England's Rugby Union team is in disarray. 

With most of the World Cup winning team having moved on, there was always going to be a period of transition.  The nature of the defeat by the All Blacks last weekend shows how the the team and the squad needs to come if England are going to have even  an outside chance of retaining the World Cup. 

Or should that be a chance of winning a game at the World Cup?  

England's Hopes? 

There are two players, who I think could have made the world of difference for England. 

One is the talismanic fly-half, Johnny Wilkinson.  Not only for his metronomic kicking ability, but also for his terrier-like defensive qualities and his all-round contribution to the team.  

Wilkinson hasn't played for England since that drop-goal in the World Cup final against the Aussies in 2003.  He's been plagued with injuries - including shoulder nerve, biceps, appendicitis, groin and, earlier this season, knee ligament problems, and recently came back after 2 months out from a knee injury, only to be injured again playing for Newcastle.  He will now be out again for up to 3 months - with a 'lacerated kidney'. Ouch.

The other player who can make a big difference to England has only played Rugby Union a handful of times.  However, for  well over a decade he has been one of the greatest Rugby League players in the World - Andy Farrell.

Some say it was a gamble to bring Farrell over to Union, especially in light of what he cost.  Others say it was a gamble for Farrell, risking his credibility and legacy moving over to a sport where he'd be a relative novice. 

He had nothing left to prove in Rugby League, where he's recognised as one of the best players to have ever played the game.  Described as having 'the brain of a back in the body of a forward', Farrell  missed the whole of his first season in Union through injury, and now time for him to get himself in the reckoning for the England World Cup squad is very short indeed.  He's playing at inside-center for Saracens this weekend for the first time, a position Rob Andrews thinks he could play for England.

I have no doubts about his talent and class - he is the best player I have ever had the privilege to see play live in either code.  He WILL be a success in Union - injuries permitting.  It's just a question of time.

Time is something England don't have the luxury of.  They need both Wilkinson and Farrell back, fit, and playing as soon as possible.

I've been getting annoyed recently with the number of football commentators who continue to criticise the defence of Liverpool.  As a Liverpool fan, I feel it's my duty to put people straight when they repeat the banal comments of a football commentator as though they are the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.  The same I've had to do for ages with regards to the abilities of Peter Crouch (but that's another rant entirely). 

Apparently, the Red's zonal marking that Rafael Benitez introduced is the cause of our defence leaking lots of goals.  But this is merely another factoid that has been repeated enough times so people have accepted it as fact…

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Watching the footy the other night I was looking at the England line-up. As the camera went from player to player I thought - what an odd looking bunch! Has there ever been a weirder looking England team? What do you think?   

A thought hit me the other morning.  Why do most sporting events that involve circuits run in an anti-clockwise direction, with the exception of some motor-racing events such as F1?

Athletics, speedway, greyhound racing, NASCAR racing, speed-skating, cycling, and probably lots of others I've missed out.  Horse racing seems to be run in both directions and seems to the exception in all of this.

I guess it could be coincidence as to why most races run anti-clockwise, as they have to run one way or the other, but I reckon there's more to it than that - I just don't know what.

I had a quick hunt on the web, and didn't find the answer I was looking for, but did come across this about F1:

…although in most cases the [F1] circuit runs in a clockwise direction. Those few circuits that run anticlockwise (and therefore have predominantly left-handed corners) can cause drivers neck problems due to the enormous lateral forces generated by F1 cars pulling their heads in the opposite direction to normal.

I also found this:

There has been a race track at Brands since 1926, when the land was first used for grass track bike racing. In those days, competitors ran anti-clockwise, but the direction of the circuit was switched in 1954.

Doesn't say why though.

Anyone?

Footnote:  I doubt it has anything to do with the Coriolis Effect either. 

The world of athletics will be feeling the aftershocks of the latest drugs-use scandal as Justin Gatlin admits that he has failed a drug’s test (although he maintains his innocence).

What’s it going to do to the public’s perception of a sport that has seen more than its fair share of scandal over the years?

Great rivalries make athletics great

With both Asafa Powell and Justin Gatlin neck and neck at the 9.77 seconds mark for the 100m and the crown of ‘fastest man on the planet’, it looked like the athletics world had another rivalry to match those of Seb Coe, Steve Ovett and Steve Cram; Colin Jackson, Roger Kingdom, Mark McCoy and Allen Johnson; Steve Backley and Jan Zelezny; and of course, Daley Thompson and Jurgen Hingsen - rivalries that I used to enjoy as I’ve watched athletics over the past 20-odd years.

There’s one other rivalry that I remember well - Carl Lewis and Leroy Burrell in the 100m. They were so evenly matched and in the early 1990s, continued to break the other’s 100m World Record by fractions of a second each time.

However, another of Lewis’s rivalries will be remembered far more vividly by most - and not for the right reasons. Of course, I’m talking about Ben Johnson.

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Although the World Cup was far from a resounding success for the England team and the now departed Sven, it was a success in many other ways.

The most striking for me is the apparent thawing of the hostility between English and German fans. Although there was some trouble, these isolated incidents didn’t seem to dent the overall feeling that the English and Germans actually got on with one another.

In total 315,000 England supporters had attended the tournament in five cities, making a “brilliant” contribution to the competition. Out of 6,000 arrests during the World Cup as a whole, 711 had been English people (though most of those were “preventative” due to drunkenness and those detained were released soon afterwards).
(Source)

I think this World Cup has shown both sets of fans (probably the English who needed convincing more, but anyway) that they are actually very, very similar.

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Congratulations to Paula Radcliffe on the announcement that she’s got one in the oven.

The only down side is that she won’t be running for a while, and won’t be showing the world yet again that she’s the best female long-distance athlete ever, and Britain’s finest athlete of all time.

She breaks the women’s marathon record by a country mile, and proves herself time and time again - and yet people only want to criticise her and bring up her poor performance in Athens in ridiculous conditions when she shouldn’t have been running anyway due to illness.

The critics complain that she let her coutnry down, that she quit! They also bring up those heartbreaking 4th place finishes on the track -saying that she is always the ‘also ran’.

What are they on about? Have any of them ever run a marathon? Any of them done the 100+ miles a week that Paula does in her training?

World’s best ever long-distance female athlete?

Let her country down??? She is the BEST athlete we’ve ever had. Have a look at her personal bests:

• 8 km road - 24:05+ (World Best)
• 10 km road - 30:21 (World Record)
• 15 km road - 46:41+ (World Best)
• 10 mi road - 50:01+ (World Best)
• 20 km road - 1:02.21+ (World Record)
• Half Marathon - 1:05:40 (World Best)
• 25 km road - 1:20:36+ (World Best)
• 30 km road - 1:36:36+ (World Best)
• 20 mi road - 1:43:33+ (World Best)
• Marathon - 2:15:25 (World Record)

From the 8 Km up she is the best female road runner there has ever been!

It’s a shame she’s not going to be running in the European Championships next month, but I hope she is back running soon - and in Beijing 2008 I want to see her with that Olympic Gold round her neck.

She deserves it.