"There are some rivalries in sports that stand the test of time..."

"There are some rivalries in sports that stand the test of time, not simply because two fanbases are fuelled by hatred for each other, but because the two teams involved are so consistently successful that whenever they meet, the stakes are incredibly high.

"Take Barcelona and Real Madrid or the All Blacks and Springboks. It doesn't matter when these sides meet, there's always a sense of extra edge to the fixture.

"You can throw Hawthorn and Geelong into that category too.

"While this is the first September fixture between the two clubs since 2016, and the Cats enter as significant favourites, it's undeniable that form, recent history and even the venue doesn't matter when these sides play for a spot in the Grand Final on Friday night."

~ Hayden Farquahar from the post '“Nothing else enters my mind”: Geelong midfielder addresses Hawthorn rivalry, potential tag on superstar' 

*** AFL Preliminary Final tonight between Geelong Cats and Hawthorn Hawks. (Cats eat Hawks.)***

*** MATCH NEWS HERE ***

***Where the hell you watch it, I don't know. Sky perhaps? I'll be watching it on bigscreen via WatchAFL.***

*** Go the Cats! ***

Paying back heartland rugby for making 'Big Rugby' possible.

Yet again, NZ rugby is finding ways to shoot itself in the foot.

To fix the multiple and growing problems it has made for itself —  increasing fan disconnection with the game; decreasing interest in "franchise rugby"; the disconnections between the amateur and professional games; the withering of heartland rugby and the slow death of the NPC and provincial rugby —different groups are arguing over different ways to rearrange the deck chairs in the back office, which is going to change very little of what's been happening out front.

Here's an idea. A simple one. A simple idea to directly and organically link the money-making areas of the game with the grassroots, and to reward the makers of the homegrown player: How about when a player "goes to the show," those who helped make that player successful are rewarded. 

That is to say (based on the current set-up), if a player is selected from his/her club to go to provincial level, money is directed back to the club, perhaps in proportion to the player's playing fee. They're rewarded for growing and nurturing that talent. And even though they lose the player for some of the season, the club and its coaches and support folk will still see reward for their effort. And will be motivated to do more in future.

Take that principle to the next level.

Let's say a player is then selected for higher honours, even to a Super "franchise" to which the club is not linked. Then a portion of that higher fee will then be directed down to the province, and also down to their club. Once again, everyone who played a part in growing and nurturing that player is rewarded, and all of them retain on ongoing interest in their success, even if (as happens too often now) they never see the player again except on the telly.

But see them on the telly now and club/province/region is just as happy, 'cos they know they're going to be rewarded for the player's success. Everybody's smiling.

The same principle would apply to national honours, and even to a player's Japanese or Euro sabbatical. In the professional era, that means a professional payment. And a portion of that too should head back to the heartland, keeping the whole rugby community tied together, instead of squabbling over the doling out of ever-decreasing spoils. 

There are about 280 full-time players across the men’s and women’s games in New Zealand, and more overseas - not to mention the many receiving payments of some kind. Imagine of some portion from all of them were directed back very visibly to those who helped make their success possible.

So instead of withering away as the higher levels of rugby grow fat, as they are now, heartland rugby instead gets a chance to grow fat with them, most especially the clubs, coaches and provinces who are most successful at selecting, nurturing and producing the best talent.

The system used to work in Australian football until the marketing bunnies took over there too. It can work just as well here.

I'm not simply saying "go back go the good old days," but there were things that worked then that can still be encouraged to work now — most particularly the strong links between clubs and the upper levels, with fans showing loyalty to their regional reps because they'd been elevated from their own clubs, and the players themselves retaining that connection — club first — coming back and playing and supporting and helping out around the club.  Not as a matter of charity, but because that's just what you did. Just like the famous ethic of "cleaning the sheds."

Fan loyalty is key, 'cos in the end that's where the money comes from (either from fans themselves, or from sponsors who want to be in front of fans' eyes). And also key is to keep directing large amounts of that money back into producing the players who make the game possible, especially to the clubs who make it all possible.

So clubs are still the place where it needs to all happen. At the moment when players arrive at the big time it's like they've landed from the moon. Clubs lose their players and live off crumbs while administrators ignore them, and commentators rarely talk about them. Change the way that money flows, however, and commentators might start talking up the players' clubs, provinces and their previous coaches and mentors, and all of them might receive both more respect and a regular payday. 

This would be a way to begin paying back those in heartland rugby who make Big Rugby possible.

Emotionally committing to a sport

 

ONE THING RUGBY DOES (did?) almost better than any other sport is to create moments of great intensity, great drama, that hinge on actions taken ine the next few moments, or seconds, on the outcome of which it feels (at the time) like worlds might fall or empires crumble.

It seems, on the evidence of the weekend, that that might be over. That rugby officialdom has shot all that in the foot.

To be emotionally invested in a sporting contest -- and that's why we invest so much time and, sometimes, money, to watch the damn things, isn't it? because we are so emotionally invested -- then we have to know that what we're seeing in front of us is final. Is authoritative. Is complete. Is over. That the thing that's just happened has happened, is irrevocable, that worlds have lost (or been won), and we can rejoice or lament as deserved.

In short, that the actions of that moment, for good or ill, are exactly as final as death.

But why commit emotionally when you know all decisions (bar send-offs) are contingent?

Why commit, as a fan, to your team defending the line for phase after heroic phase, when you know there's a match official with his arm out waiting to bring the game back five minutes by saying "No advantage." 

Why care, even a little, when you know the defensive effort will only be a reward for the other team?

And why care at all about a try, the one thing his or her team is straining heart and sinew to score and the fan can celebrate with whole heart and soul? Because even this, after whistle has gone and celebrations subside, can be taken away now at the tweak of an off-field match official's microphone which happens to bear the words "No try; we're going back four phases [four phases!] for a fumble on the other side of the field." A fumble which the on-field match official saw, at the time, and said "Play on"!

Why celebrate? 

Why care?

Why invest emotionally, even in (what should be) the greatest of things in the sport, of a scintillating and possibly match-winning try in a World Cup Final, when even that can be overturned so blithely? (Turns out, ironically, that the one thing, the only thing, that is irreversible is the awarding of a penalty. Even if the match official himself tells the players before the resulting kick is taken -- for three points in a game lost by just one -- that the decision he made was wrong, it turns out that he's barred from reversing it.)

I ILLUSTRATE BY CONTRAST. I take you to the very end of this year's home-and-away AFL season, in which the fortunes of five teams hinged on the result of one game -- a game in which Adelaide kicked what looked like a winning goal against Sydney. To give them a win. But almost immediately (and the speed was the key) the goal umpire called "no goal." No goal, he said, because the ball had hit the post. No goal, meaning that because of that decision teams went into the final eight that wouldn't have otherwise, and other teams missed out. Including Adelaide. (And my team, Geelong.)

Turned out however that the goal umpire was wrong. That the ball didn't hit the post. That Adelaide coulda-shoulda won. That (because of that putative win) several teams who had already started their off-season prep might have to be called back. 

So what's the AFL to do? Here's what they did: they came out on the Monday and said two things: "We wuz wrong." And: "Tough." It was left to sports commentators to say the third: "Suck it up."

At the time, I thought they were empty-headed. That they were wrong. Not so. What they perhaps understood, and what the weekend's failure of officiation illustrated so well, by its absence, is (and I capitalise this to be sure to make the point) that FANS NEED TO KNOW THAT WHAT THEY'RE SEEING IN THE HERE-AND-NOW REALLY MATTERS. Because if they don't, if they start to think that it's all contingent, that it's all mutable, then there's no point in hanging on the outcome of every damn moment in what otherwise is a pretty stupid spectacle.

And when that happens, people just stop caring. And stop watching.

And let's not even get started on red cards and yellow cards, and the foolishness of importing, into a man-on-man game of collisions in which every man matters, a system borrowed from soccer. (I'll let a sports writer at RNZ do some of that heavy lifting for me, suggesting a sport from which it might be better to borrow.)

Let's instead lament the decision of our team leaders who decided not to take three points when it mattered, and congratulate the Springboks and their coaches -- who worked out that to win, with the rules as they are, that it's best to play low-risk rugby in which you invite the other team to make the mistakes.

And to wonder whether we should really care about it at all.

"It is a very strange type of professionalism that Super Rugby has created in New Zealand..."

"[I]t is a very strange type of professionalism that Super Rugby has created in New Zealand...
    "What makes sports meaningful is the contest involved: what it means to the supporters and players, and the quality of the players on view.
    "Super Rugby may have some quality players, but most of the games are increasingly meaningless to most supporters....
    "For all the apparent centrality of rugby to New Zealand, most of the time it occurs as a peripheral activity and drama for most – especially Super Rugby. The problem is Super Rugby, its format and length of season, its lack of drama and increasingly, its lack of meaning.
    "Fans of the game are increasingly alienated by the way the game is being organised and marketed. For we all know, deep down, that Super Rugby is a failed competition that struggles to hold our interest across a year....
    "[R]ugby on TV [has] become a low-quality meaningless extended blur. And yet ... the ritual of coming to the rugby, to live rugby ... [is also] losing its allure.
    "What complicates matters is the way that Super Rugby is not really professional in being an open market. To play for the All Blacks you must play in New Zealand and so our professional rugby teams are effectively a closed shop of players – and increasingly, a closed and limited shop of talent. The NZRFU is really the grand patriotic collectivist corporation and the Super franchises are the shop-fronts for the collectivist brand and product.
    "Speaking sociologically, we are facing disenchantment...."

~ Mike Grimshaw from his post 'Stupor Rugby?'

Soccer? Rugger? Football? Footy?

"Archery was essential for defence of the realm; football wasn't....
    "Small wonder that the game was royally disliked. Its origins were as common as gum under a tavern table. At first it didn't even have a name with any distinction. All the royal edicts called it 'ball play or 'playing at ball.' The term 'football' first appeared in a 1486 document, but it didn't mean a game in which a foot came into contact with a ball. Instead, it meant a game played 'on foot' rather than on horse, as was royally-approved jousting. The name also showed that football belonged to the commoners; only the nobility could afford to use horses for games!"

~ PFRA Research, from their article 'A Friendly Kinde of Fight: The Origins of Football to 1633'

"The earliest written reference to a game called 'football' dates from the 15th century, although the game itself has been around a lot longer.
   "In its oldest versions, any part of the body could be used to control the ball or tackle opponents. The name it acquired refers not to the fact that only the feet could be used to propel the ball, but that the game was played on foot. This marked it out as a game played by ordinary people, as distinct from the team games of the nobility which were played on horseback....
   "This early knockabout version of football probably derived from a game called 'harpastum,' which was played by Roman soldiers. This would have looked a little like our modern-day rugby and was used as a training exercise. It involved plenty of body-tackling and general commotion. The locals then perhaps created their own rough-and-ready version."

~ from 'History of Football,' from ICONS Online (commissioned by UK's Department for Culture, Media and Sport)

"Football, by the way, originally just meant any game played on foot, as apart from a game played on horseback. So it’s been a game of the streets, indeed much of the early history of football is told from the ways in which it was banned by successive monarchs, who felt that playing football would take people away from archery; equestrian sports were more obviously of military value.
    "With the growth of industrialisation in England from the middle of the 18th century, with urbanisation and the move from the fields to the cities, then the nature of the game might change. The sort of football played on paved streets is different from a game played in the fields....
    "INTERVIEWER: Where does the name ‘soccer’ come from?
    "A: There’s nothing definite in that. But essentially by the turn of the century, one of the stories is someone asked one of the chaps at school, ‘Want to come together at Rugger, old chap’ and he said, ‘No, I think I’ll stay and have a game of soccer’, and it’s the Association Football, shortened to soccer. As ‘rugger’ and ‘Assoc’ becomes ‘soccer’....
    "In 1863 after a series of discussions in the paper, in the field, that a group of old boys from the various Public Schools got together in London in the Freemasons’ Tavern in October of 1863, and founded the Football Association. That is the defining moment in the founding of soccer. It also the defining moment in the first football code, Rugby, which had been played at Rugby School for decades before that ... the essential difference then between the two major forms of football, one is the game in which you run with the ball, carrying it, and the other is the dribbling game. Much of that would depend on the school you went to. Rugby, wide open spaces, green grass, you could run, you could tackle, you could play the rough game. If you were playing at Winchester or the Cloisters on hard grounds, then you had bans because of space, of the surface, on handling and running and tackling."

~ sports historian Bill Murray, from an interview on the ABC's Sports Factor

"The English roll their eyes when Americans talk about 'soccer.' But actually, it's what the game should be called. And it's a British word....
    "The word comes from 19th-century British slang for Association Rules football, a kicking and dribbling game that was distinct from Rugby rules football back when both versions were played by British schoolboys. The lads who preferred the rougher game popular in schools like Rugby and Eton seceded from Britain's fledgling Football Association in 1871 to write their own rules, and soon players were calling the two sorts of football rugger and soccer.

~ Der Speigel, from its article 'It's Called Soccer'

Meanwhile, in a land down under ...

"Since its creation in Melbourne in the 1850s ... it [Australian Football] has evolved to a higher form, leaving behind other codes, which the writer Oriel Gray termed 'necessary steps in the ascent of man'."

~ Stephen Alomes, from his chapter 'Tales of a Dreamtime: Australian Football as a Secular Religion,' p.48

Bob Jones on rugby's decline

Bob Jones on rugby's decline:

"I can’t think of another sport so overwhelmingly rule‑bound. Constant whistle‑blowing, pedantic referees, interference empowered linesmen and third television referees to re‑examine the rare moments of action, make for a tedious spectacle. It reeks of the school room.
    "I’ve always been critical of my fellow New Zealanders for their timid acceptance of rule‑obsessed officialdom blighting our lives, so overall, the decline in interest in rugby is probably a healthy thing.
    "The sight of a referee, having for the thousandth time blown his whistle and stopped play, then beckoning with his finger as if addressing a two year old, to a giant forward to come to him is degrading. The oaf stumbles forward, stands meekly before him while he’s scolded, then if yellow‑carded, hangs his head in shame as he leaves for his 10 minutes punishment.
    "I thought about that when watching the greatest game of all, namely test cricket and the just completed, wonderfully dramatic Ashes series. A fresh Aussie bowler came on, stripped his jersey off and handed it to the umpire, already adorned with three other player jerseys around his waist, then the bowler pulled his hat off, banged it on top of the two the umpire already had on his head, then carefully placed his sunglasses atop of the pile, before commencing to bowl.
    "During overs it’s common to see players joking and chatting with the umpires. It’s a game for God’s sake...
    "Potentially rugby is a spectacular game but there’s an urgent need for a more relaxed approach to the rules, a cry I might add, echoed by the previous coach."

. 

Sherlock Holmes watches the world's most libertarian sport [updated]

Well, not Sherlock Holmes himself, but his author, Arthur Conan Doyle, who wrote the following about the world's most libertarian sport, Australian football, after watching the 1920 VFL Grand Final between Carlton & Richmond:

I know something about football, for I played Rugby for the Edinburgh University and soccer with the Hampshire team. I have also seen the best American football. I consider the Australian game is magnificent, and from the spectacular point of view it is probably the best of them all.
    The man-handling element in the British game, when the play is fast and the scrums break up, make it an extraordinarily fine game, but in the Australian game there is such constant movement that it stands by itself. They have developed several points which are quite new to me. One of them is accurate passing by low drop kicking. I think that could be introduced into the English game with very great advantage, for it seems to be faster than any pass by hand. Another point that struck me was the extraordinary accuracy of the screw kicking—that is to say when a man running past the goal kicks a goal at right angles to his own line. I have never seen anything to touch the accuracy of both the punting and drop kicking.
    I should think that it is the most gruelling of any game I have seen, and yet the players appeared to be as fresh in the last quarter as they were in the first, and they were playing with just as much vigour.

UPDATE:

World's most libertarian sport?

Football is not a game of rules, it is a collection of understandings. It must be so because a game that is played across a vast open field with an odd shaped ball by 36 players who are permitted to tackle and bump and maintain physical contact cannot be subject to rules. Its like suggesting that a war be subject to the off-side law.
   So, it is a collection of understandings that governs the behaviour of the players. They will not act dangerously and push an opponent in the back, they will not trip each other, they will not strike each other with intent, they will not throw the ball, they will not tackle each other above the shoulders. These notions are what we might call football’s “truths”. The umpire is only there to adjudicate when a player goes beyond these boundaries. True, there are rules around certain aspects of the game, like the scoring, but the essence of the game is not found in government.

.

Do we really need to know what Ali Williams does of an evening?

 

Sport itself is good for us, and the best sports are genuine metaphors for life – and many of the very best sportsman absorb their sport’s life lessons to become better human beings. But to be good at sports is no guarantee of being good at life. And the commentators who insist that sportsmen and women are “role models” do us all a disservice – and, if taken seriously, would require these heroes and heroines to live their lives for others instead of themselves, and to live them as if they were cardboard cut-outs and not the real flesh-and-blood human beings they are.

Real flesh and blood human beings don’t all go home after a big game to a nice currant bun and a dry sherry with the vicar. They go out sometimes and party, to enjoy themselves, to let off steam, to meet up with friends and teammates to carouse and debate and dance and argue and have fun (you remember fun, don’t you?); and sometimes – just sometimes -- like all of us --they do things they may regret in the morning – about which these people whom the media make into something they’re not are compelled to deliver mawkish apologies some time later that only their sponsors and small children generally believe.

Sometimes too these flesh-and-blood sportsmen will do things that are against the law. And some of those times it might be worth recognising that the media, on our behalf, are measuring these young men and women against a ridiculous standard – that we should insist the media commentators themselves should grow up -- and that it is the law itself that is an ass.

So good on Herald writer Chris Rattue (a line I’m sure I’ve never written before) for reminding readers that:

At this point, Ali Williams and James O'Connor, two former test rugby stars, are guilty of nothing having been arrested on cocaine charges in Paris. And guilty of nothing they are, whatever the outcome.
    Has there ever been a more futile, damaging legal line than the ridiculous war on drugs?
    It has created so many victims, in so many ways. Prohibition, as it inevitably does, has created a disaster it can't solve.

And so it has. And so we have documented here many times.[See posts on Prohibition and on the War on Drugs.]

Role models? Better for us all to grow up, and for commentators to explain to punters that admiring someone for one thing theyu they do doesn’t necessitate admiring every thing they do – and that these people are simply human beings like us who in their chosen trade can often so some super-human things. And those are the things we should, and do, admire them for.

.

Jonah Lomu, 1975-2015 [update 2]

Terrible news of Jonah Lomu’s passing, at only 40 years of age!

This was the moment [from 3:12 in the video], in a Rugby World Cup semi-final demolition of England, that he burst onto the world stage as somebody truly unique …

What a fabulous few moments of joy that gave every New Zealander who saw it – especially if, as I was, you were in a rapidly-emptying room full of Englishmen at the time.

Vale Jonah.

UPDATE 1: Stu McKinlay from the great Yeastie Boys brewery just posted this “dry-eye challenge,” from the documentary 'Back to South Africa'—and filmed just a few weeks ago. “No wonder Joost van der Westhuizen made such a tearful tribute to Jonah Lomu this morning.”

UPDATE 2: The 1989 results at Wesley College, Jonah’s high school, tell a story …

So, not the drunken shambles the lemon-suckers predicted, then

Good news—maybe. Could adults soon to be allowed to be adults for more than just the duration of a sports tournament?

Allowing bars to open during Rugby World Cup games didn’t turn the country into the drunken shambles that had been predicted, say the backers of the law change that made it possible…
    A law change was made two months ago to allow bars to open early during the tournament, rather than having to apply for special licences.
    The change was enabled by a bill from ACT's sole MP David Seymour, who watched the final at a bar in Auckland's Mt Eden.
    He was happy there had been no major problems and it showed New Zealanders were actually responsible people.
    "The picture that was painted when the bill was debated was that New Zealanders are infantile and if there's not a law made to prevent it happening there would just be drunk people pouring out into the street and harassing children," he said.
    However, there had actually been a very positive spirit with many generations watching games together, he told NZ Newswire.
   Hospitality Association chief executive Bruce Robertson says it played out exactly has they had anticipated.
    "If police hadn't been so difficult over the applications for special licences under the existing act it wouldn't have been necessary [to introduce this temporary legislation for the tournament," he told NZ Newswire.

So for all the talk of drunken disaster peddled by the lemon-suckers, instead NZ adults were allowed to act like adults—and did.

Time to give the lemon-suckers the boot, and permanently restore the right of NZers to enjoy themselves responsibly.

Survey: Not many EnZedders care about rugby.

Frame from survey by Uni of Auckland Stupidity Department

Today’s story about rugby is that not many EnZedders care about rugby. Turns out that at least one sociologist cares little for accuracy.

Associate Professor Toni Bruce, from the Faculty of Education and Social Work, is conducting a survey on people’s experiences of and attitudes towards the Rugby World Cup, based on similar surveys in 2007 and 2011.
     The sport sociologist, who is a rugby fan, says the results so far in 2015 reveal a group of New Zealanders, which she calls “the silent majority”, who are not enamoured of the Rugby World Cup.
    “These are people who are uninterested in rugby or the Rugby World Cup, including some who are actively resistant to what they see as rugby’s dominance of New Zealand’s cultural life,” she says…
    Dr Bruce said 37 per cent of the survey respondents reported that winning the Rugby World Cup was personally important to them, whereas the vast majority said it was not.

The sport sociologist says a lot more besides: about violence, about increasing commercialisation of the All Blacks, and about the way New Zealanders “invest so much of their identity into sport”—all things you have to say to get tenure in a modern university sociology department whether you believe them or not.

All of it was faithfully reported in the Herald, the Press, at Stuff—and then just as faithfully reported around the world—complete with headlines like Silent majority turned off by All Blacks and rugby, survey claims, and 'Silent majority' of Kiwis are not into rugby.

Yet you have to read to the end the Herald story to discover that the sport sociologist’s survey “is self-selecting”—much like on of those Paul Henry or John Campbell questions where they ask —and, even worse, that the basis for the sweeping “silent majority” claim is a sample size of just 197.

So far 197 people have completed the 2015 survey. In 2007 there were 131 survey participants and in 2011 there were 267.

So just under 200 people have completed her stupid survey. Fewer people who have commented on her story since it’s been publicised.

Talk about making far too much soup on from one onion. Just 197 people in a self-selected survey, and this silly bitch’s “result” is getting all this coverage. 197 people, of which 126 said something she interprets as saying winning the Rugby World Cup was not personally important to them.

Why not head over here now to take her survey, and start to skew her stupid story.

UPDATE:  Farrar:

Sounds like it was a self-selecting survey, which is basically worthless.  [This means any quantitative data (ie more people are turned off rugby) is pretty useless, even though there can be useful qualitative data (why some people are turned off)]
    UMR did a scientific poll in 2011 about what news stories people followed. 83% of NZers said they closely followed the story of the All Blacks winning the Rugby World Cup…

Quote of the day: “The knockout stage is more like a 19th-century duel…”

“Yet no amount of big data or game management can prepare players
for the World Cup. This is not a military campaign like the European
Six Nations championship or the [Southern Hemisphere] Rugby
Championship…. The knockout stage is more like a 19th-century duel,
a spectacle where even the world’s best may fall victim to self-doubt.”
~ Lionel Barber, writing for FT Rugby: World Cup 2015

Song for the semi-final

I hear we’re struggling to find a song to sing at rugby games.

Ireland has the Fields of Athenry, England (for some reason) has a Negro spiritual, and Australia has the most annoying song written since our own National Anthem. Which should be unsung, but sadly isn’t.

So I don’t have a song for you to sing on every terrace, but there’s certainly a strong candidate for one to be sung at this weekend’s semi-final. An old classic, with only a few words needing an update. I mean, have you Ever Met a Nice South African … ?

Quarter-finals [updated]

So, who really wants to talk about much else this morning than those quarter finals?

Four great games, eh? And all the northern hemisphere teams sent home from a northern hemisphere tournament. How good’s that? And with memories of 2007 so quickly and thoroughly expunged—nine frickin’ tries!—how good was it that none of us even got the chance to have a decent chew on our fingernails.

But, well, with so much having been spent on and prepared for the tournament, and with so much riding on the result of every game—four more years, remember!—I can’t help wondering what is it about rugby that leaves so much to the arbitrary decision of a midfield maggot with a whistle? One of the world’s most important matches decided on a single penalty, where with rugby’s rotund rulebook there are plentiful penalties to be found in almost every play. A game in which numbers around the ball and in defence are so desperately important, yet which almost arbitrarily makes no-contest of a game by having borrowed a stupid send-off system from soccer.

And that’s not the only thing the game has borrowed from soccer.

If the best of the weekend was the nine tries run in by our All Blacks—they’re always our All Blacks when they run in nine frickin’ tries  aren’t they—the worst for me was the bloody Hollywood by our All Black captain. He’d come in offside at a ruck to snuff out a French attack when they were starting to look likely, a French fellow lent on him with a fist, and our alleged Greatest Al Black Ever started rolling around like both eyes had been plucked out—just long enough for the maggot to give a penalty the wrong way then pull out his yellow card and totally end the quarter-final as a contest.

That’s garbage, that is.

Same thing happened in a pool match, remember: Dan Carter rolling his neck just enough to get Tonga's Paula Ngauamo a yellow card. [Check it out from 2:46]

Takes the gloss off it for me, when your two starred veterans start rolling around like a gut-shot Brazilian to shut down a game.

UPDATE: Yes, I could go with Adolf’s suggestion:

It's high time the fifty-seven old farts took a leaf out of cricket's book and allowed a captain to challenge a ref’s decision, requiring the TMO to intervene and decide.

England’s options

After England’s embarrassing exit from their own Rugby World Cup tournament even before the knockout stages have started – did we mention they’ve had their worst tournament in a history of bad tournaments – “a catastrophe for country and RWC” says the hyperbolic UK press – the Telegraph suggests teams England supporters could get behind now their own sub-standard team has been dumped. Because, frankly, all the other options are going to give a fan much more fun.

Prospects include the French, who’ve had to endure Croydon; the Japanese, whose joyous giant-killing has already installed them as most fan’s second-favourite; and the Scottish, because “English and Scottish fans have a long history of friendly co-operation.” Oh, and of course New Zealand, if “my friend, you are a glory-hunter.” Like these young ladies…

[Pics by Telegraph]

UPDATE: Wanted …

Fantastic win!

Is this the best 90 seconds of video you’re going to see today? The last minute of the biggest upset in Rugby World Cup history, maybe in the top-five sporting upsets of all time: Japan’s immediately-famous last-minute win over the Springboks, complete with Japanese commentary …

Well done Japan and coach Eddie Jones, who thought through the victory.

I wonder how some of those previous Japanese coaches feel today?

[Pic by SBS.Com.au]

Some frightening alcohol statistics

In the debate that ended in passing David Seymour’s bill allowing you to watch rugby in a bar (yes, people, that’s the kind of place we live in; where a law must be passed so you can watch sport with a drink in your hand), National’s Chris Bishop presented some frightening statistics about New Zealand drinking.

New Zealand ranks only 96th in the world for our rate of alcohol consumption.

Our binge drinking rate is only half that of Australia’s, and only one-sixth that of Britain’s.

That is appalling.

What is even worse is is that young people are drinking much less.

There are one-quarter fewer young drinkers now than five years ago, and one-third fewer than the turn of the century-and regular young drinkers – the best of that bunch – are dropping like flies, only half the number it was just fifteen years ago.

What’s more, the number of young drinkers who said they went binge drinking in the last month has dropped by18 percent since 2007!

Something is not right.

Clearly, we are raising a nation of wowsers.

Worse, an MP is raising these figures in parliament as a kind of apology for drinking, as a sop to the wowsers who might object to people having some fun with a drink in their hand.

Bugger them. We need to defend the right to enjoy ourselves, and not apologise for it.

Good on David Seymour and those MPs who did vote for his bill for moving a tiny bit in that direction.

League for non-leaguies

Ahead of this week’s Origin game, life-time AFL fan Jan Courtin had a red-hot go at explaining rugby league to her fellow AFL fans:

My understanding of rugby league is:
· The men who play it are big brutes, and some have huge necks
· Some, like Alfie Langer and Jonathon Thurston, are smaller brutes but can be very handy
· Goalposts are two uprights with a horizontal cross-bar
· A goal is a try and worth four points
· A kick after the try becomes a conversion and is two points if it goes over the cross-bar
· A point is two points but can also be a point, depending on whatever
· A poster is two points
· ”Baaaall” is I-don’t-know-what but you can hold the ball as long as you want until six sets are up before you get it over the try line or give it back to the other brutes
· A free kick is a penalty
· A free is also a scrum
· A scrum is when these brutes put their heads into other brutes’ bums, but it’s not even a whiff compared to the other form of the game
· A ball-up is perhaps a scrum

· An umpire is a referee
· A mark is a catch
· A tackle is a mother of a tackle after which normal people would be dead
· Around the neck is just fine, unless it’s a strangle
· Around the legs is fine too
· A trip is fine too – I think
· Dropping the ball is OK if it goes backwards
· Dropping the ball is not OK if going forward
· A 50 metre penalty is when they get to kick it as far as they can (usually about 30 metres) forward and out of bounds on the full – or is it a yellow card or a send-off? Or maybe that’s a report? Or maybe I’m getting confused with soccer?
· A handball is a throw which is fine (and this game is mostly throwing) as long as it goes backwards
· In the back never happens because they always run towards each other
· It helps if you can run fast, in the unlikely event that you can jump over or across or under a brute and then run like hell to the other end without getting caught and get the ball over the try line
· You don’t need to be very good at kicking the ball as it hardly ever happens
· You do need to be good at kicking the ball when it sits on top of a bit of plastic at the start of the game and when converting over the cross-bar for two points
· Out of bounds on the full is absolutely fine when you get a penalty
· Out of bounds on the full is not fine unless it is a penalty – I think
· The siren is a hooter
· And, you need to know how to say “YEAH MATE, YEAH MATE” at least six times in a very short sentence if you are being interviewed.

Gold.

A song for the (barely) defeated

Here’s John Lennon on this morning’s result:

Quote of the Day: On the fatties

“There is nothing more awe inspiring, nothing more poetic, and really nothing more amusing, than watching a fat man with momentum… The art of setting fat men on a collision course has been celebrated as far back as you care to remember.  If this vision doesn’t excite you, you are either a liar, or rugby probably isn’t the sport for you in the first place.”
                  - Dan Palmer, “Best thing about rugby? The scrum,” THE ROAR