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Yes it’s the Rugby World Cup, and in the early hours of this morning London time, the mighty Fijians came within a point of suffering a shock defeat at the hands of plucky little USA.
USA captain Dave Hodges paid tribute to his players after coming within a kick of beating Fiji.
“No-one in the world of rugby gave us a chance, but we came out with a good game,” said Hodges, whose team lost 19-18, having spurned a chance to win.
Fly-half Mike Hercus kicked for glory after Kort Schubert’s try, but narrowly missed with the last action of the match.
“It was a good effort from all the players. We were very, very disappointed,” said Hodges.
This rugby tournament still hasn’t had a decent surprise result, having instead suffered an abundance of one sided results along the lines of Goliath 70 David 10, the most extreme of which so far has been England 84 Georgia (the one next to Russia – every name except one ending either in -dze or -vili) 10. Rugby is that sort of game. If one team is well on top the points will accumulate. Running over a line with a rugby ball in your hand and planting it down on the ground (in rugby touching down actually does mean touching down) is relatively easy. So, in rugby, upsets are rare, and it only gets really exciting when the teams are pretty evenly matched, as Fiji and USA turned out to be today, and as will be the case in the later rounds of this tournament, but has has tended not to be the case in the early round games now being played. So this Fiji USA game was very refreshing, and I eagerly await the recorded highlights of the game this evening.
In soccer, by contrast, a team can have all the possession and a string of chances, and have nothing to show for it. And then the other guys can run up the other end and score a goal with their one attack. Converting a solid chance into a soccer goal still takes some doing. Even open goals are appallingly easy to miss, as you will know if you’ve ever played this game, and when chances are missed the sturdiest shoulders can drop and underdog spirits can soar.
The Soccer World Cup not so long ago contained many upsets, with France (sensationally beaten by their own ex-colony Senegal) and Argentina, to name two famously strong and fancied teams, both going home after the first round of games. This is one of the many reasons why soccer is now the great World Game, while rugby is not. Soccer minnows can (sometimes) take great bites out of soccer sharks, so the fans of the lowliest soccer nations can still dream of fantasy results with their heroes winning.
Samizdata readers in particular will surely never forget how the mighty Portuguese – sporting no less a person than Luis Figo of Real Madrid – were humbled 3-2 by … plucky little USA.
It may be silly that sport affects politics, but it does. In 1966, England won the soccer World Cup, and it definitely did rub off on the Labour Government then in power and on Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson. British proles can do it, who needs the bloody toffs?, etc. etc. Wilson certainly milked that win all he could for his political team.
So when, in the quarter-finals of the next World Cup in 1970, the England soccer team was gut-wrenchingly beaten 3-2 (after being 2-0 up) by the very same opponents they’d beaten in the 1966 final, West Germany, they were widely debited/credited with tipping the balance in favour of the Conservatives at the general election held very soon afterwards. The proles weren’t so cool after all, you see.
The England soccer team has never since scaled the heights of 1966, but the infusion of television money and foreign stars nevertheless gave English soccer in the 1990s a glamour and a cultural clout that it had probably never had before. Soccer now completely dominates the sports pages, having utterly routed the now very forlorn cricket as England’s “national game”. And (“New”) Labour has once again made use of all that in its propaganda about rebranding and modernising and generally being Cool Britannia.
There is now another World Cup approaching which may have a similar, although more muted, political effect, in the form of the Rugby Word Cup, which kicks off next Friday when host nation Australia plays Argentina in Sydney. England are strongly fancied to win this, although the truth is that any one of about half a dozen closely matched teams could win, of whom England are just one. If England do win or at least do very well (by winning through to the final in grand style and then being heroically and narrowly beaten, say), this could have party political vibes back here in Britain. If England disappoint, ditto, in the sense that the dog I am about to describe won’t have barked after all.
Basically, it would suit the Conservatives if the England rugby team were to triumph, while many Labour supporters would probably prefer England to make a humiliatingly early exit. → Continue reading: How the Rugby World Cup might influence British party politics
So Wunderkind Wayne Rooney does it again, saving England from an embarrassing result against those footballing soccer lilliputians, Lichtenstein. Old Mottie and the Brookmeister even blessed him, as is traditional, with those epithets of glory, “he’s a natural”, and “he’s got a great footballing brain”. Ah yes, the memories of Peter Beardsley came flooding back, that face, the one of a bulldog chewing a wasp. But Wayne Rooney! Is he really only seventeen? It hardly seems possible. He’s a bull, he’s a monster, his touch is awesome, almost Pele-esque. Are we blessed with the next Maradonna, the next George Best, or is it just the next Wayne Rooney? This is what I love about genius. The idiot egalitarians of socialism want every man and woman to be ratcheted back to the level of the lowest of the low, to be smacked into the most feeble of the feeble denominators, but when it comes to sport, they are the first to proclaim the greatness of the individual, the uniqueness of human ability, and the sacredness of talent. What is it about sport? Is it the only human arena in which all can acknowledge individual human greatness? If only we could extend this to other realms of human endeavour. Whatever the case, God Bless you Wayne Rooney, a nation turns its lonely eyes to you. May I only be there when you score the winning goal against Brazil in the next World Cup Final.
This afternoon my fellow Samizdata-scribe David Carr took me to watch his beloved Chelsea play Leicester City at football, at Chelsea Football Club’s home ground, Stamford Bridge, which is a walk away from the Samizdata HQ. He had a spare ticket, caused by the temporary absence in the USA of his usual Chelsea companion.
It was quite a day, if only because it was the first Chelsea home game of the season, and accordingly the first home game attended by Chelsea’s new owner Roman Abramovich, the mysterious and infinitely rich young Russian who has been spending money like water on new players. £50 million is quite a lot to you and me, but to him it is apparently small change. Who knows how he made his money? Certainly no one in the crowd today gave a damn. It was enough that he was spending a little of it on their team. Abramovich got the biggest cheer of the entire day. It occurs to me that owning football clubs have now replaced owning national newspapers as the preferred hobby of the Infinitely Rich.
The Chelsea supporters by whom David and I were surrounded took the whole thing desperately seriously. They showed most excitement (a), as you would expect, when the two Chelsea goals were scored, and (b) when the referee ever made a decision of which they disapproved, i.e. not in favour of Chelsea. It seemed to me that for these person, football had completely replaced politics as the focus of their ‘political’ enthusiasms, if you get my meaning. Which might have something to do with why the Super-Rich have switched from owning newspapers to owning football clubs. Both are the result of their fantasies of political power. No politician (or for that matter newspaper tycoon) would ever get a cheer nowadays like the one that greeted Abramovich today. → Continue reading: Chelsea 2 Leicester City 1 – thoughts on why football is so popular
The most absurd intellectual property rights claim ever?
With their earthy tones and lizard motifs, Prince Harry’s paintings won admiration at home and last week earned him a grade B at A-level. But his work has stirred anger in Western Australia, where he is accused of stealing Aboriginal themes.
The moral pygmies claiming ‘ownership’ of the images drawn by artists who died hundreds of years ago must be the world’s biggest losers. Inacapable of artistic expression themselves, they demand the unearned greatness of their remote ancestors.
How sad that genuine aboriginal achievements are drowned out by the moochers!
The first foreign cricket team to visit England (in 1868) was comprised entirely of aboriginal players. Subsequently, Australian cricket authorities tried to forget about this as more than a century passed without a non-white player. Are they excluded from clubs, does the welfare system turn an entire race into a dependent underclass?
I don’t suppose that the professional racial-awareness poverty pimps are demanding that aborigines stop getting welfare and solve their problems by economic means.
For the record, one of my French ancestors wore the Crusaders’ red cross on white background in Palestine. Does this mean I should sue England soccer supporters for ‘violating’ my heritage, after all their king only went on the Third Crusade?
Blogger Jim Henley of Unqualified Offerings looks into the issue of American football teams whose names have sparked controversy, such as teams calling themselves the Redskins, and so on. Now I don’t want to enter the swamps of that particular controversy, which Jim negotiates with customary dexterity. No what struck me is this – why don’t European sports teams have such names at all?
For example, consider the Premiership football (soccer to you barbarians in the colonies) league. The teams are called Manchester United, Liverpool FC, Tottenham Hotspur, etc. Not many references to ethnic groups there (though of course football does have its ethnic issues, as any Glasgow Rangers or Celtic fan would point out). The nomaclature of football is pretty tame, even while the makeup of the teams and the fans is not.
Look elsewhere. English cricket teams are named after counties of England. All very staid. Of course when you go outside the field of professional sports, it can get a bit more interesting. I occasionally play cricket for a side called The Pretenders. (My favourite cricket team was called The Corridor of Uncertainty!). But at the professional level at least, British teams sound about as exciting as a German movie without the subtitles.
Why are our teams sporting such dull names compared to our American cousins? I need enlightenment on this subject.
Today I received the following email:
Brian,
Brian has started a webring of Brians with blogs. If you would like to join us, go and sign up here.
Brian
What is a webring? If I signed up to it, would the rest of my life be ruined? The Brian who sent me this email seems to be gay. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, consenting adults, some of my best friends…, I’m personally in favour of gay marriage, blah blah blah. But if I sign up, will I be bombarded with gay porn for the rest of my days?
In general, I feel that it is good that we Brians are getting together, and if a webring is what I think it may be, we can perhaps sit on one, in a circle, perhaps somewhere in the countryside, and discuss the Brian Issue. That is, we can discuss why cuckolded husbands, send-up substitutes for Jesus Christ, etc. etc., in the movies, all seem to be called Brian. Brian is not a cool name, is my point. Maybe we Brians can get together and change that. (The danger, of course, is that by getting together in such ways as these, we might merely confirm all the existing anti-Brian stereotypes, and cause Brianphobia to become even more deeply entrenched.)
Meanwhile, how many indisputably cool Brians can be assembled? I offer two outstanding contemporary sportsman: the West Indian cricket captain and ace batsman Brian Lara, and the Irish rugby captain and ace centre threequarter Brian O’Driscoll.
Dale Amon on these pages rightly notes the anniversary of the Moon landings of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. Well, it seems that another Armstrong is pushing back the boundaries of the possible on a slightly lower-altitude setting, in the current Tour de France.
Yes, I know, and before any churlish types feel the urge to carp, cycling is not exactly the most visually exciting sport around. But anyone who has actually taken part in competitive cycling, or seen, as I have, such folk shoot past on a French mountain pass, can only gasp in astonishment at what Lance Armstrong has achieved.
And being nice to the French, there can be few doubts that the Tour is one of the most physically demanding sports events known to Man.
Mind you, the next time I go to France, I am taking the autoroute.
Formula One motor racing has suffered from becoming increasingly dull as a spectacle in recent years. There seems to be less overtaking. The cars often look silly with their gaudy advertising and don’t have the aesthetic grace of old. Partly, I think, this perception of dullness is down to the increasingly safe nature of the sport. It is a terrible thing for folk to admit, but it is now much more difficult for a motor racer to get killed than during the heyday of Fangio and Jim Clark (arguably the two greatest drivers ever). I have actually driven around the old Nurburgring circuit in the Rhineland area of Germany – the track that nearly killed Nikki Lauda back in the mid-1970s. I was driving in a regular saloon car with my Dad and got out, shaking and trembling after negotiating the twists and turns of the track. How a driver could have thrown one of those massive old Auto-Unions or Mercedes around such a track and emerge unscathed is a miracle. No wonder the Germans rebuilt this fearsome track into something much safer
So maybe the loon who chose to walk on to the circuit at Britain’s Silverstone track on Sunday was trying to inject an element of raw danger back into the sport. It was very lucky – and also a tribute to the bravery of the one of the track marshalls, that no-one got killed.
What was this twit thinking? No doubt the usual wailers from the nanny state brigade will start demanding all kinds of fresh controls and restrictions. And I have no doubt that our flat-earth chums from the anti-globalista movement will have motor racing in their cross-hairs eventually. All those gas-guzzling fast cars with their C02 emissions, ugh!
This article by Mick Cleary contains what is for me the best sporting quote so far of the new century.
To get it you have to get the setting. Last Saturday England played and very narrowly defeated the New Zealand All Blacks rugby team, in Wellington, New Zealand. Either side could have won it, but England did, and it’s only the second time that England have beaten New Zealand in New Zealand, the last time being in 1973.
The episode of the game that is already starting to be a rugby legend was the ten minutes early in the second half when two key England players, Dallaglio and Back, were off the field for ten minutes for infringements. New Zealand were encamped on the England line, and a New Zealand try looked like a pushover, literally, followed in all likelihood by another. Game over, in other words.
But for the next ten minutes the six remaining England forwards stood firm against the eight New Zealand forwards, and not only prevented a New Zealand try but contrived to get England up the other end and enable England goal-kicking wonder boy Jonny Wilkinson to kick yet another penalty goal. I can remember when eight New Zealand forwards would prevailed against twelve Englishmen. As I say, the stuff of legend. → Continue reading: What was going through Martin Johnson’s head? – a sporting reply to savour
Just a titbit. I’m listening to the England/Zimbabwe cricket commentary on BBC radio 4, and for some reason one of them, Jonathan Agnew, who used to bowl quick for some county or other (and for England occasionally if I remember it right), referred in passing to the fact that his newspaper reading this morning had included the New York Times. There’d been some reference to Agnew in the newspapers, it seems, but in the papers he’d been reading he hadn’t come across it – something like that. They were just making conversation between overs. Anyway, Agnew’s fellow commentator Mike Selvey, who used to bowl quick for Middlesex (and England occasionally if I remember right), then said:
The New York Times? I wouldn’t believe a word of it. Their editor’s just been fired.
I have been listening to cricket commentaries on the radio for the last half century. Never, never have I ever heard the New York Times get any mention on these commentaries before.
That brand is definitely suffering.
My excuse for writing about cricket is that writing about cricket means writing about Zimbabwe, which is one of the wretched-of-the-earth countries just now, lest we forget. But the truth is that I just love cricket, and that I have loved it ever since the days of Hutton, Compton, May, Cowdrey, Laker, Statham, Truman, Dexter … and those are just (some of) the English names.
So, what is the big story in cricket just now? Read Jennings, and the news is just that people have been, you know, playing cricket. Look at the cricket web sites and it’s just cricket as usual. Who’s in and who’s out. Who’s firing on all cylinders, and who has a cylinder injury and will be missing the next few games. Earlier in the week, the British cricket pages were full of how well the new England quick bowlers had done, and how badly the Zimbabweans had batted against them on that horribly one-sided Saturday when nineteen wickets fell and by the end Zimbabwe had lost by an innings in three days. (Girls and Americans: “by an innings” is very bad, and three days is not long at all.)
Yet above and beyond all these regular comings and goings, I believe that cricket posterity will have no hesitation in deciding that the current big cricket story happened just over a week ago, just before the England-Zimbabwe series got started, in the form of the newly announced ICC Test Championship table.
→ Continue reading: The significance of the new Test Match Cricket international ranking system
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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