It has come to my attention that sports that are not Rugby Union not only exist, but have enthusiastic fans. Here is a brief round-up.
Cricket
As I remember it from Primary School, cricket is a sport played with a tennis ball and tennis racquet (see also: Rounders). It didn’t have a very clear objective other than whacking your opponents in the heid with the ball, if you were batting … or indeed if you were fielding.
Fast-forward about twenty years, and find yourself working in Detroit (the horror), when there is a departmental sports day. Your department is IT-related, so it has a fair number of Brits and a lot of Indians. You have to choose between cricket, rounders baseball, and some other shite I don’t remember, probably American Football or possibly Association Football.
You decide the cricket has the most congenial participants.
What you are not prepared for is the level of trash-talking.
You are throwing the ball worse than my very honoured old, old grandmother.
Happily this was not directed at me.
Sheepdog Trials
I am quite enthusiastic about this sport, at least as a televisual spectator. It has cute, furry animals – as well as dogs and sheep – strategy, tactics and drama, and a Four Nations type of rivalry.
In this year’s One Man and His Dog (although many participants are female, and for the adults there were two dogs), tragedy struck when the most horrendously uncooperative sheep ever bred were assigned to the Irish adult contestant, after the junior Irish contestant had had his dog spooked by a fly-over plane. Even the English commentators were awestruck by the recalcitrance of the sheep. Yer poor man had to call his dogs off before their hearts were broken forever.
Everybody smelt a fix-up.
Ice Hockey
Easily the most watchable sport of the popular North American ones – although there may be some interesting Mexican sports what I wot not of – ice hockey is fast-paced and vicious. Players are not afraid to use their deadly-sharp blades against opponents if they can get away with it.
Yet it’s all kindergarten stuff when compared to girls’ hockey in primary school, where there were no proper refs or television replays of fouls. You will notice that a hockey stick is perfectly curved to hook around the ankle, and hard enough to do serious damage if whacked on bone, by ‘mistakenly’ missing the ball.
I played centre forward, and there are no more exciting yet chilling words than ground sticks, ground sticks, ground sticks, ball. Like rugby, you never knew if you would finish the match with the same number of bones or teeth.
Tennis
Tennis is another one of those sports played with a tennis racquet and tennis ball. It can be a good background to a lazy Sunday afternoon.
Recently we had the spectacle of the relatively unknown Brit Emma Raducanu unexpectedly working her way up from the qualifying rounds, without losing a set, to beat a Canadian meringue for the US Open title. She then sacked her coach, and lost the next match in straight sets.
Maybe she will learn from Cardiff, and hire Dai Young.
Dressage
Dressage is a highly under-appreciated sport* in which the goal is to keep your horse’s head tucked into his or her chest and have him/her prance around in various ways. It is much more difficult than it looks, and especially difficult when your horse is a ‘rescued’ Thoroughbred who is more interested in being scared of everything and consequently galloping blindly over everything that exists in the whole wide world while looking more like a panicking giraffe than a tucked-head dressage clone.
It’s therefore very rewarding when you manage to win a minor ribbon.
*All right, it’s boring as hell to watch, except possibly at the very top levels.
Snooker
This is another sport at which I have some competitive experience. Or, as the mister puts it, You played pool, not fucking snooker. Stop telling them to pot all the balls.
I’m sure we can all agree that he is wrong and that Alex ‘Hurricane’ Higgins – who indeed tried to pot all the balls – was the greatest snooker player to ever live.
Equestrian Cross-Country (see also: Steeplechasing)
Avoid. These people are more insane and fearless than the Terminator.
Onna telly this week
Friday 29th October
| Gloucester v Exeter | 19:45 | BT Sport 1 |
Saturday 30th October
| Castres v Brive | 14:00 | Premier Sports 2 |
| Scotland v Tonga | 14:30 | Prime |
| Northampton v Leicester | 15:00 | BT Sport 3 |
| Montpellier v Lyon | 16:00 | Premier Sports 2 |
| Wales v New Zealand | 17:15 | Prime |
| Bordeaux v Clermont | 20:00 | Premier Sports 2 |
Sunday 31st October
| England v New Zealand (women) | 14:30 | BBC2 / iPlayer | ||
| Harlequins v Saracens | 15:00 | BT Sport 1 | ||
| Racing 92 v Toulouse | 19:00 | Premier Sports 1 |
Ovally Balls 
Great try from NZ!
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Or Shanklin, maybe. ;-)
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Shank-something anyway.
But not a lamb shank.
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Moriarty down now. Wales running out of forwards.
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Looks like a possible red coming for the ABs.
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ooh, under rules, that should be two reds
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Taine Basham’s great-great-grandad in action:
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I would have said it should be a yellow for Blackadder, as that was just a shoulder straight into Moriarty.
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SBT – yes, I agree. But one yellow instead.
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Reynal seems to have gone off Wales since February.
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Yellow doesn’t seem unreasonable
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Thats super bullshit. Mitigating factor in that a no arms tackle to the head knocks the bloke into another tackle where there is absolutely no intention to do anything other than drop his shoulder hard into Moriarty. Quite angry about that.
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It wasn’t as if Laulala didn’t move into Moriarty’s head.
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Two no-arms tackles that both make contact with the head, the first one more accidentally.
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Somehow Unzud seem to get away with stuff like that all the time. It is blatantly a cynical targeted double hit to at the very least knock the stuffing out of a heavy carrying opponent , if not get him off the pitch. No way would they tackle a scrum half the same, becuse they would obviously be off the park for the rest of the game. Karl Dickson has been annoying me as a ref recently, but both English linesmen tried to argue with Raynal on that one.
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SBT – mm, reminiscent of the famous O’Driscoll tackle that put him out of action for, what, a year or more?
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Perenara looks like Sammy Davis Jr.
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Cotter suffering from mullet confusion, calling Ioane ‘Havili’ for several phases.
Ooh, that was lovely from Jordan.
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That was a piece of All-Black Magic. Although the Welsh 9 & 11 didn’t really look like they were trying to compete.
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Noice!
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That didn’t last long.
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Ok, that try was bonkers.
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Bloody hell. They’re just scoring for fun now.
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That Welsh try annoyed the Blacks. The second try was brilliant.
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There goes another one.
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That was a hell of a clearance by Wainwright (the play before it wasn’t too bad either).
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Can’t let em get two scores ahead, then they can throw it around and do anyone. Ridiculously good handling going on there.
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It ‘all’ started when a Welsh player didn’t stop when Wales cleared the kick off return after their try. NZ got the penalty, then scored a try. It just snowballed from there. They would probably still have won, but the margin might only been 20 points or so….
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well that was disappointing, if familiar. I thought we would keep NZ under 40 points and maybe score a couple of tries. Wales have some good players, NZ have some amazing players.
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Really wanted to watch the England-Kiwi Test now but not on our telly. Do have 57 channels of stale football replays though.
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Only saw the second half. In spite of being led 18/6 , to my surprise Wales did not seem outplayed until the 55th minute. But then individual brilliance on one side, and huge gaps in defence on the other, opened the gates. Some wonderful handling and support from the ABs. They are hard to dislike.
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… if you ignore the domestic violence lads.
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@tomp ????
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@Flair – Sevu Reece is the one that comes immediately to mind (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sevu_Reece#Domestic_abuse_and_controversy) and I believe there are others.
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Refit, it seems unfortunately frequent among rugby players. Doubt there are fewer of these dreadful incidents in other nations. Hence my ???.
I was obviously strictly talking about what I saw on the pitch and in this regard the ABs are hard to dislike. But Tomp is free to disagree.
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Frizzell’s the other one, earlier this year. Not sure how many players from other countries have been selected for their national teams within a short time of being convicted of such a crime.
The sides they pick are excellent on attack, as well as being tremendously cynical on defence.
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Ah, my apologies. Frizzell’s wasn’t domestic abuse but assault. He punched a woman in the face in a bar and then hit her boyfriend outside the bar. But he wasn’t convicted because he pleaded guilty and went through the adult diversion scheme that seeks to rehabilitate offenders.
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Anybody watch the England-Kiwi game today?
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@Deebee – it’s not the fairest comparison, as the Ferns haven’t played for 2 years. But it’s been a fun game.
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A few minutes of it. England were very good. New Zealand’s first try was good, too.
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Hmm. Bit of a one-sided thumping by all accounts. Well done England! 43-12 final score, I think.
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Refit – a bit like the Lions series. 😜
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Well. the Lions hadn’t played for 4 years.
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And didn’t play much in three Tests either.
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Public holiday today in SA. Our local government elections. Probably the most important since democracy in 1994. After 27 years in power, the ANC has all but collapsed functionality in villages, towns and cities across the country and it seems that people are finally voting more critically. The DA, which was largely a white party for many years has shot itself repeatedly in the foot by trying to appeal to conservative white voters, disaffected Indian and Coloured voters and Middle class black voters simultaneously and fucked it up royally. The EFF are playground populists who’ve tapped into a rich vein of voter anger at the lack of real progress in SA but who’s policies will kill off the country for good (think Venezuela meets Zimbabwe). The rest are small parties vying for crumbs, but could be kingmakers across many areas. Interesting times.
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@Deebee – Nice to hear that you’re spoilt for choice.
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I guess it’s all part of ‘the bizarre world of other sports’.
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I may have missed the litany of domestic violence in say… the Wallabies or say… the Wales team.
I remember when Steve Hansen talked about being a better person as an All Black. Whilst it was a gimmick it might something to bring back.
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I watched most of the game on Saturday. Whilst it was a hammering Wales supporters shouldn’t feel too gloomy imo. A depleted squad first up against a team in it’s bubble for 11 weeks outside the test window is a recipe for this result.
Plus the bawsax were really good. Squidge has told the world how you beat the Saffas so it should be fine next weekend.
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Didn’t see the game and was gloomy beforehand anyway. Looking at the result I’d say it would be nice if we were better.
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