Saturday sport – rugby and boxing
Yesterday was one for sports-following – in my case, the resumption of the Six Nations tournament and then, by chance, a boxing bout I joined via radio.
For the rugby union internationals – Scotland against France at Murrayfield and then England against Wales at Twickenham – I made an early (breakfast-time) decision to pass on the former entirely in favour of concentrating exclusively upon the slew of domestic chores that had been allotted to me, a relaxed read of the Saturday edition of The Times newspaper and then a brief post-lunch nap.
I was thereby able to set myself up for a mid-afternoon immersion in ITV’s coverage of the England/Wales game shut away in the snug (television) room in front of a roaring wood-burning stove fire whilst nursing a collection of fruitcake slices and successive cups of tea.
Whilst no heavyweight, Mark Pougatch is a perfectly serviceable and competent anchor but I’m not a great fan of ITV’s go-to England studio pundits Sir Clive Woodward and Jonny Wilkinson.
As a player in his day Woodward was a worthy England centre threequarter but, for me, he was never more than an average coach who got lucky.
He began his long tenure in charge of England by promising a semi-revolutionary freestyle attacking game – which proved almost wholly unsuccessful – and then dramatically altered his strategy to straightforward pragmatism and getting the best out of his playing group, which by 1999 was coalescing around an eventual core of Martin Johnson, Lawrence Dallaglio, Richard Hill, Ben Kay, Jason Leonard, Neil Back, Matt Dawson, Jonny Wilkinson, Will Greenwood and Jason Robinson.
The England squad won the 2003 Rugby World Cup, not Woodward, but since then (despite his disastrous stint as coach of the 2005 British & Irish Lions – a 0-3 loss in the Test series against New Zealand) he has chipped out a side-line as a venerable rugby media pundit.
Jonny Wilkinson will go down in history as a truly great England fly half but his devotion to improvement and his obsessive personality causes me to believe that he has never really been able to relax and enjoy himself whilst playing rugby or indeed doing anything else.
Although he’s improved over the years, his intensity diminishes the quality of his punditry because of his tendency to issue “process-speak” by the yard in a near monotone.
I shall not continue with a detailed analysis of yesterday’s proceedings at Twickenham – Rusters will either have watched it themselves and/or be able to read about it in their favourite newspapers – other than to record that it was a classic game of two halves.
The first stanza was a messy, stop-start, affair dominated by the front five forwards of both teams buggering about at scrum-time and elsewhere, a referee who failed to get a proper grip and veered between indecision and excessive whistle-blowing and the tactics of both sides lacking real cohesion.
Frustrating as the second half may have been for England supporters in having to behold Wales making a stirring fight-back from being 0-17 down to lose only 23-19 (and having a chance of snatching an unlikely victory during a prolonged period of overtime), the fact is that it turned into a full-bloodied and highly-watchable Test match.
Whatever gloss he might seek to put upon it in his interviews, Eddie Jones has plenty of issues still to deal with. Based upon the first half, yesterday I had been expecting England to “sort a few things out” in the changing room at half-time and then blast away to an eventual 25-point victory.
After eighteen months of ignoring him and then belatedly switching horses to embrace a Marcus Smith-inspired “all court” attacking strategy, Jones ought to be deeply concerned about the current England pack’s lack of grunt and domination of the set pieces and breakdowns.
Test rugby is about squeezing the life out of the opposition’s strategies and imposing one’s own. England did neither in the second half yesterday and were hanging on desperately towards the end.
A lot of work needs to be done before the games against Ireland and France.
Separately, having retired to bed at 9.15pm and – as per my normal practice – turning to Five Live on my bedside radio to accompany my descent into slumber, I then awoke again at about 10.40pm to find myself joining the 9th round of the bout in Glasgow between the unbeaten, much-vaunted, undisputed world super-lightweight champion Josh Taylor (“the Tartan Tornado”) and his also previously unbeaten challenger Jack Catterall from Chorley.
From the commentary – having dropped Taylor in the eighth round and apparently dominated throughout – the final rounds sounded like little more than a triumphal victory procession for Catterall.
Until the judges’ verdict came through – a split decision in favour of Taylor, two of them scoring it to him 114-111 and 113-112, and third giving it to Catterall 113-122.
The Five Live commentators could not believe it – one of them described it as a “complete travesty” and nor, it seems, could anyone else.
Already the outcome is taking its unwelcome place in history as one of the most ridiculous results in British boxing in living memory.
See here for the report by Matt Davies as appear today upon the website of the – DAILY MAIL
