Crumbs of English comfort on the oche
5)English racegoers huddled under Cleeve Hill, the scars of recent Irish maulings still fresh, fearful of anticipated maulings on the racecourse and on a Dublin rugger pitch after an unprecedented weekend drubbing by the French.
Gloomy nods after the very first race where the first eight home were all Irish. This was a novice race, the future stars of the sport for the next five years. The rest of the Festival was a desperate search for crumbs of English comfort, perhaps even the green shoots of recovery. The Champion Hurdle was won by an English horse, ranked as one of the all time greats after only seven races. The English champion trainer had two winners, his first for three years. There were even a couple of winners from small stables that keep the bread and butter meetings going through the year.
And yes the Gold Cup winner was Irish but the second and third were English. Somerset’s Bravemansgame was even upsides at the last, giving hope to quizzers who had dreamt of a winning margin less than two lengths but not to be. Galopin pulled clear up the hill to pull seven lengths clear and so justifying the quizzers who’d chosen MORE.
6/7)Bob Brewer looked for crumbs of English comfort in Crediton.
I love Christmas. After all the celebrations have come and gone it’s Sned Quiz time. So I deliberate up until New Year, pondering why my five year old granddaughter and 14 yr old nephew got in the top twenty last year and I didn’t. I do three sets of answers for me, my wife and daughter, who have no idea they are part of it. Even if you total all three scores I still didn’t win. So when it came to the Six Nations I dismissed the chances for Wales and Italy and my alter ego felt, without Eddie Jones, we might be in with a sniff. The loss to Scotland in the Calcutta Cup was a disaster for Borthwick and more paper column inches were spent on the ineffectual Farrell/ Smith axis rather than the skills of Russell and Sexton. 55 kicks in the first half alone!!! So I waited for the big clash, Ireland, ranked one in the world v France ranked two. It was a belter. Tough, fast flowing, powerful, close, all the clichés you would want, with the Paddies just getting over the line by a whisker. England beat Italy but boy did they get a fright in the second half. Keiron Crowley has at least made Italy competitive now. In a dull encounter England then beat Wales pretty easily but both sides were shadows of the teams from past decades.
I’d made no real notes from the games up to now but then Sned asked for a volunteer to roving report the Six Nations and I put my hand up. My kids tell me I’ve got to stop doing it. Apparently I’m already the Weakest Link and Pointless. (So too were Wales, but I mustn’t smile too much as I know the Taffs like quizzing and McMillan needs the cash). It’s not funny in all seriousness, as the Regions in Wales are in a mess. So too are the Premiership and the RFU. Wasps and Worcester already down the gurgler and our beloved Exeter Chiefs losing nine players from their top squad. I paid £65 to sit high up in a corner opposite a try line for Chiefs v Saracens when Farrell kicked a pen in the 82nd minute to snatch an unlikely victory. Gutting. Also, I hear from a very reliable Bath source that Finn Russell asked for £1m pa and settled for £850k for his transfer. How can that be sustainable in any way? Then, before the Eng/France, Ire/Scot Senior matches on the Friday night, look at these U20 scores. Scot 7 Ire 82; Eng 7 Fr 42, astonishing victories for the away sides. But does it tell us a story about the structure of Rugby in Ireland and France? It can’t be accidental can it, that these scores translate into the Senior Game Plans and Teams.
So, last weekend, on the Saturday, I was invited to Crediton RFC in Devon, where I used to live, for the annual players reunion game, this year v Truro in SW1 League. CRFC are 2nd, Truro 5th. I hadn’t been there for 35 years. Crediton were Community Club of England in 2015/16 and amazingly run 18 teams, four for Women. I got home not knowing the Eng/France score and then Sned dropped me a text talking of a humiliation. Great I thought, we gave France a tanking. I watched it at 6am on Sunday and was astonished. The biggest ever defeat for England at Twickers and it could have been worse. We were outplayed and out paced all over the park. All the hype about Marcus Smith came from the week before when at Twickers, a dismal Chiefs offered no real contest against Quins and got stuffed. However, the Chiefs weren’t France and Dupont, Ramos, Penaud, Flament et al put us well and truly to the sword. 10-53. Shaun Edwards was wallowing in smug satisfaction. We give away so many penalties at the breakdown and, like the Welsh, seem devoid of any penetrative creativity or variety. Are Dan Cole and Mako really our best props for the future? If they are we are in deep trouble.
My favourite Six Nations fixture is Scotland v Ireland, It always has been. Why? Well it’s always open and a bit kamikaze. Whereas it took Eng 20 minutes to get to the French 22 with ball in hand in their match, the Celtic game was side to side, end to end, with the first scrum coming after an exhausting 22 minutes of running open play. It was a cracking first half with just one point in it, 8-7 to the Irish. Stuart Hogg’s 100th Cap, Johnny Sexton needing 8pts to bt Ronan O’Gara’s record 6 Nations pts total of 597pts, Scotland, maybe a first Triple crown since the 1990 Grand Slam, it was all there to be celebrated. Johnny eventually tied the record with his 7 pts. Well done to him. (He reached 566pts by the end of the tournament.) Ireland lost three forwards by the 24th minute but they weren’t daunted. Andy Farrell, surely the next Lions Coach, stirred them up and they powered their way to a 22-7 win and another chance of a Grand Slam.
So the last weekend saw Scotland gain a merited third place by beating a plucky Italy. Toby Faletau and Dan Cole reached a hundred caps each, no mean feat for forwards. France played Wales in Paris and put pressure on Ireland by winning 41-28 and the last twenty minutes looked like a really competitive Test Match with Wales fighting back to get a Bonus Point. Thomas Ramos scored sixteen points, taking his tournament total to eighty four, the FRENCH player way ahead of the rest. At 5pm kick off was in Dublin for Ireland, going for a first Grand Slam win at home, against an England team desperate for some self respect, energy and belief. The first half was a tight affair, spoiled at the end by a somewhat controversial red card against Freddie Steward. Slow motion always makes it look worse. We are talking split second action where, in my view, all the decisions players make, according to the pundits in that moment, are not actually ‘made’ as such, but more an instinctive reaction to a moment in time. I thought it was harsh, bogged down by protocol, and just a familiar rugby incident that killed the game as a spectacle. Fair play to Ireland and their Grand Slam, it was thoroughly deserved, and fair play to England. Effort, defensive resilience and team spirit over eighty minutes was restored, but frankly, International Teams do not win rugby matches with only thirteen or fourteen players. Everyone eventually tires in the war of attrition, and gaps have to appear. It’s interesting to note that Ireland received no disciplinary cards of any colour throughout and conceded only six tries in five games compared to England conceding eighteen. So, IRELAND are Champions. Well done to them. ( Did I pick France? Of course I did.) Can a Northern Hemisphere team win the Rugby World Cup? We will see. I don’t think there will be a better chance.
And Neil Southwood finally found an English triumph in Minehead.
5)Held over three raucous days at Butlin’s in Minehead, the UK Open is undeniably one of the highlights in the darts calendar.Like the FA Cup it sees a completely open draw from the third round onwards – so you can see two of the world’s best up against each other in an early battle and numerous David vs Goliath contests throughout the weekend as relative unknowns take on the world-famous stars.
For us quizzers though the important contest was Britain vs Overseas. Michael Van Gerwen looked odds-on to take the title back to the Netherlands for much of the last day of competition but he was surprisingly defeated in a sudden-death leg by the BRIT Andrew Gilding in the Final itself – a result that ranks amongst the biggest shocks in PDC major tournament final history.
If you were backing the Brits, you would have spent much of Saturday seeing your chances of success dwindle with every passing hour. Current World Champion Michael Smith and former World Champion Gerwyn Price both lost narrowly during the afternoon session. Yet more big names fell in the evening as Scotsmen Peter Wright and Gary Anderson, along with regular major contenders Jonny Clayton, Luke Humphries and Joe Cullen, all lost their sixth-round games.
This was beginning to look like a formality for the overseas contingent, headed as always by Van Gerwen. A three-time former winner of this event and unquestionably the most consistent player on the circuit, he was making light work of a tricky series of games against the likes of Dave Chisnall, Humphries and Nathan Aspinall. In the semi-finals he then brushed aside the Belgian Dimitri Van den Bergh with ease to face Gilding in what looked like a mis-match of a final.
Gilding is a former butcher and factory worker who has never won a PDC ranking event, let alone one of the majors, during his time on the tour. He was ranked number 41 in the world prior to the weekend. In direct contrast to MVG’s quick and rhythmic throw, Gilding has an incredibly idiosyncratic approach to the oche and delivers a cheeky thumbs-up to the crowd whenever he hits a 180. The Butlin’s masses began to take him increasingly to their hearts as the tournament progressed, regularly delivering renditions of his Spandau Ballet walk-on song ‘Gold’ whenever he won a leg. His smooth progress to the Final was surely going to come to an end though against such a renowned winner. Gilding had never beaten Van Gerwen in tournament play before.
Whilst he was behind for most of the contest, Gilding crucially never let MVG get more than a two-leg lead. Breaks in throw were traded at regular intervals and Gilding struck a couple of timely ton-plus finishes to keep within touching distance of the Dutchman throughout. MVG remained in relative control at 9-7 ahead in the race to 11.When Gilding suddenly drew level MVG responded in characteristic style to Gilding with a sublime 170 checkout to make it 10-9. That sort of finish is normally a knockout blow to plucky opponents but Gilding was unperturbed, pinning double 9 under immense pressure to force a last-leg decider. Van Gerwen had the darts but missed double 16 for the title and Gilding stepped in. with aplomb, sealing a fantastic 13-dart leg on double tops to clinch his maiden televised title. The tournament certainly has a history for shocks but this might well be the biggest.
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