. Apparently the team hotel has only one road leading to it and there will be "a full security blanket around it while the team are there". Phew! At least those foreign spies won't be able to monitor our secret tactics (lob it up to Peter Crouch and hope he gets a head on it) or nobble the players by swapping their tubs of hair gel around and creating internal strife. The castle retreat is a good idea I think. Not so much for the isolation, but for the creation of team-spirit as the lads try to escape by digging tunnels with their platinum hair grips or hiding themselves in a wooden-pommel horse during fitness sessions, in order to get down the pub for a swift-half out of view from Kommandant Herr Gripp. The tourny starts Friday with hosts Germany hoping to avoid humiliation against Costa Ricacacacacacaaaaaa. England's first match is vs Paraguay, a country that was home to a few Nazis and dictators in the past but is now a beacon of democratic government and open society - perhaps. Anyway, we play on Saturday in Frankfurt at 1400 hrs, so note to all non-football interested ladies and homosexuals, if you want some hassle-free shopping now's your chance - all the roads will be empty and no-one will complain about your parking manouvres.

At Roland Garros the hoped for clash of the titans draws ever nearer. Federer has so far waltzed through his side of the draw while Mr Muscles has been power-blasting his way through his opponents on the other side. On the red clay the Day-Glo Dagoe has got to be favourite, but for all those who appreciate skill and grace, the Swiss ace must be our hope. Interminable baseline pounding with graphite sledge-hammers may be effective but it's a crashing bore for those of us brought up on Borg, Connors, McEnroe, Nastase et al. Allez Roger! vas-y!