My rugby supporting ladder

Rugby is one of those games where I can happily get into watching a match even if my team aren't playing. For domestic I don't really have *a team* if I can make it I'll go and support Rotherham Titans at their home games. I have a friend who is a mad Tigers fan who is kind enough to take me along to matches and it is only polite to support them when he does, even when they play west country teams who I tend to support over other clubs but not with any great loyalty to any one. Internationals are a different matter watching 15 man test matches or sevens I have a scale of support as follows.
England
Wales
Scotland
Ireland
New Zealand
Fiji
Samoa
Italy
France
Kenya
Any other team
Argentina
South Africa
And the bottom of the list but never supported as they are the bottom of the list and below every other team is Australia.

You can't get me, I'm part of the Union

I have mentioned this before (in Can't play the game? Change the rules) but this time we can all have our say about it, so if you would like to have your say on the "Experimental Law Variations" go to http://www.rfusurvey.co.uk/

Hat-tip: A Very British Dude

Ad industry in lack of originality shocker

With their coverage of the IPL alongside several flavours of rugby I am watching a reasonable amount of setanta sports at the moment. As with most cable television channels the adverts are in predictable blocks, lots of Guinness and Magners during live rugby for example. As it gets late of an evening, it moves towards SMS based flirting and recently lots of instances of this advert for Berocca. Which if you have had any exposure to popular YouTube videos you will recognise as a rip off of Here It Goes Again by OK Go. Of course borrowing from other peoples creative works by advertising executives is nothing new, it is some years now since an advertising agency watched the Hudsucker Proxy and decided to drop a car off a building in the snow and have it stop just above the road. It is also unlikely to ever stop the thinking it saves them leaves them more time to snort coke of the pert buttocks of recently legal boys.

The shafting of Bryan Ashton.

The first two years of Clive Woodward two second place finishes in the 5 Nations and losing in the quarter finals of the World Cup is backed and goes on to form one of the great England rugby sides.
Brian Aston a second and a third in the 6 nations and a *runner up* finish in the World Cup and is dumped.
When it was first mooted that MJ would join the setup as Team Manager it was spun that it was to free up Brian to be a focused head coach. But now he is in charge of the whole shebang, but only after a further three tests, two against the All Blacks, and while there are specialist area coaches under him with Brian goes the only Backs coach. While I think Brian is to dignified to do anything Darrell Hair like and sue, it seems a shame that they will get away with treating him like this.
All in all about as well managed as the Tony -> Gordon hand over and it will probably turn out about as successful.

To follow on

The feelings I have about the England Rugby team at the moment I just cannot put into words. The best way of explaining it is remembering watching the English Cricket team in the 80s.

I think I am going to rub chillies into open wounds, it will be far more pleasurable then watching the second half of that match.

One point that John Inverdale made during the coverage over the weekend that I would support, taking the Heineken pool stage scoring system for use in the six nations. I especially like the use of bonus points for close losses and multiple tries.

Can we just skip the Internationals?

Five matches into this years 6 Nations and I am already looking forward to it being all over. Then we can have the Heineken Cup knockout stages which will almost certainly be much better games of Rugby. Then it is a matter of waiting for the two UK rounds of the IRB sevens, admittedly England aren't doing well this year, but the action is so spectacular it is easy to just sit there and support anyone or indeed everyone! Of course the other good thing about the year ticking on is we will get some cricket in the right bloody time zone so I won't have to try and hide from the score until I can get to watch it.

A mixed bag

I am going to continue not making much comment on the US elections, all the professionals are making a lot of mistakes calling these elections, I can't imagine I am going to do much better. The two things I will say are, 1) personally I think it is good for the process if the primaries remain an open field for as long as possible and 2) in the same way that Gordon's messing up of the stop and go play in October brought forward a campaign for fixed term Parliaments this presidential election is getting lots of talk going about the electoral college system.
A brief warning that with the Six Nations starting, the resumption of of the IRB Sevens and a full menu of cricket kicking off all in February there will probably be a lot more talk of sport in this blog.
I am sure all of us would like to control how we are remembered when we are gone. Major Andrew Olmsted was a blogger, both on his own site and for the Rocky Mountain News decided to leave his own final post as part of the preparation all soldiers make for when their time comes.
Lastly it surprised me that even independent school pupils are as much part of the mélange of mannerless savages and need to be taught how to behave at table.

FA announce new England Manager

In a further refinement of the model which saw the takeover of Ebbsfleet Utd by myfootballclub.co.uk, the subscribers of Sports Interactive's Football Manager Live will control the selection of the England team. The player picked most for each position who satisfies the eligibility criteria to play for England will get the spot, the formation that is used most successfully in the online game will be the one used by the team.
A head coach will be appointed to run training sessions and may be given the power to make substitutions, although this maybe done through the game, if enough Football Manager players can be found online during a match.
Each player will get a share of £2.5 Million when the whole thing collapses during the qualifying for the 2010 world cup.

It just isn't cricket

Can someone please explain to me why the various administrators in world cricket believe they can still run a closed shop?
How is it that every year during the winter those of our finest not on tour are happily waved goodbye by their county and country as they toddle of to ply their trade in the SuperSport Series and the Pura Cup and yet Solanki, Nixon and Maddy have caused scandel by joining up with the Indian Cricket League? Sorry the "rebel Indian Cricket League" as it seems to be impossible to report on this particular twenty20 competition without referring to it in the pejorative.
Ok the ICL can't have the same impact on the game as "World Series Cricket" did, that breakthrough has already happened, but if there is space in the market for more cricket then the BCCI should concentrate on improving its offering to cricket fans rather than trying to strong arm other governing bodies into banning players who want to join.

Rule 22.8

Lots of commentators on the game of Rugby Union have started calling for the points value of a drop goal to be reduced. I have a better idea, they should suggest altering rule 22.8 which current reads:

22.8 BALL KICKED DEAD IN IN-GOAL

If a team kicks the ball through their opponents’ in-goal, into touch-in-goal or on or over the dead ball line, except by an unsuccessful kick at goal or attempted dropped goal, the defending team has two choices:
To have a drop out,
or
To have a scrum at the place where the ball was kicked and they throw in.

Now I am assuming that successful drop goals are not mentioned as the ball is dead as soon as the points are scored, so if we remove the reference to the "attempted dropped goal" then any drop goal attempt that fails will trap this law. So anyone considering if they should take a punt at the sticks will have to think very hard about how likely they are to slot it, especially from distance.
On the other hand, most of the people calling for this are from Tri-Nation sides that traditionally don't take drop kicks, so maybe we don't need to change this at all.

Letter Published

The letter I wrote to Observer Sport Monthly was published. Not to my complete surprise it has ended up being a tiny bit shorter.

Bank on it
I enjoyed last month's cover story right up until the point when Tom Bower stated: 'Football is not a utility or a bank, but part of the fabric of England.' Football has been around in its current form for 150 years. Banking has been 'part of the fabric of England' for three times longer.
Tony Kennick, Sheffield

Letter to the Editor

The Editor
Observer Sport Monthly
via Email

Dear Sir,
I was enjoying last months cover story (The Big Sell Out, August) right up until the penultimate column when Tom Bower stated: "The difference is that football is not a utility or a bank, but part of the fabric of England"

I will briefly mention the argument that people's lives are significantly more at risk from real harm by utility price rises and these companies being run for the benefit of foreign shareholders. If a season ticket is priced out of person's means they have less enjoyment in their lives, if food or financial services are, they could freeze or starve.

The real issue here is to respond on the authors own turf, football being part of our society, especially as the outgoing editor was defending the amount of coverage the sport was getting. For comparison with what follows Football in approximately this form has been part of our lives for 150 years, I can use no other date as I am writing this in Sheffield. Firstly to directly rebut the two sectors Tom mentioned, banking is a difficult one to pin down a starting point on, but the founding of the London Royal Exchange was in 1565 to bring banking services together seems a good point, it implies that there was a significant sector beforehand but it works for my point as it points out banking has been part of the fabric of England for three times longer than football as we know it today. As for utilities, I got as far as a dimly remembered lesson at school about London's water and the New River company in the first two decades of the seventeenth century. Of course the New River was quite literally part of the fabric of the country and around two and a half centuries before the Sheffield Rules.

Casting the net wider, I feel that there is an intrinsic part of British life that is under far greater threat than football, having been with us for hundreds of years, massively popular with all sectors of society since the middle ages and with the oldest extant company dating from 1698. Brewing in this country has come under sustained, well financed attack recently. We should be campaigning loudly for the American, Belgian and other foreign money out of brewing because of the risk to the performance of our native beer styles.

After all the worst case scenario for the foreign money in football is an under-performing England team and that sounds no different from all the years where the top flight clubs were owned by our citizens does it?

Tony Kennick
(Address Supplied)