The image editor posts hopefully
Scotland vs Italy
Previously the wooden spoon fixture, these teams have made some recent progress but the Italians are definite underdogs here. Italy have made 4 changes and given a dayboo to Simone Gesi on the wing. However, they lack Capowuoouuzzzo at full back so, whilst they look fairly settled, they don’t have much in the way of X factor.
Scotland have made 5 changes including leaving out Finn and Hoggy so, while I predict a win, the margin will be smaller without them. Also, given they have lost their last 2 games, they will be motivated to end in style (same could be said for Italy tbh).
Scotland have a better pack and cooler heads. Against Wales, Italy played like headless chickens for much of the game and gave Wales some points either by coughing up the ball in their half or failing to execute the basics. Scotland will be patient and gradually rack up a decent win.
Head-to-head Planet Rugby says that Scotland have won the last 8 fixtures but this only goes back to 2017 and I haven’t dug further. It would take a miracle or a card for Italy to win and it won’t happen this weekend as Scotland get their 9th (or more) win in a row.
30 – 10 to Scotland.
France vs Wales
France, France, France. Until last weekend many people said they had been underwhelming despite only losing in Dublin. That all changed when they swaggered into Twickenham and put 50 on some boys Borthwick had found. They said they could play rugby, double promise, cross their hearts – but they couldn’t.
To be fair, that was the best performance I’ve seen from a team against the English since the dastardly Saffas won the 2019 RWC. Maybe even better. Every time Dupont kicked the ball into space it opened up the back line and a French player waltzed over the line about 10 seconds later. Their defence was aggressive, their ruck speed brutal and every carry seemed to gain at least 3 Robshaws. But most impressive was how clinical they were. I can’t remember a scoring chance being wasted.
Wales on the other hand were solid last weekend but otherwise haven’t set this tournament on fire. They still drag around the reanimated corpse of AWJ but have some new talent including a footballer on the wing. How there isn’t a better 13 in Wales than George North I’ll never know.
There is a ‘last hurrah’ feel to this team but rather a white orc filled Dad’s army willing its way to victory, this feels like a Clive Woodward selected Lions team. If Clive Woodward had coached Wa…. You know what I mean! France to make it 5 in a row against the men in red.
50 – 12 to France
Ireland vs England
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
60 – 8 to Ireland (*starts crying*)
Laughing and crying by Craigsman
Onna telly this week
Friday 17th March
| Bulls v Western Province | 17:00 | Sky Sports Arena |
Saturday 18th March
| Scotland v Italy | 12:30 | BBC1 / RTÉ2 |
| France v Wales | 14:45 | ITV1 / S4C |
| Ireland v England | 17:00 | ITV1 |
Sunday 19th March
| Scotland v Italy (U20s) | 14:00 | BBC iPlayer |
| London Irish v Exeter | 14:00 | BT Sport 1 |
| Ireland v England (U20s) | 17:00 | BBC iPlayer |
| France v Wales (U20s) | 20:00 | BBC iPlayer / S4C |
Ovally Balls 
Though Stormers’ mistakes have been their own undoing
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Well, don’t think I’ve ever seen Leinster happy to take a draw before.
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Although mind you, if Leinster had won, we could have taken the second spot.
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Thaum, I’ve just watched the video you referenced.
The biggest achievement of the SNP in government is the steps taken to eradicate child poverty, these are not easily or quickly benchmarked, the benefits won’t show for another 20 years, but they will show.
That is how a government should act in power, looking way beyond the next election, looking to benefit the people of the country, not just their own voters
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Ticht – yes, exactly. That’s massive.
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Newcastle beat Glaws by 5 points after losing Palfreyman in the first quarter to a red card. Not just a superb rearguard action, but they looked the better side too. Glaws looking flat and disjointed.
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Thaum, one more thing about Nicola Sturgeon, she has faced the most vile attacks on social media and for a sustained time, ever since she became First Minister. It’s personal stuff you don’t see posted against men.
I have no doubt it takes its toll
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Ticht – as far as I can tell, attacks on women tend to fall further into the ‘I’m going to rape/kill you’ realm than attacks on men do. Which is very scary.
Or, more trivially, concentrate on appearance or sexist tropes (iron my shirt – oh, how fucking witty).
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Here is a long but good interview with Hugh Dan Furra Linee MacLennan
“Six months from now, it will all be over. On the evening of September 16, after he has led the BBC’s coverage of the Camanachd Cup final one last time, Hugh Dan MacLennan will bring down the curtain on a 40-year career with the corporation as a staffer and freelancer.
In the course of this glorious knock, notable for its consistent excellence as much as its longevity, the Lochaber native has become the undisputed voice of shinty — inheriting that mantle from his great friend and mentor John Willie Campbell — while continuing to uphold his reputation as an authority on Gaelic language and culture and working in senior positions in the worlds of academia, print journalism and public transport.
Latterly, MacLennan has carved out yet another niche, in rugby union, firstly as lead commentator on BBC ALBA’s coverage of Edinburgh and Glasgow and more recently as match-day announcer at the Warriors’ Scotstoun home. He will be commentating on the Super Series Championship in the summer too.
It is a lot — so much — to be giving up, but MacLennan is convinced that the time is right. “One reason is I feel I’ve done enough,” he explains. “I think I’ve done enough and I want to hand it over to younger people. I’m now confident that there are enough young people, particularly on the Gaelic side, who can take over without me having to be concerned about who is coming next.
“It’s also a neat way to finish on my own terms — I’m leaving at a point of my own choice. It’s 100 years since the first final at the Bught and it coincides with my own 40-year anniversary. This is the moment to call it.”
With both his parents hailing from the Western Isles, MacLennan has been a fluent Gaelic speaker since childhood and after graduating from the University of Glasgow, he taught the language at Millburn Academy in Inverness, which is where he met Campbell and took his first steps in broadcasting, picking up BBC radio shifts during the school holidays. His earliest duties included reading the Gaelic news during the Falklands War.
“My mother had always told me to become a Gaelic teacher because you’d have a secure job,” he says. “I played along with that, got the qualifications, and went to Millburn in 1979 with the intention of completing my certification.
“Gaelic students in those days were very fortunate. When I came out of college in 1979, I was offered 13 teaching posts, one in Tiree with a house and everything. That was my Sliding Doors moment, because I chose to go to Millburn in Inverness where I hooked up with John Willie Campbell and the rest is history.
“The BBC offered me a job in 1983. I went in as a station assistant, then became a news and current affairs producer. I did my first Camanachd Cup final for them in ’83 as well. We were put on a ten-week production course in London, which just wouldn’t happen now. We even got to go to the pilot of Blackadder: a different world.
“One day when I was down there I got a call, which I thought was a wind-up. They said they wanted me to do the shinty final a week on Saturday. The great David Francey was the lead commentator, and he was down to do England v Scotland at Wembley a few days later. He asked me along to see how he worked. A chauffeur-driven car called for Mr MacLennan at reception and there was me trying to work out who they meant. David was there in the big fur coat, we stride up Wembley Way and up into the gantry, meeting people like David Coleman, Emlyn Hughes . . . I was pinching myself at every turn.
“Sat in the gantry, at half-time, I said, ‘can we talk about the final and how we’re going to work?’ He got out his two big sheets and said, ‘the guy who hits the ball, you put your pen on his name, I’ll do the rest.’ He then touched my elbow, saying, ‘when I do that sonny, you speak’. That was it.”
MacLennan has since shared a Camanachd Cup commentary box with such luminaries of Scottish sports broadcasting as Alastair Alexander, David Begg, Jock Brown, Iain Anderson and, latterly, Gary Innes, the former Fort William captain who is also a successful musician and in 2016 took over from Robbie Shepherd as the presenter of Take the Floor.
MacLennan played himself until his late 20s, when “it was suggested that it was maybe not a good idea to be coming into work on a Monday morning with your fingers all mashed up.” It is, he admits, a source of lingering regret that he never hit the heights as a player, and he cites the former Scotland, Aberdeen, Inverness and Chelsea striker Duncan Shearer (who was born in Fort William) as back-up.
“I had Duncan on stage one night in Lochaber at an event, and he said his biggest sporting regret was never having played in a Camanachd Cup final.
“I would have loved to have given it a go as well, The upside of it for me has been getting the best seat in the house all these years, and been part of so many special occasions.
“My greatest moment in shinty terms was when Gordon MacIntyre, uncle of Robert [the professional golfer from Oban], scored the winner for Kingussie in the 1996 centenary final having lost an eye 18 months previously. I had been within 15 feet of him on the day it happened. I went to see him on the Monday, and he said ‘I’ll be back, don’t you doubt it.’ He managed it, and how.
“His brother, Dougie, Robert’s father, passed the ball to him, a long pass. Gordon killed it, pulled it to the ground and rammed it home. Just a perfect moment.”
MacLennan had a brief stint on the news desk of the Press and Journal — “in fact, probably the briefest career anyone has ever had there: May 29 to October 3, 1989. Me, Michael Gove [now the secretary of state for levelling up, housing and communities] and sundry others were sacked for taking the company on about contract issues and union recognition. These were desperately difficult times — more than a hundred of us were literally shoved out onto the streets with our belongings in black bags.”
For seven years from 2001, MacLennan headed up communications and marketing for Caledonian MacBrayne, the ferry operator; 2008 was also the year that BBC ALBA began broadcasting, and when the Gaelic-language station acquired rights to what was then the Magners League, he turned his attention to the oval-ball sport of which he had been a fan since regular visits to Murrayfield in the 1970s.
“It all happened at very short notice, and the first thing that struck me was that we would need to develop a [Gaelic] vocabulary for rugby,” he says. “Nobody around the table volunteered, they all looked at each other and said, ‘we thought you could do that as well’.
“I plundered all the different vocabs from Ireland, Wales, the Maori language, South Africa. I wanted to invent new words that would be appropriate but I also wanted to dig out old words that would be useful to bring back into the lexicon.
“I found an old word for the swivel that would hold a rope round a lamb’s neck so it wouldn’t choke — ‘udalan’. I used that for fly half, because he’s the pivot in the team. The most famous word I introduced was ‘peanas’ [Gaelic for ‘penalty’]. For some reason everyone loved it and still does.
“Fair play to the SRU for biting the bullet and saying that the games were better being shown in Gaelic than nowhere — those were the options at the time. For me, in an ideal world there would be Gaelic comms on all the big matches with red button English and the same the other way round. That’s what happens in Wales, but there are technical and financial reasons that mean that can’t happen right now and I understand that. That’s where I would like to see it go, though.
“I covered both of Glasgow’s first two finals, in 2014 and 2015. The Belfast one [in which Gregor Townsend’s then charges defeated Munster to claim the first and so far only major title won by a Scottish club in the professional era] I did with Andy Nicol in English live on BBC2. It was a phenomenal night of rugby — the first 40 minutes from Glasgow was the best I’ve seen any team play. Leone Nakarawa was unplayable, and even more memorable was the post-match interview he gave Dougie Vipond who still doesn’t know what he was saying!
“In general terms, the evolution of Gaelic-language broadcasting has been rapid. In the Eighties, the service went from virtually zero, the famous Gaelic minute at Radio Highland each day, to now where it’s a full service. I feel I was extremely lucky to have been part of the founding bricks of the radio service and moving almost seamlessly into a TV channel.
“None of it I could have predicted when I started — it just wasn’t on the horizon. You were happy with slow and steady then it just exploded. It involved a lot of risk-taking, and was down to a few individuals fighting very hard battles within the BBC system.
“When I look around and see so many young people coming through, it’s extraordinary. That’s all linked to Gaelic schools. But there is still a reluctance to accept it as part of the mainstream, and I don’t think the Scottish government backs it as much as it should. They are ultra sensitive about spending money on Gaelic in case there is a backlash. They are 10, 15, even 20 years ahead of us in Wales and Ireland where they have a selection of services, but to have gone to where we were to where we are has been nothing short of extraordinary.
“I would like to see some more women coming through in sport. They are to be found in every part of Gaelic broadcasting, particularly at the higher levels, but so far have not quite made the break into on-screen presence in terms of commentating. BBC Radio nan Gàidheal’s sports programming has made great progress in this regard, but generally speaking some more work could be done, and that’s maybe part of my own reason for getting out of the way.”
When the bigger dogs moved in on the rugby rights, MacLennan was approached by the Warriors for a role which has grown to encompass hosting the Club KubeNet sponsor’s lounge, issuing the pre-game rallying call in the supporters’ clubhouse and the match announcing itself.
“None of that was planned either. BBC ALBA lost the contract, which I saw as a vote of confidence because we had established a market and a way of doing things. We always felt that the major players would come in at some point.
“Glasgow is a bit of a gig, but really enjoyable. I would always prefer to do the commentaries, but the enjoyment I’ve had out of the relationship with the fans is tremendous. It’s a commitment and that would have been 18 Friday nights or whatever. If you’re going to take a decision to pull out of something, I think you have to do it properly and finally; it’s not fair to other people to pick and choose. I don’t want to be tied to a fixture list that is dreamed up in Dublin, I’d rather be playing golf somewhere or whatever.”
The minds of MacLennan and his wife Kathleen have been “focused” by the health issues they have both suffered in the past two years.
“I was diagnosed with prostate cancer purely by chance because I was undergoing treatment for psoriatic arthritis,” MacLennan recounts. “Part of the regime was to do regular blood tests, and one flagged up an issue. They monitored it, saying they would do so until it required an intervention, and in January of this year my PSA [prostate-specific antigen] count had reached a threshold where they offered me two choices.
“One was removal of the prostate and the second was to go on a course of hormones and then radiotherapy for four weeks. I took the second option and completed it seven weeks ago. I’ve had no after-effects at all. I have a check-up in May, but I’m quite confident that I will require no further treatment.
“I’m becoming a bit of a bore telling people to take the test. My wife took a poo test and it came up with a tiny spot of blood — the cancer was small and thankfully caught early.
“It happened just before last year’s Camanachd Cup final. She was in ICU the night before the cup final. I was swithering about whether to come up the road on the Saturday. The surgeon who was looking after her told me to clear out, get away, there was nothing I could do anyway.
“It was still a big decision for me to leave her and focus on what I was doing. She is now clear of cancer, but it has focused our minds on what we want to do from now on. It’s all a question of priorities and having done everything we’ve done we want to enjoy our retirement. We’ve booked a cruise on the Panama Canal next January and that ain’t moving for anyone.”
The couple live in Alloa, coincidentally in the house where Grant Gilchrist, the Scotland lock forward, grew up. “His old weights room is my study,” MacLennan says. “He used to train on a trampoline out the back, which had tonnes of gravel as a base in the bit of the garden where I wanted to plant my potatoes. I had to shift all that gravel, as I frequently like to remind him.”
After more than an hour of reminiscing, MacLennan reaches for a contemporary reference when I ask what he will miss.
“If I could bottle the sound that happened in the last 25 seconds of last Saturday’s Murrayfield game [against Italy] when Scotland broke from their own line and 67,000 people got on their feet and blew as hard as they could so Blair Kinghorn made it to the line . . . I’ve not heard anything like that before at Murrayfield, a mix of relief and ecstasy. These things I will miss, you can’t not, but it’s time to look forward.”
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Ouch, Bristol thumped 46-24 by Tigers.
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Embra got rubbed in Galway, but Glasgow are 28 – 0 up at Thomond at half time. Fekitoa is a very lucky lad that his tackle on Smith wasn’t reviewed, I’ve seen a still and it’s clear shoulder to head. Fortunately Smith passed his HIA.
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Bloody hell, Glasgow have scored 4 tries against Munster! In Munster! (Sorry Trisk).
BUT!!! Still have the second half to go. We shouldn’t lose from here – but this is a Scottish side in Ireland.
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Ticht getting his revenge at the breakdown there…
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This is topical
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I used to like Trimble, he was always funny but his slip is showing in terms of his bias
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38 – 14 Glasgow on 62 mins
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DeeBee pleasing RG Snyman is back
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Good win for Glasgow, battered them.
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BALOUCOOOOOOOOUNE is baaaaack!!!
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Bulls with cracking albeit jammy try.
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Just in case no-one belives us….
No footage of the hit that Ticht mentioned though, although spoken of in commentary.
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I didn’t realise the Ulster game was in the player, Viaplay has darts and football on it.
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Camanachd Cup
Camanachd is what is popularly known as shinty….?
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Oh …wait I only skim-read initially…. I see it mentioned explicitly now.
Here, hurling “as Gaeilge” is “iomanacht” but the stick is a “caman”. The women’s game is camogie – used to have different rules but now is pretty much same as hurling.
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Trisk, ioman is Scottish Gaelic for shinty and the stick is the caman
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I’m just going to post this here in case I forget and follow up on it later,
“Since her death in 1979, the woman who discovered what the universe is made of has not so much as received a memorial plaque. Her newspaper obituaries do not mention her greatest discovery. […] Every high school student knows that Isaac Newton discovered gravity, that Charles Darwin discovered evolution, and that Albert Einstein discovered the relativity of time. But when it comes to the composition of our universe, the textbooks simply say that the most abundant atom in the universe is hydrogen. And no one ever wonders how we know.”
—
Jeremy Knowles, discussing the complete lack of recognition Cecilia Payne gets, even today, for her revolutionary discovery. (via alliterate)
OH WAIT LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT CECILIA PAYNE.
Cecilia Payne’s mother refused to spend money on her college education, so she won a scholarship to Cambridge.
Cecilia Payne completed her studies, but Cambridge wouldn’t give her a degree because at that time there’s not much exposure for woman, so she said to heck with that and moved to the United States to work at Harvard.
Cecilia Payne was the first person ever to earn a Ph.D. in astronomy from Radcliffe College, with what Otto Strauve called “the most brilliant Ph.D. thesis ever written in astronomy.”
Not only did Cecilia Payne discover what the universe is made of, she also discovered what the sun is made of (Henry Norris Russell, a fellow astronomer, is usually given credit for discovering that the sun’s composition is different from the Earth’s, but he came to his conclusions four years later than Payne—after telling her not to publish).
Cecilia Payne is the reason we know basically anything about variable stars (stars whose brightness as seen from earth fluctuates). Literally every other study on variable stars is based on her work.
Cecilia Payne was the first woman to be promoted to full professor from within Harvard, and is often credited with breaking the glass ceiling for women in the Harvard science department and in astronomy, as well as inspiring entire generations of women to take up science.
Cecilia Payne is awesome and everyone should know her.
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Well played Glasgow ….
However, we were “cat” in the 1st half….
2nd half replacements made a huge difference…. might have even been interesting until that terrible pass from the restart at 31-14….
Nothing to be gained by naming individuals – but there’s a few that look done. I’d hope the fifteen on the pitch at the end start in SA (give or take)
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Sorry, typo, iomain is shinty
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Stick is a camán – long A …. for some reason Gaelic has the fada backwards…. but Irish has it like an acute accent in French….
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And should be a fada on the ó in camógie (kam-oh-ghee not kam-oggy )
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Risk, I don’t think I’ve seen that accent in Scottish Gaelic, it’s always forward, at least in the textbooks I have.
I seem to recall that this is an ongoing process as pronunciation varies across the highlands and islands in Scotland and the move is to unify things, just like Hugh Dan says in the article there, there is often a need to invent terminology or spelling as there are no words for these things yet,
eg telebhisean
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Me, Michael Gove…. and sundry others were sacked for taking the company on about ….. union recognition
Unexpected conjunction of people and activities….
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Irish has úd for try…. cìc for “kick” – cic pionós is penalty kick, cic saor is free kick
TG4 (known to all as TG Ceathair) is equivalent of BBC Alba – also do great coverage of URC (and predecessors).
Irish tends to veer between the Spanish example (eg tren = train) – take the word and incorporate it with suitable spelling or the German style – invent a brand new word (fernseher for television)
Hence we have ráidio and télefís …. but ollscóil is university….
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pronunciation varies across the highlands and islands
Same with Irish – Munster Irish is the “caideán” or standard but Connemara Irish is relatively interchangeable – Ulster Irish is meant to be a different thing entirely….
There’s a club in the Dingle Gaeltacht – Rugbaí Chorca Dhuibhne – I’ve heard the last bit of their name rendered as
Gwee-nah, Gee-nah, Dwee-nah, and Div-nee – just by people in the Munster Branch.
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Trisk – I know very little about it (am obviously going to opine anyway) but I’d guess that Ulster Irish is probably more influenced by Scots Gaelic?
F’rexample, Saoirse is pronounced Sor-sha rather than Seer-sha.
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Really nasty no-arms tackle on Burns at the ruck. Yellow card given (we thought it should be red), but the Saffer commentator is trying to argue that there was nothing in it.
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Good win for Ulster
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FT: Ulster 32 – 23 Bulls.
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Ticht – I was pleased with that, particularly considering all our Ireland players were rested. We’ll have them back for next week’s trip to Dublin for the European Cup … but so will the Blue Meanies. Gulp.
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Ulster Irish is probably more influenced by Scots Gaelic
And vice versa apparently….
I’d have Saoirse as Sare- shuh
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Trisk – ah, another regional accent variation!
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… although your -shuh is probably a more accurate rendering than my -sha for all of them.
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OT – thanks for the Led By Donkeys video. God but they’re venal.
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Great win for the Lions yesterday, coming back from 16 points down to win by a score. Guys down here reckon Ulster had a homer ref and TMO, but Bulls fans will whine about anything. Ask TomP, he should be free of the old Bulls blubber by now.
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Did I mention the great win for the Lions? Just checking.
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Did the Lions win? Didn’t notice because of the excellent win for Glasgow in Munster (first time since 2014). Franco Smith is working wonders with this squad.
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Ticht, I was about to write a lenghty answer to your well meaning posts about the French reacting to Macron’s reform vs the British way of opposing it, were they confronted to the same situation.
I read the very brash and very stupid article by Agnès Poirier (who is she???) with the title “We French are born to confront authority”.
Save yourself some time and read BTL of the Observer’s editorial piece, the posts by Manchemec and LostinBruges.
Theyre both better informed than these two articles.
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BB, once the Lions get a bit more cash, we’ll be hammering Leinster week in and week out.
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And we have the chance to put down that marker when Leinster are in town in a couple of weeks. A full house of points, and a couple of favourable results and we could even sneak into the playoffs and duff the bastards again in Dublin, as we mount a late, glorious charge to the crown!*
* I don’t think I’m still pickled from the pub yesterday, but all bets are off.
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