Are all athletes morons (or is this one a special case)?

Jaw-droppingly stupendous stupidness from Mark Lewis-Francis who is a British sprinter.

Athletes may be required without notice to submit to a drug test as part of efforts to control and limit the extent of cheating, through drug enhancement, within sport. Athletes are required to provide advance notice of their whereabouts at all times. Three strikes (within a five year period) and you're out: happen to be not where you are supposed to be when the tester calls three times and you are out of competition for a year.

They all know that the drug testers will call, but not when; and they know perfectly well why this regime has been put in place. The consequences of missing tests have been spelled out and are clear as crystal.

So consider now some of the words of Mr Lewis-Francis, who tested positive for cannabis in 2005 and was stripped of his silver medal won at the European Indoor Championships in Madrid in the same year.

"My two are for being lazy. It was while the system was brand new and they should have given us a bit of leniency. I think it's a rubbish system."

"I do not understand why they are singling us out as British athletes. We are not the biggest cheats in the world."

"I feel like I am back at school and have to report to the headmaster everywhere I go."

Diddums

Ill thought through football post

While I was waking up this morning (I don't think I actually dream about football) I had a little brain wave (I think). This is it, without any polish.

I have no particular brief for English football and only a tangentially vested interest. In the same way I care about the state of English cricket I care about English football. After years and years and years of laughing at English cricket I got impatient and longed for a decent fight. I wanted to be engaged in the way my parents and their parents once were, with the outcome of test series in the balance sometimes until the last match and then not actually always going our way.

I didn't actually enjoy watching us lose the Ashes but I could point to a couple of mitigating factors and also that the thing was a close run series.

I was comforted though by the knowledge that nothing in the structure of the game in England or the quality of players made likely a sea-change; we remained likely winners in the return series at home and likely to continue for the foreseeable future to produce better quality players, playing better quality cricket with greater determination to win. And we would on balance continue to do that more often than not against all comers.

It was my misfortune some years ago to meet with the Chief Exec of a county cricket board and it confirmed that in English Cricket there exists an obdurate block to success at that level. The man's interest lies in his county, not county cricket let alone the game at national level. They have the game by the balls, as it were, and have no plans to shed their blazers and county ties.

In England the creation of the Premiership has created a similar situation and I think it time the FAE learned the rules of Billionaire Chicken, which is known in some households as Call My Bluff. Legislate in the interests of the national game and the national team. Politely invite the representatives of Manchester United, Arsenal, Liverpool, Chelsea [as well as anyone else for that matter with the temerity to object] to take shove off and play their football outside the English game and with their rich continental friends.

De register the clubs. Have nothing further to do with them. Simple. Of course it won't work. Even the FA doesn't bother to pretend that these clubs get anything from being affliliated with it they wouldn't get from throwing their lot in with their rich and glamorous continental friends. Their web site is nothing but a promotion of a mind-blinding whirl of insubstantial frentic activity.

Good riddance if they go, good behaviour if they stay.

I think I've been Bar-Wicked

Brian has a moustache that makes him look like a fool. Under that circumstance a wise man would take particular care not to supply the world with the conclusive proof. But the honourable thing isn't to deflect culpability in the fool-stakes.

While preparing the chook for the oven this evening I happened to express puzzlement that in the vast amount of time which has passed since the job of England manager became available the name of Gerard Houllier hasn't been bandied by anyone.

Hanson might choke on his Haggis at the mention of the man's name but is he really a less plausible candidate than the Handsome One's partner in punditry crime on MOTD? Does his track record not stand up to comparison with those of most if not virtually all the names on the fantasy future England manager list?

Now it turns out I was being foolish beyond belief and proving (if needed) that I am a girlie and therefore know absolutely nothing about football: Houllier's name is on the FAE's shortlist. After saying one more thing about football, and fantasy future England football managers, I am going to shut up on the subject - at least until there is something more I want to say.

If I was being all girlie on the subject of the England manager I would have a shortlist of one and a half and it would comprise Jose Mourinho and Big Phil and most definitely not M. Houllier or the neurotic Spaniard who took over from him at Anfield. Clear?

PS. When Jose arrived at Chelsea after the departure of that rather sweet little Italian the old Sports song Black Stockings for Chelsea acquired a new and very special resonance. I shall go off and listen to it again, now, I think.

Bad Sex

An over-long, inept, messy business: much like an England football campaign and like many women up and down the country on most nights of the week I'm left thinking "Thank God that's over!"

And is often the case it is the men, responsible in the first place, making the noisiest complaints about what's happened.

Lemons

Being an Australian of significantly scottish ancestry I shall and indeed must say this twice: Cheating Bloody Fancy Dan Italian Footballers.

Cheating Bloody Italians...

And if that wasn't bad enough bloody Israel beat Russia and England are still in it which means we all have to endure more English chest beating and McLaren baiting and FA whipping and testosterone fuelled preposterousness.

And Christmas is coming.

This is all too horrible.

Missed that one

Gratuitous rudeness alert. New Zealand's rugby league team turned up, sort of. England, and are now gone with tails between legs. Oops.

Hot on the heals of embarrassment in the world cup of the union version comes abject humiliation. In the third, final and quite completely pointless match in the three match series the England team required only a half to defeat the Kiwis; they chose to sit out the first half and watch the sheep shaggs prove that they do actually have a nodding acquaintance with the rudiments of the 'game'.

Stupid game though. Played by Sydney-types and therefore getting its first, last and only mention here.

An incredibly stupid thing to do

In the pantheon of sports horse racing ranks slightly ahead of Petrol Head Nirvana and the length of the staight up on pugalism; that isn't saying much since they've all been lapped long since by curling, lawn bowls and, um, some other dreary 'sporting endeavour' in the Interest Me stakes.

I once had a stake in a racing horse that died from lack of interest on my part (the stake, rather than the horse, that is).

Any ho. The Race That Stops The Nation is over, thankfully, as now the politicians can go back to doing and saying interestingly stupid stuff. And I can stop trying to weave the names of the runners into my novel in anagram form. Which is possibly the most bizarre and stupid form of displacement endeavour ever undertaken by a frustrated novelist.

Catching up

In keeping with my long standing practice of not keeping track of matters already covered I ask this only in passing notwithstanding the fact that it is a matter from yesterday's fish'n'chip wrappings: did Lewis Hamilton really call for his new co-driver to be a Team Player.

I'm astonished. Truly. I hadn't seen anything this past year in Petrol Head Nirvana to suggest that this self absorbed little man-boy might be familiar with the expression. Hm. One does live and learn.

Poor boy

The man who managed the Bok to the Rugby World Cup has made abundantly clear his devotion to the Boer cause by not applying for the vacant position of manager of the South Africa Rugby Union national team. By curious coincidence the managed the Poms to the final has not had his position reconfirmed; his far better remunerated position, that is.

Curious

Lewis Hamilton, the little boy who so I'm told very nearly was Top Banana in Petrol Head Nirvana, has announced that because the press and the public make it so difficult for him to pee in English motorway public conveniences and generally spend time in England hanging about with his mates he's going to take up residence quite coincidentally tax advantageous Switzerland, where he'll be able to spend so much more time so much more easily hanging about with his mates and pee without being peered at.

Curious

Pension planning

The ex-head honcho of English cricket is approaching the age at which he will cease to have realistic prospects for making oodles of money. So he's decided to cash in his chips and publish a catalogue of Andrew (Freddy) Flintoff's drunken revels.

Brilliant.

An ex-England rugby captain has woken up and realised that he no longer has any prospect of playing for England (in a Rugby shirt) or any other means of making a living, and has poured scorn over the man who got England against all the odds to the Rugby World Cup final.

Brilliant.

Ooh, I did enjoy that

I haven't deployed the word perspicacity in a long time, and it felt good when I did. So good I'm going to do it again. Oh, I already did.

Any ho, Martin Jol's gone. This chap the spurs board has been assiduously and openly courting since at least the 'summer', isn't yet quite ready to step into the breach, but the box has been built (the last nail was driven in, it now emerges by the defeat to Newcastle) so Jol's been shipped out.

Ramos will come to the Lane with a very good reputation, but Spurs are and always have been a team with ideas way above their station - by which I mean the sum total of their resources. Even in London they've only ever intermittently been stronger than third best, and the Hammers have resources Spurs will always lack which make them potential contenders for that third place at a time when first and second are a lock out by Arsenal and Chelsea.

Some people thought the earth would stop spinning if Jose ever left Chelsea. Drogba's staying. The earth still turns on its axis. Jol is already being laid out for this evening's fish 'n' chip wrap.

Hope he lands a good job some time soon.

If you are a life-long Liverpool supporter are you comforted that the newish owner of your club has come out and said that the (management) credentials of your club's manager should be 'unquestioned'. Really? Ever? Intriguing.

Personally, I suspect Senor Benitez of suffering a fairly crippling mid-life crisis. I just hope it continues for a good long time, given his security of tenure.

It wasn't supposed to be like this

As football men go Martin Jol might be a bit of an ugly-buggly but he's never succeeded in arousing anything like contempt in me.

So Newcastle United putting him out of work wasn't part of the script, but tonight's result must be one of the very last nails to be driven into the coffin in which he'll be shipped out of White Hart Lane. I can't see even a good run from here saving him; after a time these things become a self-fulfilling prophecy and it seems to me that time has now been reached and passed.

Well wasn't that lucky

Indolence has its own rewards and very occasionally they're more than worth all the effort involved in not actually doing anything.

And now it emerges that it might just have been was well I preferred admiring the curiously well tanned torso of Richard Armitage over the dubious delights of the Grand Prix finale and the calamitous turn for the unreliable Lewis Hamilton's little non-red caboose has taken in recent weeks: so calamitous that he managed to lose the title to a blond bloke with absolutely the most monotonous delivery I've ever had the misfortune to hear.

Any hoo, a petrol temperature related possible infraction of the elaborate rules of the 'sport' has opened up the possibility of disqualification of up to three vehicles that finished ahead of the little non-red caboose - and if that were to happen Lewis would secure he needs to wrest the title from this boring blond man and give the world a boring non-blond manlet as title holder.

Do I sound like I care a great deal about any of this?

PS As far as I can determine from a cursory examination of the back pages the results were not overturned and Little Lewis ended up losing the title to the boring blond with too many 'k's in his name.

What a picture

Poor little Jonny's face. All England had, and not enough to beat the Bok on the night. A face like a thunder cloud. Everyone else looked dejected or, to deploy the adjective de nos jour, 'gutted'. But Jonny looked livid. Livid at himself, at the pitch, the balls, the posts, the lines, the refs, the video judge, the other 14, the bench, the remainder of the squad (probably poor old Josh), the management and support, the media, the spectators, the stadium staff, the French nation, the Bok in their entirety, the Gods of Rugby, but probably most of all himself. He tried to pout and he tried to look inconsolable. Every time he relaxed for a second he looked like he wanted to rip the heads off kittens.

And he wasn't, actually, all England had.

Where's the upside in this?

England weren't supposed to progress beyond the quarter-final but they did. They played above themselves, and at times out of their skins and, ultimately beyond the level dictated by skill.

Like the inadequate Australian squad they should have departed as losing semi-finalists; neither squad has gone forward since the 2003 World Cup and that the finalists in that tournament should play off for third place, given that, would have been entirely fitting.

So why did England fall at the final hurdle? Well quality told in the final analysis. England looked to have been outclassed across the pitch and in every phase which is not something one might have gleaned from the hysterical 'expert' commentary of Matt Dawson.

I was tempted to kick off by declaring that the question first asked four years ago* had finally been answered with an emphatic YES, but that is only part of the story. England can't progress, though, until Jonny retires. The other fourteen men on the pitch are too conscious of his presence and I suspect they're limited by that awareness, which is of course a bitter irony since he is the consummate professional and the ultimate team man.

And yet ... who is the man among them to run in breath taking tries? Is there a man among them who would do it but for the obsession with penalties and drop goals? If he's there, among them, he was keeping himself very quiet during this tournament. England's point average through the course of the tournament was the lowest of all finalists in the history of the World cup and that's an unadjusted average taking no account of the expansion of the tournament to incorporate lesser rugby playing nations such as Namibia and Portugal.

There's something lacking at the middle of the England squad.

That's why they lost. They were inadequate.

The neutral supporter was the loser tonight. The game as a spectacle was something other than riveting. I couldn't help but think that a more fitting final would have involved the Kiwis or the French themselves, notwithstanding the extraordinary ability of the Kiwis who undoubtedly play consistently the best rugby any where, any time, except for those eight weeks every four years wherein the World Cup is staged.

On a related note my vote is for maintaining the 20 team competition rather than reverting to the 16 team format. The progress currently being made of the Argentina team in the face of inexcusable opposition by the 'big' nations of the European Six Nations and the Southern hemisphere Tri-Nations and the ineffectual blustering of the IRB hints at a glorious future for the game.

And so we have to look for the silver lining to this cloud. It isn't in the bragging rights now held by the Bok. Sadly there'll be no cheerfully squiffy toffs on 606 tonight and no Matt Dawson struggling to sound enthusiastic while in the grip of a raging hangover tomorrow morning. If I do spot that silver lining I'll let you know.

I guess it might lie in the fact that four years from now we'll all get to snigger as the Kiwis choke in front of a home crowd. I'm enjoying that thought already.

* that question was, of course, "Is that all you've got"

Sodding bloody half term rant

I just had to get that off my chest and have expended all my energies.

I have just time before tottering off to bed to note that the Pumas dined out on roast chook tonight. Congratulations on a splendid showing by the South American contingent and on a splendidly well hosted tournament. It is, in a way, a shame that you had to depart in this manner but as you yourselves would say C'est la guerre!

The time will come for me to reflect on tomorrow night's events; which might lead to a sorrowful acknowledgement that the Webb Ellis trophy is in Boer hands or might result in other than wry observations on the nature of English histrionics and unfettered jingoism (duly amplified by the atrocious performance of the round ball hooligan sporting fringe mid-week).

I was also intending to provide a piece in my own style reflecting on market economics, cartel, price fixing and access to the innermost thoughts of the average British alcopop consumer. You'll have to wait for that gem, I'm afraid.

Have attitude, will travel

And the distance travelled will reflect the amount of attitude.

And when it is the sort of attitude displayed by the England cricket selectors, then that metaphorical distance travelled won't be great. I know they're 'only' playing Sri Lanka, non-Titans of the international cricket (five day) scene, but this is an away series and England could do with a heartening display of Winning and yet ...

The England selectors have:

awarded Andrew Strauss a central contract then told him not to bother packing his bags
picked a squad that includes a lot of youngsters who qualify on the grounds of having performed 'well' in recent One Day Internationals.
included Phil Mustard as a reward for having made a 'satisfactory impression'

What a muddled message. No wonder the selectors have overlooked the claims of Ramprakash for a place in the squad; he'd hardly sit comfortably in the midst of this overwhelming mediocrity and inexperience.

PS: this effing Spell checker can't even recognise Sri Lanka. What am I supposed to do? Call the place Ceylon? Grr

A girl's gotta a do what a girl's gotta

How could I possibly get this far through the day without passing comment on England's heroic failure in the Euro qualifier they played last night on the artificial pitch (blah, blah) in Moscow against Gus Hiddinck's slavic battlers.

The heroic element in this defeat for the benefit of those unfamiliar the the ebb and flow of the match derives from the fact that England actually led for a long period of the match through a goal scored by that total glamour puss Wayne Rooney. And then they gave it all away in a manner all to familiar to those who understand the quality and nature as well as litteral meaning of the expression 'England Batting Collapse'. All the finest quality EBCs have followed a period of a match wherein England's workhorse bowlers and jelly fingered fielders have somehow negotiated the team into a position of relative strength.

So hats off to Steve Maclaren and the lads. Well done. And a commendation too, to the Jocks who succeeded in tripping over their own bootlaces in Georgia.

Finally, I'm getting a bit anxious about the RWC final this weekend. Short of actually shooting him or hamstringing him I'd take it as a kindness if someone could bring Bryan Habana down: say with a really, really bad flu he can't recover from before Sunday night. I fear this is the only way of putting England in with a chance.

And finally I am very proud of myself for eschewing a nicety so nice as to be beyond pedantic and out in the extremes of linguistic pomposity. I left out an apostrophe so 'no longer required' as to be wrong in its use rather than its absence. I know this because someone told 'me' this on the radio yesterday.

How to not outstay one's welcome...

When I left the office France were at least 6 points ahead having scored a try while already leading England in yesterday evening's semi final. I left expecting to see a good 20 minutes of the second half but bumped into Sue and her husband taking a head-clearing amble towards the river front. Sue had a bad day at work on Friday; she's brittle and nervy at the best of times but her supervisor seems to bring out the worst in her. Pete had taken her out for dinner and a bottle of wine to cheer her up.

I'm not sure what value to place on Sue's verdict on the new restaurant, given the bottle of wine she'd been through, but she was certainly enthusiastic.

That was a digression; I walked in with 8 minutes of the second half remaining and England only trailing by one point. When I catch up with the elder Watson brother I'm going to have a thing or two to say to him! And I'll never rely on him for a score update again.

Shortly after I walked in, the Slug a few feet from the television in a supplicatory pose, Jonny got a grip on his balls and put England ahead - then to show it wasn't a fluke he drop kicked to put England into next week's final.

I proposed in an earlier post a book on the number of pages the Sunday version of the paper would give over to coverage, should England win last night's match. Well making due allowance for it being a broad sheet while the weekday newspaper is tabloid (size) the answer is a staggering TWENTY SIX pages, not including the big photograph of guess who (is that all you've got?) on the front page plus almost all of pages 2 and 3.

That's the splendour of rugby. As far as the nation's media are concerned it is a sport that takes place only once every four years, but when it happens it puts on a bravura display such that those same media must relegate the round ball game to the back pages of the back pages.

After this World Cup is over rugger buggers will retire gracefully to the muddy paddocks of Gloucestershire and Somerset and Wiltshire and leave us in peace for four years. If only football had such fine manners.

And while I'm at it I've discovered that there are actually rules. This came as a bit of a shock and also something of a blow, if I'm honest, but a chap called Patrick Kidd did a little piece he called Rugby ... for beginners (Australians take note) so I did. I still won't follow what's going on next weekend - but as I would with a Die Hard film, I'll sit back and allow myself to be entertained by a preposterous display of organised mayhem and channelled testosterone. Cheers.