The Knowing Avoidance Of Sprawl

I recently reviewed (favourably) Scorsese's The Irishman. That movie sprawls - knowingly. One can sometimes take that sprawl as an automatic signifier of depth. In the case of The Irishman, the sprawl is part of the brilliance. In other films the sprawl confirms nothing so much as pretentiousness - consider for example the sprawliest picture of all time (one I like despite its manifest faults), Heaven's Gate. 

Well today I will talk of the anti-sprawl. This phenomenon favours the concise as its plot rattles along. What put all of this in my mind was the ninety-minute gem that is Dead Shot. Because it was set in the Troubles I came to the film with a fear that it was going to get all Ken Loach on me. Don't worry, it laments the cruelty and obduracy on both sides of the conflict. It is over almost as soon as it starts but don't underestimate it. 70/100.  

La Rochelle To The Rescue

I've just about recovered from an excellent weekend in Dublin (is there any other sort?) at the European Rugby Finals. As an appetiser we had the Challenge Cup Final between Glasgow and Toulon. Perfectly decent game of rugby which Toulon won with some ease - and it was nice to be at the Sergio Parisse farewell tour.

Saturday was something different - the best game of rugby I have seen for years. A stoked-up La Rochelle had the cajones to come from a seventeen point deficit to defeat a very good Leinster side. And despite the views of some one-eyed Leinster fans, the referee, Jaco Peyper had a good game. I had steeled myself for a ruinous performance from him. I am (as regular readers will know) no fan of Peyper, but, credit where credit is due, he played his part in a great match. Just to be clear - the sending-off at the game's end was absolutely correct. Peyper could have bottled it. He didn't.

Peyper gets it right

Watching Leinster presents a conundrum. They are stacked with talent and are enviably well-coached. However they come with an off-putting air of entitlement. This had clearly got under La Rochelle's skin and their coach Ronan O'Gara had stoked things to fever pitch. O'Gara presents the rugby consumer with another problem - he is clearly a highly gifted coach and motivator but has lost little of his gobshite qualities since his playing days. His stock is nevertheless high  - I would employ him.

Talking of gobshites, a man who clearly enjoys projecting himself as such is Michael O'Leary. We flew Ryanair to Dublin and you have to accept that the airline does exactly what it says on the tin - no frills but gets you there and back. In an industry littered with financial failures, this is admirable. It must be a sign of my advancing years but the cabin staff looked ridiculously young.

Back home my mood was for some light entertainment and I found it in I Was Monty's Double. A predictable cast of the usual British suspects give life to a young Bryan Forbes's script. It is a reassuring dose of joyful derring-do in the face of war. Very British. Jolly good. 67/100.

The weather is nice. The garden is looking good. I am playing golf tomorrow. God is in his Heaven and all is well in the world. That, of course, is a ridiculous overstatement - lurking on the horizon is an American government debt default. If you think our politicos are tiresome I suggest you watch a bit of CNN to get the full flavour of America's sclerotic politics. If they sneeze, we will catch one hell of a cold. A plague on both their houses. 

Some Days Are Just Bad Days For Referees

I watched a full game of televised rugby yesterday. This is a much less common occurence than of old - I tend to rely on highlights these days and I must confess that I have my concerns about the future of the dear old game. It has got itself into a terrible mess - soft sendings-off, the Anglo-Saxon obsession with 'winning the collision', blah, blah, blah. 

The match was the Premiership semi-final in which Saracens saw off Northampton with some ease. It was intriguing to see Saracens playing the game with more elan than of old. Most eye-catching was the commanding (imperfect but commanding) performance of Owen Farrell. He played with more freedom and imagination than he permits himself in an England shirt.

I have alluded to the soft sendings-off that blight so much of the modern game, but yesterday it was the other side of the coin that showed itself. No two ways about it - Sean Maitland should have been sent-off in the first minute. He is not, so far as one can judge, a malicious player but he got an aerial challenge catastrophically wrong and impacted an opponent with both elbow (to the head) and knee (to the chest). This involved a staggering degree of negligence and I do not see, the laws being framed and applied as they are, that anything less than a red card was appropriate. Karl Dickson (a good referee having a bad day) awarded nothing more than a penalty. Maitland scored two tries. 

The controversy aside, I enjoyed the match, in particular Saracens' commitment to changing or, best of all, avoiding altogether the point of contact. It is a gloriously physical sport made complicated by a a groaningly heavy law book and the involvement of clumsy humanity. It can however be hugely uplifting when done well. When coaching I used to bang on about aiming for small moments of perfection. These remain achievable, Saracens' final try beinga case in point - pace and precision.    

From The Desk Of The Author

bloody lovely

I have spent the last couple of days here on the island (that's Mon to you and me) in confinement with Shakespeare and Bagehot, pushing through the rather tedious task of correcting the manuscript of my thesis. I never thought I would say this but I can actually tire of exposure to my own purple prose. Who would have thunk it eh? Still, my efforts have been productive and as the afternoon slips into its seventh hour I have given myself permission to open a recently purchased bottle of Basciano Il Corto 2019. I do get some things right - it's bloody lovely.

So what (apart from the academic distractions which quite properly don't interest you) has been going on with the Pig? Well, he's strained his left calf muscle (in a new area - of the leg, not of the country) which is a pity because he's been feeling quite fit. He's played quite a bit of golf and after some encouraging signs has gone significantly backwards in the last couple of weeks, so we won't dwell on that.

Politics, bloody politics. What a shitfest. No I'm not going to depress myself by dwelling on the subject. Just for now. Oh I know what I can tell you about. You may remember that I was lamenting the deplorable adaptation of Great Expectations offered up by the BBC. Well the good news is this - the same organisation's 2011 offering of the same source material is on iPlayer and it's so much better that the it makes you suspect that someone at the Beeb left it up there because they were so ashamed of the newer pile of shite. It's teatime - spicy mussels are calling and that wine won't drink itsef. TTFN.