Keeping up with the Powells ?

Can he indeed...
The rise and rise of the Cardiff No 8 with the rock star blonde locks has presented Gatland (and, perhaps, the Lions management) with a rugbying conundrum.
It has been solved to some extent at the Ospreys by using Jones at 6 alongside Tiatia at 8 - another player who is hard to drop, even as he moves into his late thirties. Wales may opt to do the same. Jones is not as flashy as Powell, less of a game breaker, but has the precious quality of making the right decisions at the right time. Technically, he is excellent - his retention and presentation of the ball are second to none, and he has the bravery that will be needed when the Boks start tearing in to the Lions to avenge THAT tour of '97.

Hurt Little Danny Carter ? Me ??

Figuring that, at £30,000 a game, Dan would have some loose change in his shorts, Harry decided to investigate...

Tying the Kangaroo Down

Wales 21 - Australia 18
November 29th, 2008

A palpable sense of relief washed over the exhausted Welsh team at the final whistle at the Millenium, a veritable tsunami of the stuff. More of it poured down from the packed terraces, where the crowd had nibbled fingernails down to the elbows as a dominant Welsh team managed to keep the Aussies in the game.
The first half featured some of the best attacking rugby Wales have played for some time, where the ball was recycled speedily, and Cooper fired out a good supply of ball for the attacks to build. Beautifully crafted angles, allied to real strength in the contact area, provided us with two terrific tries. Real Bread of Heaven stuff.
Australia stayed in it due to the shambolic Welsh line out, which led to us being unable to sustain periods of pressure, and gifted the Aussies a "What happened next" type score for second row Mark Chisholm.
In truth, Robbie Deans' men were well beaten by a side that has made real strides in a very busy year under The Gat and Big Shaun. What next ??

It's Not All Black...

November 22nd, 2008 at the Millenium Stadium
Wales 9 New Zealand 29

Never mind the 30 years of hurt (er...make that 42...) so bewailed by the round ball fraternity...the 55 years' spell seemed to be fading at halftime at a packed Millenuim Stadium this weekend. Ryan Jones and his merry men faced down those years of dreaming, as well as the Haka, to bring us within sniffing distance of the All Black scalp.
The tribal nature of the Haka face off will remain in the memory for all of us who witnessed it, a genuine spine tingler. Gatland must have loved it.
The final score was a tad flattering, but testament to the All Blacks sense of purpose and cohesion when put under pressure, and their enormous physical reserves of raw power. As ever, McCaw gave a masterclass at the breakdown, where Martyn Williams faded in the second half, along with the last whiffs of all that cordite from the opening expolsions.
Ah well - next year...

It’s no use getting shirty…

The Scarlets have now lost 9 straight in the Heineken Cup, and it hurts. The fact that the last two matches were to clubs who have found it difficult to decide whether they are rugby clubs or fashion houses will hurt the Dyfed Men of Steel all the more.

The new Stade shirts feature a renowned queen whose face is reproduced Warhol style. The players of Stade are well established on the nude calendar circuit, and Parisse’s buttocks no doubt adorn the walls of the Parisian metrosexual set, but the closest the Llanelli boys could get to a renowned queen would be a picture of Aled off the Chris Moyles show.

Stade were too good for about ten minutes of what was otherwise a pretty even contest. Mark Jones scored the try of the tournament thus far, finishing off a scintillating break by Morgan Stoddart.

The Ospreys were, quite simply, woeful. Even allowing for the lack of experience at half back, they allowed the Perpignan pack to disrupt the flow. Wayne Barnes and his supply of yellow cards could only do so much. Lee Byrne continues to shine under the high ball – he catches an unusually high proportion of his own kicks, in fact. Chris Latham apart, he is the best full back around, and can surely look forward to a summer on the high veldt.

Season's Greetings !

So many questions as the 08-09 season dawns.
Can the Gatland revolution keep pushing us on ? Or are we bound to fall to earth, constrained as we are by lack of cash and basic demographics ?
Can England shake off the tag of being 6 Nations underachievers in the post Woodward era ?
Can the Lievremont experiment survive the next season ?
Or will the Irish, having popped off for a nap for most of last season (which, unfortunately for them, included a World Cup), return refreshed and full of that Munster spirit ?
And what of Scotland ? What price Andy Robinson returning to International coaching there ?

And at club level - will blue collar Leicester gamble on Caucau (see the video clips next door and wonder why he's not THE superstar of 21st Century rugby.) ?
Will playboy Danny's ankle hold up to those punishing sessions in the capital's more exclusive nite spots ?
And in Wales - will Llanelli's house move throw them in to confusion (""Oi-Gareth ! Which cardboard box did you put the boots in ?") Can the post Lyn Jones coaching team handle the big names at the Liberty Stadium ? Can the Blues OVER achieve ? Can the Dragons be anything more than a distantly related Ugly Sister ?

ELV's - an RSVP...

Henry's trademark Headmasterly stare in use as his ex pupil out thinks him in the Bledisloe Cup encounter. Robbie Deans has more experience than his old coach in one crucial respect - he has played a season under the contoversial new ELV laws, and it showed.
A breathless game, played at breakneck speed, but Northern hemisphere purists will have plenty of anti ELV ammunition to play with too. The scrums were poorly managed by the ref, and became an irrelevant mess - which is not something the Wallabies would be losing any sleep over. If you're Andy Sheridan, however, your raison d'etre is being undermined...
And as for the break down - George Smith was king of the turnovers - again, the ref was frankly bewildered as many hands made light work of whatever clean possession was available.

The Mystery of the Duracell Bunny

So who is the pink fluffy one who gave the girl a night to remember ? Scandal, as ever, will out. Just ask Dallaglio...
Interestingly, the England camp's travelling lawyer, the beak with the brief, has refused to allow his charges to talk to the police. This is called "fully co operating with the authorities", apparently. So when you're next pulled over on suspicion of drink driving, don't answer any questions, don't blow in to the bag, and see if it works for you...
Initially, I wondered if the "serious incident" in the hotel room may have been a Charlie Hodgson tackle. Maybe I misheard the "tackle" reference.
Today Henry's Kiwis continued their journey towards ultimate salvation in 2011 by playing at about 50% against an England team that no longer plays as though it understands what it is trying to do. Big Jonno sensibly stayed at home.
So, Mr Kiwi Copper, there's one of them that has an alibi.

Embarassment, no riches...

According to the Indie on Saturday morning, Gatland and Edwards didn't do 40 point drubbings. Well, they do now....
Outmuscled by a rampant Bokke back row, then outwitted by the skill and speed of Jean de Villiers, the Grand Slammers came third, while the world champions looked exactly that. The Welsh conceded soft penalties when they needed to stay in touch, and coughed up the ball just when they needed to hang on to it.
More than anything else, they didn't look as though they were relishing the contact - all a bit of a throwback to the world cup performances, with a couple of sweeping moves resulting in excellent tries thrown in to remind us of what we'd thought we'd left behind at half time at Twickenham.
Well, boys...hope you're enjoying the training sessions in the wake of this minor debacle...

“Low Lie the Green Fields…” when sheep block the trains…

A funny feeling, really, being in the Millenium Stadium in a sea of red, when you’re a neutral.

As one of the few (very few…) who did not speak in an Irish accent on the day, I felt sorry – momentarily, mind – for the Toulouse players. Neutral ? they’d have snorted, gallic nostrils flaring like a bull at a Portmeirion supply depot. Sacre bleu !

That feeling ebbed away as the Irish singing pulled away at the heart strings. They were never going to lose this one through lack of passion. The last of my sympathies for the embattled French disappeared when Pelous – a player I had credited with some brains – aimed a petulant, school bully type kick at Quinlan’s backside. What Guy Noves felt at that point is hard to imagine. His captain, his most experienced player. He might have saved the yellow card act for something more useful at one of those rucks that Quinlan nobbled so expertly.

My man of the match – Paul O’Connell - back to where he was before the World Cup, as the foundation stone around which a meaningful Lions assault on the Springboks has to be built. He – and Irish rugby, in fact – went AWOL last Autumn, and their form in the 6 Nations was pretty woeful, too. But through it all, the ‘07-08 Munstermen steamed on. Through the so called Group of Death, where they scrapped for their lives against the emerging giants of France, Clermont, booted the fallen giants of Stradey Park into touch, and outdogged Dallaglio and his team. You can’t say they didn’t deserve it !

A last end-of-season rant from a Millenium fan – why oh why do we have to put up with the crassness of Network Rail ? The plain fact is that the authorities would never leave a few thousand rival football fans waiting for trains in this way.

Unfortunately, not enough Frenchmen there on Saturday, or the barricades would have been up…

And to top it all, sheep on the line outside Newport…

The Case for the Defence

With the Grand Slam stashed away, and the ink drying on our Shaun's contract extension, there are plenty of reasons for Welsh fans to be happy. Winners are indisputably grinners.
There are two critical areas that Gatland and Edwards have focussed on to allow the World Cup whipping boys to become the sleek outfit that it became under Ryan Jones during the course of this campaign.
Firstly - intensity. The turning point of the whole 6 Nations was the fact that the pack refused to allow the English to score at the end of that first half at Twickenham. They had taken a fearful hammering, the strains of "Swing Low..." filled the stadium, but Ryan Jones' forwards fronted up. England's failure to score meant that the game was still on, and although the second half will be remembered as one of the great performances. Perhaps not by fans of Ian Balshaw...
Second - and step forward, Mr Edwards - defence. A side that leaked 13 tries in 4 matches in the World Cup gave away only 2 in the 6 Nations campaign. In all those games, in all that intensity, the Welsh side only missed a total of 25 tackles - a 95% completion rate. Each game showed that there was a stategy in place - the fanned out defence against the French, for example, with next to no one committed to rucks, meant that the men in red were impossible to beat on the outside. All this nullified the talents of Clerc and co., who in all honesty never looked like scoring.

Shaun of the Dead...

It's all the motivation you'll ever need...

The Boys and the Black Stuff

In 1916 they took the rubble from the shattered O'Connell Street Post Office and used it to build a new stand at Croke Park, the spiritual home of the Gealic games. No wonder the hapless English got such a scare there last time out.
On the 8th March, 2008, Wales reduced the Irish game plan to rubble, too, as O’Sullivan’s conservative tactics backfired. Although there was only one score in the game (how much would Shane Williams be worth in a football style transfer system right now ?), in truth Wales outplayed the home team.

We travelled - in hope and no little expectation - to seek a win that would give us a most unlikely (and completely unexpected) Triple Crown. The pain of that World Cup exit seemed a long away as we gathered in the maze of bars in downtown Dublin. The Guinness was supped, the Jones/Hook debate debated, then there was more Guinness.

The atmosphere at the ground itself was superb – the huge Welsh faction raised the roof, but was initially quietened by the powerful early Irish drives. We waited for O’Driscoll to be let loose, but still the forwards drove on, clearly out to blow the Welsh away in those early exchanges.

But that was about it from the men in green. As brave as they were in the tackle, O’Sullivan’s men offered little in the way of an attacking threat. Horgan was a fingernail away from scoring in the first half, and the forwards continued to battle, but the influence of Shaun Edwards’ defensive preparations were there for us all to see. It was perhaps epitomised by Ian Gough. In the second half, the pain from a “stinger” to the shoulder brought him to his knees, but then he got up and scrambled back in to the line. Presumably further damage to the shoulder was preferable to facing Edwards in the dressing room afterwards.

In attack we always looked dangerous, the sharp movement of the ball giving the Irish defence plenty of problems. Shane Williams’ try was beautifully created, the play patiently built up with the sort of confidence we so lacked at the World Cup.

And after it all – on the TV screen England’s sad struggle in the rain ended as a bar full of Welshmen sang “Flower of Scotland”.

Oh – and there was more Guinness

England 19 - Wales 26
Little did he know, as he shared a beer of the warm canned variety with a Middle Eastern Welsh rugby afficionado, that he was set to start his coaching career in the Principality off in such a spectacular fashion. He got his mate Shaun a job, and got stuck in. that probably cost him another warm beer or ten.
The jokes about "Ospreylia" rebounded massively as a core of players dug in deep (so deep...) before half time to stop the game becoming a rout, and as the second half developed the collective will of the English failed and the street fighting qualities of Phillipps et al came to the fore.

Cheer up, Gat !

So things are looking up for the Gat (I'd call him "Fat Gat" except it's been done before, plus the fact that I'd be too scared...)
The Blues and Ospreys negotiate their respective groups, giving the Welsh regions continued exposure to the extreme demands of the Heineken.
And both sides delivered away from home - the Blues in the muddy bearpit that is the Memorial Ground, Lyn Jones' multi talented Ospreys at Bourgoin. He will reflect on the fact that the Scarlets' failure to progress is possibly down to the fact that their forwards were simply not up to the task. They need to dig deep in to the coffers to buy in at least 2 core forwards, as the Blues have done with Tito and the Ospreys have with Holah. Far from restricting Gatland's choice by taking up Welsh playing spaces, these players are visibly lifting standards around them and, crucially, bringing a harder edge, a winning edge, to the teams.

And Don't Dilly-Dallaglio On The Way...

So how will the big man from Wasps be remembered ?
A certainty that he won't fade away, mind you, as he will certainly go down as one of the most media savvy player of the modern age. As England's coach, Andy Robinson's freedom to select was fatally undermined by the Big D's ready supply of sound bites. As Brian Ashton discovered, Our Lol didn't take kindly to others suggesting that he should sit on the bench, much less retire from the game.
An objective view of his rugby would have to concede that he should have jumped ship back in 2004. The square jawed bloody mindedness is still there week in week out, but he has been short of gas, a deficiency thrown in to some relief by the power of the emerging James Haskell. How England could have done with his ball carrying prowess in the second half against the Springboks.
He will be remembered in Wales for being everything that his Welsh contemporaries were not, a player with power to spare, and a winner's mentality. Who could forget the way he carried the Welsh back row, plus both half backs, to score off the back of that scrum?
At the end, however, the rugby fan still finds it hard to accept some of the nonsense that went on after the World Cup. For all his accolades, and his status in the game, the manner in which he has cashed in on the backroom rumblings (and as he was put on the bench in the early stages after some indifferent displays, it has to be said that he was probably a key source of those rumblings) has diminished him as a person.