Tough Opener?
‘Ulster Home to Clermont in Tough Opener,’ blazed the Tele’s headline, as Niall Crozier explained that Ulster won’t be intimidated by the visit of Clermont given their record at home against French opposition.
Forgive my somewhat blasé attitude but isn’t it time the likes of Crozier and some supporters cut the plucky little team bit and started believing we are a contender on the Heineken scene. Had it been away to Leicester or Clermont you might have been forgiven for executing such a headline.
Bottom line is the Heineken is a top class competition and as tough as it comes but if we are to continue our progress and continue to compete at the top table then some folks have to start taking a leaf out of the gospel according to Johann Muller and grow a pair, rooted in confidence.
That is not to belittle the size of the task or discount Clermont as a top notch team but it is time to discard our minnows in a big pond complex and invest in self belief without ever forgetting that the team has to turn up and play!
The golfers have shown us the way, it’s time to absorb their mental strength and self belief.
A Sublime Time
‘Sublime moments are created out of monotonous hours of the ordinary performed as the perfunctory and build the heightened sense of awe when someone or something transcends the normal to touch the sublime.’
I wrote this in my blog ‘Touching the Sublime’. I had just watched Rory McIlroy put Northern Ireland golf on the map and I wondered about Darren Clarke and what might have been with his golfing career.
I need not have pondered too long because sooner than you could yelp ‘pitching wedge’, our little country once again rocketed to the edge of the golfing galaxy as Darren Clark appeared left fairway to claim the British Open with considerable panache and paunch.
3 ‘Major’ golf champions in the space of 13 months!!!
My earnest wish is that given the preponderance of golfing wannabees in the Ulster Rugby camp that they will take a leaf out of our golf champions tee card and emulate their mental fortitude and apply it in the cauldron of the Heineken competition.
The golfers have laid down a marker for our rugby players to follow.
Are they willing to go there?
Who the Hell Wrote this One?
With an interest in construction but no interest in the job, my jaw dropped as I read UR’s criteria for the post of Project Sponsor and Stadium Facilities Manager.
To start with they are advertising two entirely different roles under the one job application.
Firstly they want someone to act as a project sponsor for the Ravenhill redevelopment and then act as facilities manager in the completed project with a brief to operate at a profit.
The job criteria looks as though it has been written by a civil servant and likely has, given the DCAL input to funding. It is straight out of the civil service manual for promotion within the professional and technical discipline.
The project sponsor requires to liaise between the Senior Responsible Owner or SRO, [Shane Logan I would imagine] and the contractor to deliver the projected redevelopment within time and budget.
Fair enough but the project sponsor must have knowledge of NEC contracts, Gateway Reviews, have experience of building projects in excess of 10 million pounds and knowledge of sports stadia projects.
Yikes!!!!
Let’s get this straight, if you can meet this sort of criteria and come complete with professional qualification to boot then you are more than likely to be tramping round a sports stadia location in London, project managing work for the 2012 Olympics, rather than a small scale redevelopment project in Belfast.
Should you fortuitously be in the position to deliver the previous criteria then you also need to meet part deux. That is someone to run the redeveloped Ravers at a profit, be responsible for stadium maintenance, (including the grounds maintenance as I understand it) and be responsible for health and safety of the facility.
Oh and by the way in addition to your 10million plus construction experience, also happen to have expertise and previous experience in running commercial enterprises.
Sometimes jobs like these have briefs developed to suit a pre ordained applicant. They are designed to exclude outsiders by deliberately magnifying the degree of difficulty in terms of criteria to the extent they can be omitted at the initial stage of selection for interview.
This does not appear to be the case here. Rather a mandarin with experience in construction projects has set out a stiff and somewhat exaggerated job brief with little regard for the consequences of finding someone who might have the necessary multi tasking ability in construction and commercial stewardship.
Frankly the project sponsor part of it sounds more high falutin’ than it needs to be. We are talking here about a 3 phase project which requires an understanding of bricks mortar, steelwork, siteworks and interior fit out, allied to a knowledge of health and safety, set timescale and a pre-fixed budget.
(There, I have just defined the brief!)
It ain’t rocket science ensuring a contractor fulfils his obligations whilst an anxious client looks on at his investment wondering if it’ll be delivered in time for the start of a new rugby season.
The difficult part is running Ravenhill as a profit making entity. Get it built and then the hard work begins.
As Kevin Costner once pronounced, “they will come.” For sure!
It’ll be Alright On the Day
I met a man from the ministry the other day who is at the heart of these matters and he assures the redevelopment will go ahead and the bats are a state of mind.
Tour De Force
The Tour De France is on a slow burner towards a climatic finish both literally and metaphorically as they tackle the legendary L’Alpe D’Huez.
Mindful this is a rugby website I wondered what similarities could be found between rugby, road race cyclists and road racing. Strangely there are a few obvious comparisons.
Mindful also that the majority of my 3 readers have a working knowledge of rugby I can inform them that the specialist cycle men, such as the sprinters are built like rugby’s explosive wing forwards. In other words like brick poo houses with powerful athleticism to match.
Teams too must behave in a co-ordinated and systematic manner in the way they operate during varied stage racing. For example sprint teams generally grind down their weaker opponents during the flat stage racing in the way big packs grind their opponents into the rugby field dust.
The Tour reaches a conclusion in Paris on Sunday in a spectacular display of flat stage racing. Don’t miss, if only for Le Spectacle, a colourful pageant of spectator and bike.
Look out for the Isle of Man’s Mark Cavendish and his HTC team, they are the ‘big pack’ of the peleton, likely to grind weaker teams into the tarmac with their power riding at the front of the peleton, if they’ve any energy left.
They are the Munster of pro cycling.
Corrections, comments or questions?