Al's Blog from the Bog

So the 2008 Six Nations Championship (a rugby competition between England, Scotland,Ireland, Wales, France and Italy) concluded on Saturday. Congratulations to Wales on their Grand Slam (winning all their matches), their second in four years.

Before the it began, the pundits were predicting the most open tournament for many years, and they were right. All the teams were much closer in the standard of rugby they played than for a long time, but Wales were certainly the best team and deserved their win.

You could argue that this “closeness” made the competition very exciting and, in terms of the results and winning margins, perhaps it was. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves though. The quality of rugby was far, far from a high standard. Why was it close? In simple terms it was because most teams (Italy excepted) have gone backwards, which made most of the games dull and tedious.
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rugby international, rugby, Six Nations, sport

This will only be relevant to those of you in England so my apologies in advance to the rest of you!

I can’t describe how fed up I am with all the media reports describing England’s “heartbreaking” (or similar) sporting weekend. My favourite sports are rugby union and formula 1 so I have as much of an interest as anyone, but I’m not disappointed. I don’t subscribe to the “first loser” school of thought, although I’d be the first to admit that I like to win, but let’s just have a reality check here. England’s rugby union team from 2004 until about 4 weeks ago was really very poor. Reigning world champions they may have been, but they seemed to have lost the desire to play. Slow, ponderous, dim-witted and unimaginative in the forwards and, frankly, the backs may as well not have been there at all.
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F1, rugby