Notes from a sporting week 03/03/08

Silly Danny:

Why oh why couldn’t you have stayed in with a cup of tea and a packet of biscuits? Hopefully that is the question England fullback Danny Cipriani will have been asking himself on Thursday after he was unceremoniously dumped from the England team who went on to lose 15-6 to Scotland at Murrayfield on Saturday, after he was photographed leaving a nightclub at just after midnight on Thursday morning. According to Cipriani he went in to the Mayfair club for around 20 minutes, had a chat and a soft drink, dropped off some tickets and then headed home to bed just after midnight (though why said friend couldn’t pick them up from anywhere else and at a more sociable time, has not been cleared up).

In all likelihood he would have made little difference to the score or performance seeing as it was the Scottish forwards’ dominance of the breakdown that was the key factor, allied to the England pack’s ability to undo a lot of hard word with stupid offences at key times. Sure he may have relieved Wilkinson of the burden of kicking from deep, but any hope of seeing his running game in action would have been lost amid the mud and England’s statuesque backline.

There should be the probability of him making his start next weekend against Ireland at Twickenham, so poor was England’s display that it would be better to see what he can do over 80 minutes, rather than wait for the two-test tour to New Zealand in the summer and coach Brian Ashton has said he will be in contention regardless of what occurred in the last seven days.

But why then did Ashton react in so harsh a manner to so minor an offence? Like so many of these incidents that become public we are not really given much insight into what occurred. All we were told was that he was dropped after ‘inappropriate behaviour’. Quite what was inappropriate about his behaviour and/or what rules he broke were not revealed. If there had been a midnight curfew, just tell us. All that has been said is that the players were told to be sensible. He wasn’t drunk, nor had got into a fight. So he may not have been in bed come the witching hour, but so what? There are many players who admit to sleeping very little the night before a match and the effect isn’t always obvious. Just because you go to bed at midnight does not mean you’ll be away with the fairies for your nightly eight hours.

A lot was made in the Sunday newspapers that it was Ashton’s attempts to show who was in charge after the speculation that followed England’s march to the World Cup final last year, when Mike Catt and Lawrence Dallaglio ‘revealed all’ in unflattering terms for Ashton. If that was Ashton’s motivation, then more fool him. His coaching style has been one based on trust and mutual understanding between coach and players. He has never been a table thumper, doing things in a quiet, intelligent manner. One hack suggested that it was an anti-Wasps conspiracy following Dallaglio’s comments, Josh Lewsey’s exclusion from the squad despite good form and the overlooking of Shaun Edwards for an England coaching position. Utter nonsense, seeing as England captain Phil Vickery comes from said club.

Contrasts have been made to the Clive Woodward era and the man himself has admitted that he would never have reacted the way Ashton did. What Woodward did was treat his players as adults. Yes they could go out and get leathered the night before a match, but woe betide them if it affected their performance. As Cipriani’s coach, Edwards, said, rather him go out for a while and enjoy the (alcohol-free) company of friends, than sit in and fret all night.

From Cipriani’s point of view he needs to come back, just be himself once more and show what a talented prospect he is. The worrying thing is though he, along with the rest of us, appears to have little idea of what rule he broke. Under Woodward the whole squad knew as it was written down and signed off by coaches and players. Unfortunately Ashton, who we have been told a thousand times, does not like the management side of being head coach. Well tough. He needs to get hold of things in the way Sir Clive did and stay true to himself and his philosophies. Hopefully then both parties will have learned from this sorry saga and work together for the benefit of England, God knows they need it.

All hail the giant killers:

So that is what they mean by the romance of the cup. After years and years of having to listen to the hollow ramblings of the BBC, finally we have a semifinal line up to look forward to

Whilst Manchester United, Arsenal, Chelsea and, to an extent, Liverpool fans have become accustomed to their place in the May showpiece, for once none of them will be anywhere near the final. Hooray for that.

You see the heads of those four clubs may feel that their presence adds ‘glamour’ and ‘appeal’ to the competition, when all they have done in recent years when getting there is bore us to death. This year we know that at least one of the finalists will be from outside the top flight, which means that even if the one remaining Premiership team, Portsmouth, does win the trophy that a) it will be a different name from the usual suspects and b) there will be someone new in Europe next year, receiving more money from doing so and hopefully being able to attract better players to help them improve further.

The beauty of the FA Cup has always been the democratic nature of it, allowing the smaller teams a fair and even chance of beating one of the bigger sides. Whether it continues next year, is irrelevant for now, unless of course you’re a fan of one the 19 Premiership clubs who failed to make it to the semifinals.

Letdown at the Dome:

The O2 Arena is no stranger to anticlimax after it lay dormant for five years after the Millennium celebrations, until some bright spark hit upon the idea of using to host sports events. Sadly the latest, which had the potential to be the best yet, was nothing short of a damp squib.

David Haye versus Enzo Maccarinelli in the cruiserweight title unification bout was the UK’s biggest fight since 1993 when Chris Eubank and Nigel Benn met, but failed to go past two rounds, thus leaving the crowd in the arena, not to mention thousands in the UK and across the pond in the USA disappointed and no doubt feeling a little short changed.

The first round was dull apart from Maccarinelli’s fierce left hook that he failed to take advantage of, whilst the second belonged to Haye, who went in hard and reaped the rewards when the referee stopped the bout.

Apparently Macca looked nervous when he entered the ring and it seems they betrayed him on his biggest fight night yet. A shame really as the Welshman is a fantastic fighter, yet so too is Haye. But such is the manner of boxing in this day and age, when the ballyhoo and baiting that takes place before a fight almost always overshadows anything that takes place in the ring. It has even got to the stage where death threats are shrugged off.

They shouldn’t be. It should be upto the governing bodies (lord knows how many there are) to come down hard on it and stamp it out. But that’s never going to be the case when they take the attitude that no publicity is bad publicity. If the boxers actually worried more about their performance in the ring, rather than out of it, then maybe we might start having world title bouts, that for once live upto the hype.
JI 10/03/08