Swiss gnome takes charge

The Football Association yesterday announced Roy Hodgson as the new England football manager. The appointment of Roy surprised a large number of  people who had expected Harry Rednapp to be given the job.

There is, however, huge and previous baggage with Harry which remains from his days at West Ham. It concerns his relationship with the players and staff when he was there at the same time as Trevor Brooking. Allegedly Brooking was of the view that Harry would be the England manager while he remained at the FA 'over his dead body'. This view may well have prevailed. Trevor taking a moment to ease off the fence  is a monumental event for English football.

The RFU hase recently announced a new head coach in Stuart Lancaster. Many people were surprised by his appointment as well. That stemmed, though,  from his limited international experience compared with a number of other candidates.

The RFU were aware of this limitation so they gave Stuart Lancaster control of the 2012 Six Nations championship to see what he was made of. He and his team were a whisker away from winning the title and associated grand slam, and this performance was enough to nudge him over the line, and he was duly appointed.

The FA have appointed somebody with International experience, and success at the World Cup instead of a very successful club manager. The main candidates have contrasting personalities which reflect in the way their teams play football, and the FA could have appointed one or other only for the duration of the up coming European Championships. They have, however, ignored that option and given Roy a four year contract.

Time will tell whether the FA or RFU approach was the right one. Hopefully they will both be successful, and can carry the England name  to the top of the World rankings again.

Swing low sweet chariot, you're as low as you can go

A comment by Des Kelly in the Daily Mail this weekend really hit the spot.
....'rugby union can no longer look down its nose at footballers in a condescending manner. The game is up. Posh lads misbehave too.....'

Both halves of the comment are true, the linkage, however, may be inappropriate. The rugby players who considered themselves superior to professional footballers were themselves professionals. They were, however, army officers, teachers, solicitors, bank managers, policemen and doctors. All five nations had them in their ranks, although the farmers of Scotland and the miners of Wales were only too happy to put it over the English toffs given the chance.

These days rugby players are sporting professionals. There are no career backgrounds to mould a stereotype out of, and thereby lies the problem which has been laid bare at the feet of the RFU in England. The players are interested in money, they want to do the job with as little effort as they can, and they have no respect for the old school who are trying to hang onto the remnants of the game as they knew it.

The other home nations, with maybe the French as an exception, have had less of a cultural upheaval as they embraced professionalism. There is less money, are less clubs and less players, and we all know the Welsh were being paid anyway, long before they were allowed to be!!

So English rugby is in one heck of a mess; no structure, no CEO and no team management. Who then is going to step forward as the catalyst of change? I wonder if Seb Coe knows anything about rugby?

All change please

Well it was off to Twickenham Stadium on Saturday for a lads and dads day at the rugby. It was the second consecutive weekend of rugby there, and for the second weekend, London Overground decided they would close the line between Turnham Green and Richmond and perform engineering works.

Interesting that they discount the fact that 80,000 people will be going to the match and a good number of them will be using the tube. Do they not tie up with the RFU over these sorts of things?

Anyway, we did not let that spoil our enjoyment of another England victory, a victory which squeezed them into second place in the table as Wales faltered in the final furlong. England, therefore, won their three home games and now have some sort of stable base on which to build.

I must say the singing on the bus this weekend was very good, all we need to do now is try to get Jerusalem embraced by the RFU when the stadium is full, and for them not to play that blasted 'Land of Hope and Glory' when everybody is waiting for the game to start.

Entry fee extra....

There has been much discussion lately about the rising cost of air travel, with talk of increased landing charges for Heathrow and Gatwick and fuel charge supplements affecting most major airlines. Couple that with the cheap airlines like RyanAir and EasyJet adding-on for hold baggage and golf clubs, and the whole scene becomes extremely confusing. people are up in arms about early boarding charges and 'long leg' premiums. All are classed as stealth charges making cheap ticket prices a misleading selling ploy.

Luckily the Office of Fair Trading has clamped down on these practices so that at least the surcharges are included in the price, if not the luggage charge. Now lets turn our attention to something else which continues to irritate me.

I regularly use TicketMaster for concert and sporting event tickets. They have hidden charges too. This week I ordered six tickets with face value £15 each for a rugby game at Twickenham. I was then charged a booking fee of £2.40 per ticket, and postage of £2.20. As I could only order two tickets at a time that cost me postage on each transaction. The whole package was £109.80, a 22% premium on their face value.

So, I went directly to the RFU box office as I was passing, but they were not selling tickets for this event, it was TicketMaster or nothing. What I want to know is why don't they just say the tickets are £18.40 including P & P, up front, so we all know where we stand, or in this case, sit?

Ashton-Under-Slime

Do you ever have one of those days? well, I think I did yesterday......

It started at midday when I went to the RFU office to pick up 3 duplicate tickets for the England v Wales rugby international, remember that word, duplicate. These were tickets which we were assured had been left in Cleakheaton, and they , therefore, gave three of my regular rugby colleagues the chance to bring three of their children.

This detour meant that I had to hot foot it to Richmond to join the drinking session a little later than planned. That went OK although the pub insists on showing football when it is full of rugby supporters. Given the match kicked off at 16:30 yesterday, I had arranged food at Zizzi's in the town centre. I booked for 13:45 thinking we could arrive about 14:00 and all would be sweetness and light. First crisis of the day, they had given our table (for 14) away aledging they had rung me to see where we were. They hadn't so we returned to the pub for more pints of foaming Pride and burger and chips 14 times!

Still we had the bus trip to the ground to look forward to, and after a fine rendition of Jeruselum, Sloop John B, Bloody Great Fishes are Wales, and others, we arrived in good time to take our seats.

Crisis number two. The three tickets left in Cleakheaton had in fact been posted by the owner to his son-in-law in High Wycombe, and he and his chums were sitting just where we had hoped to be. His father-in-law has a touch of Alzheimers, and had forgotten he had posted them on, so his problems are obviously greater than ours.

I watched the game from eight different seats as I got shuffled around the stand, and frankly after the second half, it was eight vantage points too many. Don't let any one eyed welshman cons you into believing Wales won, the stark reality is England lost. Do I really want to pay £68 to watch a product which is not up to scratch?

I should be used to it though, for years, the match has always been the low point of the day.

More disappointment followed though as Manchester United salvaged a draw with the last kick of the game against Spurs, and the Argyle crisis continued with a 1-0 defeatat home to Hull. As a point of interest these two cities, Plymouth and Hull, are the two biggest in the Country never to have experienced top flight football.

So as days go it was pretty harrowing, but all clouds have a silver lining, and following a very good sesh in the Prince Blucher, with all the right sort of company, and a few pleasant distrations, a bus came along just as we were leaving. That meant a quick call to the local takeaway meant it stayed open a few minutes late to allow the day to finish with the first food for over twelve hours.

Bread of Heaven, bah! give me Chinese of Chiswick any time!!!