Well how wrong I was. When started “a prediction thread”:https://crookedtimber.org/2008/01/28/six-nations-2008/ at the beginning of the 6 Nations, I didn’t even mention Wales. But they’ve been magnificent, and “deserved their victory today”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/rugby_union/welsh/7295598.stm . There were so many great moments too: Skrela going backwards from the restart; and Wales winning that scrum against the head near the end. I expect the streets of Cardiff will be, er, interesting, tonight. Here’s hoping England sack Ashton and offer Shaun Edwards a lot of cash.
From the category archives:
Sport
A Nobel prize-winning scientist once described Basketball to me (in his impeccable Yorkshire accent) as “a dreary game played by physical freaks in which nothing happens till the last minute”. I enjoy regaling my students with this story, and explain that cricket is the only real sport. But, apparently, I’m wrong (about cricket, not basketball). The Boston Review contains a 27-year-old letter from John Rawls explaining why baseball is, in fact, the best of all games. (Hattip Tom Hurka — sorry, Tom, I couldn’t resist)
There are many reasons to take pleasure in the New York Football Giants’ victory in the Supreme Bowl last night, but none, I think, is more important than the fact that the Northeast Region Patriots did not manage to pick up any points on their first drive of the second half. Here’s why.
For those of you who didn’t watch the game (and what, really, is wrong with you people? are you not sufficiently cosmopolitan to follow every last detail of American sporting contests that run for a mere four hours?), the Patriots faced a fourth-and-two at the Football Giants’ 44-yard line. They punted, and the Football Giants got the ball on their 14.
With the Six Nations starting this weekend, it is time for one of those prediction threads again. Here’s my take. There are only three possible winners: France, England and Ireland. Of these, England overperformed in the World Cup, and the Irish were shocking, but expect some regression to the usual level. France have the most skilful team, England are rebuilding, and a great Irish team is on its last legs. England have some key weaknesses: Regan has been dreadful at hooker for Bristol, and, once again, there’s no obvious scrum half. Since France have home advantage over both England and Ireland, and England have the same over Ireland, that should be enough to make the difference. So who to come last? I’m betting on Scotland to get the wooden spoon.
Bobby Fischer has died. I’m disappointed that some blogs and are making a lot of his paranoid ravings. Maybe that’s a generational thing. If you were of the right age — and I was 13 in the summer of 1972 — then what you’ll remember is something different. The daily drama in ReykjavÃk stretched over months, the odd young American taking on the the Russians at their game, and millions of people taking an interest in chess for the first time. I think about playing against my dad, and finally getting good enough to beat him, and challenging others of my own age; of picking up the paper and trying to follow what had happened the previous day, and why. A strange talent who belongs forever in 1972, not since.
I guess it would be fun to have a best-of-2007 thread. The trouble is, of course, that it turns out when you look closely that many of the things that you thought came out in 2007 actually came out earlier. But I’m going to ignore that, if paperback came out in 2007 (for example) that’s good enough for me. So here goes – an entirely perverse personal selection (nominate your own in any category you like in comments).
Film: Das Leben der Anderen. Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s portrait of East Germany under the thumb of the Stasi. Not released in the US and the UK until 2007, so it counts.
Novel: David Peace, The Damned United
Biography: “The Man Who Went into the West: The Life of R.S.Thomas”:http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1845132505?ie=UTF8&tag=junius-21&link_code=as3&camp=2506&creative=9298&creativeASIN=1845132505 , by Byron Rogers. I blogged about it “here”:https://crookedtimber.org/2007/09/03/the-man-who-went-into-the-west/ .
Team: “Bristol RFC”:http://www.bristolrugby.co.uk/index.php , the relegation favourites who ended up in the Guinness Premiership play-offs. (OK, so I’m biased.)
CD: “Gram Parsons Archive vol. 1”:http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FGram-Parsons-Archive-Vol-1%2Fdp%2FB000W1V8DU%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3Dmusic%26qid%3D1198179063%26sr%3D1-1&tag=junius-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325 . Two CD’s of Flying Burrito Brothers performances from 1969 that have been sitting in the Grateful Dead archive ever since. Great performances and unmissable, if you like that kind of thing (which I do).
Blog: “The Encyclopedia of Decency”:http://decentpedia.blogspot.com/, or Decentpedia. Whilst some of us had wasted hours of our time in serious engagement with the “decent left”, Malky Muscular, the Decentpedia’s proprietor, managed to deflate them with highly effective ridicule.
Blog post: Any one of Errol Morris’s “discussions”:http://morris.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/09/25/which-came-first-the-chicken-or-the-egg-part-one/ of photographic authenticity at “Zoom”:http://morris.blogs.nytimes.com/ .
Time-sink of the year: “Facebook”:http://www.face.book.com .
Project of the year: Project 365, over at “Flickr”:http://www.flickr.com , into which Eszter inveigled me, and which gave me a lot of fun.
I’d love to be able to nominate a philosophical paper or book of the year, but I can’t think of anything that’s really knocked me out.
Apparently England’s new manager has promised to learn English. I was going to do a clever post on this, but then the excellently if improbably named Jimmy from Glasgow (scroll down to third comment) took the words out of my English-speaking mouth:
I don’t see the problem here with Cappello not speaking fluent English. I can’t think of many English football players who can speak fluent English either. They usually speak in general cliches peppered with generous helpings of ‘you know’, sometimes with the ‘what I mean’ added on. E.g. “They put us under a lot of pressure, you know, but Gav-o did well, you know, because sometimes in football you have to score goals, you know and the first 90 minutes of the match are the most important because, you know, I’m a firm believer that if the other side scores first you have to score twice to win, you know.”
From the improbable Kansas Cricket Association, here is a remarkable 4 minute explanation of the British Empire’s world’s greatest sport. (My Contemporary Moral Issues students might want to note that there will not be a question about this video on the midterm).
Your chance to make predictions and explain who you’ll be rooting for and why. I’m hoping for an England win, but predict SA to win 32-12, with Wilkinson scoring all England’s points. Since I’m English, it isn’t hard to explain my sympathies, and the fact that “Bristol”:http://www.bristolrugby.co.uk/index.php hooker “Mark Regan”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Regan should playing for England and is an old boy of St Brendan’s 6th Form College (where my youngest went) more than completes the picture. I’m more intrigued about who the various Celts, Gaels, Aussies and Kiwis who write for or read CT will be backing. Normally, I’d expect an “anyone but England” policy, but, given “the dubious politics of SA rugby”:http://southafrica.foreignpolicyblogs.com/2007/05/26/rugby-race-and-nationalism-with-a-twist/ and England’s underdog status, there may be some surprises.
“Richard Williams in the Guardian”:http://sport.guardian.co.uk/columnists/story/0,,2186554,00.html
bq. Had things turned out differently, one of the seats in the press box in the Stade de France last Sunday night might have been occupied by a 79-year-old Argentinian newspaperman whose own rugby career was blighted by asthma. He would have been recording the success of his fellow countrymen in reaching the last four of the 2007 Rugby World Cup for the first time.
In rugby’s Darwinian stroke,
Whole countries evolve into jokes:
You’ll see Wallabies cry,
Springboks that fly,
Gaels that suck — and Kiwis that choke.
After the first weekend’s matches, I’d say that the Southern Hemisphere big-guns haven’t been tested yet (though South Africa had a hard 40 minutes of fighting against the Samoans), and of the IONA countries, only Scotland have any reason to be happy. England were boring and stuck. Ireland looked uncoordinated. Namibia scored two tries against them in four minutes, which is ridiculous. Having beaten France and seen Ireland’s performance today, Argentina must be feeling pretty good right now — and the French are probably feeling better as well.
Compare and contrast this:
With this:
Looks like everything in rugby has gotten more professional over the past 25 years. Bonus haka (vs Ireland) below the fold.
The Rugby World Cup starts this weekend, with France vs Argentina tonight. I haven’t been able to keep up with the form this time. I think Ireland are looking slightly shaky in the run-up. They’re in the same pool as France and Argentina, so that’s going to be tough, with France having home-field advantage and Argentina being the dirtiest team in Europe. England are hoping for a revival. I would, ideally, like to see them semi-revived and then re-crushed, but I’ll settle for straightforward humiliating defeats. Thanks to their crap form they may have a helpful underdog status, however. As for the Southern Hemisphere, all the Kiwis I know are in their usual frame of mind, viz titanic self-confidence combined with a desperate fear that the All Blacks will choke yet again.
The BBC “tells us”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6956867.stm
bq. Tyrannosaurus rex would have been able to outrun a footballer, according to computer models used to estimate running speeds of dinosaurs.
But which one? Outrunning some footballers would be no great achievement. More to the point, would T. rex have been able to control the ball and get a decent cross into the box? Those who have followed the career of the Danish winger Dennis Rommedahl know that speed isn’t everything.