Pack your suitcases and prepare for Round Two of the European Cup.
Cardiff v Harlequins
Home advantage and Ellis Jenkins won’t do enough for Cardiff against in-form Quins. Quins by 10.
Castres v Munster
No-one will ever know the result of this match as anyone who attempts to watch it will die the most horrible of deaths from boredom, judging by the reverse fixture.
Wasps v Toulouse
Ooh. Toulouse by at least 35.
Ospreys v Racing 92
Surprisingly, Racing 92 are languishing even further down the Top 14 table than Ospreys are in the URC. I still think they’ll win, though – by about 12.
Connacht v Leicester
This could be the surprise of the weekend, possibly depending on the weather. Connacht by 3.
La Rochelle v Bath
Bath to take a Bath. La Rochelle by 20.
Exeter v Glasgow Warriors
Glasgow have been looking the business in their last couple of matches, and Exeter are not what they were last year. Weegies by 6.
Bristol v Stade Français
Neither side setting the world on fire this season, so home players by 4.
Leinster v Montpellier
Despite being toppled off the top of the URC, Leinster remain a team to be very scared of, and are at home. Blue Meanies by 17.
Bordeaux v Scarlets
Ooh là là, les Médocs par approximately neufty.
Northampton v Ulster
Will the return of Baloucoune and Hume mean an Ulster away win? Probably not, but I’m going for Ulster by 7 anyway. (This is why I never win the leagues.)
Clermont v Sale
Oh dear, Yellow Army by 30.
Onna telly this week
Friday 14th January
| Castres v Munster | 20:00 | BT Sport 3 |
| Cardiff v Harlequins | 20:00 | S4C / BT Sport 2 |
Saturday 15th January
| Wasps v Toulouse | 13:00 | Channel 4 / BT Sport 2 |
| Treviso v Dragons | 15:15 | S4C |
| Ospreys v Racing 92 | 15:15 | BT Sport 3 |
| Connacht v Leicester | 15:15 | BT Sport 2 |
| La Rochelle v Bath | 17:30 | BT Sport 3 |
| Exeter v Glasgow | 17:30 | BT Sport 2 |
| Bristol v Stade Français | 20:00 | BT Sport 2 |
Sunday 16th January
| Leinster v Montpellier | 13:00 | BT Sport 2 | ||
| Bordeaux v Scarlets | 15:15 | BT Sport 3 | ||
| Northampton v Ulster | 15:15 | BT Sport 2 | ||
| Clermont v Sale | 17:30 | BT Sport 2 |
Ovally Balls 
Meatloaf deid. Like a bat out of hell innit.
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https://www.ohio.edu/sportsafrica/journal/snyders.html
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Now that you mention it, I vaguely remember Mordt going to RL, but not Louw. Probably around the same time that Naas Botha went to gridiron as a kicker for the Cowboys. That was in the early to mid 80s when sporting isolation was at its peak and the National Party had reached the peak of its own, barbaric, power and many of our top sportsmen and women saw no future in staying here, when they could make money and compete internationally overseas. Zola Budd was another, running barefoot for the UK when she could barely speak English, lots of cricketers too, from SA and then-Rhodesia (before 1980).
My dad actually played with Wilf Rosenberg at uni and against Des Sinclair, also a Bok. Rosenberg and Sinclair were both Jeppe boys, although a few years apart, and my dad went to Highlands North, over the hill from them. Huge rivalry in those days.
Rugby League has never taken off here, despite the Rhinos (I think that’s the name of the national team) trying to get going about 15 or 20 years ago.
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‘Preventing Huddersfield’: The rise and decline of rugby league in South Africa, .1957–1965
By Hendrik Snyders is the article but I can’t find a link for you at the moment.
Episode 176 of Tony Collins’s excellent Rugby Reloaded podcast has interview with Prof Snyder about it.
http://www.rugbyreloaded.com/
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Oh no, not Meatloaf! And there I was referencing him last night. Loved his music – theatrical, over the top, bombastic and pure joy to belt out on long road trips.
It reminds of another slightly jarring death – Douglas Adams. I had every one of the Hitchhiker’s Trilogy books and had bought each one several times, because they had a habit of disappearing, whether I had consciously lent them to people or not. A friend finally gave me the Hitchhiker’s Guide Compendium so that I could keep the series in one place – Adams passed away that night. Coincidence? I’ll ask him one day, hopefully.
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436,000 new covid cases in France yesterday. Certainly a lot round here (SW).
Case rates pre-Omicron in the SW were below the national average, so there is possibly some catch-up going on?
I don’t know the current new case rate split between Omicron and the rest.
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Yes, there were a couple of others – wracking my brains to recall their names…… there’s one who I know it’ll come to me if I just stop actively trying to remember….
RL wasn’t a huge destination for Irish rugby players – Ken Goodall (an 8 from the late 60s and early 70s) who joined Barrow is about the one I can think of (that might reflect Irish rugby’s socio-economic profile)
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Total Cases to date*
UK: 15.6m
France: 15.6m
Total reported deaths to date:
UK: 153k
France: 128k
* recording systems are different, I think. I believe under-reports deaths, for example.
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trisk, David Barends probably.
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@TomP
I’m thinking of a big solid winger/centre – played for Leigh (in my memory) – might have moved to a St Helens/Wigan later
OK – off to google
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Maybe the lad I’m thinking of wasn’t from SA…..
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Don’t forget Brian Carney. Played GAA I think before going to university in England and picking up RL then.
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“Green Vigo and other “coloured” players
Yes, there were a couple of others – wracking my brains to recall their names…”
Blue Vago?
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Tiaan Strauss apparently captained the SA Rugby League side in 1997 – so capped by both Boks and Aus at RU and SA Rhinos at League. Didn’t know that! Played club league in Aus, obviously.
Coloured and Black players in the RL Hall of Fame here include Vigo Green, Goolam Abed and Enslin Dlambulo. Bradford Notherns seems have been a polpular route into RL in the UK for Saffa players of all backgrounds.
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Can’t believe Deebee killed Meatloaf just so he could kiss BB.
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Carney – yes. Unusual in that he didn’t really play union first (well not at any high level)
And in that vein – talking about players moving from an amateur code to a similar professional code – GAA gets very agitated at the flow of players to AFL.
It’s not huge but it tends to be rising stars (not established players), so “they’re stealing our boys” tends to be the chorus. Few enough have really established themselves – I got the impression that there was some undertone that Irish players were ‘soft’ . Basically, they’re athletic enough – running, catching, kicking but not quite set up for the physicality. GAA football doesn’t have that direct contact.
If you’re good 20, 21 footballer – a 2 year training contract in Australia – what’s the downside? Better weather, get to be a professional sportsman for a short period. I do see a few turning down a move to Oz, and we can only guess that various under the counter inducements are offered (scholarships etc) because after all “it’s an amateur sport”.
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It’s not huge but it tends to be rising stars (not established players), so “they’re stealing our boys” tends to be the chorus.
Glad this kind of thing doesn’t happen in rugby.
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trisk, also the women gaelic footballers are going over to play in the Aussie Rules Women’s league, which is now shown on Irish telly. One of those players also played soccer for Ireland.
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@TomP
So, far that’s been established women players (and in case of Cora Staunton – approaching “veteran”). Doesn’t seem to evoke the same outrage – rather the opposite. Seems to be seen as a stamp of approval
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Cmw – you should know what deebee is capable of by now.
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Slade – actual deaths from Covid in the UK are around 175,000. I suspect the Omicron cases are seriously under-reported due to unavailability of tests, and also people either not testing or not reporting positive results.
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Nice Meat Loaf obit: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/jan/21/meat-loaf-bat-out-of-hell-singer-dead-at-74
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Thaum – not to put a tinfoil hat on but I’ve always found the ways they recorded the deaths to be unconvincing. Isn’t it deaths from people who have tested positive with covid rather than covid being the cause of death? There was a spike in all deaths before Xmas and that lead to a spike in recorded covid related deaths.
Even when you Google deaths from omicron you only get ‘omicron related’ deaths.
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@craigs
The reported deaths are definitely over stated. Even Javid has finally admitted this. They weren’t saying this as recently as 3 weeks ago.
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Plus there are enormous issues with using a non-diagnostic, very sensitive technique like PCR to do clinical diagnosis. The numbers of cases will always be inflated in times like this, particularly when they start to accept as a valid positive result detection of 2 genes rather than 3, as they did for 6 weeks or so the last week of November 2020 and again the last week of November 2021.
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The impression I get is that initially deaths were understated, but more recently (and probably for quite a long time) they are overstated.
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And that what that means for the overall figure since the start of the pandemic is anyone’s guess.
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The figures the government use are deaths within 28 days of a positive Covid test, so yes, this includes people who have died of something else who happened to also catch Covid. But the higher number, the ONS one, is deaths where Covid is recorded as a contributory factor on the death certificate. It’s a higher number because of the lag time between infection, hospitalisation and death, which often goes beyond 28 days.
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Not Covid related, but off to Glasgow on Sunday for Mrs CMW’s brother’s funeral on the Monday (the bad thing that happened more or less over Christmas and just after). He was a good man who had been ill for a very long time though the end very much came in a rush.
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I think that’s the way we measure here too. So, if I’d gotten covid and was later run over by a bus – I’m down as a covid death (correlation not being causation – unless I was delerious or something when I stepped out into the road into the path of the notional vehicle)
We’re removing most restrictions here – NPHET have recommended and just waiting for government to make some decision on it.
Cases were over 20k/day a week or so back but have now plummeted to 5k/day in fairly short order.
Numbers in ICU topped out at 100 or so.
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craigs, it’s complicated. For instance, people don’t die of AIDS as such but we still say they die of AIDS. At the start of Covid there was the big thing about people dying of Covid and people dying with Covid. The “with Covid” often from the “Don’t worry about it. It’s no worse than the flu” people. Also, the testing wasn’t great at the beginning so as CMW reported deaths were probably under-reported.
Gotta go with the actuaries on it and they’re having lots of discussions about it.
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An interesting one is deaths related to vaccines. You aren’t considered vaccinated until 21 days after the jab. So if you a) catch covid b) have an adverse reaction or c) die due to the jab within those 21 days you are considered “unvaccinated” in the stats.
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Best Wishes, CMW
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As per TomP cause of death is such a grey area anyway – pneumonia, the catch-all that is sepsis etc. Often doesn’t tell you much about why someone died.
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OT, over Christmas my eldest had the booster and then had a symptomatic Covid infection a few days later, so that ties in with the efficacy not kicking for 21 days.
We had been boostered a few weeks before and didn’t become ill, same with one sister, but the other who had had her booster vaccination cancelled in Edinburgh before she came down also tested positive
– just an anecdote, but it all fits with what we are being told
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– we all did LFTs and the two who had positive results also had positive results from their PCR tests – I forgot to mention that bit
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I get adverts for risky chucked at me of Facebook and with Burns Night being next week I clicked on one because it was for a whisky I remembered we had at one of our group tastings, it was one of the best we’d ever had (a Balvenie 21 in case you are interested).
It’s now selling for just shy of two hundred quid.
I won’t be tasting that again, then.
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CMW – very sorry to hear that. Best to you and Mrs CMW.
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Farrell is out of the Calcutta Cup match.
Smith will play 10
Shite.
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Sorry to hear that CMW.
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For all the above reasons I find really unhelpful to compare countries deaths. Maybe an unpopular opinion bur right now, the government is handling reasonably well. Yes Bojo is playing his political hand with ‘plan b’ but compared to the over reaction in other countries I think it’s been quite sensible.
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Craigs – we have the highest death toll in Europe, and that’s with using the lower number. I don’t think other countries have been over-reacting at all.
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Thaum – this says we are about mid table (so to speak):
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1111779/coronavirus-death-rate-europe-by-country/
And to put it into perspective, the worst country (Bulgaria) has lost 0.46%, we’ve lost 0.22% and Germany has lost 0.14% (taken from the deaths per million people)
Not trying to gloss over the deaths in this catastrophe but if the difference between doing well (Germany) and badly (us) is 0.08% then it’s a fairly small margin which could fall into the measurement differences described above*.
*Also, the government definitely fucked up the beginning of the crisis and the messaging and the parties etc etc. I’m not arguing against that.
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And the contracts to their mates.
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UK death rate’s 50% higher, then.
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Tomp – of a relatively small base.
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I’m happy to be proven wrong btw.
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Deebee, the best 10 Rand I spent on a book was for a second-hand copy of The Craven Tapes from the CAFDA shop in Claremont.
Here’s a bit about van Vollenhoven:
Danie Craven: Tom von Vollenhoven told me, for instance, that he was going completely off the rails, drinking vodka’s (sic) before a match and he felt that the only way he could get back to rugby was with a firm hand disciplining him. That was why he went over to Rugby League and they instilled discipline in him.
Editor: Why do you think he was drinking before the match?
Danie Craven: I think all of the fame of 1955 and 1956 had gone to his head. He told me he would have a vodka in the dressing room before the match
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CMW, strength mate, thoughts are with you this weekend.
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Ticht, you need to put filters on your search engine to cut out the risky adverts.
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