Hide him in a hiding place where no one ever goes
Put him in your pantry with your cupcakes,
It’s a little secret just the Robinson’s affair,
Most of all you’ve got hide it from the kids.
Where have you gone Willie John,
A nation turns its lonely eyes to you,
Woo, woo, woo…….
As the rugby grinds to a halt (metaphorically speaking), as it actually slithered to a stop, there is the distinct sound of the meshing of media gears as they crank up the ante in the wake of the Robinson’s affair.
A man on the radio opined that the dots required joining, citing Mrs Robinson’s announcement of a breather from politics pre-Christmas, Mr Robinson’s denouement of Mrs Robinsons behaviour post Christmas and the subsequent revelations from the Beeb on the whole shebang. Just how many dots this man needs to link all three together is a source of some puzzlement.
For me you just couldn’t make it up. I imagined myself as a script writer on some TV drama turning up for my script writers session with the producer and presenting my scenario for the drama which was to be based on fact.
“Morning BP, what ideas have you got for us?”
“Well ok, we’ll start with the 50 something female politician who gets too close to a young man following a bereavement. She arranges for a loan or two from business friends to help the youngster start up a business, falls out with him, demands the money back, gets it, repays one of the donors and redistributes the rest to a church and herself.
“Hmmmm, carry on”
“OK, the politician’s hubby is also a politician and leader of a wee nation. Well not exactly, he has to share the leadership with a guy who used to be part of a gang that terrorised the country. Anyway the hubby finds out about the money and the affair and calls a press conference in which he tells the wife very publically that she’s on her own as he himself is er, rather blameless.”
“Really?”
“Oh yes, the local TV are on their trail and expose the female affair, precipitating a political crisis for the wee nation.”
“Eh?”
“Throw in the odd planning application, property developers with a penchant for donating large sums of money as ‘gifts’, a political advisor turned whistleblower who is more honest than a 2 month old baby and a herd of opposition politicians baying for blood and you have a perfect recipe for a blockbuster episode.”
“Nah sorry, but we want something that our audience can relate to and touches reality. Anything else you can offer?”
“OK let’s try bearded fanatics hijack aeroplanes and fly them into the tallest buildings in the United Sates killing 3,000 people and simultaneously try to fly an aeroplane into the Pentagon!”
“Right that’s it, your fired, we wanted something believable!”
“Ok, ok, how about large man in charge of a semi professional rugby team that wins the rugby equivalent of the Champions League. The large man goes on to…”
“OUT!, no more of this fantasy stuff, you’re fired!”
Well you actually could make it up and no one would believe you. As the king sang, ‘it was only make believe’ as Ulster’s bearded out half, Ian Humphreys took a razor to his flowering hirsute material round the lower half of the face, just as it was becoming almost prerequisite to wear one, given the wind chill evident in the weather. This act of wanton destruction clearly and substantially altered the wizard no.10’s features beyond belief. His second row teammate apparently walked right past him without a hint of recognition causing a minor wit to remark that opponents have been doing this most of the season and last.
Now of course this conforms to the old cliché that iHumph couldn’t tackle a fish supper and still can’t. These are the sort of perceptions that sometimes stick to a player like a political smear. There is a germ of truth in there which tends to obscure the bigger picture and gets magnified beyond all recognition. I have in fact been quite impressed by iHumph’s ability to tackle. There is no doubt he is not the biggest player and with 16 stone no. 8’s barrelling down the 10 channel, tackling becomes something of a suicide mission at times. It is all in the mind though and one reason Humph becomes a target for the naysayers is that he clearly suffers an occasional crisis of confidence in his tackling that translates into body language which says he isn’t interested in tackling.
As an absolute paperweight when I first started playing I found that even in the lower echelons of the game when I had bulked up to 12 stone, tackling was still an issue of confidence. Make a hit early on in the game and the confidence flowed, miss a tackle and all of a sudden the doubts crept in leading to abject failure to even look like I was tackling. With a lack of bulk I have no doubt that iHumph does have the odd moment of doubt creep into his mind and opponents no doubt also attempt to target him as a means of unsettling him. We as spectators must persevere with iHumph’s senior moments in the tackling stakes and hope that it is generally a passing cloud before order of confidence is restored as no doubt his forte lies elsewhere in the game of rugby.
All the Irish provincial games were called off and the daily diet of rugby news was as thin on the ground as the ice that prevents the games being played. The local media has gone into overdrive on the Robinson’s affairs. Her appetite for lovers on the side has apparently tripled since the Spotlight programme was aired according to the Sunday Life and I’m waiting to be named along with 3,000 others. Rugby in our local newspaper is a diet of quotes and the odd opinion from the writer based on something he has been told by UR. I suppose I shouldn’t expect much else when the Belfast Telegraph actually sponsors Ulster Rugby. My attention has increasingly turned to the Irish Times rugby coverage which is both up to date, opinionated and does cover UR even though it primarily focuses on the big two, Munster and Leinster. Liam Toland, Setanta’s respected pundit, in his Irish Times column for example had some good things to say about us and also analysis of how we could and should do better.
Ulster outhalf Ian Humphries has real oomph in his game, which affords his team-mates real focus. In these days of packed midfields Simon Danielli’s second try was a gem that should have had Ulster baying for blood and Munster in disarray with the ease of their penetration.
It is this kind of reasonable comment that is missing from our local papers and increasingly the Telegraph appears to syndicate its rugby coverage from the Indepenent group of newspapers with the result that its website carries large headlines about Glasgow or Gloucester as well as Ulster rugby. The Irish Times website has kept me right up to date with events in the big rugby freeze up and now gets my vote of confidence with the Bele Tele reduced to an occasional read.
Can’t pass the time of day without being amused at the UAFC site. The big freeze has turned the pundits on it into minor weather vanes. I’m waiting to see who turns to acorns for something original on the weather fronts currently sweeping in from Siberia. The weathermen are led by Armagh’s biggest tractor with a home computer in the cockpit. Can you be stopped in a field for posting whilst driving an agricultural vehicle?
Let’s hope not, otherwise Rooster Coburn will be silenced for long periods on the net and I’d sure as hell miss his frost tinged homilies on anything from temperature to permafrost and pig piss as anti freeze. Keep up the good work Rooster. Credit to UR for getting the finger out on the pitch. It’s amazing how the threat of having to play outside Ravenhill has focussed minds.
Reading my flavour of the month newspapers, The IT and Independent.ie, I am heartened by the fact that the pundits in these esteemed journals do not see Ulster’s group as a given for Stade and believe it will come down to the wire. Reasons cited are that Stade have not been playing well recently and Bath have picked up a head of steam and begun winning matches.
This may be a little too positive thinking pour moi, as I believe Stade will pick their game for the HC and that it’s a big ask for Bath to win in Paris. If they do achieve that considerable feat then we will have to play them at the Rec in the last game which will be too big an ask for us to win. Meanwhile Edinburgh would have to lose to us and beat Stade at Murrayfield. It’s all too much for my mind to comprehend at this late hour and I’ll settle for us beating Edinburgh on Friday night and losing to Bath the following weekend, with Stade winning both their matches. We will at least be able to say we beat Stade and well.
As BJ Botha might say, ‘don’t count us out just yet young man!’
Corrections, comments or questions?