RWC Bulletin 9

Simply the best

Not that much need be said really. The two best teams (notwithstanding Scotland's peculiar ill luck) have reached the final and that game will be refereed by the best referee. So good luck to Australia, to New Zealand and to Nigel Owens. May they between them conspire to give the world a game it can cherish, to the benefit of my precious sport.

I had some hunches before the tournament, most of which have been wide of the mark. I always feared that England would lose to Wales and I near as dammit knew Wales would lose to Australia, but I figured that England would beat Australia and that Wales would be eliminated to nurse yet another persecution complex. As it turned out Australia produced one of the three seminal performances of the competition to floor England and England went out because they were too stupid/arrogant (take your pick) to kick a goal against Wales. The other two seminal achievements? Japan's heroics against South Africa and the All Black evisceration of the poor old French.

My other wayward hunches: Ireland went out tamely and were feebler than I had predicted; Argentina have taken a meaningful step forward in their method - I hadn't seen that coming, probably because I wasn't looking very closely.

The final? Really can't call it. New Zealand are the better team but it is difficult not to admire what Cheika has done with his Australian team and David Pocock is my player of the tournament. One to watch rather than bet on. Enjoy.

By the way I have discovered the joys of Spotify and am currently listening to 10cc's back catalogue. Nice. I will be breaking away shortly to try to get my head around Bourdieu's The Field of Cultural Production. Will the Boy Bourdieu be able to hold a philsophical candle to my favourite Frenchman, Roland Barthes? I wouldn't bet on that either. Cheery bye.

Crimson Peak

You can't beat a bit of gothic from time to time. And who better to deliver it than Guillermo del Toro, he who brought us the matchless Pan's Labyrinth. His latest effort is one of his English language offerings and although nowhere near as good as Pan it is stll pretty diverting. A litlle slow to burn it comes to a frantic and gory crescendo. I saw it in full Imax splendour with DN2. It reminded me of that Renaissance gorefest 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, which is another of my favourites. 6.5/10.

Finally dragged myself out for my first run since the half marathon and sensibly kept it to thirty minutes. The calf feels a little stiff  but blessedly usable. I've actually missed the exercise although I have been enjoying the eating and drinking. Big Fat Pig is alive and well and living in Four Oaks.

By the way this is blog number 600. Is there anybody out there?

All Is Not Well In The World

Last week you were no doubt surprised to find me confessing common cause with John McDonnell. As an aside I do note that McDonnell is a fellow alumnus of God's own University of London, though not, of course, of King's - we didn't really do lefties. Anyway my inner political correctness is nagging away at me once again. Surely I can't be the only died in the wool capitalist who is queasy about this undignified toadying up to the Chinese that our esteemed government deems fitting - Where is the morality?

The tiger who came to tea

I am considering inviting the Dalai Lama round for tea so that he can be assured that we're not all like George Osborne.

I wouldn't mind our creeping to the Chinese if I felt we were on the upside of a cunning plan to exploit the one party statists and their loathsome fellow travellers and thereby precipitate their downfall. But I am left with the unpalatable conviction that our new found mates will simply shit on us again and again, much as they have already shat on our steel industry. Nobody sane is an absolutist about foreign policy but you do have to draw the line somewhere. Don't you?

At times like this I read my tattered volume of Bernard Levin's journalism (a thrift shop find) and wonder what the great man would make of it all. He was close to a lone public voice predicting that the Soviet 'evil empire' would collapse under its own odious weight. I hope the same is true of China's project but it will occur all the more slowly if we underpin the superstructure.

As another aside, Levin was another London graduate - LSE in his case, a place that really did produce lefties of heft. It was with a little sigh of regret that I read last week that the LSE is these days one of the country's most conservative colleges. Bloody hell, where will I be without my cultural stereotypes? 

Middle Aged Rockers

A splendid night at Oxford's New Theatre to see John Cooper Clarke and Squeeze. Pot bellies and dad dancing much in evidence as the ancient audience got into the swing of things but there is no denying that both acts have worn well. I was accompanied by Daughter Number Two, JE and AE. DN2 must have been one of the youngest there but she seemed to enjoy it.

Cooper Clarke is laconic, amusing and, yes, poetic. He had an album to promote (actually what we used to call a box set - Anthologia) which I am pleased to note (not quite sure why - ridiculous nostalgia?) is available on vinyl. The likes of Jeremy Hardy, Marcus Brigstock and the other legions of the bigoted left might learn a lesson from Clarke - it is possible to be right on without being hateful. Clarke even made a reference to the tour he made with Richard Hell and the Voidoids back in '78 which pleased me no end because that was when I had last seen him. Good then, good now.

Squeeze also have an album to flog, Cradle to the Grave, their first for seventeen years. The show perhaps inevitably lagged when they did the new material but the old classics were rapturously received and no one could be in any doubt about the talent and musicality of the band. Glenn Tillbrook's voice was strong and I had never quite appreciated how good a guitarist he is. And as for the new material, I'm going to buy that album so that in future I can sing along to that as well. 

A good night for ageing dancing bones.

RWC Bulletin 8 - Correction

Viperjohn (my wise commentator - see comments on last blog) is of course correct. My summation of the RWC quarter finals should have said "Scotland aside" the Welsh had made the best fist of it.

As for the Joubert fiasco, well it seems that the powers that be have given official approval of my conclusion that it should have been a scrum, but in doing so they have hung the ref out to dry and yet not commented on the most culpable element of his conduct, that is to say his flight from the locus in quo.

Time to move on. We are all Argentinians now!

Off to see Squeeze and John Cooper Clarke tonight. I last saw Cooper Clarke at the Hammersmith Palais in 1978 when he was on a bill with Elvis Costello and Richard Hell and the Voidoids. Costello was rubbish, the two supporting acts far superior. Review to follow.

RWC Bulletin 8 - An Unfortunate Sequence Of Events

Argentina deeply impressive. Ireland beaten by a better team, as they graciously conceded.

Poor old Craig Joubert did himself no favours officiating the Scotland v Australia match. The yellow card he gave Maitland seemed out of proportion, although Joubert may have found himself prisoner of the Third Match Official in his ear. But worse was to come as the game reached its denouement. The fateful sequence of events was murky and the options open to Joubert ranged , at one extreme, from allowing play to continue (this would have required that he detected no knock-on by Scotland) and, at the other, penalising Scotland. In the heat of the moment he went for the latter. Was there a knock on? Even if there was, did an Australian hand intervene before the next Scot played the ball? Forensic hindsight tells us that he would have been better served by justifying to himself the middle course and acting on the first offence, namely a perceived Scottish knock-on. Australia might very well have scored from the resulting scrum, indeed their resourcefulness almost makes this seem likely. As for the plaintive cries that he should have asked the TMO to help him out, well the IRB have (completely predictably) hidden behind the match regulations and emphasised that such reference would have been improper. But, would Joubert seriously have attracted anything but praise had he stepped outside the regulations? All of this is academic and my sympathies instinctively sit with the referee but Joubert's flight a la scalded cat from the pitch at the final whistle was plain wrong. Had there been hostility towards him from the Scots then this would have diminished them but for him somehow to anticipate such a reaction ill fits rugby football.

So European rugby has been humbled. Wales came closest to the semi-finals and an item on the ITV Wales coverage (I was in Anglesey for the weekend) perhaps summed up why they went no further - in a vox pop a group of demented middle-aged fans jumped around and deemed the situation acceptable because they had at least beaten the English. They do not mean this as a joke I'm afraid and it tells you all you need to know about Wales' failure to be as good as they could be. Which is a pity.   

RWC Bulletin 7 - Bloody Hell!

I was privileged to be present in Wellington when the 2005 All Blacks dismantled Woodward's comically ill-prepared Lions. That was marked by the greatest single game of rugby union played by one man - Dan Carter. Tonight in team terms we saw the finest demonstration of what we might glibly call total rugby - New Zealand - 62, France - 13. Read that score again, I haven't got it wrong. In the television studio Clive Woodward churlishly highlighted the French shortcomings. Not remotely the point. New Zealand were magnificent. Simple things done accurately and at extremes of physicality. Next weekend they will face South Africa. It will be no country for old men.

At a less elevated level I took in Bath's televised victory over Exeter this afternoon in the Aviva Premiership - that's the competition for the top teams in England, a well known second tier nation. During the commentary it finally dawned on me that Austin Healey may just be as annoying a pillock as Stuart Barnes. On careful relection however I conclude that Healey knows he's doing it and cultivates the image. Barnes is, one fears, merely a tosser. Talented, but a tosser.