It’s been a bad week for the English national team. First the cricket team is embarrassed by the West Indies. Then the football team is taught a lesson by Spain. Finally the rugby union team takes a beating by Wales today. BUT at least on the rugby front things are looking up because that best I’ve seen England play in a couple of years!

Last week against Italy they score 5 tries, win the game comfortably but it was like watching paint dry. They was nothing but criticism for Martin Johnson men, constantly conceding possession and doing anything but run with the ball. However against Wales it looked a different team (except the first 15 minutes!) The ball was still kicked away a little too often for the purist but at least the backs were attempting to break the Welsh line. England even managed to Read the rest of this entry »

It’s going to be a fine night tonight, it’s going to be a great day tomorrow! Rugby hits the headlines again tomorrow with the start of the Super League season coinciding with the start of the Six Nations Rugby Union tournament! The big question is of course what to watch?
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…or do we just expect far too much?

Personally I think it’s a combination of the 2, we are a bit rubbish and we certainly do expect too much of our national teams.

At the weekend I had the pleasure of watching both our national Rugby teams get stuffed. Please remember the we invented the sport of Rugby. First of all in a game that we were hotly tipped to win easily (why, our tournament record was shit?) our Rugby League team got hammered by New Zealand. Despite a mini comeback at the end of the first half this was not a close game. We were well and truly battered. At no point in the game did we even look like winning, never mind making it a stroll in the park. Read the rest of this entry »

Was last week a false start? I think today we are going to find out just how Martin Johnson’s England Rugby Union team intend to play. This afternoon they face Australia in the first of 3 games against the top southern hemisphere teams with South Africa and New Zealand to follow.
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I’m just sat watching England Australia, it’s a complete and utter fucking stuffing. The Australians have battered the English. Yet the English commentators fully expect England to make it through to the final where more likely than not they’ll play Australia. If England are supposed to be the second best team in the world at the moment and they’re getting beat by more than 40 points by the best team, why even bother carrying on? Why not just give Australia the trophy now and call it a day?

Personally from what I’ve seen England don’t look anything like the second best team in the Rugby League world at the moment (Fiji, New Zealand anybody?). At least half the teams in this years Rugby League World Cup have looked better than England. So I wonder why the hell are we just presuming that we’ll be in the final, we’ll be nowhere but back home if we play the same way against New Zealand in the semi final. That’s what gives me hope for the tournament, that the “usual” teams get a wake up call.

I guess I know why they didn’t bother holding this tournament 4 years ago, because at the moment it’s hardly competitive is it?

It’s kicking of right about now (check out the twitter account for a link), not that you’d ever guess it because other than a little bit on the BBC news this morning the Rugby League World Cup seems to have gone right under the radar.  You’d think that having bypassed the 2004 world cup because of a worry about the viewing figures that they’d have made sure to overdo the hype machine this time around, doesn’t look like it though?

It’s a bloody shame because Rugby League is an excellent watch.  When you think of how much England get behind the national Rugby Union team with a little bit of publicity you could get the same for league. There are some problems with the competitiveness of the tournament and the organisers know it.  That’s why they’ve gone down the line of changing the group system so that the better teams stand a better chance of getting through to the later stages rather than having walkovers at the semi/final stage.

Anyhoo the first game is England versus Papa New Guinae, expect plenty of hard hitting violence.  This is the sort of thing Sky Sports should be covering, not fishing!

(ps don’t forget it’s the Anglo Welsh cup today as well, plenty of top draw Rugby action. As if you needed an excuse to sit on the sofa all day with beer! It’s pissing down out there).

I drank beer on Friday night. This shouldn’t be that much of a problem but for me it is because every single time I have a “few” I’m dying for days afterwards. Saturday was spent on the sofa not moving, the last thing I wanted to do was upset my guts anymore than what they were! Sunday I was still feeling too rough to do much of anything, I’m just about coming around today.

The cool thing is that because I was fooked it meant that I got to watch a lot of sport. I managed to catch 2 Heineken Cup games over the weekend. First of all Leinster stuffed Wasps in a game that was far more 1 sided than I was ever expecting. Leinster were happy to run the ball and kick at the right time whilst Wasps were looking for the kick all the time. The end result was 41 – 11 to Leinster, was much deserved as well. The second game I caught was another Anglo/Irish game, this time the current champions Munster against Sale Sharks. Again it was the Irish team that looked to play the running Rugby from the start and Sale were looking desperate at times. They did manage to get themselves back into the game but that only drove Munster on to try harder winning 24-16. Not a stuffing but still it was convincing enough. Special notice must go out to Munsters forwards at the breakdown, they were excellent at isolating the Sale players are turning the ball over, it’s probably what won them the game. Also something that made me laugh, the touching moment when one of the sale forwards wiped the “split open” head of one of the other forwards with his rotten shirt, as if it was going to help. The ref still made him go off, has rugby gone soft?

Saturday was also the first round of Premier League games after the international break so I was looking forward to catching up on all the games on Football First. All the top teams did well, winning convincingly. Well all except Liverpool anyway who in their normal style for the season were jammy as hell and didn’t really deserve fuck all. But what you gonna do? One thing that did annoy me was the lack of the Man Utd – WBA game from football first. Shitty Setanta strikes again. I wonder how long the greedy bastards are going to carry on putting sports fans through this for?

Sunday I was up early for the Chinese Grand Prix. Wasn’t a classic was it? As soon as Hamilton was in front it had that look of being all over. It was no surprise as well to see Ferrari pull out some team orders near then to try and get that midget Massa as close to Hamilton as possible for the last race. I started this season as a long time Ferrari fan but I’ve really swung around in the last half dozen races. It Massa wins the title then Formula 1 loses all credibility as far as I’m concerned, I’d rather watch a A1GP race than that! Anyhoo, Hamilton goes into the last race of the season at Brazil with a 7 point lead knowing that a 5th or better finish wil secure the title. I’m expecting plenty of steward action to try and screw him up as much as possible.

So other than all that I also caught some of the snooker, which was as dull as watching paint dry once Rocket Ronnie was knocked out by that 11 year old. Oh yeah and Andy Murray won some Britvic or something like that as well. But we don’t like Tennis, it’s full of nob heads.

The Heineken Cup started last night, it’s the biggest thing in Northern hemisphere rugby outside of the world cup, so perhaps I should mention it!

Last night it was Northampton vs. Toulon. Toulon doesn’t have a wage cap as they are French and spend £5 million a year. Northampton being English do and have a MAX of £1.5 million

Result: 56 – 3 to Northampton.

Money can’t buy you everything.

The Heineken Cup is well worth a watch, here’s the fixture list.