Rugby with a bit of style for once!

L to R - Graham Rowntree, Head coach Stuart Lancaster and Andy Farrell

I find myself feeling somewhat positive about English Rugby Union this morning, which is something that hasn't happened for quite sometime; probably a decade or more. Some people would tell you that there has been many a morning at work where my colleagues have been basking in victory, for me to come back with something along the lines of 'we played poorly, it was boring to watch and I don't care if we won; it's not right!'

I have to take my hat off to Stuart Lancaster and his coaching team as they are now asking their young team to play rugby in the right way that is attractive to watch.The strides that have been made by this coaching team were not particularly evident in the first two games due to adverse weather conditions, but after watching the game against Wales yesterday I think if we carry on on this vein the future for English rugby is bright. The highlight has to be the emergence of Owen Farrell, who controlled play from stand-off with purpose and direction of a man beyond his years. 

England's fly-half Owen Farrell

 Aside of being incredibly able to give others the platform to play, Owen can play a bit himself; as you might expect with his father being a former dual-code professional as well as a member of the coaching staff. Owen's play even brought a slightly coy smile to his father's face on a few occasions. As well as Owen Farrell, I think David Strettle deserves a mention for his wing play and I think Lee Dickson fitted better in to the style of play than Ben Youngs who 'box-kicks' far too often for my liking. It was also nice to see England with forwards who are good with ball-in-hand and mobile as well. This kept England recycling the ball and moving from phase to phase quickly. As Stuart Lancaster said 'Wales are a team who have been together a long time and we have been together for three weeks, they are a very good defensive side and we caused them problems.'

England may have lost the battle yesterday, but I think in the long run we can win the war. If we continue to play expansive and flowing rugby we can have aspirations beyond triple crowns and six nations. The future's bright, the future's England!

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Is British football in complete disarray? (Part two)

Unfortunately this tale gets more rather than less woeful. For a club to be mismanaged in to administration once is bad enough, but this has happened Portsmouth twice in about two years. It is the third time they have been in administration in fourteen years! The situation could possibly not be worse at Fratton Park without the club going out of business altogether. (Which is not beyond the bounds of possibility!)

The hallowed turf at Fratton 

Portsmouth are in a situation where if their debts are not sorted out very quickly then people will refuse to do business with them.
Portsmouth's creditors are rumoured to consist of other football clubs including Wolves, West Brom and Bristol City as well as The Football League itself. Portsmouth City council are also said to be owed £78,000, and the electricity and gas suppliers have been threatening to cut them off for some for non-payment of bills. You have to wonder how far can it go, and I have said all this without even mentioning the bill to Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs. It is also said that Portsmouth owe previous owners Balram Chanrai and Alexandre Gaydamak in the region of £20 million. Portsmouth are not even worth £20 million, they never have been and probably never will be, so how on earth can they be allowed to end up in this kind of mess?

As Portsmouth are the closest football club to me geographically, some of my friends and family are Portsmouth fans, and a lot of them are in complete despair, and who could blame them? Portsmouth fans are among the most passionate you could meet. They're trophy count might not rival the likes of Liverpool or Manchester United, but the unequivocal support they give their club certainly would. Do they deserve to be treated in this way by businessmen from foreign shores looking on the club as some sort of cash cow? In a word, NO!


The football powers that be have to take some accountability here. In a recent BBC Sport article it is said the The Football League were 'misled at best' regarding former owner Vladimir Anotonov's finances, but surely it is their job to leave no stone unturned in matters of this nature? Particularly as they had been in exactly the same situation less than twenty four months previously with the same club! The man had been refused a license from the GFSA to operate his bank in this country for not complying to rules and regulations, what more of an indication could you want?


All this said about the sad situations at Glasgow Rangers and Portsmouth, here are some further brief reasons why football needs a complete overhaul; starting at the very top.

• We have a player in Carlos Tevez, who does not come from a wealthy background, sees earning nearly a million pounds a month as being treated like a dog. He feels that bad about these abhorrent working conditions he went on strike.

• We have a governing body, that three months before the second largest tournament England enter, see fit to undermine (rightly or wrongly?) Fabio Capello to the point where he felt he had to resign leaving us without a full-time manager. 

• The custodians of our wonderful game also see fit to make the game a laughing stock, by on one hand banning one player for alleged racist remarks for eight games with little more than hearsay evidence. On the other hand, the England captain is caught on television cameras clearly abusing his England colleagues brother, and God forbid it should interupt his playing season we'll defer the criminal charges until the end of the season. 

• Players that want to retire from international football for one reason or another. David Beckham has it right; as far as he is concerned he will always be available for selection until he retires from the game completely. 

I don't intend to discuss the rights and wrongs of these issues, but all the average fan wants is clarity and consistency throughout the game on every issue. Please governing bodies, get your heads together and sort this mess out. We do not need to be the laughing stock of world football any longer.

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Is British football in complete disarray? (Part One)

One would have to say on recent evidence the only answer is on overwhelming yes. The owners of clubs have been in the headlines recently with the Glasgow Rangers and Portsmouth going in to administration this week, but the players create their own headlines for other reasons. Perhaps the most bemusing matter of all is that the powers that be have allowed these situations to arise, and continually keep dragging the beautiful game that is loved by millions in to the gutter. 

And these are not the only guilty parties!

The top of the bill this week has to be the demise of Glasgow Rangers. For one the two biggest clubs in Scotland, the future looks decidedly bleak. Since Craig Whyte took control of the club in May last year, the debt is rumoured to have increased by approximately fifty per cent. It was said to be around £49 million at the time of the takeover, and depending on who you believe it has escalated to around £75 million at the time the administrators were appointed. Bearing in mind that Mr Whyte took control of the club from Sir David Murray for £1, (it was indeed one pound!) on the basis that the clubs debt issues would be resolved, it does seem utterly ridiculous that the debt has allegedly increased by £26 million instead!

Craig Whyte

All of this on top of the fact that it is now being questioned whether Mr Whyte should been allowed to take control of Rangers in the first place, due to previous issues revolving around bankruptcy in previous businesses that should have prevented Mr Whyte becoming a company director. Since taking control of the club earlier in the week, the administrators have admitted that £24 million pounds has not been traced. This money was raised by advanced sales of Rangers season tickets for the next four years that were sold to Ticketus.

In a statement yesterday Mr White said he was '100% confident' that there has been nothing untoward during his tenure. He also added 'I wish to state categorically for the record now that I personally have not taken a single penny out of Rangers since I became chairman and have paid all my expenses from my own funds.'

'Today, I learnt that my predecessor, Alastair Johnston, has urged the Crown Office to order an investigation into my takeover of the club.' 'Again, I have absolutely nothing to fear because any fair investigation will prove that I have always acted in the best interests of Rangers and have been involved in no criminal wrongdoing whatsoever.”

I would hope that if only for Scottish football's sake that the issues get resolved satisfactorily, but I how this situation has been allowed to happen all parties involved must be the deeper issue.

more to follow...

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The Suarez Evra Affair - Is that the end of the matter?

 
After Luis Suarez's apology today to 'Liverpool FC and all that it stands for', is that the end of the matter? Or indeed should that be the end of the matter. 

It seems that this article in the New York Times (who are apparently shareholders in the Fenway Group, Liverpool's owners) about the incident may have forced Suarez to apologise due to bad publicity on the other side of the Atlantic, which is clearly a market that they will look to exploit sooner rather than later.


Hopefully now that the apology has been made that will be the end as far as the press are concerned, and everyone can just get on with playing football. That said, Suarez has had unequivocal support from the club, his manager and his team-mates. This makes me think that there has to be something untoward along the line somewhere. Even if both players behaviour yesterday was not becoming of their clubs, it seems to me that the behaviour of both men suggests that Suarez has been hard done by. Also, not in any court in the land could you get a man convicted of a crime on the hearsay evidence of one man alone, yet the Football Association saw fit to do so on this occasion.

I know that if somebody had been racist towards me, I would not want to shake their hand. Also on the flip-side, if somebody had accused me of behaving in a racist fashion, and I knew full well that I hadn't, (or had not intended to) I would not want to shake their hand either. What I do also find interesting is that the term 'racism' has been used from the start. By definition of the term, there must have been some vitriolic and nasty abuse that Suarez was superior to Evra on the ground of race and colour. Bearing in mind that Suarez's team-mates who are from all corners of the world have supported him from the beginning, is it likely that Suarez believes that Uruguayan of fairer skinned people are superior? Or for that matter, do people really think the Suarez thinks that French people or darker skinned people are inferior? I think not. 


As there was not, and still is not, any conclusive evidence to really prove this case one way or the other, nobody will ever know what really happened on that day. My summation comes from purely the body language of both men, the visual evidence from various sports channels as well as what was reportedly given as evidence by Evra and Suarez in the case. I think football as a whole, and fans of all clubs, will be glad to see the back of this issue as well as the other high profile racism case. Unfortunately that one is dragging on until July. 


Maybe we can start next season with a clean slate...

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David Beckham: Legend

Should Beckham be included in the Olympic squad? In my opinion definitely yes. There is a distinct possibility that we may not even have won the Olympic bid without the efforts of Mr Beckham. I for one was not expecting a positive outcome on the July morning we won the bid, and I don't mind saying it brought a tear to my eye. Aside of all the efforts of David Beckham to win us the Olympics, the man has been a global icon and ambassador for not only football in Great Britain, but Great Britain as a whole. He does one thing in life that many people don't do, and this is lead by example. On the pitch he has taken games by the scruff of the neck and dragged England to the required result. The primary example of this was in 2001 when England played Greece at Old Trafford. We required a draw to progress to the World Cup finals in Japan and South Korea and we were trailing 1-2. Cometh the hour, cometh the man. Beckham started to play like a man possessed amongst players who seemed lacklustre in comparison. If one man could get us to the finals, Beckham could. He'd had a few sighters from dead ball situations during the second half, when in the dying minutes of the game, England won a free kick, and this happened.

The red card against Argentina was now forgotten. The coming months after this red card showed the character of the man. David Beckham suffered dreadful (and unnecessary) abuse by away fans when he came back to play for Manchester United, and still more often than not he managed to turn out above average performances, and as we all know was quite often sublime. If only more of England's 'Golden Generation' had shown as much bottle during the campaigns of the noughties we would surely have frequented the latter stages of tournaments one or twice. The fact that during the reign of Steve McLaren as England manager, when he dropped Beckham in a rather undignified fashion, David never ruled himself out of selection. He announced publicly that he would never rule himself out of availability for his country. Towards the end of his international career he was flying from Los Angeles to London (and then around Europe for games) when I am sure his employers would rather he didn't, but in his mind playing for England was the greatest honour, and a challenge that should be accepted with grace and undertaken with heart and vigour. I think Beckham should be given the opportunity to pass this example on to the younger generation of players, as well as younger fans, and what better way do do this than by signing off from a distinguished career than bringing back a gold medal from the games in London. Not only in London, but in East London where David Beckham began his life and found a love for football. He may not be England's most capped player, or even England's greatest player. But surely David Beckham is England's most loved player.


David Beckham's career statistics


Clubs played for: Manchester Utd, Preston North End, Real Madrid, Los Angeles Galaxy, AC Milan


Total Appearances 674
Total Goals 121
Total Assists 90


Honours

6 Premier League titles
2 FA Cup Winners medals
1 Champions League
4 Charity (Community) Shields
1 FA Youth Cup
1 La Liga
1 MLS Cup

As well as many personal awards including Premier League Player of the Month (1): August 1996, PFA Young Player of the Year (1): 1996–97,FWA Tribute Award: 2008,Sir Matt Busby Player of the Year (1): 1996–97,UEFA Club Footballer of the Year (1): 1998–99,UEFA Club Midfielder of the Year (1): 1998–99,Premier League 10 Seasons Awards (1992–93 to 2001–02),Domestic & Overall Team of the Decade, Goal of the Decade (vs. Wimbledon, 17 August 1996),BBC Sports Personality of the Year (1): 2001,English Football Hall of Fame: 2008,BBC Sports Personality of the Year Lifetime Achievement Award (1): 2010

Officer in the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II: 2003,England Player of the Year: 2003,United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) Goodwill Ambassador (2005–present),"Britain's Greatest Ambassador" – 100 Greatest Britons awards,The Celebrity 100, number 15 – Forbes, 2007, Number 1 on the list of the 40 most influential men under the age of 40 in the UK, Time 100: 2008, Gold Blue Peter Badge winner, 2001