damned lies and sadistics

Absolutely shattered. Abso-bloody-lutely. There was no let up. Constant movement, changes of angle, ups and downs and some truly heroic performances from all the team...

Muddy conditions meant that it was never going to be pretty but we showed real team spirit in adversity against some bigger English opposition, kept our shape and came away winners.

Such was the school under 11's boys-and-girls week on The English Riviera. The kids were inspiring.

However, I come back to this:
Dragons beaten by 43 to 5
Blues beaten by 37 to 8
Ospreys beaten by 19 to 17
The Scarlets, at least, scraped a draw in their last match.

I go away for one week and the wheels fall off?! That isn't strictly true, of course; I was only away for 5 days. Now, I KNOW it was the last week, fringe players, big names resting before tours etc. etc. But Why Can't We Do Better Than This? Eh? Perhaps it is because we are trying to raise four teams from 3 million people. France has 61 million, Scotland 5. Ireland 6. England has a population of 50 million. Interestingly, they have more registered rugby players* than South Africa, Australia and NZ put together.

France: 14 teams - 4.35 million population per team
England: 12 teams - 4.16
Scotland: 3 teams - 1.6
Ireland: 4 teams - 1.5
Wales: 4 teams - 0.74266666
South Africa: 5 teams - 8.8
Australia: 4 teams - 5.5
New Zealand: 5 teams - 0.82
India: 2 teams - 547.5
Have a look at this and compare it with the figures above

But really, should we not be better than we are? Or are we only as good as we should be? Hmmm.

(If you are in any way interested in Italian rugby, they have 58 million pop. with about/some/a few teams and therefore about 0.00079 Italians playing the game per Lambretta)


Perhaps it's because I'm hungry. Perhaps I should go and order a curry and have a few beers. My Lovely Wife is away on a Hen, so I have the place to myself. Already watched three matches and she's only been gone 13 hours [1 match every 4hrs 20mins]. But yes, shall try The Curry Remedy and try and brighten my mood... see ya in a bit.

The Curry helped. Ah, what the hell - when the boys get back from injury and Gav gets his head on and starts playing and swearing and the u21's come through and the Academies start pumping players out and that balding blonde centre who I can't remem... Shanklin! gets better and Gethin's shoulder heals properly and my plan of skills coaches comes to pass and Tiddles fights off Satan and skates across Hades and Gehenna, dodging snowballs on his little pitter-patter paws miaowing, until we swing him in the kitchen that is Wales.. why then, everything will go swimmingly. Now, another Irish cider, methinks...3 botkles per head of poclipation works out at two thursdays packetof crsoispsand ohojka n ojd heehhee!whiskybigcolijn'sfunnyhahaha!!


Aye.

*or something like that. I am exhausted after all this number m'larky.