RWC19.1

Six weeks of international rugby are in process. Today's seminar is on what Rugby Pig has been calling the full court press, borrrowing from his basketball vernacular. This style of is much in vogue, not merely in rugby - look for example at what Liverpool do on the football field.

The press demands a vigorous pursuit of every opponent to the end of denying anyone time around the ball. South Africa applied that vigour for the first twenty minutes against New Zealand but then we saw the downside of the press coupled with the acuity of the All Blacks. New Zealand have elevated their skills so that their care of the ball (both in attack and defence - this latter aspect is oft overlooked) can be backed to outlast the ferocity of the press. Thus today New Zealand maintained control of both sides of the ball and crafted their victory. Don't bet against these two sides meeting again in the final.     

 

You Can Checkout Any Time You Want But You Can Never Leave

As with the Hotel California, as seemingly with Brexit, so also with mental illness I'm afraid. Great Big Baby Pig has a weakness and although he has been pretty well for a while now, the dreaded gremlins have been back this week, provoked by events that though vexing should really not have appeared insuperable. Better today. So this is a public thankyou (yet again) to the Pig's rock, the Groupie. The Pig's manic depression has made him particularly mindful of the daily horror that those without such trenchant support must endure. Mental illness is real people. As I say, better now, nothing to see here, move along please. 

An Old Fashioned Sort Of Film And None The Worse For That

The title rather gives away the fact that this is an essay in whimsy, albeit one with a twenty-first century sensibility. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, whimsy aside, has a hard edge on the topic of wartime occupation and, an added bonus, is stunningly shot - Devon stood in for Guernsey apparently. The film includes predictably strong turns from national treasures Penelope Wilton and Tom Courtenay. A worthwhile watch. 7/10. 

Still Pretty Shocking At Golf

A funny thing happened at Alnmouth Foxton Golf Club on Wednesday. The Pig was hitting the ball quite passably off the tee and almost as well when approaching the greens. But could he putt? Could he bollocks. No feel whatsoever, to the detriment of his score. In the ferocious winds at the magnificent Goswick links on Thursday, this inability continued unabated. So it was left to Big Willy to hold off Mikey B in the battle for the inaugural Dunmore Shield. All great fun in that beautiful North East of England. Non-golfing highlights included fish and chips from Lewis's in Seahouses and a very good early curry on the Wednesday.

Goswick

It doen't half take it out of you all this golfing, eating and drinking an so the Pig has spent an inordinate time sleeping since his return to the family fold. He did however keep awake long enough to watch The Theory of Everything and rather enjoyed it. It's quite an old-fashioned biopic about the remarkable Stephen Hawking but none the worse for that and carried along by Eddie Redmayne's stellar leading performance. 7.5/10.

Why Am I So Shocking At Golf?

The Pig is on tour in Northumberland with Big Willy and Mikey B. Sadly Viperjohn is absent on sick leave but he is in our thoughts and prayers.

Big Willy and the Pig journeyed early and played at Dunstanburgh Castle on Sunday. They got very wet but revelled in the stunning scenery around Embleton Bay. The Pig played notably badly. He did the same at Seahouses yesterday and was mildly better at Bamburgh today. Is there, one has to ask, a more beautiful golf course in the land?

Two more days to go - Alnmouth tomorrow and Goswick on Thursady. I think I've just about got enough golf balls to get me through. Bring it on. I'm well of out of the hurly burly of non-golfing life, a fact brought home to me by the parliamentary proceedings playing out on the television behind me. Said it before, will say it again, what a shower of shit.  

Good Stuff, Bad Stuff, Loads Of Stuff In Fact

Four days have now passed since the miracle at Headingley which saw Ben Stokes, by a combination of megatalent and towering will, lift an otherwise hapless England cricket team across the line to victory. Watch again the last hour of that match and then try to tell me that Twenty20 is other than a tasteless frippery.

cricket, bloody hell

That was good stuff. Bad stuff was the demise of Bury FC. Worse has been the quality (more markedly the lack of it) of debate that Bury's expulsion from the Football League has inspired. Even the usually sane, albeit hyperbolic, Jim White on TalkSport had lost the plot in the immediate aftermath. The questions no one has been asking and which need to be posed are these: What is it that dictates that we absolutely must have ninety-two functioning fully professional football clubs in this country? What other country has, per capita, a similar number of such clubs? Why should the insolvency of a football club be administered by any standard other than that applying in all other industries (bar banking I suppose I ought cynically to add)? I do not deny that football has a particuar problem in being invaded by shyster investors but the crisis of football is all about greed at the top of the mountain and envious chancers looking to scale the immoral peaks.

Brexit, bloody sodding Brexit. Boris Johnson's proroguing (alright I know it's technically the Queen) of parliament has got the Remainer luvvies all of a tizzy. There is sham outrage and pious bollocks about this signalling some death of democracy. Oh good grief, grow up. Parliament will miss perhaps five days of potential debate on a topic it has already wasted three years of fannying about upon. I am no fan of Boris but the outrage arises because just for once a Prime Minister has outflanked the Remainers, a group who have become used to getting their own way in the face of nothing more daunting than Theresa May's crass, appeasing ineptitude. If you're on the same side of an argument as Jeremy Corbyn, Gina Miller, two dozen Anglican bishops and, worst of all, John Bercow, you might just be wrong.  

Two More Films. Good Ones

Roger Ebert the late and great film critic said this of Scorsese's early Mean Streets:

Great films leave their mark not only on their audiences, but on films that follow. In countless ways right down to the detail of modern tv crime shows, "Mean Streets" is one of the source points of modern movies.

The Big Fat Pig (that's me folks - although I have been for a guilty run this morning) is certainly in no position to disagree with Ebert, so he won't. In Mean Streets we see in detail the lives of everyday New York hoodlums, ranging from the misplaced morality of Harvey Keitel's lead to the nihilistic man-child of De Niro's Johnny - the latter a place-holder for Joe Pesci's piece de resistance in Scorsese's later masterpiece Goodfellas. At less than two hours the movie displays a self-discipline from which, dare we suggest it, Tarantino (in the news at the moment for Once Upon A Time In Hollywood) might learn - 8.5/10.

Spotlight has none of Scorsese's cinematographic style but is another important film. Ostensibly one might think it a film about the scandal of sex abuse by catholic priests in Boston, but that is only part of the story. It is also a lament for the lingering death (at the hands of the internet and a twenty-four hour news cycle) of old-fashioned investigative print journalism. An ensemble piece, it is the journalistic procedures it portrays that dominate the piece rather than the stars although we should take particular note of Stanley Tucci's bit part as a principled lawyer. Pointedly unhysterical and never voyeuristic. 8.5/10.