Robert Burns and the #IndyRef

Unedifying times in the run-up to the Scottish independence referendum as people with lots of time on their hands resort to arguing over how a man who died in 1796 would vote in 2014.

Yes, as Scots come together all over the world to celebrate his memory, some people are unable to resist claiming him as one of their own, as if we’d see him at a Better Together stall in Dumfries or a Yes Scotland meeting in Ayr. Silly stuff, not to mention unhelpful.

Every couple of months or so, some academic or politician lays claim to the National Poet. This evening, Scotland Tonight will have ‘experts’ on to argue it out. Was he a unionist? Was he a nationalist? Is a Nationalist in the 1790s the same as a Nationalist in 2014? Is the British state in the 1790s the British state of 2014? What would Burns have made of the EU? Does he feel the SNP’s fiscal plans are feasible? Is he a fan of Trident? Did he support Team GB? Why didn’t he add #indyref to the end of his poems?

If nothing else, it is unpleasant to see The Bard, a man who brings Scots together around the globe, being used as a pawn in the politics of our age. On both sides, claiming Burns’s phantom vote is a ploy for the patriotic ground. Unionists want to bend over backwards to prove that they love their country as much as the next Scot, and Nationalists want to show that it is they who have Scotland’s best interests at heart. It’s playground stuff.

This is not his fight. To extrapolate from his writings a definitive vote on the Scottish referendum is a cheap and tawdry ploy. The man is dead, and died in a world so fundamentally different from ours that it is pointless to draw him into the unbecoming bickering of 2013. As some politicians are fond of saying, there is more that unites us than divides us, and Burns can be a symbol of that, if only he were left alone. The debate must be moved on. Burns will still be Scotland’s Bard the day after the referendum and Scots are going to have to reunite, whatever the result. Burns could remain something that Scots unite around, but presenting him as a partisan player in the debate not only sullies his memory but also makes the post-referendum healing process all the more difficult. So for all our sakes, let him rest in peace.

A Visit to Twickenham

Half-time came and a vicious rumour began circulating around the North stand, section L15. It went roughly as follows: on the 1st of December 2012 England beat New Zealand. A very quiet, very humble man told us this. He had been sitting just over there, on that fateful day, and he pointed at the tunnel.

- By the New Zealand bench, said the unassuming Englishman.

- Were you?

- Yep, I was. And at half-time we all said they’ll come back, they’re the world champions.

- How self-deprecating of you. They are the world champions after all.

He wasn’t listening. I could have insulted his mother’s mother and he would have kept at it. He went on.

- And they did come back!

- They certainly did.

- Then we scored two, just like that! And do you know what I heard Richie McCaw say?

- What did he say?

I played along, my eyes rolling around my sockets like a pinball machine on ecstasy.

- He said, and I quote, “What the fuck do we do now?”

- Did he really?

- Upon my life, good sir. And you know when you hear Richie McCaw the captain of the world champions saying that…! Well!

- Absolutely!

- And it was good for the game.

- Yes, good for the game, absolutely.

- Showed all you lot, the rest of you, that they could be beaten.

- And we are grateful, we really are.

But what of Twickenham, Twickers, “HQ” (for the total berk), I hear you ask.

A silent, corporate, boozy blanket of hush for most of the afternoon. Twickenham, a stadium that resembles a cathedral in its size, scope, and self-importance, was often awkwardly silent. Sure, it rose to crescendos with two minutes to go but the deal is more, “you play well, then we’ll cheer you”, as opposed to the Welsh who prefer a more jovial and helpful “We’ll cheer you to help you play well”. The Stade de France is often silent like Twickenham, but the Gallic silence is more in protest. They are a public that pays attention, knows its rugby, and knows what it wants and expects. If the team doesn’t perform, the fans withhold their labour. The English silence is a deafening racket of apathy; uneducated and sedated apathy.

There are no separate stands, just one all-encompassing coliseum-esque stand, overbearing in its uniformity and distance from the pitch. Not as steep as the Millennium Stadium and with none of the decibels. Every stand is the same, suffocating: there’s no escape. (These are good things, most of them, exactly what you want in a stadium.)You’re packed in – the seats are smaller than Murrayfield. The drinking is more obvious, too, than in Edinburgh, and while booze makes the Scottish fan more boisterous, it makes the English fan more sedate. The crowd, controlled by the TV, takes that little bit longer to react to the referee than at Murrayfield where every penalty to Scotland and opposition knock-on is whooped and hollered. This tells you more about the quality of the teams than the fans.

This Calcutta Cup match never had the fizzle or edge that the return fixture has in Edinburgh where it’s the biggest event of the season. It’s probably just not approached with the same excitement as England versus Wales or France which often have more of a bearing on the Championship, an outcome that rarely concerns Scotland. For example, the fan to my left supped his way through the first half all docile and dopey, and only piped up when England were well clear at which point he felt it was okay to start praising everything Scotland did, gushing with patronising platitudes. When Farrell kicked for the corner with 2 minutes remaining he proclaimed, “thank god, the Jonny Wilkinson era is over!” When I pointed out that the era that he hated so much was England’s most successful ever he supped his pint and shook his head. “It was boring, mate.” I rest my case. Richie Gray was “blondie” or “long hair”, as was Denton. There was a disappointing lack of knowledge or insight or humility in the English folk to my left and right, no subtlety of appraisal or appreciation of nuance. Everything was either “Absolutely bloody bwilliant!” or “absolutely atrocious!” The Scottish man in front of me did a good line in self-deprecation though, which must be a particularly Scottish trait.

So we left Twickenham shaking our heads, rueing the bits and bobs that can be improved here and there, the tweaks in selection and the approach in both attack and defence. All the humour that I could see, all the wit, was with the Scottish fans. “One Andy Murray, there’s only one Andy Murray, one Andy Muuuurray!” was belted out as we left the stadium by one Famous Groused fan with a solid grounding in the art of irony, honed over many, many crushing disappointments.

Skyfall: sexist?

A response to Giles Coren's article: http://reciperifle.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/bond-villain.html

Giles, I agree with some of the points you make about Skyfall and disagree with others. It seems to me that you have fallen in to the trap of taking fictional female characters and trying to extrapolate messages and trends that tell us about how we view women in the 21^st century. Female characters are never taken as just characters, they have to be viewed in terms of something beyond themselves, everywoman, as an explicitly female character. Why can't they just be a character?

I agree with your comments about the sex worker-whisky-murder-William Tell-cheap gag-shower surpise. It was a weak, cringe-inducing point in the film. If nothing else, downright creepy.

However, I don’t agree that Judi Dench’s M dying and being replaced by a man sends a bad message. She is an incredibly "strong" female character who has been in 7 Bond films and has challenged James Bond in every one of them. If you actually examine the situation, she died heroically, wounded in 'battle' – she refused to just be shuffled out the door. Female characters dying is not, in itself, sexist – women die too... As for being replaced by a man, she was going to be replaced by either a man or a woman. So it was a man. That, in itself, is not sexist. Every time a man replaces a woman in a job, are we supposed to view that as a defeat for the female species? If you choose to watch Judi Dench’s M in terms of "gender politics", then why not celebrate her character for being the "strong" female film icon that dragged Bond into a more modern age. She says it herself to Bond’s face in Goldeneye, calling him a “sexist, misogynistic dinosaur”. She’s one of the 'strongest' female characters on the screen.

As for Moneypenny, is it sexist that she decided that a career in the field wasn’t for her? What about all the women who decide that a career as some sort of ‘licensed to kill’ Lara Croft isn’t for them? I’m sure most secretaries don’t see themselves as second-raters, but you clearly do. Is her ‘settling’ for a desk-job a betrayal of feminism? A capitulation to the misogynistic forces at work in modern Britain? Or just her decision? Plus, she’s M’s secretary, not Bond’s.

So there you go. Despite the Macallan and the shower, I thought it was fantastic.

Reassessing Chelsea's Champions League Win

Abnormally, the sun is rising in south-west London but the dust has not yet settled on Chelsea’s magnificent Champions League campaign. There are those still who hold Barcelona up as a paradigm of footballing virtue and still fail to applaud Chelsea for beating them over 180 minutes of football. There are still those who fail to recognise the achievement of beating a Bayern Munich team in their own back yard, a team who had progressed past the best team in Spain, Real Madrid.

The point of this article is to dispel the myths of modern football, to outlaw certain words and to maybe provide a new slant on what it means to be “better” at football than another team. I will take Chelsea as my primary example and seek to undermine various phrases that currently blight the modern game.

1. “Chelsea played negative football”

Negative football? What does this mean? Did they deliberately score own goals? That is the only way I can conceive of a team playing negative football. So long as a team is not deliberately kicking the ball into their own net, they are playing positive football. I would ban the use of the words positive and negative – they are meaningless and have arisen out of a culture that has seen football stray from its core purpose into the entertainment business. Normally, and always at the elite end of the game, there are far more neutrals watching a game than fans of either team. These neutrals want to be entertained and they privilege the team that entertains them. Entertainment usually means going out to score as many goals as possible. Most neutrals are not the absolute connoisseur who admires heroic defence as much as silky attack. This is a shame, but it’s also a fact of life.

So the friction is between Chelsea’s desire to win the match (tie) and the neutrals desire to be entertained. I make no apologies for respecting the team that is doing right by its fans in its efforts to win. A team has no responsibility to please the neutral. They are obliged to win, to try to win, and therefore to please the fans. Playing well is a bonus. Every right-minded fan would rather win a Champions League “ugly” (whatever that means...) than lose in a semi-final playing beautiful football. Sport at the highest level is about winning.

Chelsea had no responsibility to go out all guns blazing, throwing caution to the wind and paying scant regard to their team’s ability in relation to that of the eleven supremos opposite you. Whoever said attack is the best form of defence is a liar and has never had Messi, Xavi and Iniesta running full pelt at them.

2. “Barca were the better team”

We love sport because of its inherently empirical nature. There is a winner determined by a score. As far as I’m concerned, the score does not lie. We love sport because sport really pays no attention to subjective measures like ‘better’ except the score. That is why the score exists, as a judge for who is better.

Undoubtedly, Barcelona are a better football team than Chelsea. If they played each other 10 times Barca would probably win 7, Chelsea 1 and they might draw 2. But that’s not how football works. League football is closer to this model, hence why teams would rather win a league than a cup – it’s a better judge. But over 180 minutes, Chelsea were better. They managed to produce the performance that led to the one victory and one of the draws. Do they not deserve credit for producing the two performances that led to them scoring more goals than Barcelona?

Simply, Barcelona played the most wonderful attacking football and Chelsea played the most dogged defensive football. Football is about blocking shots just as much as it is about shooting. Barcelona’s attack is wonderful, though, isn’t it? Or is it? What is the point of attacking? How do you judge an attack? Goals. Barcelona’s attack was successful in every way except in the final analysis of actually putting the ball in the back of the net. You can have as many shots as you like but if you don’t hit the target then what’s the point? I’m not going to join in the fetishising of Barcelona’s liquid football if their shooting is so poor as it was against Chelsea. They missed a penalty, too, possibly one of the few moments in football where the responsibility lies so heavily with the taker.

Chelsea set their stall out to play a certain way. They pulled it off. Barcelona set their stall out to play a certain way. They failed. And despite the fact that Chelsea were playing such defensive minded football (not negative), they still outscored Barca by three goals to two over 180 minutes of football.

Chelsea were the victims of the fetishising of Barcelona. Such contrived fawning is an unpleasant sight in sport and it’s a hangover from when Barcelona truly were great. They would win with such grace and style and panache. But when these qualities are prized above winning, I lose interest. Sure, Chelsea fans would have loved to have progressed playing wonderful football but every team has its limits and you have to play the opposition. They succeeded magnificently. Beating Barcelona over two legs is impressive, outscoring them is heroic. So I salute the shot-blocking winners of Chelsea more than the squandering wastefulness of Barcelona and say that the better team is that which carries out its intentions in such a way that results in a victory. The only thing to say to those who claim Barcelona were the better team is “prove it”. They did not, could not. Hence, Chelsea progressed.

3. “Chelsea didn’t deserve to win”

Who ‘deserves’ to win? Who decides who ‘deserves’ to win? What on earth means that one team has the divine right to score more goals than the opposition, seeing as that is what winning is?

The word ‘deserve’ should be removed from sporting lexicon and we should all accept that in 99.9% of cases, the team who wins is the team who ‘deserved to win’. Why should a team who records 50 shots and scores no goal ‘deserve’ to beat a team who shoots once and scores? Either one team has an excellent goalkeeper who saves all these shots (in which case, credit to them for having a good goalkeeper), the shots need to be of a higher quality to beat the goalkeeper or the team that manages to let that one shot become a goal needs to have a look at why it managed to let a team with what appears to be an awful attack score a goal against them.

Bayern had wasted 14 corners before Chelsea took full advantage of their first. Well done Bayern for playing in such a way that resulted in those corners but either the delivery wasn’t good enough or their heading is not good enough or Chelsea’s defending of those corners was excellent. Whatever the combination of reasons, it is the team that manages to defend 14 corners and score from 1 that I admire rather than the team that fails to score from 14 and lets in 1.

Why is it that so many privilege the wasteful team with the poor defence over the solid team with the potent attack that takes its chances. No team ‘deserves’ to win as a result of creating lots of opportunities that please the neutral viewer. Such a team may well be better at football but that is largely irrelevant if they cannot, on the day, put the ball in the back of the net.

Bayern were apparently the better team and ‘deserved’ to win. But they, like Barcelona, missed a penalty. Messi and Robben were wasteful. Why should a team which takes an awful penalty kick win? I see no reason why they should. Chelsea’s goalkeeper beat Bayern’s penalty taker so why do people say Bayern ‘deserved’ to win?

4. Conclusion

Let us ignore those who make pronouncements about what is positive and what is negative. To use these terms is to mistake the point of sport. I love attacking football and certainly prefer it to defensive minded football but not at the expense of victory. Anyone who disagrees when it comes to their team has questionable ideas about what they want from their team. I repeat, give me the victoriously heroic shot-blockers of Chelsea over the creative yet ultimately wasteful Barcelona every time.

Let us ignore those who think the team who wastes 14 corners is better than the team who scores a wonderful goal from their 1 corner.

And finally, let us ignore those who say that one team deserves a victory over another. Sport is the great equaliser. It may appear that Barcelona and Bayern are better football teams than Chelsea but football disagrees. It challenges your preconceived notions of what it means to be a good football team. In 99.9% of cases, the team that wins deserves to win. To say that Bayern deserve to win is to excuse the wanton wastefulness of Gomes, the lack of bottle exhibited by Arjen Robben and to deny the terrific lesson in defence given by Ashley Cole and the whole-hearted performance given by Didier Drogba. That, I cannot bring myself to do.

Tweeting Player Power

Just a short note on player-power in rugby and football.

It's got out of hand, hasn't it? And it's mainly due to Twitter.

At the end of the 6 Nations, the RFU were looking to appoint a permanent Head Coach of the England rugby team. Nick Mallett was the main and then the only option apart from keeping Stuart Lancaster in his role. England had a good tournament and the team was clearly happy.

Twitter gave these happy and contented players (the ones chosen by Lancaster, of course...) the public forum to support their Head Coach's bid for permanency. They abused it. Several players went above their station and put their employers in a very difficult position. Whether Lancaster was the right man is not the point; that was the RFU's decision and not that of the players. They had no right to publicly name their preference, thereby holding their employer to ransom. By all means they should have made their views known through senior players and the captain but to go public was inappropriate and unprofessional.

Imagine if the RFU had disagreed with the players. To do so would not have been as stupid as it sounds. I doubt all the players who Lancaster left out were feeling as cheery about his permanent appointment as those Tweeters. The public would know immediately that Player A preferred Lancaster and so would Mallett. Hardly the ideal start to a new regime.

Similarly with the FA, numerous players voiced their support for Harry Redknapp. So it turns out, Roy Hodgson is the new manager instead. That immediately undermines Hodgson and leaves him in a role which he knows several senior players don't want him in.

What were both sets of players trying to achieve? Was it to save/consolidate their own international careers? Was it with a genuine concern for the direction of their national team? Probably a bit of both. But as soon as they took to their Twitter accounts they showed disrespect to their national associations/union, disrespect to the other candidates seeking to land the job and an extremely unprofessional attitude with which to begin the reign of a new national manager.

6 Nations Half-Back Evaluation

This has not been a vintage tournament for half-backs.

For England, the distinctly average stop-gap Lee Dickson was eventually found out against Ireland and Ben Youngs thankfully returned to somewhere near form. Owen Farrell is ready to play international rugby but his passing is too often behind the man.

Mike Blair also returned to his form of 2009 but his teammates were too often slower in thought and deed. Greig Laidlaw is arguably not the answer at fly-half though he did provide much needed direction even if direction did not manifest itself in penetration.

Conor Murray impressed me as an all-round scrum-half and will hopefully recover quickly so that he can push his case for the Lions. Sexton confirmed his place as the most capable and rounded fly-half in the competition.

For France, several combinations were tried and more often failed. Yachvili missed out through injury though Parra should have automatically replaced him and not Julien Dupuy. Lionel Beauxis sadly failed to produce his early season form and PSA should surely stick with Francois Trinh-Duc.

Italy have no half-backs of value except perhaps Bennvenuti. Burton plays so deep and so lateral his backline has no chance.

For Wales, Mike Philips seemed to find the right balance between passing, kicking and utilising his strong running game, a balance that he lost for a season. His performances have been tidy, understated, and classy. Wales’ success has come in spite of Rhys Priestland and not because of it. He fell apart at Twickenham and I feel he is too keen to kick the ball. His confidence and composure from the world cup was non-existent. This was no doubt related to his aberrant goal-kicking.

"Oh Danny Boy"

Such clichéd headlines that very closely match the title of this piece are now obsolete in relation to Danny Cipriani. He is no longer a boy and certainly not a boy wonder. He has served his apprenticeship, albeit an atypical one, and is now surely ready to push for a place in England's national side from the dog pound of unwanted and undervalued players that is the Sale Sharks.

I have long been a fan of Danny Cipriani. He burst on to the European scene at a time when defences were very much on top (possibly like Kelly Brook) and the chances of a 10 breaking were definitely as slim as her. We'll get on to that lithe temptress that so distracted young Daniel very soon. Here was a 10 with genuine pace, the quickest in the team. He wasn't just a sprinter though, he was a footballer too, with a very cultured left foot.

And he had swagger and was good looking and there were 'human interest' stories about his mother driving a London cab to help make ends meet. He was undoubtedly naive and stories about training ground fights with Josh Lewsey over missed tackles didn't help. This is the first time I have mentioned Cipriani's tackling, or lack of tackling. It is not his strong suit and I am often too keen to sweep this awkward fact under the carpet to focus on the parts of his game where he is is outstanding.

He made a wonderful test debut at Twickenham against Ireland where he exhibited such control and poise, qualities that Owen Farrell has shown recently, although with a harder edge and a greater willingness to tackle than Cipriani. He even swore on the BBC. Irresistibly rock star and everyone loved him.

Of course, to think these thoughts was naive in the extreme, though not as naive as Danny. It was exciting though, seeing a 10 who could do all these things in such an audacious fashion not seen since Carlos Spencer. There were few detractors that day, though hordes have emerged since.

Two months after being crowned the new King of Twickers, he suffered one of the worst injuries around, the fracture dislocation of the ankle. Awful luck. But he came back 6 weeks ahead of schedule,a  testament to his own hard work, a much-questioned virtue of his, sometimes correctly, and sometimes not.

Back in the England side under Martin Johnson, chargedowns became the symbol of Danny's downfall. He fell out with Johnson, got injured again and then came Australia.

I still find it staggering that some questioned his move to the Melbourne Rebels. It is a tournament made for Cipriani and what 22 year old would turn down the opportunity to move to Australia and get paid loadsa money to play rugby on hard, fast pitches across the Southern Hemisphere. Sounds better than the bus to Newcastle...

But he'll be unavailable for England, they crowed. And? He was never going to be there forever, he was 22 and looking to broaden his horizons. Surely there was no problem with sacrificing two years of England caps which were never going to arrive anyway because the dogged Leicester streak in Martin Johnson hated everything that Cipriani stood for from the very beginning. So good luck to him, that was my view at the time.

Since then Cipriani has had 'disciplinary' issues. He leaned over a bar and nicked a bottle of vodka, hardly a crime, though was treated as if he'd then brought it down with a crash of alcoholic glass over Rod MacQueen's grey head rather than pouring it down his throat. The Australian move hasn't gone all that well, with moments of brilliance tempered by that old inconvenience, the need to tackle.

With his contract with the Rebels coming to an end and keen to return home, few clubs were interested in a prima donna who may well make searing breaks but who also is an arrogant celebrity before before professional rugby. Shame on these clubs. What an indictment of their club that they have such little faith in their own abilities and values, that Cipriani might flourish there.

Sale Sharks are the real winners in all of this, and Cipriani may well be too. With Steve Diamond and his strong personality running the show, they are hoovering up talent that other clubs have either missed or feel isn't quite right for them. Andy Powell, the first problem child and world renowned racer of golf buggies, was the first. Apparently he needs a minder with him to make sure he behaves. But more importantly, Sale have trusted him, they have put in place the necessary measures to make sure he repays that trust and is doing well. Other clubs have missed a trick.

Hopefully they can do the same with Cipriani and his clichéd personality of flawed genius. Being in Manchester and not London (or Melbourne) should help and the ethos of Sale may well closely resemble the 'Once a Wasp, always a Wasp' feel of that club. He can do things that very English players of his generation can. Whether he will learn to tackle well enough to convince an England coach of his talents is arguable, but even if he doesn't make it back to that international level, Sale can hide him around the backline in defence before reaping the pacy rewards of placing their faith and trust in a lost soul. I hope he does well - players of his calibre, flawed as they may be, and they are all the more interesting for these flaws, are rare, and we should enjoy them while they are around.