Is this rugby's worst ever jersey?

RugbyHeaven | Wednesday, 08 October 2008

 

High art, or high farce? You be the judge as the always colourful Stade Français club in Paris launches its latest rugby jersey on the world.

The trendy Parisian club has come up with a garish new design, launched to coincide with the start of this year's Heineken Cup competition, that is either brilliantly chic, or downright sick, depending on your point of view.

This year's design depicts the face of Parisienne 13th-century heroine Blanche de Castille, the wife of Louis VIII, in a multi-coloured design described by club publicists as "in the fashion of Andy Warhol".

Well, they're certainly getting their 15 minutes of fame, and then some.

The shirts made their debut in the weekend's 34-16 victory over Montauban that took the Ewen McKenzie-coached Stade Français eight points clear of Toulouse at the top of the French Top 14.

As usual, the latest designs under the always colourful ownership of the eccentric Max Guazzini have created plenty of chatter.

Some critics have described it as the worst rugby jersey in the game's history? Others love it.

One thing you have to give the club credit for, though, is consistency. Having started the trend with a fluorescent pink jersey that has become their signature look, they have continued to defy critics and fashionistas alike.

Last season saw a light brown number with turquoise stripes and pink flowers and was described by one critic as "reminiscent of an Hawaiian shirt fashioned from some 1970s caravan curtains".

There was also a pink, green and blue effort with tie-dyed blurred lines that drew unflattering appraisals.

Still, the club gets full marks for originality, and, who knows, maybe their persistence will finally see other rugby clubs join the trend.

Premier League threatened with salary cap as FA vows to get tough

Triesman attacks culture of debt among big clubs
Chairman angers PL over plans to act as regulator

 

Matt Scott The Guardian, Wednesday October 8 2008

 

The Football Association chairman, David Triesman, yesterday threatened to enforce a salary cap on England's leading clubs as part of a wide-ranging and often damning address on the game's finances.

Setting out the FA's plans to become a stricter regulator for football and placing himself on a collision course with the Premier League, Lord Triesman attacked an industry that he said had run up £3bn of debt, speaking of the "very tangible dangers" for the game at a time of much uncertainty in global finance.

"In the current climate it could be that we have to work out [wage] restraints and what they might be," he said during a speech to the Leaders in Football conference at Stamford Bridge. "A sensible form of [wage] restraint would make sense and it is not inconceivable. It's very hard to do anything unless all parties want to do it and everyone needs to want to do it. Preferably without being compelled."

Triesman's proposals will put the FA squarely at odds with the Premier League, particularly his ambitions for the governing body to become the English game's regulator. Senior government figures have this week been explicit that the FA's powers should be extended, and Uefa, the European governing body, is certain to offer support, having itself lobbied the European Commission to become football's statutory regulator.

Triesman set out an ambitious manifesto for reform of the game's regulatory structure. "I think we are too fragmented with too many bodies responsible for too many parts of the sport," he said. "Greater clarity is needed about who is responsible for the fitness and future of the game. A clear sports law could clarify the position. The time has come for a comprehensive sports law apportioning responsibility and accountability."

He also called for a strengthening of the fit-and-proper-persons test for club owners to include considerations of human-rights abuses alongside a prospective buyer's financial history. But most of his speech was given over to the volatility of the credit markets and its impact on English clubs. Triesman was referring to Manchester United when he talked of the "impenetrable instruments" of debt clubs have accrued. He said clubs must "decrease their indebtedness" by refinancing - although market conditions forbid most that luxury - or paying it down.

In response the Premier League's chief executive, Richard Scudamore, compared Triesman's aversion to debt with that of the Uefa president, Michel Platini, who Scudamore claimed "thinks all debt is bad". Scudamore instead believes that borrowings are sustainable if they are in keeping with revenues. Despite the biggest anomaly of Manchester United, whose debts are £666m, he pointed out that the ratio of debt to earnings at Premier League clubs is broadly 1.1:1.

But Scudamore was most strident in responding to Triesman's regulatory ambitions, insisting that the league should not yield to the whims of an organisation that is in some ways its commercial rival. "We are like competitors," he said. "We compete for sponsorship and for television rights and we are in the same space.

"The way it works here is tripartite. The Football League with its long reach, the Premier League with its different focus and different appeal and the FA all working together. If we draw three circles the overlap doesn't need to be huge."

FA ponders appeal

The FA may appeal against the paltry €14,000 fine Fifa handed Croatia last month. David Triesman will discuss it with Fifa's president, Sepp Blatter, after the racist abuse England's Emile Heskey suffered in Zagreb. Lord Triesman said: "We want to make sure that in the international system racist abuse is dealt with effectively."

Should England play Steven Gerrard in central midfield?

Former Liverpool defender Jim Beglin and Wycombe manager Peter Taylor discuss Steven Gerrard's role in the England team

The Guardian, Wednesday October 8 2008

 

Jim Beglin Former Liverpool defender and ITV match summariser

Yes

I think Steven Gerrard would tell you himself that he is at his best and most effective when he plays in central midfield because it makes best use of his intelligence to pick and choose his runs from a position where he can be most dangerous. Of course you can stick him out wide and he is that good a player he will do a job for you. He can be a good provider from the right and moves inside well to make the selection work but for me it does not extract the maximum from his talent.

If you're going to play four across midfield, as Fabio Capello seems to prefer, you can't squash three candidates into the two available central berths . It's a dilemma for the England manager and I appreciate how difficult it is for him to decide. After the Croatia game when Gareth Barry and Frank Lampard combined effectively, I can understand those who want to go with the status quo. But let's not forget that Gerrard and Barry have worked well together as a pairing in the past.

The crux of the issue is the balance of the side and nothing should compromise that. As we saw on numerous occasions, particularly during the 2006 World Cup, you are asking for trouble by accommodating both Lampard and Gerrard in their favoured roles. Capello is going to have to decide to leave one out. I'm glad it's not my decision to choose which one plays.

But if I had to I would go for the Liverpool captain . Gerrard gives you more aggression and is a real battler in the tackle. His specific quality is pretty obvious — he is capable of producing sensational match-winning moments. I think Lampard is a more consistent contributor, maybe better at linking the play and probably gets more involved in a match in terms of passing. I just think Gerrard has the knack and ability to transform games with one huge moment.

Gerrard now has brought more discipline to the way he plays. I know Liverpool set up diff erently — against Everton Xabi Alonso and Gerrard were stationed deeper in midfi eld with Robbie Keane playing off Fernando Torres. In the past Gerrard had a tendency to vacate this position from time to time to go out and seek the ball which left the defence a bit vulnerable. But at Goodison Park I saw a new maturity to his play — he knows the role much better and is shrewder about when to break forward .

I feel perhaps I am being a wee bit unkind to Lampard. I really am torn. I would give the nod to Gerrard but it's a marginal decision. Lampard's general play this season has been absolutely superb — his link-up play, passing, astuteness in timing his runs to take opportunities in the box and finishing have been wonderful. But as good a player as Frank is, my gut instinct is that Gerrard is capable of even bigger things, decisive, game-changing interventions.

In terms of the balance of the team you could squeeze Gerrard in on the right but Theo Walcott has come of age now and deserves a run there. It's a close call but if you stick with Barry, and experience tells us you must, I would pick Gerrard to partner him.

Peter Taylor Wycombe manager and former England caretaker

No

I wouldn't break up the partnership of Gareth Barry and Frank Lampard in England's central midfield for the upcoming games because Fabio Capello has started well with those two and he now wants to start building a team for South Africa 2010 . So, with Steven Gerrard having missed the fi rst two World Cup qualifiers because of injury, it prompts the question: do you leave the Liverpool captain on the bench?

The answer is simple: No. I would never leave Gerrard out and, because I think he can play everywhere in midfield, he would be the one, yet again, who would have to play wide.

Steve McClaren had Gerrard on the right and I think that was the right idea. Gerrard is such a talented player that he can play anywhere: he can play right, he can play left and he can play in the middle. I would have him on the right because of his fantastic crossing but this time, as I wouldn't want to drop Theo Walcott after his hat-trick against Croatia, I would play him on the left. That will give him the opportunity to cut inside and shoot with his right foot.

Playing him wide gives him more freedom. My experience as an international manager is that the opposition will focus on the two middle men and mark them tightly, because it is easier to locate them and pin them down in the middle of the park.

Some people say Gerrard and Lampard should play in central midfield but I don't think you can drop Barry. It is not that Lampard or Gerrard can't defend, because they can, but they are not defensive players. Barry is a defensive player: he thinks like a defensive player and he plays like a defensive player. He shields the ball, starts attacking moves, heads the ball well and reads the game well.

And even though England are playing Kazakhstan and Belarus this time — perhaps not the strongest teams in Europe — you can't underestimate them and think you can play without a defensive midfi elder. It just doesn't work that way any more. You need to show all the teams respect and that means having Barry in the team.

It is not that Lampard and Gerrard can't play together because they can. Any team in the world would love to have them and would probably not contemplate dropping one of them. They are world class and give England so many options. Also, I think that Capello has introduced something that may have been missing before and something that will see them play better together: patience.

I have sometimes felt that they have wanted to play well for England so badly that they have tried too hard. They haven't been patient enough. With Capello, however, I have seen them have more patience in their passing and that can only benefit the team.

There is no way I would drop Lampard and, as I wouldn't play him wide, he has to stay in the middle. Lampard has been getting quite a lot of criticism from England supporters recently and I just can't understand that. It baffles me. He is a tremendous player and the thing with him is that he is desperate to be there and desperate to play well for England, which may not always have been the case with every player. The criticism he has been getting is unfair and silly because he is such a good footballer. End of story.

Who's next to lose their shirt?

Forget the thousands of job losses, rising inflation and soaring energy bills - the real progress of the financial crisis will be measured by English football's folding sponsors, says Barney Ronay

• Barney Ronay
• The Guardian,
• Thursday September 18 2008

At the start of the second world war it was the bananas that went first. With the fire of London it was rats. As the British economy continues its whoopee-cushion-style contraction, the effects of impending meltdown are also being felt in some unexpected places. Last season brought the near collapse of Northern Rock, Newcastle United's shirt sponsors. A week ago West Ham's sponsors XL went bust, prompting the removal of their name from the club strip. At the weekend the Hammers played West Bromwich Albion, also without a logo after failing to find a deal. Even more ominously, post-Lehman Brothers all the talk is of the travails of the insurance giant AIG - which happens to be the shirt sponsors of Manchester United. For big business the writing isn't so much on the wall as on the chests of the nation's footballers.

This is all very much in keeping with football's rampage into the cultural and economic mainstream. For the past decade or so the Premier League has acted as convenient shorthand for the wildest excesses of the UK's consumer-driven economic boom, an acme of vulgar consumption. Now, as the tide continues to turn, football is right back in the vanguard of things, a sandpiper running ahead of the surf. Never mind the inflation basket, the job-seekers' queue or the cost of borrowing. Future economic historians will be able to measure the progress of the credit crunch by English football's folding shirt sponsors.

This isn't the first time football shirts have delivered an oblique commentary on changing economic times. Kit sponsorship was first permitted as recently as 1979, the same year Margaret Thatcher came to power. It would be a further 10 years before clubs were actually allowed to wear their logo-plastered strips on live television. But in those early days kit sponsorship arrived in a rush, a visible symbol of the early Thatcherite emphasis on consumer-led economy, a decade of ad-boom and marketing thrust.

Early football-kit sponsors were often drawn from the middle ranks of domestic commerce: breweries, garden centres, double-glazers, photocopier suppliers, package holiday dealers. The names of those first-generation shirt sponsors read like an elegy for changing times: Talbot at Coventry City; British Caledonian at Ipswich; the mysterious Withey Windows at Norwich; plus assorted small-town accountancy firms and business consultancies. An exception was Liverpool's 1979 strip, with its striking white HITACHI, which is generally considered shirt sponsorship's first iconic design. The stark capitals tested to the full the FA's draconian, if charmingly pre-decimal, restrictions: 16 square inches, with letters no more than two inches high.

There was another side to all this, a meeting of minds with what was happening in the stands. The encroachment of labels and brands wasn't just a football thing, it was a 1980s thing. And so the terraces gave us the casual, the game's most decisive extension into high-street fashion, ultimately via the likes of JD Sports and assorted other leisurewear providers. For the label-obsessive fan, the newly commerce-spattered football ground provided the perfect catwalk to parade his Fred Perry, his Lyle & Scott and his crimplene Sergio Tacchini tracksuit top. With the casual, football provided a youth movement that pre-figured the past 20 years of label-conscious culture and the fetishising of the visible blue-chip clothing brand.

Liverpool fans are widely credited with kick-starting the movement, inspired in part by their team's trips to Italy in the European Cup. As the players paraded their Hitachi kit, soon to be followed by the Crown Paints era, supporters stocked up on priceless limited-edition continental labels, to be flaunted on their return to the domestic terrace. The mature casual look emerged as something close to an ambitious junior executive on a golfing weekend after getting dressed in the dark in a branch of TK Maxx. It's a look that football has bequeathed to the nation's shopping centres, one that arrived hand in hand with kit sponsorship and has matured with the growth of the replica shirt as leisurewear. Perhaps the turning of the tide for the shirt sponsor might even prefigure a similar era of brand austerity on the pinched, crunched and pressed UK high street.

In many ways the disappearing logo is to be celebrated. Not just as a sop to the traditionalist lament about rampant and all-consuming commercialism. There have also been some terrible mistakes along the way, as two distinct and separately focus-grouped design forces, the kit and the commercial logo, have been dramatically conjoined.

Aston Villa's claret and blue was briefly augmented by a migraine-inducing bright purple and lime-green sponsor's logo. At the junk-food end of things the brief partnership of convenience between Pizza Hut and the black-and-white shirts of Fulham spawned the vaguely nauseating incongruity of extreme physical activity and a dinner-plate-sized deep-dish food product. The same with Wolves and their giant Doritos logo. It just didn't sit well.

Arsenal provided a few laughs during their Sega shirt period, a word that would be regularly removed during away trips to play in Spain (sega means "wank" in Spanish). West Ham spent five years displaying the name of kit manufactures Pony, which in the local East London rhyming slang means "crap" (from pony and trap).

There have some quirky additions too. For several seasons Tranmere Rovers were sponsored by Wirral borough council. Presumably it needed the publicity. Clydebank were briefly sponsored by the pop group Wet Wet Wet. For years Atlético Madrid's owners, Columbia Pictures, would change the club's shirt sponsor according to which Hollywood blockbuster was on release. Atletico's Spiderman II period involved a total redesign of the away shirt.

The current trend for the disappearing logo also tells us much about football and its miraculously self-sustaining revenue streams. Until now football has surfed above the credit crunch, its finances mysteriously fizzing with independent life. During the summer transfer window, record amounts - some estimate as much as £500m - were spent by English clubs. For now, at least, it's still all boom at the very top.

Disappearing sponsors notwithstanding, this looks set to continue for a while. Early kit deals may have opened up a vital new source of revenue. But this was in the pre-hyper inflationary days when even the big clubs wrestled annually to balance their relatively meager turnover. Space on Manchester United's shirts is currently leased out for close to £10m a season, but this is hardly make-or-break money. The disappearance of AIG would simply be an inconvenience, or an opportunity for a merchandise-shifting rebrand. These days the kitty is stocked by TV rights deals, billionaire owners and the global merchandising arm.

With this in mind, a new trend among clubs involves abandoning the commercial sponsor altogether in favour of something philanthropic. This season Aston Villa are sponsored by the Acorns children's hospice, a gesture on the part of the club's billionaire owner, Randy Lerner, to emphasise Villa's community ties. Similarly, but on a more global scale, Barcelona are currently wearing the name of Unesco: a freebie perhaps, but also a canny addition to the Catalans' club-of-the-people brand.

For now the disappearing football-shirt logo remains a hieroglyph of troubles elsewhere, an indicator of the economic meltdown on the thermals of which football continues to float in its own superheated fiscal bubble. For how much longer remains to be seen, of course. The shirt logo has had its say in the past. Perhaps, like the marauding rats of the great fire, you ignore it at your peril.

We're all in awe of McCaw

By MARC HINTON in Brisbane - RugbyHeaven | Thursday, 11 September 2008

The decisive game of the 2008 Tri-Nations is still three days away and All Blacks captain Richie McCaw is already in a hot sweat. Turns out, though, his Australian nemesis George Smith is the least of his worries.

McCaw, you see, is being put under the grill. A gaggle of excited journalists has managed what Schalk Burger, Smith and numerous other No 7s of international standing have failed abysmally to do.  We have taken the brilliant All Black outside of his comfort zone. Well outside, it turns out.

McCaw is being showered with praise after back-to-back standout performances have transformed his side's season. What's more, his injury-enforced absence early in the campaign, and the subsequent All Black form crisis that accompanied it, only served to highlight just what a valuable (read invaluable) resource he has become.

And McCaw is positively squirming. He's being asked to quantify his brilliance, to rate his pieces des resistance. He's getting matches, veritable tours des force (OK, enough of the French) thrown at him willy-nilly, and he's being requested to evaluate his greatness. No, this is not Richie's cup of tea at all.

We should blame Graham Henry. He started it. The All Blacks coach came out on Tuesday and said some pretty flattering things about his skipper. Reckoned he'd never had a finer test in the black jersey than that he delivered in Cape Town last month. Described him as a "colossus".

Then a Sydney tabloid unleashed a full page report headlined: "In awe of McCaw." In a piece highlighting his massive influence on the All Blacks it mentioned, offhandedly, that the No 7 had won no less than 57 of his 64 tests, or an unfathomable 89 percent.

Later on Wednesday afternoon former Wallaby and Queensland great Jeff Miller stood in Brisbane's Queen Street Mall and informed anyone within earshot that to beat the All Blacks on Saturday night the Australians have to do one simple thing, and do it well.

The essence of Miller's message was that McCaw must be removed from the equation, whatever it took. "You target him and you basically say if anyone sees Richie McCaw you fly in and take him out... he's unbelievable, his ability to get everywhere, to basically be a serial pest, his influence as captain, the fact he can run so well with the ball, and he can offload as well. Australia really needs to have a focus to somehow nullify him and take him out of the game."

Miller, of course, was not advocating anything illegal or dangerous. But you pretty much got the gist of his message, not to mention that respect that exists for this New Zealand star among the Australian cognoscenti.

You also sense that McCaw would rather be out there combating flying Wallabies than fielding these invitations to reflect on his own greatness. It doesn't do his discomfort any good that not only are his latest two exploits being placed under the microscope - a virtuoso display at Eden Park, followed by something even better in Cape Town - but that his presence in Brisbane is bringing to light a previous personal epic back in 2006 when he single-handedly inspired the All Blacks to a Bledisloe-clinching 13-9 victory.

"I find it quite tough talking about it to be honest," said a sheepish looking McCaw. But still we persisted. Which was better? Brisbane '06 or Cape Town '08? "It's a hard one to answer, to be honest." But being the good bloke he is, McCaw obliges.

"I was happy enough," he says of his latest two efforts. "You can have one or two good performances, but being able be consistently good is what I keep aiming for. You've got to keep your feet on the ground too. If you're looking back thinking that one was good, it doesn't take long to not get it right."

But McCaw conceded some satisfaction at the way he was able to come back so effectively after that spell on the sidelines with an ankle injury.

"I came back into a team that was pretty desperate after a couple of losses, and was happy with how I slotted back in. [But] on Saturday we're going be up against a team that will be just as desperate and we've got to be the same. We'll see how the performances are Saturday -- that's how you judge yourself."

McCaw is asked for his recollections of that Suncorp '06 victory. It wasn't pretty, with just one try on the night to Joe Rokocoko, but it was mighty.

"I remember that one was pretty tight ... previously when I'd been an All Black and it had got tight like that we'd tripped over against the Wallabies over here. So to come out on the right side of that one was hugely satisfying."

And that tete-a-tete with Wallaby wing Mark Gerrard? It seemed to personify McCaw's greatness in a single moment, the flanker getting back to make a try-saving tackle, then in the same instant getting to his feet to win the pressure-relieving turnover.

McCaw smiles. "Every time it gets mentioned Ali Williams says they forgot the fact that I had to clear the ball with a big kick downfield... I guess there are always moments like that you're proud of, but when you get desperate they're the sort of things you've got to do."

The 27-year-old 64-test All Black says he doesn't need to read his writeups to know whether or not he's a had a good test match.

"When you come off the field you know if you've had a pretty good day, if you've had some influence. Some days you might have done nothing spectacular but you know you've contributed all around the park.

"That's what I try rate myself on rather than one spectacular thing that perhaps gets blown out of proportion."

But here's the thing with McCaw: he's so good, for him was is ordinary, to the rest of us is spectacular. Nobody knows that more than Wallabies coach Robbie Deans.

Robbie's right-hand man becomes nemesis

Phil Wilkins | September 5, 2008 | www.smh.com.au

ROBBIE DEANS turned away from New Zealand rugby union as the Super 14's most successful coach, and now Greg Somerville, his right-hand man of a decade of scrums and silverware with the Crusaders, is preparing for some northern exposure.

There have been greater New Zealand Test tight-heads than the 30-year-old warrior from Wairoa, props of pure strength and technique such as Olo Brown and Carl Hayman, but none served his province and country more reliably than Somerville.

Mild of manner, uncomplaining of his front-row fate of banging heads and grating cauliflower ears with rugby's most powerful men, the 115-kilogram prop will leave New Zealand satisfied he became the most valuable player in the Super 14 competition. Others received richer contracts, flashier cars, more perks and lavish publicity, but for durability and dependability, for winter-long hard labour in rugby's darkest pits, none surpassed Somerville.

He was involved in the All Blacks' one-off 101-14 Test rout of Samoa in New Plymouth on Wednesday night, taking his New Zealand record for a prop to 64 Test appearances since his debut in 2000. Somerville emphasised how much focus was on the Wallabies and Brisbane, saying he felt little emotion when wandering off the field to complete his final Test on home soil.

"I suppose it crosses your mind a wee bit but I know there's still a job to do in Aussie so I haven't dwelled on things too much," Somerville told NZPA.

Twice he had World Cup campaigns with all the national agony and ignominy that accompanied the All Blacks' failures of 2003 and 2007. Now, he will be crossing gnarled fingers that he is required for at least the last Test of the Tri Nations series against Australia in Brisbane next Saturday.

A tour of Europe is to follow, but Somerville has yet to finalise his future with head coach Graham Henry and forwards coach Steve Hansen to establish whether the time is opportune for a younger prop to step forward with Auckland's John Afoa for the All Blacks.

Unless the New Zealand Rugby Union changes its policy about offshore players, the Wallabies Test at Suncorp Stadium could well provide Somerville with his swan song for the All Blacks. He is deserving of any reward he receives when he begins his 2½-year contract with the wealthy English club Gloucester.

Kees Meeuws, one of Somerville's predecessors in the Test front row, left New Zealand after the failed World Cup bid in 2003, to join French club Castres. Ultimately, he moved on to be pursued by several well-heeled European clubs, Harlequins reportedly offering $277,000 a year for his signature. Meeuws rejected the offers and signed with another French club, Agen, for $427,000 a year, with house and car, of course.

Top-class props are such a rare commodity that they surpass five-eighths in the financial return sphere. Money specifics have not been revealed in Somerville's move north. Although it is safe to say it promotes him from the salt mine to the gold mine department.

The Joy of Six: inspired football transfers

Rob Smyth | blogs.guardian.co.uk/sport  | August 29, 2008 11:05 AM

As this summer's transfer deadline approaches, look back at six of the most successful deals ever done

1) Diego Maradona (Barcelona to Napoli, £6.9m, 1984)
To associate the inspired transfer exclusively with the bargain is as restrictive as the inclination to associate beauty exclusively with the aesthetic. Just as heart-bursting beauty can be found by watching a bag blowing in the wind, so you can still sniff value even when paying through the nose.

As such, it feels apt that Maradona is the only footballer to break his own world-record transfer fee. Sometimes the most important thing is simply to identify the bleedin' obvious - true greatness, slap down some notes on the table and say, "Let's have some of this, then". That's what Napoli did in 1984. While Milan, Inter and Juventus faffed (Maradona was in a hurry to move as he was completely skint), they did the necessary.

Maradona had nothing to his name when he joined Napoli, but the champagne flowed over the next few years: he heads a select list of players (Alan Shearer is another) whose signing almost single-handedly brought unimaginable joy to a small or underachieving club. Napoli had finished a point off relegation the previous season.

Those corkscrew curls might occasionally have looked in need of some L'Oreal lovin', and there were issues with social dandruff as well, but there is no question that Maradona was in genuine "Because I'm worth it" territory.

2) Lee Dixon and Steve Bould (Stoke to Arsenal, £350,000 and £390,000, 1988)
Arsenal's legendary 1990s back five were so similar that it felt like they had emerged from the same sporting womb, when in fact they were adopted from all over the place to partner the club's natural child, Tony Adams. Even when Bould and Dixon were bought from second-division Stoke, it was at different times: Dixon in January 1988 and Bould in June.

In those days you could find a proper player in the lower divisions: if talent is concentrated strictly in a pyramid these days, back then it was more like Marge Simpson's hair, only squashed a bit at the top. A staggering number of players not only made the leap to the top, but looked comfortable straight away. Dixon and Bould were good enough to play 63 of 76 league games in Arsenal's championship victory in their first season. Imagine a team winning the title this year with Cardiff's Kevin McNaughton and Roger Johnson in their defence. Presactly.

But George Graham had obviously seen something - possibly two right hands going in the air and appealing for offside 50 times a game - and it was a remarkable achievement to compile such a formidable defensive unit from such disparate parts. There have been more famous and exciting double signings in English football (Ardiles/Villa and Mühren/Thijssen, mainly), but none as remorselessly effective. In signing them, Graham ensured bread would be on the table not for today or tomorrow, but for an entire decade.

3) Peter Shilton (Stoke City to Nottingham Forest, £250,000, 1977)
Peter Taylor made so many wonderful signings during his time in the Midlands: Ade Akinbiyi, Trevor Benjamin, Juni ... Let's try that one again.

Peter Taylor made so many wonderful signings during his time in the Midlands: Dave Mackay, Roy McFarland, Kenny Burns, Larry Lloyd, Frank Clark. But his best might have been the one so obvious that even Brian Clough, a notoriously modest judge of a player, knew it was a good deal. The key with signing Shilton, 27 and with nearly 400 league games already under his jockstrap, was not the player but the fee: a goalkeeper-record £250,000 for somebody whose role was so disparaged at the time it was a bit like paying £50,000 for a cleaner.

But Clough and Taylor knew the importance of bricks and mortar. They knew that Shilton was this close to being perfect. Seriously, if you are under 35, you have no idea of how magnificent this man was. This was the signing that Taylor, a goalkeeper himself, had waited his whole life to make, like a kid who had saved up his pocket money for years. In his autobiography he wrote: "I had been obsessed with him since he was 19 and already a fixture in Leicester City's first team."

Serendipity also came into it. Shilton's Stoke City, who were relegated the previous season as Forest were promoted, had their first game of the season away to Mansfield. The full horror of what lay ahead hit Shilton right between the eyes, and after a dose of the I'm-a-celebrity-get-me-out-of-heres he was off to Forest. In his first season they won the league; in the next two they were champions of Europe.

4) Sol Campbell (Tottenham to Arsenal, Bosman, 2001)
This article could have dealt solely with Arsène Wenger's signings and still omitted some gems; in English football, only Peter Taylor has had a keener eye for a player in the last 50 years. Yet for all the obscenely accomplished unknowns he has unearthed, Wenger's best signing, like Taylor's, might have been somebody we all knew intimately: Sol Campbell.

The deal wasn't quite the banker that it looks in hindsight. It's important to remember that Campbell was 26 and still a little erratic. And of course it took courage to strip Tottenham of their finest, however obvious the schadenfreudian trip. Yet Wenger saw in him the monster who would totally dominate the next few years at club and international level: astonishingly, in Campbell's first three seasons at Arsenal, they only lost one away game in the league when he was on the pitch (at Everton in 2002-03).

It's difficult enough replacing one great player - Kenny Dalglish famously managed it at Liverpool - but Campbell almost single-handedly replaced a great back four. Never mind Lauren, Keown and Cole: when Campbell was on one, as he frequently was in that period, Wenger could have played Lauren Laverne, Martin Amis and Ashley from Coronation Street and still kept a clean sheet. Without him, Wenger would have not won a league title for more than a decade.

5) Mickey Evans (Plymouth to Southampton, £750,000, 1997)
There is a flawed but potent discourse in football about strikers whose mid-season signing has cost their new side the title: Rodney Marsh, Tony Cascarino and Faustino Asprilla are the principal examples. At the other end of the table, there are loads of examples of forwards whose mid-season purchase has saved their new side from relegation. Kevin Campbell's nine goals in eight games at Everton in 1998-99 stand out, as does Christophe Dugarry's holiday romance at Birmingham in 2002-03, when he even made a silk purse out of Geoff Horsfield.

In the 1996-97 season, there were instances at three different clubs, starting with John Hartson and Paul Kitson at West Ham, and Darren Huckerby at Coventry. The other was the unknown striker Mickey Evans, picked up from Plymouth by Graeme Souness in March to help Southampton in their annual relegation dogfight. He did that and more: at the start of April, with Southampton bottom and five points away from safety, he scored four goals in as many games, including two in a massive win at Nottingham Forest. Evans became the most unlikely winner of the Premier League Player of the Month award (the silver medal goes to Alex Manninger). Those were the only league goals he scored for Southampton - Souness departed in the summer, and new manager Dave Jones didn't fancy him - but his place in history was secure.

6) Dwight Yorke (Aston Villa to Manchester United, £12.6m, 1998)
We all know Eric Cantona was Sir Alex Ferguson's greatest signing, but at £1.2m it wasn't that much of a risk. Signing Cantona's eventual replacement, Dwight Yorke, was a different matter; it took stones of granite. Partly because Ferguson was loosening the purse strings for the first time in nine years, and possibly the last if he got it wrong; partly because most observers, neutral and partisan, thought Yorke, scorer of a modest 73 goals in 232 league games for Villa, was hideously overpriced; but mainly because Ferguson had absolutely no support for the purchase within his own club.

Yorke had barely scored a goal against United (just one, a penalty) but the loose-limbed mischief of his performances against them had wowed Ferguson. Yet Ferguson's assistant, Brian Kidd, wanted John Hartson - no, you don't need to adjust your screen - and thought Yorke didn't have the "remarkable range of exceptional abilities", particularly dribbling, that so interested Ferguson. Staggeringly, most of the directors took Kidd's side, to the extent that Ferguson asked the board if they wanted to "call it a day". Having called their bluff, he got his man - and in his first season Yorke delivered 29 goals, more than 20 assists, the partnership from heaven with Andy Cole, the treble and a knighthood.

War principles serve Deans well

By SPIRO ZAVOS - SMH | Tuesday, 26 August 2008

The opening minutes of Saturday's test in Durban provided clues that the Wallabies were going to break their overseas hoodoo after 14 unsuccessful Tri-Nations matches in South Africa and New Zealand.

The Springboks smashed away at the Wallabies' tryline. Each phase was met by vigorous and disciplined resistance. Then, an attacker was isolated after the Springboks had been pushed back to the 22. The nearest Wallabies, backs and forwards, poured into the ruck. The Boks lined up for the next attack, which never came, because a turnover had been forced - one of 16 against them in the test.

Coaches forget - at their peril - that rugby is primarily a war game. To paraphrase George Orwell, it is war without the bullets and the killings. The game is described in militaristic terms: attacks are launched down the flanks; halfbacks snipe; there are breakouts from a defensive position; kicks can be torpedoes or bombs.

Tackles are the equivalent of body counts. There are the set-piece confrontations of the scrums and the line-outs, rather like set-piece battles in tactical terms. Phase plays are the equivalent of skirmishes with the troops/players trying to force gaps in the enemy defence.

Rod Macqueen, the last Wallabies coach to win in South Africa before Robbie Deans's triumph on Saturday, understood that war-game tactics could be applied to devising successful game plans. He was devoted to the aphorisms of Sun-Tzu, the fourth-century BC military strategist and author of The Art of War. It is fascinating to see how Sun-Tzu's principles to win battles came into play at Durban:

"Invincibility lies in defence." Although the Wallabies conceded two tries, they were not scored until the game was lost by the Springboks. The home side was kept scoreless well into the second half.

"Opportunities multiply when they are seized." Matt Giteau converted his first penalty kick to give the Wallabies a psychologically important lead. The crowd, always a factor in South Africa, was taken out of the contest - especially when Lote Tuqiri scored his breakaway try following a kick-and-chase that started when an aimless Springboks punt was fielded by Drew Mitchell, who pressed forward with an attack.

The final Wallabies try came when Percy Montgomery, not noted for his tackling ability, was moved into five-eighth in place of the injured Francois Steyn. Stirling Mortlock thundered through the gap like an unstoppable tank.

"Know your enemy." The mentality of the Springboks is that they resort to thuggery when they are under pressure, to induce a free-for-all. In the first half, CJ van der Linde, infuriated at his team's inability to clear its rucks, dived across the piled bodies to head-butt Sam Cordingley. Late in the Test, Schalk Burger (out of frustration?) attacked George Smith in the nether regions. Smith, like Cordingley, did not retaliate, but shouted out to the referee: "He's having a go at my nuts."

"The general who wins the battle makes many calculations in his temple before the battle is fought. The general who loses makes few calculations before." It is clear that the embattled Springboks coach, Peter de Villiers, does not understand the complexities involved in the expansive game he is trying to impose on his team. He doesn't select a "fetcher," a loose forward such as Smith who plays on the ball at every ruck and maul. The instinct of South African players is to smash into opponents rather than create space for players outside them to stretch the defence. The expansive game, in other words, is at variance with the skills (or lack of them) and the instincts of the selected players.

The Springboks haven't lost to the Wallabies at Johannesburg since 1963. Defeat on Saturday would bring with it the likelihood of the sack for de Villiers.

"When the army is restless and distrustful, trouble is sure to come from other princes."

It's The Dash wrap-up, and our documents are real

By Pat Forde ESPN.com

BEIJING -- Forty names, games, countries and minutiae that made news at the Beijing Olympics (forged birth certificates sold separately):

Douse the flame. The Metric Dash has ridden in the last lost taxi, slept on the last concrete mattress and imbibed the last watery beer for these Games. No more noodles for a while. No more rushing to catch the 3 a.m. bus from the Main Press Center that never, ever departed at 3:01 -- that would be late.

You know it's time to go when even the supernaturally enthusiastic volunteers are losing their hospitality. Time to trade in Georgia (No. 32 in the medals standings) for Georgia (No. 1 in the AP and USA Today polls).

But the 958 medals doled out by the International Olympic Committee weren't quite enough. Time now for a few more gold, silver and bronze to be distributed by Baron Pierre de Metric Dash.

Mark Renders/Getty Images

Belgians couldn't win more than two medals in Beijing, but they still can make damn good beer.

Overachievers
Forget figuring out which countries had the most medals -- that's easy. Which countries won the most medals per competitor brought to Beijing? (Medal counts as of 8 p.m. Saturday, Beijing time.)

Gold: Zimbabwe (1). Thirteen athletes, four medals; one medal for every 3.3 athletes.

Silver: Kenya (2). Forty-six athletes, 13 medals; one medal for every 3.5 athletes.

Bronze: Armenia (3). Twenty-five athletes, six medals; one medal for every 4.2 athletes.

Underachievers

Which countries won the least medals per competitor?

Gold: South Africa (4). One medal, 142 athletes.

Silver: Egypt (5). One medal, 104 athletes.

Bronze: Belgium (6). It brought 103 athletes to Beijing but won only two medals. Time to drink even more of that excellent Belgian beer.

Biggest studs in Beijing: Male Division
Gold: Michael Phelps (7), United States. His was simply the best athletic performance The Metric Dash has ever seen. If Phelps were a country, he'd have finished 22nd in the medals standings.

Silver: Usain Bolt (8), Jamaica. Ran three finals, set three world records. You'll hear a lot of talk in the upcoming football season about speed, but you won't see anyone nearly as fleet as Bolt was in the Bird's Nest. No human has ever moved faster.

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Lars Baron/Bongarts/Getty Images

Maarten van der Weijden is one of The Dash's heroes. The Dutch swimmer won the open-water gold, seven years after being diagnosed with leukemia.

Bronze: Maarten van der Weijden (9), Netherlands. The open-water swimmer was diagnosed with leukemia in 2001 and at one point was given a slim chance to live. He spent two years out of his sport combating the disease, at times simply hoping to survive it. Last week, he won the 10k open-water swim gold medal.

Biggest studs in Beijing: Female Division
Gold: Yukiko Ueno (10), Japan. The bionic softball pitcher threw the final 28 innings of the tournament for the Japanese over two days -- 21 of them in a single day. The final seven came in what might have been the biggest upset of the entire Olympics, a 3-1 win over the United States in the gold-medal game.

Silver: Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh (11), United States. John Wooden once won 88 straight basketball games. Sounds impressive until you compare it to this beach volleyball tandem, which leaves Beijing with a 108-match winning streak.

Bronze: Olga Kharlan (12), Ukraine. In the most exciting Olympic event nobody saw -- except The Metric Dash, who was pulled in watching on TV one afternoon in the Main Press Center -- Kharlan led a ridiculous comeback to give Ukraine the team saber gold medal over China. The Chinese led 25-15 until Kharlan started swashbuckling like Zorro on amphetamines. Kharlan single-handedly outscored the entire Chinese team the rest of the way, 21-20, and scored 21 of Ukraine's final 30 points. She entered the final match against Tan Xue down four points and ended up winning to give her team a 45-44 victory. The final touch came after the judges deliberated for a long time and declared no point just moments earlier.

Biggest duds in Beijing: Male Division
Gold: Tyson Gay (13), United States. When the summer began, a lot of people thought Gay could win both the 100- and 200-meter dashes. But since injuring himself while running in a 200 prelim at the U.S. trials, it's been all downhill. He failed to make the 100 final in Beijing, then was a co-conspirator in a dropped baton that disqualified the American 4x100 relay. Brutal.

Silver: U.S. boxing (14). Muhammad Ali, George Foreman, Sugar Ray Leonard and other former gold medalists must be aghast. The Americans won one medal -- a bronze by heavyweight Deontay Wilder -- in their worst performance in Olympic boxing history.

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Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/Getty Images

Tyson Gay was shut out of medal contention in Beijing, failing to make the 100 final and being a co-conspirator in a dropped baton that disqualified the U.S. 4x100 relay.

Bronze: Grant Hackett (15), Australia. The swimming legend was picked by USA Today and Sports Illustrated to sweep the 400 and 1,500 freestyle events. He finished sixth in the 400 and second in the 1,500, beaten by a Tunisian in the latter. Competing in his third Olympics, the 28-year-old Hackett suddenly looked old.

Biggest duds in Beijing: Female Division
Gold: France (16). The French men won 30 medals in these Games. The women? Seven. Biggest fall from grace goes to swimmer Laure Manaudou, who failed to medal in three individual events after winning five individual medals (three gold) at the 2007 world championships.

Silver: Lyudmila Blonska (17), Ukraine. The heptathlete won the silver medal -- then had it stripped after testing positive for drugs. She'd previously tested positive at an international competition in 2003. Welcome to Banned for Lifeville, sister.

Bronze: Katie Hoff and Kate Ziegler (18), United States. The American swimmers were expected to win up to eight medals, with three or four of them gold. They won three medals -- all by Hoff, none of them gold. Ziegler didn't even make a final in either the 400 or 800 freestyle.

Best supporting actors
Gold: Jason Lezak (19), United States. What Lezak did to pull out the 400 freestyle relay will go down as one of the greatest clutch performances in Olympic history. Overhauling the former world-record holder, smack-talking Frenchman Alain Bernard, was a feat of such adrenal force that it was reminiscent of those stories you hear about women lifting cars to free their trapped children. Lezak couldn't swim back to that level in the individual 100 freestyle (he took home bronze), but nobody will forget the relay swim that kept Phelps' great eight quest alive.

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AP Photo/Ricardo Mazalan

Olympic rookie Carli Lloyd played an important role in the Americans' road to gold, scoring the lone goals in a key match against Japan and in the final against Brazil.

Silver: Milorad Cavic (20), Serbia. The Californian swimming for his parents' home country was on nobody's radar coming into these Games. But he earned his niche in history, first for suggesting that Phelps needed to lose for the good of the sport, then for very nearly making it happen. Cavic lost gold in the 100 butterfly by one-hundredth of a second in a race that somehow eclipsed the aforementioned relay as the most memorable of the Olympics.

Bronze: Carli Lloyd (21), United States. The face of the women's soccer team was goalkeeper Hope Solo. She had the backstory -- her public blasting of former U.S. coach Greg Ryan and goalie Briana Scurry at last year's Women's World Cup. She had the front story -- her shutout of the powerful Brazilians cinched the gold medal. But it was Olympic rookie Lloyd who scored the only goal in a key Olympic match against Japan, and it was Lloyd who scored the goal that won it against Brazil.

American Olympians
Three Yanks who ennobled the Games by their actions:

Gold: David Neville (22). His headfirst dive to the finish line for bronze in the 400-meter track final was the living symbol of how badly someone can want a medal. Couldn't happen to a nicer guy, and it completed an American sweep of the event -- a rare triumphant moment for the U.S. at the track venue.

Silver: Brendan Hansen (23). America's best breaststroker had a brutal summer -- he failed to make the Olympic team in the 200 breast and failed to win a medal in the 100, an event in which he held the world record. After finishing fourth and watching bitter rival Kosuke Kitajima of Japan win the gold and take his world record, Hansen could have quickly exited the pool and left the painful scene. Instead, he crossed two lanes to congratulate Kitajima. That's class.

Bronze: Jessica Mendoza (24). The softball left fielder was crushed when the U.S. was stunned by Japan in the gold-medal game, but she overcame it for the greater cause of Olympic softball. She quickly organized the Japanese and bronze medalist Australia to place softballs in the shape of the numbers "2016" in the infield, then had the teams pose behind them. The point: to bring back softball, which is being booted from the Olympics in part because of -- oops -- American dominance.

Biggest buffoon of the Games
Gold: Jacques Rogge (25), IOC president. The fool who runs these Games has generally feigned powerlessness in response to Chinese clampdowns on free speech and human rights -- but the peacock crowed in dismay when Usain Bolt dared enjoy himself after winning the 100-meter gold. Rogge clucked his tongue at Bolt's lavish celebration -- which, it should be noted, was not done in a demeaning way toward any of his competitors. It was, if anything, a re-enactment of Muhammad Ali's shortest poem: "Me, Whee!" For Rogge to finally find a conscience about something so harmless and trivial speaks volumes about the lack of perspective in the IOC ivory tower.

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Jeff Gross/Getty Images

IOC president Jacques Rogge? Not a fan of Usain Bolt's postrace celebrations.

Silver: Spanish basketball team (26). For some reason, the Spaniards thought it would be a great idea to pose for an advertising picture pulling their eyelids to the sides, approximating the "slant-eyed" look of Asians. They also saw nothing to apologize for, after the ad launched a small firestorm in the United States. The Chinese didn't take offense, which should perhaps be the final word on the matter -- but it still seems like a wildly insensitive stunt to The Metric Dash.

Bronze: Ara Abrahamian (27), Swedish wrestler. Abrahamian was so displeased with his bronze medal after a controversial loss in the 84-kilogram Greco-Roman event that he took it off, dropped it to the mat and walked off during the ceremony. The IOC correctly kept it. No bronze for that baby.

Biggest breakthroughs
Gold: Iceland (28). As the name suggests, this is not a Summer Olympics power. But there it was Sunday, playing in the men's team handball final, gunning for the first Summer gold medal in the nation's history. France won, but Iceland took home the silver. That should melt a few hearts up around the Arctic Circle.

Silver: American volleyball (29). Gold medals in men's and women's beach volleyball. Berths in the indoors gold-medal games, with the men winning gold and the women taking silver. The bumping, setting and spiking have never been better in the U.S. than right now.

Bronze: Asian swimming (30). China's six medals tied for third-most at the Water Cube. Japan's five tied for sixth-most. South Korea chipped in with two. The three combined for four golds. The sport is more than just the U.S., Australia and an assortment of Europeans these days.

Most overrated Chinese story lines
Gold: Smog (31). Yeah, it was sci-fi horrible the first few days. And everyone obsessed on it, because there were no competitions yet and there was nothing else to do. But then it cleared, and pretty much never came back. We had a ton of blue sky the past two weeks, and the heat was overrated, too.

Silver: Liu Xiang (32). The country's hero never cleared a single hurdle in competition here, pulling out with an injury in the prelims. Talk about a letdown.

Bronze: Project 119 (33). China's stated goal was a record 119 medals. It had a smashing Games, racking up a world-best 51 golds. But it didn't get close to 119 overall, finishing second to the United States' 110 medals with 100.

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OLIVIER MORIN/Getty Images

Wherever you are Mr. Taxi Cab Driver Who Saved My BlackBerry ... The Dash thanks you!

Most notable Chinese traits
Gold: Seriousness (34). The folks here don't exactly cut up like, say, the Aussies in Sydney in 2000. The Olympic pastime among them was taking their picture in front of the venues, and 80 percent of them weren't smiling for the camera. There was one moment of humor Saturday, when Jeff Duncan of the New Orleans Times-Picayune went to the Main Press Center help desk to get his going-away media gift: a genuine bronze medal. Jeff's playing question, "Why not a gold?" was met with a surprisingly playful response from a volunteer: "Work harder next time." That prompted The Metric Dash to chuckle and hold up a hand for a high five from the volunteer. She looked at the hand as if it were radioactive. End of high jinks.

Silver: Helpfulness (35). The Chinese service industry generally bent over backward to please. Of course, when you have volunteers on every street corner, in every hotel lobby and crawling around every venue, things tend to work well. One thing China never runs out of is manpower. One night at the patio bar of The Metric Dash's hotel, there were 17 patrons and 15 workers. Not too difficult to get a waiter's attention with a ratio like that.

Bronze: Diligence (36). One night, The Metric Dash left his BlackBerry in the back of a cab, and figured it was lost forever. Yet, 24 hours later, a note was in the hotel room inquiring about ownership of said BlackBerry. How the cabbie and the hotel managed to track down The Metric Dash remains a mystery. Regardless, it's not the kind of thing you see happening in Manhattan every lunar eclipse. (The flip side of that anecdote was the dozen cab drivers who meandered around Beijing, hopelessly lost. The Metric Dash has never seen so many cabbies with no idea where anything is.)

Best Chinese things to experience
Gold: The Great Wall (37). Nothing else like it, anywhere.

Silver: The Silk Market (38). This is full-contact shopping like nothing in the Western world. It's five stories of booths manned by astonishingly aggressive shopgirls, who literally will grab you and drag you into their micro-store in an attempt to sell you everything from shirts to jeans to shoes to luggage to, yes, silk dresses. Once you're in, expect a hard-core bartering battle conducted on a calculator -- you pressing buttons, them countering -- with prices starting at roughly 10 times what you might end up paying if you play hardball. The saleswomen alternate between flirtation and anger, depending on how the negotiations are going.

Bronze: Opening Ceremony (39). They sure seemed great, back before we heard how much was fake and how badly some of the participants were treated. But the flame-lighting remains an all-time show stopper.

Point after ...
When hungry in Beijing, The Metric Dash has one place not to recommend, on name alone: Country Ass (40). In general, there is a lot of food not to recommend there. The Metric Dash is ready for some barbecued ribs, please.

Information from ESPN The Magazine senior writer Luke Cyphers was used in this report. Pat Forde is a senior writer for ESPN.com. He can be reached at ESPN4D@aol.com.

Chickens in the Newlands rafters

by Dan Retief | 17 August 2008 (21:08) | www.supersport.co.za

Had Dan Carter matched his career average of around 14 points a test, Saturday’s game against the All Blacks at Newlands could have resulted in a 29-point defeat for the Springboks – which would have made it one of the biggest in history.

That is the sobering thought for a Springbok group who seem reluctant to concede just how bad a showing this was against what is a quite ordinary All Black side.

And I’m afraid it’s been coming for some time.

It may be the inevitable World Cup hangover allied to the changing of the coaching personnel, but in every test this year there’s been a lack of focus, and absence of intensity and an element of casualness in the Boks’ approach - and the chickens finally came home to roost at Newlands.

Even in the satisfying victory over the New Zealanders in Dunedin there was a lot that was wrong and it was a concern for me that everyone with a role to play seemed to forget that until Ricky Januarie’s magical try in the 73rd minute the All Blacks had been having the better of that match.

The coaching group’s “off-the-cuff” approach is dangerously at odds with South Africa’s time-tested pattern and, of course, it did not help that going into Saturday’s test the like of Fourie du Preez and Percy Montgomery were put under external pressure from on high the like of which no other international players have to deal with.

The one good thing about Newlands was the Boks’ potent scrummaging (which would have been noted with some alarm by Robbie Deans and his Wallabies) but for the rest it was a litany of so many errors that it was amazing that after 65 minutes the score was only 5-0 – a factor which supports my contention that the current All Blacks are average when compared to some of the outfits who have been here in the post-isolation years.

The Boks now need to beat the Wallabies twice, with both bonus points for tries, to edge ahead of the All Blacks on the Tri-Nations log, and then hope for the Wallabies to beat the Kiwis in the final game in Brisbane to have a chance of snatching the title – a big, and unlikely to be successful, ask.

Hopefully though they’ll be resolved to give it a full go in an effort to rub off the tarnish which is already creeping up the Webb Ellis Cup.

And a good place to start would be to eradicate the sloppiness which seems to be the outcome of the new coach’s efforts to introduce a more adventurous approach.

My notes from the test, parts of which follow below, make for a pretty damning report card.

00 – SA kicked off and Butch James put it straight into touch.

01 – Fourie du Preez put kick over deadball line.

03 – Spies wins lineout but passes wildly, followed by poor pass by Bekker, Habana dropped catch, quick lineout by Habana puts Boks under pressure.

06 – Smith try! Five phases, McCaw standing out grubbered for Smith who got to the touch. 0-5.

09 – SA scrummed free-kick, looking dangerous, but Du Preez lost ball!

10 – Bismarck broke through but pinned for not releasing.

11 – Monty going to corner but forward pass to him from Jacobs breaks up movement.

14 – Monty got ball back as it bounced off Habana, Burger couldn’t hold ball off Monty.

15 – Going open Matfield dummied and got tackled, then lost ball.

17 – James drop-out went in-goal and gave ABs attacking scrum.

18 – Jean de Villiers penalised playing ball with hands in ruck.

21 – CJ blocking as Jean de Villiers breaks through.

24 – Beast forced turnover. JP great chase to get ball. Jacobs went on own and got turned!

34 – Great chance as Boks threatened, but again a break-down penalty.

35 – Great weaving run on short side by Habana, but he had stepped out as Andrew Hore hit him.

38 – Du Preez again kicks over deadball line.

HALFTIME: 0-5

44 – Montgomery missed first penalty.

46 – Du Preez taken out by Brad Thorn chasing kick. Montgomery missed again.

48 – Great cross-kick by Butch. JP caught Muliaina to force 5m scrum.

50 – Boks mount 5 close phases on ABs line… and then turn over the ball!

51 – Monty coming infield dropped Carter’s kick.

53 – Boks lost own lineout.

56 – Carter drop charged by Spies, who got away but no support to keep move going.

59 – Du Preez kick out on full.

59 - Januarie on for Du Preez. Watson for Burger???

61 – Steyn didn’t find touch with penalty.

63 – Spies couldn’t hold Januarie’s pass after he caught kick and unloaded under pressure.

65 – Carter try! Going over on his back. On 14th phase. Through Watson and Steyn 0-12.

71 – Jantjes running onto wide pass by Butch dropped it; after breakout by JP.

74 – Mealamu try! Jean de Villiers gifted it to him with shocking pass after Steyn tried to spark something with a quick throw-in. 0-19.

76 – James’s flat pass missed by Jantjes and ball into touch.

My notes include remarks about slapdash play, lineouts going wrong, losing the ball in contact, dreadful support play and queries over why Matt Goddard allowed the All Blacks to play off their feet, but not the Boks, and to check (with Andre Watson) why so many of the penalties against South Africa were full-arms while the ones we received were bent-arms as the offences seemed to have been similar.

But this was not a defeat for which the Boks could blame the match official. It was down to their own mistakes, some 30 in the list above (that’s close to one every two minutes) and unless there is a radical improvement over the next two weeks Peter de Villiers’s charming idiomatic expressions are going to wear thin.

The Springboks are the world champions and it is time they started showing that on the field. On Saturday’s performance those writers from the antipodes who question our right to the golden trophy seem to have a point.

 

Preview: South Africa v Australia

Friday 22nd August 2008 | wwww.planet-rugby.com

Writing is often made easier when you listen to music, and this writer's particular trick is to simply open up his media player and switch it to play all at random. The first lyric to hit the ears ran as follows: "It's oh so quiet, sshhhh, sshhhh, it's oh so still, sshhhh, sshhhh, you're all alone, sshhhh, sshhhh, and so peaceful until..."

It was far too appropriate a musical line to leave out, for the build-up to South Africa's Tri-Nations clash against Australia in Durban on Saturday has been as low-key as any I can remember.

The musical coincidences didn't end there. Genesis were up next: "Too many men, too many people, making too many problems." It hits the spot as far as South Africa's problems at ruck time go, or rather, it offers a far more perceptive insight into why the Boks are losing such a steady stream of turnover ball. The subsequent line: "There's not much love to go round. Tell me why this is a land of confusion" was also an indicator of the South African fans' level of patience with their coach at the moment, both for his tactics and his press conferences.

I was also compelled to dredge up some lines from past reports to back up Phil Collins' damnation of the Boks' loose play, and found the following gems: "But it was Australia's loose forwards who stole the show, completely dominating their illustrious opposite numbers" from the 16-9 defeat in Perth, and "Throughout the match (Richie McCaw) dominated the breakdown, pulled off numerous telling tackles..." from the 19-0 defeat in Cape Town.

It was never going to be easy for Peter de Villiers. The first black coach of South Africa, the political darling of SA Rugby's transformers, the man tasked with defending the World Cup despite the imminent departure/retirement of many of Jake White's players.

But he is not handling it well. He has tried to implement a gameplan which is antithesis to his predecessor, using - by and large - his predecessor's players. It doesn't play to their strengths, and it doesn't suit the current climate: namely to get defence in order first, and then build an attacking platform off that. Even his players are reminding him of that, and Jean de Villiers went as far as to remind the press of that as well on Thursday.

Peter de Villiers may have become the first SA coach to win in Dunedin, but he has also become the first SA coach to see his team nilled at home. The second of those achievements is far more significant than the first, especially given the nature of the two matches. Dunedin was conquered by the players' will to win and inflict revenge, and ultimately, by one moment of inspiration against a team still struggling to find its tactical feet. That can happen anywhere.

The nil was a result of pure tactical ineptitude, which should never happen anywhere. There were flaws all over the place, flaws there because the coach simply failed to acknowledge what the other team would try to do to stop his plan - in fact, he appears to have failed to acknowledge the opposition and what they might do at all at times, believing his expansive game would simply win. The Lightning Seeds: "Dreams go bouncing in your head, pure and simple every time."

Then A-Ha: "Cry Wolf, oh-oh, time to worry." Moaning about the referee has alienated De Villiers from the officials and from his supporters, as has the failure to publicly address what was painfully obvious to all watching: namely that the gameplan did not commit enough people to the rucks to secure the necessary quick ball. If Richie McCaw was there too much in the last game, it's because he was able to be. Official criticism means he now won't be able to count on official support in subsequent games; he has been too acidic too often.

Australia are in town, and every bit as relaxed as the All Blacks were last week. Chumbawamba's "I get knocked down, but I get up again, you ain't ever going to keep me down" is about right. There's little form to go on except for one excellent win and one crushing defeat, but this is a team with a strong nucleus of players, and nothing has been heard of the Auckland hammering since. In fact, the most interesting piece of info to emanate from the camp all week is that Matt Dunning has Metallica on his i-pod and Sam Cordingley breakdances in his spare time.

But they are focussed and ready. Having been on the end of both kinds of result so far this tournament, Robbie Deans will not let stubbornness sway his tactical thinking. Morcheeba's "You'd think I'd know by now. There's never an easy way" will be his mantra. Just as in Perth, Australia can keep things tight, keep the focus, and wait for the Boks to slip. The Wallabies are waiting.

So this Test is about South Africa, and more and more about Peter de Villiers. His noises this week have been a mixture of Robbie Williams "Let me entertain you" and the Fine Young Cannibals' "Good thing, where have you gone." He will stick to his expansive running game, even if it means losing the senior players who once led the team to a World Cup, but are now apparently not pulling their weight.

Paul Simon can advise him as well as the rest of us: "Problem is all inside your head she said to me, the answer is easy if you take it logically." There has to be an element of conservatism to this week's gameplan, a basic structure to improvise off, a move to address what was missing last week. Hopefully De Villiers' intransigence will at least bend to that. Otherwise, the Boks will slip to defeat once more, and De Villiers will have to listen to Aimee Mann: "It's not going to stop. Until you wise up."

Ones to watch:

For South Africa: Fourie du Preez is another of those to flourish under Jake White, but to struggle under De Villiers. Is it because his inspiration can shine in a structured gameplan, but fades to grey in an expansive one? Du Preez's strength was always to be solid with boot and hand, and to make two or three game-turning breaks, and he is in a position to control the game his way. He will have to, expansive gameplan or not.

For Australia: Drew Mitchell might have plenty of work to do at the back if South Africa do wise up and try to play the game down the other end. Mitchell is not one naturally given to pragmatism, which may have restricted his selection chances in the past, but now is his chance to prove he is the full deal.

Head to head: The loose forwards hold the key, as with every game, but with Australia now at full strength the same question arises for this Test as with all the others: Will South Africa have enough people to clear out the Australian loosies, or will Smith and co. take all their ball. The game will be won and lost here.

Recent results:

2008: Australia won 16-9 in Perth
2007 Australia won 25-17 in Sydney
2007 South Africa won 22-19 in Cape Town
2006 South Africa won 24-16 in Jo'burg
2006 Australia won 20-18 in Sydney
2006 Australia won 49-0 in Brisbane
2005 South Africa won 22-19 in Perth
2005 South Africa won 22-16 in Pretoria
2005 South Africa won 33-20 in Jo'burg
2005 Australia won 30-12 in Sydney
2004 South Africa won 23-19 in Durban
2004 Australia won 30-26 in Perth
2003 Australia won 29-9 in Brisbane
2003 South Africa won 26-22 in Cape Town
2002 South Africa won 33-31 in Jo'burg
2002 Australia won 38-27 in Brisbane

Prediction: This time, South Africa will not bounce back... although they will be closer to the mark. Australia by six points.

The teams:

South Africa: 15 Conrad Jantjes, 14 JP Pietersen, 13 Adrian Jacobs, 12 Jean de Villiers, 11 Jongi Nokwe, 10 Butch James, 9 Fourie du Preez, 8 Pierre Spies, 7 Juan Smith, 6 Schalk Burger, 5 Victor Matfield (c), 4 Andries Bekker, 3 CJ van der Linde, 2 Bismarck du Plessis, 1 Tendai Mtawarira.
Replacements: 16 Adriaan Strauss, 17 Brian Mujati, 18 Joe van Niekerk, 19 Luke Watson, 20 Enrico Januarie, 21 Francois Steyn, 22 Percy Montgomery.

Australia: 15 Drew Mitchell, 14 Peter Hynes, 13 Stirling Mortlock (captain), 12 Berrick Barnes, 11 Lote Tuqiri, 10 Matt Giteau, 9 Sam Cordingley, 8 Wycliff Palu, 7 George Smith, 6 Rocky Elsom, 5 Daniel Vickerman, 4 James Horwill, 3 Matt Dunning, 2 Stephen Moore, 1 Benn Robinson.
Replacements: 16 Tatafu Polota-Nau, 17 Al Baxter, 18 Hugh McMeniman, 19 Phil Waugh, 20 Brett Sheehan, 21 Timana Tahu, 22 Ryan Cross.

Date: Saturday 23 August, 2008
Kick-off: 15:05 (13:05 GMT)
Venue: ABSA Stadium, Durban
Weather: Sunny and hot - 28°C - with a fresh NE wind about 18 km/h
Referee: Lyndon Bray (New Zealand)
Touch judges: Bryce Lawrence (New Zealand), Rob Debney (England)
Television match official: Romain Poite (France)

By Danny Stephens

All Blacks shut Springboks out of game

Sportal.co.nz - 17/08/2008

Ace All Blacks first five-eighths Dan Carter might not have taken his kicking boots to Newlands but he produced a typical piece of class to score the match-winning try over South Africa in the 19-0 win Philips Tri Nations win.

The win was the first time South Africa had failed to score a point in Tests at home against the All Blacks.

The All Blacks had been attacking hard with a series of continuity plays which stretched the South African defences before Carter, who had a horror day with his goal-kicking despite registering his 800th point in Tests, spied his chance after 64 minutes and broke for the line.

He was held just short but twisted his body and stretched out while on his back to ground the ball under the posts. His conversion, apart from being the first successful goal kick for either side, gave New Zealand a 12-0 lead.

South Africa was soundly out-played and never showed the purpose the All Blacks brought to the match. The Springboks attempted to run the ball but unfamiliarity led to mistakes under pressure.

Then replacement hooker Keven Mealamu couldn't believe his luck when the Springboks tried to run the ball from their own goal-line five minutes from the end. A pass flung by second five-eighths Jean de Villiers fell into the hands of Mealamu who scored the easiest of tries.

Earlier, it was a piece of Richie McCaw magic, a kick into the Springbok ingoal area off his left foot, set up the try for centre Conrad Smith. It typified another superb game from McCaw who dominated the loose and saw off rival Schalk Burger early in the second half.

South Africa had made a nervous start with first five-eighths Butch James landing the kick-off in touch, and then a tap penalty was kicked dead by halfback Fourie du Preez.

But once the All Blacks kicked into the South Africa 22m area, a big risk was taken with a quick throw in which caused mistakes in-goal and it was from the subsequent play that Smith scored.

South Africa was let off for constant infringing on the ground with referee Matt Goddard several times telling captain Victor Matfield that he was giving a last warning.

However, three penalty goal attempts by Carter missed the mark to go with the conversion of Smith's try that he had missed earlier.

South Africa went close to scoring when wing Bryan Habana was ruled to have stood on the touchline 15m out from the goalline. Goddard insisted on having the TMO check the situation.

The first half was bruising with some hard hits from both sides but the pace of the game, and it was frenetic, seemed to take a greater toll on the South African forwards. The only injury loss was to the All Blacks with wing Sitiveni Sivivatu forced to leave the field with a leg injury. His place was taken by Isaia Toeava.

Springboks first five-eighths Butch James put a well-weighted kick to the All Blacks line and while fullback Mils Muliaina had it covered he was driven back over the line. However, the Springboks, despite several drives at the line were unable to beat the All Blacks defence and the ball was cleared.

Replacement prop John Afoa went close to scoring in the corner after some quick passing but the TMO ruled the try out after 55 minutes.

The All Blacks scrum was not as dominant as in recent games and the lineouts proved a mixed bag, but by the same token the South African lineout was not the force of earlier games.

Pressure started to tell on South Africa as kicks drifted out on the full.

Carter might not have had his goal-kicking boots on but his tactical placement was sound, especially as he played the corners in the latter stages of the game.

Springbok No.8 Pierre Spies was a constant thorn in the All Blacks side putting his athleticism to good effect with some strong runs with the ball in hand, however, he lacked consistent support against a solid All Blacks defence. Du Preez was lively while on the field and prop Tendai Mtawarira made some early thundering runs but again the Springboks were unable to build on them.

It was a classic display of control and represented another step in the development of this side.

Scorers:

New Zealand 19 (Conrad Smith, Dan Carter, Keven Mealamu tries; Carter 2 con)

South Africa 0

HT: 5-0

Gold inspires glittering All Blacks

Sportal.co.nz - 17/08/2008

All Blacks coach Graham Henry believes the gold medals won by rowers Caroline and Georgina Evers-Swindell at the Beijing Olympics inspired his side to a clinical 19-0 victory over world champion South Africa at Newlands on Saturday.

According to Henry, the unexpected glory for New Zealand's twin sisters formed the basis for the All Blacks' motivation ahead of a victory that sees them take one step closer to retaining their Philips Tri Nations title with three games left in the competition.

"The medals were an inspiration and showed a lot of courage and it was precisely that which won the game for us, that togetherness as a team," Henry said.

"We stuck to the task at hand and showed our skills and it paid off in the end."

The All Blacks were forced to defend for large periods of time, and had fewer chances than their opponents, but managed to defend their line and use the opportunities they got for a three try to nil victory.

All Black captain Richie McCaw said it was an 'epic battle up front.'

"It was a hell of a physical match and the defensive attitude of the guys really paid off in the end. They way we gang tackled the Boks and forced the turnovers, we worked hard for them and that set the standard for the game. We really targeted the start."

McCaw said that the defensive effort was the key to the win.

"They were at our line a couple of times and we also missed a few shots at goal. But some days it is like that. We really scrambled hard on defence and we knew we had to stop them. Defence sets the attitude for the game and those gang tackles slowed down their ball. It was all about attitude."

Henry had special praise for Dan Carter, who missed five kicks at goal, yet bounced back to score a try in the second half that ultimately turned the game in the All Blacks' favour.

"Dan played superbly in the last 20 and he has learnt to handle pressure situations like this. He is one of those players that has the guys to hang in there and do the business and finish."

Springbok coach Peter de Villiers said he was 'disappointed' but promised that the Boks would stand up again. The world champions face two more outings against Australia in Durban and Johannesburg in the next fortnight.

"We are very disappointed at the way we played, but there was so much emotion surrounding Percy [Montgomery] this week and his 100th cap that perhaps it got to us in the first 20 minutes and it took us that long to get back into the game.

"We made simple mistakes," De Villiers added, "We didn't do a lot of things wrong but we made simple mistakes at crucial times, and we allowed the All Blacks to come into the game again.

"It's no use crying over spilt milk, but we will be back again. These guys are professionals and they will pick themselves up again. We will have our fights behind the scenes to pick the guys up. If you look at the dressing room, you look at the faces and the guys know they can do better."

Bok captain Victor Matfield admitted the chances of the Boks winning the Tri Nations were now slim.

"It's very small at the moment, but we'll stay positive and we know we can make our country proud again," he said. "We can only control what happens in the next two weeks, and that's what we want to do."

Hansen backs Boks to bounce back

Sportal.co.nz - 18/08/2008

outh Africa will avenge its 0-19 defeat against the All Blacks and defeat Australia next weekend, according to All Blacks forwards coach Steve Hansen.

The world champions' hopes of claiming this year's Philips Tri Nations were cast into doubt as they drew a blank in their first home game of the tournament on Saturday.

South Africa has managed just one win from its opening four games - against the All Blacks in Dunedin last month - and now faces two crucial encounters against the Wallabies in successive weeks.

The media spotlight on Peter De Villiers' team ahead of next Saturday's clash in Durban is expected to be intense but Hansen expects that will act as a spur for them to return to winning ways.

"There's no doubt that the Springboks will very disappointed with themselves this [Sunday] morning," Hansen told reporters.

"They will be reminded throughout this week about this defeat. Their critics will be onto them relentlessly.

"But I have no doubt they will be up for it next week in Durban. After Durban it will be Johannesburg and that's been a happy hunting ground for them."

Hansen also pointed to Australia's poor record away from home in the Tri Nations as room for optimism for the Springboks.

The Wallabies have not won away since 2001, the last time they won the Tri Nations, while their drought in South Africa stretches back eight years when, coincidentally, they won in Durban.

"You must not forget that Australia also have great pressure of their own," Hansen said.

"They have not won away from home for some time so they also want to get that monkey off their back.

"I have no doubt that the Boks will be up and ready next week when they come up against Australia."

South Africa will reassemble in Durban on Monday and De Villiers has already indicated that there will be a lot of 'soul-searching' to be done by his side.

"There's a few things we need to work on, you always need to do some soul searching when you play like this," De Villiers said.

"Physically, and all our other attributes - we're there. We just need to change our mindsets.

"We didn't see any body language of superiority to show that we are a proud rugby nation. Perhaps that's our biggest challenge at the moment.

"I think we were let down again by poor decisions. We didn't take the chances that were given to us, right from the beginning. We took the wrong chances at the wrong times, but credit to the All Blacks who put us under tremendous pressure and forced us to take those kind of chances."

Boks nailed in Newlands nightmare

Posted in Springboks, Tri-Nations by Jon Cardinelli | www.keo.co.za

An average All Blacks outfit scored a comfortable 19-0 victory over the world champions in Cape Town on Saturday.

This was to be the watershed, the fixture that would separate the 2008 Tri-Nations contenders from the also-rans. For the Boks, they could not want for inspiration as a capacity Newlands crowd’s rendition of the national anthem would have galvanised them beyond measure. The All Blacks threw down the Kapa o Pango, a haka reserved for special occasions. Those in the ground who didn’t feel the intensity must have been completely drunk or dead inside.

Everything pointed to a classic Test match, but when you look at the game over 80 minutes, it was nothing more than one anticlimax after another.

Butch James booted the first kick-off straight into touch, and this set the tone for a string of unforced Bok errors. The hosts’ tactical game was hopelessly below par, the box kicks and probes for space finding well-placed All Blacks attacking players. Several kicks from Bok territory also dribbled dead meaning the Boks not only surrendered possession, but a significant amount of territory as well.

But this wasn’t the most disappointing aspect of the Boks’ performance. South Africa were not dominant at the lineout but still managed to secure the majority of their own ball. The Boks were impressive at the scrum but despite these platforms, South Africa spurned opportunity after opportunity. They looked a better side when they kept it tight and should have been ahead of the All Blacks at half-time. The option-taking was poor and the dismal execution was inexcusable.

It has to be said that the New Zealanders weren’t too flash either. Richie McCaw kicked a great grubber that Conrad Smith chased successfully to score, but Dan Carter’s errant boot saw the All Blacks miss out on 11 points (one conversion and three penalties) in the first half. While the All Blacks never looked dominant, you would have expected them to take these points.

The battle at the breakdown was fiercely contested with the Boks holding the ascendancy in the initial stages. However, the Bok tactics of committing too few players to the rucks began to backfire. This was exacerbated by referee Matt Goddard’s leniency when it came to All Blacks players off their feet. It was a far from a clinical performance from the Boks, but they will lament Goddard’s officiating at the tackle point.

Playing in his 100th Test, Percy Montgomery didn’t cover himself in glory when he missed a penalty attempt early in the second half. Montgomery missed a sitter moments later, and with 48 minutes on the clock, the Boks were yet to open their account.

James had an ordinary match but provided a neat nudge behind the All Blacks defence that was well chased by the Bok backs. The hosts won the five-metre scrum after sacking a retreating defender over his own tryline, but the subsequent attack again came to nil when the ball was slowed and eventually turned over. There’s no other way to describe it - it was painful to watch.

The Boks’ awesome defence is what kept them in the game, as the All Blacks struggled to get over the gain line. Replacement prop John Afoa thought he was over in the 55th minute until Montgomery effected a heroic tackle in the corner.

But Percy was a clear indicator of how inconsistent the Boks were – he’d make a good tackle one minute and then boot it out on the full the next. The crowd showed him due respect for his long service when he was subbed late in the game, but it was a forgettable performance for the centurion.

Time rolled on, and so did the South African error count. The Boks conceded possession and the All Blacks finally managed to launch a multi-phase attack. The hosts’ defensive line was good, but the relentless Black wave finally breached when Carter fought his way through. The masses of Kiwi support in the Danie Craven stand went gaga as the try took the visitors to a 12-0 lead with less than 15 minutes to play.

Ricky Januarie lent the Boks some urgency in the final quarter, but again it was the poor execution that cancelled out the linebreaks and broken tackles. The Boks preferered to play without structure for much of the game, but their support lines and offloading let them down to an alarming degree.

A desperate and speculative pass by Jean de Villiers was intercepted by replacement hooker Keven Mealamu in the 76th minute. It allowed the All Blacks to finish with a flourish and further embarrass the errant Boks.

South Africa will have to cope with the fact that they are all but out of the Tri-Nations. They will have to cope with the fact that they scored zero points in a home match where they were slight favourites. Worst of all, they will have to cope with the fact that they were beaten by an average New Zealand outfit and were ultimately undone by their own incompetence,

Springboks – None.
All Blacks – Tries: Conrad Smith, Dan Carter, Keven Mealamu. Conversions: Carter (2).