The old Lions gathering for their weekly Round Table meeting had tears in their eyes as they recalled former misappropriations on tour. As the laughter subsided, one remarked, “Aye and we would never have got caught stealing a golf buggy either. If we did Willie John would have smoothed it all out with the local constabulary.” One imagined a stricken Andy Powell calling the team hotel, “Willie, you had better get yourself down to the M4 services, I’m stuck here with the cops and a golf buggy!”
“Eh what?, oh alright hang on I’ll be down in a minute.”
Ten minutes later a tall craggy figure in a cardigan, carpet slippers and smoking a pipe steps from a 4×4 and strides across the forecourt to greet the South Wales police.
Several minutes of genial bon homie pass and the recalcitrant player is released.
Unfortunately for Powell there was no father figure, as Gatty, Toad and company where soundly asleep in the Manor whilst Andy had an idiot of a friend for company who clearly wasn’t wise council. Powell is an old school rugby player, all commitment, physicality and bravery but half a sausage short of barbecue. Rugby remains a game played best by intelligent people. 20 years ago he might have escaped with a few words of admonishment but in these days of pseudo media outrage, pseudo moral, social and political rectitude, Andy Powell was a dead cert to pay a price for his ‘Flintstones in Vegas’ type escapade.
If old rugby men winced on behalf of the ridiculous Powell, they would have winced even more at the sight of a prone Thom Evans. There is no worse moment in rugby than to see a player lie motionless on the field. People with any kind of human compassion will have held their breath, not the least his brother who watched grim faced from the other end of the pitch. Given the amount of contact that takes place on the rugby field it is a surprise more accidents like that don’t happen.
A sigh of relief then that Evans appears to be making a recovery, I wish him well on behalf of my 3 readers. Whether the Scottish team will recover from committing rugby hari kari in that game is another matter. Scotland’s approach towards the end of the match resembled kamikaze pilots in a last great bid to halt the tide of defeat. At the 45th Kamikaze reunion of old Scottish players there will be many empty seats belonging to old Scots who died of disgust watching their team implode. At least Thom Evans should survive to attend, for that we can be thankful.
Scottish hari kari was immediately followed by ‘Phantom of the Opera’ in Paris featuring the eponymously named Bastereaud as the odd looking guy in the mask and the equally eponymous Jerry Flannery as the pantomime villain who aims a kick. The critics have panned Jerry’s performance as lacking acting substance and for playing it too real. The Munster mafia led by godfather O’Reilly have belatedly sprang to Jerry’s defence stating that the next time the show is staged it will show the script called for Jerry’s head to hit the turf. Rising from this grassy snow covered stage he staggers and has clearly, according to godfather O’Reilly ‘lost it’ mentally. Hence the rationale behind his ‘lost it’ attempt to kick a Frenchman in the goolies.
On Monday the critics on the UAFC panned the Premiere of ‘Logan’s Run’, a movie about Ulster rugby’s ascent to world domination starring Shane Logan and a script that looks like an embellished cv. Logie makes a stirring speech at the start of the movie about how a small town professional rugby team will ascend the ladder of world rugby and dominate the game in true rags to riches fashion. It remains to be seen whether the general rugby loving Ulster public will buy into this one though sometimes they buck the critical trend by loving movies panned by the critics.
The small home town professional rugby team made their appearance early in the movie following Logie’s speech and bucked the upward trend of world domination by stuttering to a draw against the team one place lower than them in the League. From such humble beginnings there arises an unstoppable force. Meanwhile back in his cramped office Logie wrestles with team affairs and occasionally his team manager Mr. Humphreys and has his work cut out. Ulster rugby are shown fostering a family image based around deep seated connections twixt fans and team. They buck this trend every now and again by allowing speculation about team members to fester to the bewilderment of the loyal supporters.
Enter Bossy boots the teams pantomime cat as one such example of how speculation has been allowed to run on and on and on … Where there’s a vacuum there’ll be any number of jobsworthy’s around to try and fill it with hot air. Thus Bossy boots continues to appear on the big Ravenhill stage and the audience continue to ask him is he going to RDS or is he not? Bossy’s boots will be hard to fill if he does seek the bigger stage in the RDS. Much speculation has blossomed as to who if any will be his successor, ranging from gnomic Springbok Januarie to equally gnomic but paler Munsterman Strings to our very own understudies, Willis, Porter, and Marshall. World domination can be an affair fraught with more twists and turns than your average Wyoming tornado
This columns adopted star Brendon Botha or BJ as he’s affectionately known, is plying his trade with the small hometown professional rugby team known as Ulster and will continue assist them in their quest for world domination for now. The world’s a bigger stage however and BJ may decide that a bigger stage is necessary to display his considerable talents as an immovable object when push comes to shove. Thus speculation simmers on that BJ may return to his native South Africa and bid for world domination via the Springbok team rather than Ulster. Let’s face it, he has better chance of world domination ‘Out of Africa’ than starring in Logan’s Run.
I could not make last Fridays inaugural bid for world domination at Ravenhill and ended up watching the affair on the big screen in Ballygowan in the company of Ron the spark. Ron is a relative newcomer to rugby and has never played the game, nevertheless some careful man management by me has turned him into a ruthless critic of the game. 30 minutes into Fridays match and Ron was voicing his contempt for Scottish ref Peter Allen, who was playing the part of a bad guy in the movie.
“There’s only one team in it as far the ref’s concerned,” spluttered Ron.
“Yes, unfortunately Ulster audiences are familiar with his role, it rarely changes,” I replied, concern evident in my voice.
“Who is this commentator?” was Ron’s next contribution as Jonathan Davies continued to squeak his way through the movie, playing the part of biased commentator supporting a team from his native land.
“Ulster are cheats,” squeaked Jonathan, “Look they’re offside all the time, why can’t the referee see them cheating, this has to be sorted,” his voice rising a further 3 or 4 decibels into a prolonged squeak.
“Ah justice is done,” squeaked a relieved Jonathan, as Ulster baddie and prolific cheat Rory Best was sent to the bin much to the disgust of the totally biased local audience. At this point as Jonathan squeaked on about how great the role of the Dragons were in the movie I turned the sound down, though even now I have still have a residue Welsh squeaking noise reverberating round the inside of my head.
Stage two of world domination begins next Friday when the Ravens of the non ragin’ variety take to the Ravenhill stage in support of world domination by the back door. I will be in attendance with Gillian and Ron the Spark and hopefully a decent sized crowd as we really do have a chance of domination in the British and Irish cup. Friday sees the reappearance of the Welsh and a squeaking noise, hopefully of their pips being squeezed.
As BJ Botha might say, “World domination, gimme some of that!”
Corrections, comments or questions?