Al's Blog from the Bog

Wales were strong favourites for a win in Paris last night, the first ever ‘Friday Night’ 6 nations fixture. Over the last couple of years the French seem to have radically changed their thinking about how to play test rugby; coach Marc Lievrement was under considerable pressure to conjure up a win and, perhaps more importantly, demonstrate what his strategy actually is.

Although Wales have yet to reach the heights of last year’s performances, their matches this year have demonstrated both a good deal of control in the forwards and a rapier-like cutting edge in the backs. Any team coming up against them would have good reason to be nervous.

From the start it was obvious that France were focussed and would not roll over easily. Early tit-for-tat exchanges favoured the Welsh but only by a whisker. A (rightly) disallowed try prevented the French going ahead but the pace and power of their forwards and backs was clearly in evidence and it became apparent that their ‘new strategy’ owes a lot to England circa 2003. Big, strong forwards with surprising speed hammered at the Welsh defences, while the backline employed a powerful and aggressive defence, largely snuffing out the threat of the Welsh centres.

Wales went 13-3 up after a sublimely simple attack which sliced open their opponent’s defence, and it was at this point that one imagined French heads would drop, discipline would desert them and Wales would be free to work their magic. Not so. France came back with more power and by half time the score was level.

The third quarter was the most impressive, at least from a neutral standpoint. Wales did little wrong – a few mistakes here and there, but the best team in the world will not be 100% accurate. No, the shock was the way the French dominated the ball through their ferocious forwards. They should have been getting tired, weakening a bit, but it looked more like someone had lit the blue touch paper. The hits were hard – from both sides – and bodies seemed to be strewn all over the pitch.

By the time the fury had begun to abate we were deep into the final quarter and the Welsh were 8 points down. A final push from the men in red saw them camped in the French 22 for the last 10 minutes, but ‘les bleues’ held firm for a well-deserved victory.

A great match, some wonderful rugby with fire, passion, aggression and skill, and good discipline from both sides – although Tom Shanklin was lucky not receive a yellow card for a dangerous tackle. It is rare for me to feel my heart pounding towards the end of a game, unless England are playing in a close contest, but I was genuinely excited by this match.

rugby rugby, Six Nations

Last night we updated www.mylifelists.com with a good number of small changes to the user interface – the look & feel – and a large amount of ‘re-plumbing under the hood’. From the visitor’s perspective the changes are not massive but, even so, added together I hope you will agree they make the whole site feel more neat & tidy.

The current economic difficulties around the world may lower the spirits a bit, so there’s no better time to create Lifelists® and think about the good things in life!

As ever, if you have any problems with mylifelists.com please let us know.

business, internet business, Lifelists, mylifelists.com

The Mayo Open Coffee Club met for the first time today when a ‘bakers dozen’ gathered at the TF Royal Hotel in Castlebar for a bit of a chat and a cup of coffee.

Thanks and congratulations are due to Chris Kerndter, the driving force behind establishing MOCC – well done Chris!

The Open Coffee Club concept is to encourage entrepreneurs, developers and investors to organise real-world informal meetups to chat, network and grow. More details about Mayo OCC are at mayo-open-coffee-club.org, including details of future meetings.

A good mix of people were in attendance, from developers and business owners to mentors and people involved in support and incubation of fledgling businesses, all adding up to a solid foundation on which MOCC can grow. The venue, a large hotel in the centre of Castlebar, was spacious and accommodating, although the coffee was a bit on the pricey side.

So, a great start and plenty to look forward to in the future.

business business, Ireland, Mayo, MOCC, networking

Although I’ve been ‘using’ Twitter since May last year I still consider myself to be something of a ‘newbie’, having posted only 176 messages in that time. It took me a long time to get the point and it’s only in the last couple of months that I’ve started to feel confident with it. I’ve never been an ‘early adopter’ and find that my personality tends more towards the lurker than active participant where social media is concerned.

Now that Twitter is all the rage in the media, or rather Twitter-bashing is all the rage, I can see that over the months I have started to understand it, to the extent that I find it blindingly obvious that much of the coverage is ridiculous, immature and downright inaccurate (no surprise).

Being considered by many commentators as just ‘the latest internet craze’ it is ripe for those commentators to start picking. The internet is evil, it’s full of porn, nazis and paedophiles. It makes our children spend their lives in a sedentary activity, forces them to eat junk food and ruins their health. Oh and it causes cancer. Twitter is on the internet. QED.

Mainstream media organisations have one job, and only one job: selling themselves. By which I mean gaining, keeping and growing their audience; everything else is incidental. Aside from the issue of social media making mainstream media redundant (discuss…), headlines like “Twitter: just another way of talking to people” would not sell many newspapers. There needs to be scandal, depravity, danger &c. And of course there is, because Twitter is just another forum, populated by human beings. So there’s bound to be some of the above. Not much, but some, somewhere, though I haven’t found it yet (of course I’ve not looked ). It’s the old ‘holding a mirror up to society’ thing.

We should forget about arguments over whether it’s any good or not, whether it has any value, whether it’s dangerous or useful. It just is. The point is that it’s a tool, facilitating communication, so we have to decide as individuals whether or not we want to join in.

As a tool it works pretty well. It has had its problems – growing pains you might say – but it does pretty much what it says on the tin. Being like an internet version of SMS, the messages are short, snappy, cleverly crafted (sometimes) and to the point (sometimes). The premise is “What are you doing?” so I assume the main requirement must be speed, in the sense of immediacy. Whatever is posted must be instantly available to all who wish to see it. In my experience, it delivers.

As for the content, that’s up to the users. It has nothing to do with the system. If you say that Twitter is full of rubbish, what you are really saying is that its users are full of rubbish – and I would respectfully suggest that you haven’t seen the output of all 6 million+ users. I haven’t seen the output of all 6 million+ users either, but I’ve seen some of it and I’d bet there are people talking about just about any topic you can think of. So there’s rubbish, inanity, egotism and narcissism of course, and I’ve read that there may even be some imaginative souls using it for sexual shenanigans. Then there’s friendly, helpful, advisory and supportive stuff, intellectual conversation and even a bit of tech talk. So as I said, just like any social forum anywhere, real or virtual.

One of the really interesting parts is the way the system can interact with other systems. For example, when I ‘tweet’, the message automatically appears here on my blog and on my Facebook page. This is a small example of how everything can (and will eventually) be interconnected. Makes me think of Dirk Gently and “the fundamental interconnectedness of everything” but that’s for another day.

On a personal note, I’m not keen on some of the “look how big mine is…” stuff that buzzes around the periphery. It’s usually men (really?) and relates to how often you tweet, how many followers you have, how many times your posts are ‘retweeted’ (re-broadcast with attribution) and so on. And why do people have to say ‘good morning’ and ‘good night’? But I’m getting old, so lots of stuff annoys me now.

If you don’t like it, don’t use it. If you do like it, use it in whatever way suits you. But if all you can do is criticise it, take a good look in the mirror.

entertainment, technology entertainment, lifestyle, technology

The second week of the 2009 RBS 6 Nations Championship didn’t throw up any surprises but there were some notable moments.

The weekend started in Paris, where France entertained Scotland. I expected the French to win comfortably and I hoped that they might even show us that French coach Marc Lievremont’s strategy was starting to make some sense. The surprise was that, from the outset, it was Scotland who seemed to be attempting to run the ball wide, re-invigorated as they were by the inclusion in the starting line-up of the Evans brothers. Nevertheless, there was the nagging feeling that, for all their ambition – and indeed first-half superiority in all areas bar the scrum – Scotland would not win.

The Scots failed to capitalise on their territory and possession, going into half time trailing by two penalties to one. The second half saw the French exercise a little more control, but they still failed to impress. Although the Scots never looked like winning, they refused to lie down and certainly can be proud to have come quite close to an upset. A little more discipline and perhaps a couple of genuine locks – the experiment of playing with backrow forwards in the second row failed to provide the expected mobility and let them down in the tight situations – and the result could have been different.

Wales took on England at the Millenium Stadium in Cardiff, with only one result anticipated. The only question was how large the winning margin would be. The bookmakers were not disappointed although they may have been a little nervous at times.

Before the match, much had been made of the loss of Shane Williams to an injury but such is the strength in depth of the current Welsh back division that if it was a problem it was all psychological. In the event Wales looked controlled and always threatening, if ultimately a little disappointing.

That disappointment is probably a credit to England’s defence, particularly man-of-the-match Joe Worsley. The men in white managed to bottle up the Welsh quite effectively, primarily by shutting down the threat of Jamie Roberts in the Centre. (The Welsh management must focus on a ‘plan-b’ for when this happens again, as it surely will now that England have shown the effectiveness of the tactic.)

It would have been interesting to see how Wales would respond to real pressure, a genuine threat to their Grand Slam ambitions, but England were so ill-disciplined at times that the contest was never in doubt. Indeed, England displayed flashes of clever back play and scored two tries to Wales’ one (who’d have thought it?), but the six penalties given away in kickable positions – and another two yellow cards – left Wales in a comfortable position. If England had brought a bit more gumption onto the pitch it could have been a quite different game, but then gumption is something that England don’t seem to have had much of since 2003.

The final game of the weekend saw Ireland travel to Rome. Again, the form book was quite clear and, although the Italians have made huge strides over the last ten years, few people seriously imagined an upset. At least this week Italy decided to include a scrum-half.

The first half was a fascinating contest, with Italy’s aggressive defence putting Ireland under a lot of pressure, leading to the 3 penalties that were to be Italy’s contribution to the scoreline. In between them Ireland benefitted from an interception/breakaway try, but the first quarter really belonged to Italy. From then on Ireland were in control, dominating possession and territory for the rest of the half and eventually carving Italy open.

The second half was a complete mess. Stop-start, injury strewn and just flat; very forgettable. Ireland’s dominance increased and Italy tired, but the scoreline at the end was rather inflated, though perhaps reflecting Ireland’s overall superiority. Most memorable for the bad tackles – including the Italian fullback’s clothes-line job on his opposite number at the very start – and the referee’s inability to get control of the scrums, few will want to buy the DVD of this game.

Italy will take some positives from the first quarter and if they can develop an effective attacking backline could become serious contenders. Ireland will be pleased to have won but will know they have much to work on if they are to challenge Wales, who remain clear favourites for the Championship. The next matches are in two weeks time, when Wales travel to Paris, Ireland entertain England and the Scots will hope that home advantage gives them the edge over Italy.

rugby rugby, Six Nations