Something resembling first-choice teams have been named. Let’s hope they all survive the weekend.
International rugby on the telly this weekend
Friday 6th September
| Scotland v Georgia | 19:30 | Premier Sports 1 |
| England v Italy | 19:45 | Sky Sports Action / Sky Sports Main Event |
Saturday 7th September
| New Zealand v Tonga | 3:35 | Sky Sports Arena |
| Australia v Samoa | 10:30 | Sky Sports Arena |
| Ireland v Wales | 14:00 | Channel 4 / RTÉ Two |
Ovally Balls 
@craigs
Jonathan Aitken once read his FT unfolded with his arms at full stretch sat next to me on the District Line.
I judged him that evening. He will not have liked my verdict.
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Fecking FT readers…
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Bercow out!
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CJ’s been busy, Embra finally granted building warrant for Mini Murrayfield
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‘Bout time he pulled his finger out
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Chimpie – has he decided not to move over? I’ve seen him comment on the Graun recently, but i don’t think he’s commented here since we (re)started.
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BB – I messaged him recently (like a good little epigone) and he said he’s just really busy with a few things. I hope he’ll be here when he goes to Japan (lucky bastard).
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Craigs – I’d forgotten the jammy bugger was off to Japan!
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Fish cakes for dinner. Love them. Don’t have them often enough. Home made too. Mrs Deebee’s a genius with them. ‘Swhy our marriage has lasted so long.
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I think The Priest should go to the World Cup.
I think Corbyn is the worst leader Labour could have chosen in these times. But as a human being he is miles above the slime representing the Tory Party.
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I love a good fish cake.
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Bercow might be very annoying and perhaps has done bad things, but he his head and shoulders above the slime sitting on the Tory front benches.
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I’ve shared a tube carriage with Enoch Powell. Neither of us read anything.
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How’s things in your neighbourhood deebs? And was your weekend suitably celabratory?
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If anyone likes crime dramas Sacred Games is pretty awesome.
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Iks – I agree with you BTW. No one should read my antipathy towards Corbyn as an endorsement of anyone else.
I couldn’t choose who I’d want as pm right now*. At arguably the most important time the UK is going through in my lifetime.
Which is so frustrating.
* over the last few years I have gradually drifted towards the centre politically. I was never far left anyway. But tbh I’m not impressed by the left or the right in their current general states.
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“over the last few years I have gradually drifted towards the centre politically. I was never far left anyway.”
I thought you said the other day that you’d only ever voted Lib Dem.
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I like crime dramas Craigs. Sad to say but we finally got round to watching the first series of True Detective this last 10 days or so. We liked it but lost the story and incidental character thread sometimes because we didn’t binge-watch.
Will check out Sacred Games.
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Tomp – I was talking generally. When I vote I try to do it tactically. No fucker is seriously backing Labour in Esher and at the time the Lib Dem candidate looked like the most likely non Tory to win. Same in Ashford.
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I’m not really that happy with the Lib Dems either btw.
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Iks – Never seen True Detective but it’s on The List. There is a book behind Sacred Games (same name) too but the tv series borrows from a lot of other Bombay noir stories. I really like it.
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Craigs – likes Bombay crime dramas, hate politicians.
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“Under the Craigsman manifesto the working week would actually be the weekend”
You’ve killed Sunday cricket you bastard!
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My brother gave me a DVD of True Detectives for Christmas several years ago and I watched the first two episodes the last time the family went away without me. Was getting quite into it. Progress since then has amounted to a stern warning for leaving the DVD in the DVD player.
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Is the cat around? Wanted to let him know just watched the Hobbit trilogy (extended) over 2 nights. Excellent.
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@UF – Brookter will also be delighted.
I’ve only ever seen the first one which I went to the cinema to see. Watched ten minutes of the last one the other night, but then a child had a bad dream and came downstairs and it was inappropriate what with being a big fight with scary monsters. This was a relief really as it was clearly shit.
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CMW – stop thinking so small man! I propose the Five Day Weekend Village Test. The bar is also a place of work so it would also have a free side bar and bouncy castle.
Five Day Tests for the people!!!!
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@Craigs – I’d rather die in a ditch. No, sorry, I mean I would end up dead in a ditch.
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CMW – well, play a 1 dayer on Friday then. Friday will be the new Sunday. Which is arbitrary anyway.
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The Craigsman manifesto also leaves operators of bouncy castles as second-class citizens.
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We’ll see what the algorithms say. Maybe we’ll need second class citizens, maybe we won’t.
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Once went on tour in Shropshire without any opening bowlers. Got four overs each out of two old giffers who both then disappeared into a ditch for the next twenty minutes without telling me. Urinary tract infections apparently. Clun got 280-odd and we batted out forty overs for 58/9.
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The Handsome Family really ought to record the Peppa Pig theme tune. That would catch the DVD police off their guard.
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I blame CMW for this desperate attempt for a flake of recognition.
I had records from the Handsome Family – including the title track from True Detective – long before it became the title track of TD.
AND I had another reader’s letter published in Sight & Sound this month, though didn’t quite hit the heights of letter of the month like my last one.
AND better still S&S also published my correction. They printed a still from ‘The Man Who Laughs’, a 1928 silent movie directed by the German Expressionist filmmaker Paul Leni. It was captioned as Mary Philbin in a tryst with Conrad Veidt. I pointed it out it was in fact Olga Baclanova’s vampy Duchess getting to grips with Conrad.
Sad? Yes.
Proud? Absolutely.
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I only discovered that the Handsome Family did the True Detectives theme tune relatively recently. My brother and his girlfriend at the time used to sing “So Much Wine” together and that was all I knew by them. Thinking about it that would have been the girlfriend around the time he gave me the DVD that then sat unwatched for four years or so.
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Going off on a Handsome Family tangent, just in my head. I bought this weird one-off record in the early nineties by the singer from Strawberry Switchblade and a bloke who I think was a Satanist. A cover versions LP basically, but it had a similar Country Goth feeling like the HF, albeit on a shoestring recording budget.
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How’s things in your neighbourhood deebs? And was your weekend suitably celabratory?
Weekend celebrations were pretty quiet, but very good – we’ve both been travelling a lot, so weren’t included to go too big. A bit sad, but there we are!
The violence has subsided a bit, but only because so many of the foreigners that have been targeted are in refugee camps or in hiding. It’s disgusting and our disgusting ruling party still insists it’s simply criminality, not xenophobia. They’re unreconstructed mealy-mouthed lying scum with not one shred of common decency or care for ordinary people living in South Africa, whatever their origins. Not even the Brexit Party would fraternise with this lot.
I suspect things will calm down for a while, but the underlying issues won’t go away as long as the ruling elite prioritise their own wealth and corruption above that of delivering dignity to ordinary South Africans. The most sophisticated country in Africa still has children drowning in pit latrines, being taught under trees or in asbestos classrooms, with some schools only having a couple of pit latrines for hundreds of kids. Many girls in poor communities miss school every month because of a lack of sanitary pads, and in Limpopo Province, home to the mindless radicals of the ultra-left, ultra-racist EFF, kids get their textbooks about two-thirds of the way through the school year.
The situation outlined above in the education sector is much the same when it comes to healthcare, policing, water and sanitation, housing and other basic service delivery areas. All the while, our government spends billions of pounds a year bailing out corrupt and useless utilities (power, rail, roads, broadcasting, airlines, water boards and others) as well as local governments that have been raped, plundered and left for dead by corrupt and inept ruling party ‘comrades’.
Meanwhile, big business has been on a looting and collusion spree of its own, meaning that between them and government, the cost of living here is spiralling out of control, whilst jobs are shed by the thousands every month and we sit with an unemployment rate of approaching 40% in total, and over 50% for those under 25. But it’s ok – our elite have struggle credentials, so they must be good, right?
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Rant over, but thanks for asking!
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@TomP
Consensus down here is that Dweba is within touching distance of a Bok call-up and is surely the future for us in the 2 berth. Same people reckon Ruan Pienaar should be called up in Japan if one of the 9s is injured, so I’m not 100% convinced of their sanity. He was pretty impressive on Saturday though.
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SupeRugby kicking off at the end of January next year to ensure it runs uninterrupted through to the final before the inbound Tests. The first matches are on Friday 31st January, usually associated with the cricket season down here, but there you go. I know you’re all besides yourselves to know who’s playing who and what the results will be, so here it is:*
Blues vs Chiefs in Auckland, will see the first match of the season and an early chance for the Blues to re-emerge as serious contenders in not only the Kiwi conference, but challenging for overall honours too! Just kidding, the Chiefs will batter them and send AVS into a early season funk that won’t go away until they beat the ‘Tahs.
The Brumbies take on the Reds in Canberra next in what is actually an extension of a leisurely pre-season hitout for the ponies. The Reds came bristling into the comp last season with youthful exuberance and early promise, but got repeatedly stuffed up their holes, as our Scottish brethren here are wont to say. No changes here.
The Sharks kick off their campaign against the Bulls in Durban on that Friday evening, with a side packed with Boks, management brimming with confidence and fans swaggering all the way from Dunedin to Durban to Durham at their prospects. Should last about 20 minutes as they fumble their way to obscurity. The much maligned Bulls started to put together a decent side last year and will look to build on this, much as it pains me to admit.
The Sunwolves see their sunset season start with a sashwindowing by the Rebels in Japan. Only two wins last season, against risible opposition (the ‘Tahs and someone else), so nothing for the Rebs to worry about there.
The Crusaders host the Waratahs in Nelson and will hope that early season rustiness doesn’t disrupt their rhythm too much. Luckily for them, they’re up against a side with less rhythm than a one-legged white boy in a hip-hop dance off.
The Stormers host the Canes in Cape Town and will also have a side full of Boks, although consensus in SA is that about half of their Boks are lucky to be in the squad, so dismal were they this season. The Canes scored the 2nd most points in SR last season after the Crusaders and will have a decent sprinkling of support in Cape Town too. They’ll stuff the locals up their holes too.
The Mighty Golden Lions have the toughest task of all on the opening weekend, travelling to Argentina to face basically the same side that will have thoroughly dismantled England and France a couple of months before on their way to a World Cup semi-final spot. With an envious world having decimated the Pride with chequebook thuggery over the last three seasons, the Lions will probably only win by a score or two. Actually we’ll probably get humped.
* All of this is obviously subject to the sides having enough players to put 23 in a squad after the dastardly Europeans and Japanese have finished buying talent.
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Do I get extra points for a steal of such lengthy proportions? Glad Brookter isn’t around to cut me off at the knees as I launch one breathtaking soliloquy after another. Although it would be nice to have his sage and steady hand at the tiller in these uncertain times in the global system.
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Durban in January will be horrible to play in, even at 7 pm.
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Yip. It’ll be pretty much what the World Cup is going to be like for the next few weeks. Something I haven’t thought about,* but will the weather change much over the course of the World Cup? Will it get cooler or drier at any stage, or wetter or windy?
* It’s not the only thing I haven’t thought about, but it is important.
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Foreign-Born / Raised Players at RWC 2019
http://www.americasrugbynews.com/2019/09/09/foreign-born-raised-players-at-rwc-2019/
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Thanks for the extended summary Deebee. There’s not really much to say really, other than that is depressing.
Do you see any improvement in the future? Were things worse for people overall in 2000 or 1990?
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Ticht – my mate was born in the Solomon Islands but you wouldn’t know unless he told you. I’m not sure what this proves. Apart from where your mum was when you were born.
Or is it just pro baiting?
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Craigs, in the run up to our sport’s biggest jamboree I just found it interesting. It wasn’t posted to bait anyone, it’s a subject that is often discussed, so a bit of info won’t hurt the discussion if it resurfaces.
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@Craigs – 1990 was the beginning of the emergence of a new South Africa and a period of dawning possibility and hope. However, the bulk of South Africans, especially those in rural areas, lived in squalor and many below the poverty line. For many South Africans today, their lives are immeasurably better than then.
By 2000, we were just out of the Mandela presidency, and not too far off from the waning of ‘Madiba Magic’ that he brought to the country. Thabo Mbeki’s ruinous HIV/AIDS policy is estimated to have cost up to a million lives and created huge numbers of not only single-parent households, but child-headed households, the disastrous effects of which are bearing fruit today. But that period from the late 90s to early noughties was probably the most encouraging for us, before the absolute disaster of the Zuma decade which has gutted not only the public purse, but most of the institutions set up to ensure accountability and law and order.
The future? If Cyril Ramaphosa gets his arse into gear and actually makes some sweeping changes to economic and social policy we could re-emerge as a key developing nation: we’ve got the mineral endowment, we’ve got the infrastructure, we’ve got the talent and we’ve got a neighbourhood that has some of the fastest growing and biggest projects unfolding anywhere in the world. But we need a radical change of thought in the ANC, away from state-centric failure and state interference in the economy (almost every state owned company is technically insolvent and relying on bail outs to keep going) to unleash this. The DR-Congo is getting more mining investment than we are FFS!
In summary, I’m going nowhere, despite having a UK passport and transferable skills. Love this place, man!
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Ticht – I looked at the article and it was interesting to see the merry-go-round, but more importantly I think, is how they looked sensibly at whether players moved commercially or not (family, uni, backpacking through the States etc). The reality is that there is a small minority of ‘project players’ in the overall scheme of things.
Still pissed that you got WP Nel and we’re saddled with Gecko’s useless Frans Malherbe.
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Deebee, my friends have now left Angola after three years or so. Despite being a little apprehensive before arriving they quickly fell in love with Angola and Southern Africa. The job moved to the ME, so off they go on another adventure
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