2020 was a fabulous year. If you’re a highly contagious virus. For the rest of us, it meant lockdowns, Brexit, and – most importantly – severe disruption to the rugby schedule.
The Six Nations finished on Hallowe’en, and we had an odd Autumn Nations Cup, in which one nation never played. Leagues were all over the place. Mostly, fans are still not allowed to attend matches, even when those matches have not been cancelled.
On the up side, the Saracens got relegated.
And there is the sheer beauty of this to end the year (thank you, Beeb):
Meanwhile, the OvallyBalls mascot is on the scent of newsworthy items.
She has been paying attention to recent news items, including this article, which contains the following snippet:
This requires not only forwards tracing (identifying who you might have given the infection to) but also backwards tracing (where you got it from).
Obviously, tracing both backwards and forwards is her forté, but it has caused her to wonder if, in rugby, we should refer to the forwards and the backwardses. Or be like the French, and call them the in-fronts and the behinds. She likes behinds.
But enough of that shite….
A new year has just emerged, squalling and puking in the manner of these things, and we have been finally shat completely out of the EU, but we do have the hope of vaccines (along with the knowledge that the Tories will inevitably fuck up the distribution).
And now Chimpie has a fully erect Melbury (no, me neither) that he is preserving and oiling. So that’s good news for him, even if the rest of us may wonder what the purpose of this ‘Melbury’ is.
I raise a glass to all the contributors and lurkers of OvallyBalls, with best wishes for 2021 for yourselves and those you care about*.
Happy new year!
*Except where that involves teams playing Ulster or Ireland.
Onna telly this week
Friday 1st January
| Bristol v Newcastle | 15:00 | BT Sport Extra |
| Scarlets v Dragons | 17:15 | S4C / Premier Sports 1 |
| Cardiff v Ospreys | 19:35 | S4C / Premier Sports 1 |
Saturday 2nd January
| Pumas v Lions | 12:00 | Sky Sports Mix |
| Treviso v Zebre | 13:00 | Premier Sports 2 |
| Wasps v Exeter | 14:00 | BT Sport 2 |
| Sharks v Griquas | 14:30 | Sky Sports Mix |
| Edinburgh v Glasgow | 15:00 | Premier Sports 1 |
| Gloucester v Sale | 16:30 | BT Sport 2 |
| Cheetahs v Western Province | 17:00 | Sky Sports Mix |
| Ulster v Munster | 17:15 | Premier Sports 2 |
| Leinster v Connacht | 19:35 | Premier Sports 2 |
Sunday 3rd January
| Leicester v Bath | 15:00 | BT Sport 1 |
Fuck, it’s a try.
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FT 24 – 35. Splendid Connacht.
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very good!
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2021 has started well! (Apart from this afternoon, obviously). Well done Connacht (and Claw – who didn’t manage to jinx his team).
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BB – he unjinxed them by saying they’d fuck it up. Genius.
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Just watched 3 Billboards etc for the first time. Wonderful……………..
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……and………after a topsy-turvy few days………………………chill
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………..ain’t no time to hate
barely time to wait……………….
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Morning!
Just had a lovely walk in the rising sun – frosty on the ground and deep snow on the Pyrenees.
Dog had a wonderful time chasing deer and pheasants – always to no avail!
Met neighbours out hunting for sanglier – of which there are too many as hunting activity levels are down – so there is a strong possibility of a joint arriving at the front door before long.
Lots of birds – residents and migrants – skittering about and some starting to sing in the morning sun.
Just brilliant.
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I feel bereft now that I can’t watch English Premiership rugby live here in France, either via my English friend’s BT account or via piggy back sites (VIPleague, Stopstream, cricfree).
With the arrival of 2021 it seems the ERFU have limited licensing and blocked transmission by BT.
Looks like I’ll have to set up a VPN or something to get round it.
Poo!
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Sounds like you’ve been busy while I’ve been hiding under the duvet, Slade. I also watched Three Billboards… recently and liked it a lot. I approached it with caution because there seemed to hype then critical backlash, but it was very good IMO.
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Have to hand it to the Irish teams. Nobody else is going to make the Pro14 interesting for them, but they seem to have done a good job yesterday of making it interesting for themselves.
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Sounds idyllic Slade! Just don’t smoke the joint before lunch.
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ho-di-ho!
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If there is no Lions tour will a squad be picked anyway as a player accolade?
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Slade, unless there is a huge change very quickly, which is nigh on impossible, I can’t see the B&I Lions tour going ahead, the virus is still going to be in the community and it would be madness to attempt an international tour, some goes for the Rainbow Cup.
TBH I can’t see the 6N going on next month either.
Total lockdown for six months, get those vaccinations done and then see where we are, it will be tough, but I can’t see any other way we can swiftly bring this thing under control.
The flu epidemic which started in February 1918 lasted until April 1920, and we had a feck of a lot fewer people on the planet and feck of a lot less travel and intermingling.
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Slade, me old china. Sounds like a beautiful day. Missing my visits to friends in Lias d’Armangac.
Been using this for some years, cheap and easy, works for nicely for UK , France and Australia using local postcodes of friends on free to air accounts, and using their log in details on pay channels. Thoroughy reasonably priced.
https://www.smartdnsproxy.com/
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SBT……………….thanks, that’s great (I hope)
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Ticht – I’m sure the most prudent course is best – I just wondered whether countries and Lions would name their squads anyway – giving players something to aim for and be proud of………….
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Leicester 16 – 17 Bath at the end of the 1st half – Bath ahead on tries 2 – 1 but conceding more penalties
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Just for reference, Slade, I usually and up watching BT Sport games on VIP, instead of logging in to BT, cos the streaming is better.
Tiggers Bath is a pretty fun game to watch. Lots of good front row action, with Genge, Youngs and Cole getting the upper hand so far, and some nice back play too.
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It’s an enjoyable game SBT
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23 – 20 now………………………….Bath shouldn’t really be losing based on the names on the selection sheet – but they never seem to look equal to the sum of their parts.
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Thanks SBT
– but you don’t get all the pop-ups and other stuff linking directly to BT
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26 – 20
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26 – 23
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33- 26
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Good game, Tiggers deserved it in the end
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BEAVER ALERT
(Countryfile)
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ticht,
I don’t think it’ll go ahead, unless it’s a vaccinated tour. And why should rugby players get the vaccine ahead of other more vulnerable?
On the “Spanish” flu pandemic of 1918-20 I agree with what you said but for me it doesn’t work well as a comparison. There was plenty of travel – the American soldiers probably brought it to the Europe, the horrific impact on the population of Samoa, and it got into South Africa because of soldiers returning to the country from Europe. And rugby did start again in 1919. The NZ army team won the Kings Cup that year and then went on to tour South Africa later in the year. Strengthening the bonds of Empire and all that – they also acceded to South African requests not to play Ranji Wilson, one of the stars of the Kings Cup team, who was the son of a West Indian guy in NZ.
Tony Collins is good about this as always: https://soundcloud.com/user-523674328/71-springboks-versus-all-blacks-rivalry-racism-and-ranji-wilson
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@tomp
These vaccines won’t help much when it comes to transmission anyway. They don’t give you full immunity, they just reduce the probability of severe symptoms. So it means you are likely to still be able to transmit the virus if you get infected with it.
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Quote from Baxter on defeat to Wasps:
“We didn’t play well enough. There is a reality in rugby that it is a pretty honest sport and you tend to win games you deserve to win and you tend to lose games you deserve to lose.
“That is what I said to the lads, that is what today felt like. We didn’t deserve to win because we didn’t play well enough…..I have to say, ‘Well done, Wasps’. They created issues for us today and capitalised on their opportunities way better than we did.”
Good man, that Baxter.
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Tom, according to airportwatch there were 4.4 billion flights taken in 2018, that’s just flights.
The world is far more interconnected now compared to 1920
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ticht, of course. There was quite a lot of movement into and out of Europe, for instance, in 1918, though. Around 10,000 American soldiers every day and they probably initially brought the virus with them.
Am trying to find a piece I read about this. These pandemics spread along trade lines and they’ve just sped up over the centuries and, as you say, there are more connections.
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Tom, 10 000 troops per day is of course 3.65 million journey per year.
They’d need to be doing that every single day for one thousand two hundred and five years to get to 4.4 billion journeys.
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If William the Conqueror had started moving 10 000 troops per day after the Battle of Hastings, he would be about 3/4 of the way towards the 4.4 billion today.
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I’m labouring the point because I’m astonished at the number of flights there are.
I had no idea.
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last one on this….
Each flight is not just carrying one person, so however many people are on the flight, multiply that by 4.4Bn and you get to how many journeys were made by aircraft in 2018.
Then count train journeys, boat journeys, car, any other method of transport and every single interaction those people make count towards the interconnectedness of our world today.
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Words Thaum!
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Belated HNY everyone!
Back to… Work I guess.
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4.4 Bn is the number of passenger journeys, no? Othewise it’s 12 million flights per day, which seems rather a lot.
ticht, I’m not disagreeing with you. It’s more that there was a lot of movement a hundred years ago, including for rugby tournaments in Europe and rugby tours around the world. Plus, medical science is in a better place to understand the virus than then and some other things that one’d hope allow the situation to be handled better.
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Happy New Year Craigs.
“Back to… Work I guess.”
If you could get counting train journeys, boat journeys, car, any other method of transport and every single interaction people make towards the interconnectedness of our world today then that would be helpful. Answer by lunchtime would be good.
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Make sure you get your own work done too though as 10,000 Normans just showed up a bit late for the Battle of Hastings and will be looking to take your job if you’re caught slacking.
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“4.4 Bn is the number of passenger journeys, no?”
Yes. I got bamboozled by the sheer number of flights.
The world population in 1920 was just below 2Bn, today it’s 7.5Bn.
I’m trying to say that with the population growth and the travel, there is a far higher degree of interaction and potential for transmission of infection today than there was 100 years ago.
Even though the potential for infection would be lower back then there were still five hundred million infections and up to fifty million deaths.
So far we’ve had eighty five million cases and 1.8 million deaths, clearly we are better at handling this disease than medics and governments were back then, but going back to my original point about the B&I Lions tour, I think it would be folly to embark on it before widespread vaccination has been achieved.
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“Make sure you get your own work done too though as 10,000 Normans just showed up a bit late for the Battle of Hastings and will be looking to take your job if you’re caught slacking.”
Luckily they were turned back at Calais as freedom of movement has been curtailed.
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I’m backing them to get through regardless. A little bureaucracy isn’t going to be enough to stop Normans from making interactions towards the interconnectedness of the world.
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Not sure which of the Six Nations and Lions Tour is more likely to happen.
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Maybe the Six Nations will be played when the Lions Tour was supposed to be happening.
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Speaking of vaccinations, I read elsewhere that there is a problem in South Africa wrt ordering the vaccines, ie they haven’t gotten around to ordering any yet.
Deebee?
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Thinking about what Slade said above about picking a Lionz squad anyway, I reckon Gats might pick 25 Scottish lads so he can never again be accused of being anti-Scottish.
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