Ten Things I Hate About You

Rugby – Ten Things I Hate About You

1. Tap penalties were scrum halves run into a fat lazy prop and are given a lollipop by the ref and another 10metres for being ‘obstructed’. Obvious answer to this iniquity is to deem the ball in play the second it’s tapped.
2. Players who are shown close-up on TV spitting phlegm, it’s a football thing that is rapidly transferring to a sport played by supposed gentlemen. Can’t bear to think of being buried under a pile of bodies on top of spit. Ugh!
3. Lazy runners, mostly fat lazy props who think they’ll be given a fool’s pardon by the ref for being fat and lazy when in fact they are actually getting in the road of real athletes deliberately.
4. The stuffed toy from the pram that is George Hook and his fawning sidekick Tom McGurk. It’s pantomime time on RTE again, I’d almost forgotten what it was like until last Friday. Oddly George wasn’t huffing and puffing as much as usual but McGurk did try with the foot pump to inflate the bauble. The Pope in the middle was more marginalised than usual but odder still it was Conor O’Shea who was supplying the hot air. Can this really be what Minister Ryan wants with his free to air vision of rugby on these shores?
5. Hype – usually applies to a one-off performance from an English player at international level and is usually a kind of evaporating substance which disappears with close inspection and scrutiny. When there is a hype vacuum and the hypists are bereft of an English player to promote they will opt for a player from the GP of foreign extraction usually with names likes Schalk and Carlos. The same vanishing effect occurs when close scrutiny and prolonged hype is applied to said object.
6. Referees who smile a lot and talk away as if minding the kindergarten. They are usually called Tony Spreadbury and key characteristics are an usually clean set of molars, an ability to smile even when the situation is serious, an unshakeable belief that you are absolutely, totally, utterly correct and no amount of talking to me will make me change my mind one iota. The overall impression is one of a sinister wee white shark. I had a close-up vision of Tony once, following the infamous Toulouse game and we informed him as he crossed the car park, of Brennan’s dastardly act. Tony flashed that famous shark smile and you could see his mind tick over a thousand times whilst for once he was unusually reticent.
7. Football chants at a rugby match. – You know who you are, need I say more.
8. Teams who think they are god’s gift to rugby, usually called Stade or Hairsprays and usually cut a pathetic lot when caught red handed doing things they shouldn’t, such as playing with 16 men on the pitch and sticking fingers in players eyes, otherwise known as gouging.
9. IRB law lords who continue to tinker with the rules for their own mostly southern hemisphere agenda.
10. Laws made to be broken such as the put in to the scrum which is supposed to be straight but is in fact more crooked than an Alpine mountain track. A crooked feed to the scrum has all but eliminated the art of hooking. Other examples are the ineffectual policing of the back foot rule. Back foot now means a line drawn, roughly through the middle of the ruck.

Howls of The Dogs at Midnight Fall Silent

At the time of going to print the Rush saga had not reached it’s expected conclusion. Oddly the dogs in the farmyard had been a howling all night as if things were going on we should know about.

Interestingly the two key players, Ulster Rugby and ‘X’ have remained extremely tight lipped since the announcement of the signing way back in February. Were it not for the peripheral forces of media and internet traffic one would never believe anything at all was amiss. In the absence of an affirmative from either of the two main parties even the internet chatter has ground to a vacuous halt. The waiting game has begun, one would suspect ‘X’ is not coming to Ravenhill but sometimes one must expect the unexpected.

A Sunny Afternoon

With the rugby in all but a hiatus ones attention inevitably drifts elsewhere. Imagine a languid afternoon near the River Lagan on a solitary stretch of the Ormeau Embankment opposite the Ozone centre in Ormeau Park. Out on the still waters of the river just short of the McConnell Weir a small pontoon floats, surrounded by a number of high powered inflatables crammed with men in blazers and women in their best boating attire. A woman with a loud hailer and a flag bestrides the pontoon whilst two others lie on it horizontal, attempting to hold on to the octos (8 person rowing boats) manoeuvring for the start of the women’s annual university boat race twixt Queens and Trinity.

Ollie (my son) and me have just arrived to watch the start of the race and are making our way down a gangplank on the bank of the river to the pontoon moored below. As the sun bursts through the haze we can see a very tanned, almost elderly bloke standing on the pontoon with a young women’s arm around his waist and they are smiling towards another women who is attempting to photograph them. A third women stands slightly to the side of the trio looking slightly bored. All the women are sporting sunglasses and wear floral patterned frocks. Not wishing to intrude on this intimate scene, Ollie and myself tiptoe past and make our way to the rail to watch the pony tailed sun-visored amazons in the rowing boats start their race.

Unexpectedly we are distracted by the bored looking women, who is now standing at Ollie’s side and has spotted his Inst rowing jacket. She is enquiring if he was racing this morning.

“I was chucked off the boat yesterday,” replies Ollie, his disconsolation palpable.

“He crashed the boat in practice yesterday afternoon and got the sack,” I informed the women in rather uncharitable fashion and was about to tell her we had purchased 4 tickets to go and watch Ollie race and had then left them unused.

“That’s not ideal,” growled the woman, before our attention was drawn to the boats which suddenly set off, blades flashing in the afternoon sun.

“C’mon Queens,” shrieked the woman, whilst one of her companions behind us yelled, “Queeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeens,”

With a twirl of her floral frock the woman and her companions were gone up the gangplank. As the octos followed by their flotilla of high powered inflatables stormed upriver, she had disappeared into the interior of a big black 4 x 4 which roared off along the embankment in a hail of diesel fumes. A green future could wait whilst the Carolines pursued their quarry up to the regatta enclosure. Sadly I can report that despite such enthusiastic support the Queens women’s eight failed to uphold the honour of the university.

A half hour later and Ollie and myself found ourselves wandering round the small tented enclosure at Queens PE centre. Inside the tent of scattered tables, a band played on doggedly to an audience of approximately 3, whilst a bored looking bar person busied themselves with mundane tasks to while away the time. Escaping this oasis of melancholy, music and sadness, we found ourselves standing at the railings at the side of the river about 30 metres from the tent. A small crowd had gathered in anticipation of the men’s boat race and to our left alongside many empty beer and Magner’s cider bottles, stood 3 casually but expensively dressed youths. A passing motorised inflatable with some officials on board received the finger from one of them and thankfully they left before the race began. Elsewhere various reasonably well dressed types stood around amongst the abandoned bottles of beer and cider and chatted amicably with one another.

Ollie reckons it’s about 2.5miles from the weir to the Queens boat club having rowed it a few times himself and eventually the announcer informed us the boats were off. I timed their appearance at the Ormeau bridge at about 2-3 minutes from when the start was announced. The Queen’s boat led by about two boat lengths, the blades swishing crisply through the water. A round of applause broke out as they passed our by now swollen crowd of 50 plus people.

As the applause died away so the boats were gone round the bend and that was it, for me anyway, a small glimpse in time into another world of boats, blades, crews, octos, dilettantes and of course the Carolines, all floral frocks and obligatory shades, one sunny afternoon in early June. Ollie is still getting over the trauma of being dropped on the eve of the RBAI/MCB showdown, but that is sport. Sometimes your chances are dependent on the wiles and wispy nature of coaches and in this instance a somewhat impetuous rowing master. For the record, after a day doing exams they went on the river for a last practice and Ollie’s boat crashed into another one due to a panicky oarsman. Ollie as cox took the rap as did the cox of another boat in his year who committed some other transgression, them being replaced by two lesser experienced pilots. I hope he doesn’t let it get to him and that he comes back next year, as he has potential but crashing the boat isn’t the best outcome for a cox who wants to do well.

Man in Pink Fails to Stay the Course

The Italian version of Le Tour De France, The Giro D’Italia, finished last week and as usual with anything involving the Italians it has its fair share of flamboyance and exotica. So were the French have the famous Maillot Jaune, the Italians have the leader of the race in a pink jersey. The pink jersey was held for nearly a week by a guy whose name I now forget, but whose jersey wasn’t the only thing pink. His bike was pink, his sunglasses, his helmet, his shoes, in fact just about everything on him was pink bar his suntan on the arms and face. After bravely hanging on to the penultimate stage of the race he eventually succumbed to the might of 2 Italian and a Spanish rider who combined to burn him off on one of the extreme hill stages of the Giro. The pink jersey and only the jersey eventually rested on the shoulders of the Italian star Ivan Basso.

All in pink reminded me of last year’s Tour De France, when an Italian rider took possession of the King of the Mountains jersey which is red polka dot on white. As he consolidated his position as King of the Mountains during the race so the polka dot look extended progressively to his helmet and by the time he had reached the winner’s podium in Paris everything was covered in polka dots. The crowning moment was on the winner’s podium when he appeared with his two young kids whom both sported mini me polka dot jerseys!

Other memorable moments from the Giro featured a time trial over about 12 kilometres which was essentially up a very steep hill and featured one rather elderly mechanic running behind his rider whilst pushing a spare bike up a very steep incline. The poor fella probably succumbed to a heart attack after featuring at the rear wheel of his rider for about a kilometre, because he disappeared off the TV screens as the commentators chortled savagely into their microphones at exertions of it all. Looking forward to the Le tour which starts early July.

That’s it for this week. Hope you enjoyed the little vignette by the Lagan, its all true and despite the good weather, Belfast was quiet when we visited the city centre early on Saturday afternoon. Perhaps the economic situation is taking its toll. The weather is certainly booming as B J Botha continues his safari. If he could let us know when he’s coming back, it will be time for us to get our raincoats out.