Les Blews - who sells the Cardiff Herald outside the Arms Park thought he was in a dream and someone had named a road after him...all he could hear was "Alley Les Blews"...
Yep. A dream. And next weekend is the dream fixture for France - playing the toughest All Blacks squad in downtown West Of England aka Wales. The French public will be impressed.
I have, however, received a spy satellite picture of the France XV casting an eye - "jeter un coup d'oeil" - over the hunky boys of the Silver Fern...take a look!
Big party time for the French before the serious business in Cardiff (Oh how 'international' is that piece of organisational merde?) next week. Great.
South Africa - the Springboshers can look forward to Fiji in Marseille
Ireland could possibly change all that Arms Park business - unless their wheels come off yet again when they meet the Argentina XV. A 30-0 win for the Greens will be good for Guinness, good for Ireland and brilliant for France. On form though, it is goodbye - see you in four years.
Wales and Fiji actually played rugby yesterday. Fiji won - deservedly, although they nearly lost the plot after 80 minutes. A proper adventurous do-or-die game from both sides in patches. Watch out for Delasau in the next match - they'll not win but it might make for exciting rugby again! Wales, for all their investment, power and past inventiveness failed to um...'deliver' I think is the word. As they say in Fiji "Life's a beach, and then you Dai!" How much money do the Fiji RFU receive for getting this far...anyone know? Is there a prize divvy up a la golf tournament? It is rumoured that Italy were 'on' £14,000 win bonus each last night... £50 now and the rest to be collected in weekly installments from Giuseppi's Chinese Laundry allegedly...
Apparently, rugby balls (like cricket bats being 'knocked in' I suppose), have to be 'kicked in' before being declared fit for use in matches. At least according to Neil Jenkins the Welsh kicking coach they do.
Daniel Carter, Graham Henry and Co. (Snarling hakas a speciality) are perturbed that the match balls are not flying true - unlike the 'practice' balls that are supplied (which are apparently identical?!).
Jonny meanwhile is checking each pimple on his Gilbert with a micrometer looking for discrepancies in semi-hemispherical arrays.
Meanwhile, in St Etienne, in the pissing rain, in a difficult situation under pressure, at night etc... Chris Paterson slotted six from six kicks - up to 16 consecutive I believe. Don't suppose he'll be talking balls - for the moment anyway...
"Scotland The Bathe" skirled out from the pipes after this push -pull match dribbled to a conclusion. Scotland won 18-16 in a contest that was there for Italy to win. Very slack play by Italy allowed far too many penalties to be administered by 'Charlie Kaplan' (who wasn't too bad actually - he must be losing his touch...). I'm getting really fed up with the 'pro-speak' of managers/ coaches/ trainers/ nobodies etc who talk meaninglessly about the pressure of this and that, the spirit of Wee Willie McWinkie in training...body on the line blah blah blah! The curmudgeonly Frank Hadden was caught out with a smile on his face when Bortolussi pinged the ball wide of the posts toward the end of the bathing session...but we didn't notice that Frank, okay? You can get back to being miserable, viz. - he's arranged for his squad to have a sandpaper massage this morning, before a meal of raw haggis - followed by a drop of telly, a tart an a cuppa while watching France and South Africa win.
Let's get the formalities over with: New Zealand - win. Australia - win. Wales - well, I sort of expect them to win but Fiji might just ignite...also 'The Big Fishes' will be playing a game of rugby IN FRANCE! and IN THE OPEN AIR! The weather is going to wreak havoc on Duncan Jones' hairdo, not to mention that of Colin Charvis, although he has been wearing an alice band (sponsored by Elastoplast) in recent games. Gareth Thomas paid a flying visit to the WWF headquarters in Stamford, Connecticut to learn how to forearm smash someone without really hurting them. Let's hope eh? Interestingly, the picture of Duncan shows him in his prop's jersey...so called because it gives the viewer exact instructions as to what the wearer needs...
And so to Scotland. My friend Stephan Freyermeuth writes elswhere that the Scottish jerseys are horrid and that they are going to lose. (I told him they were going to St Etienne but he didn't get it). Anyway, St. Etienne. Scotland are not going to be giving presents like last time Italy came out to play - who remembers that? 21 - 0 after about thirty seconds- "Happy Hogmanay Luigi,.." It will not happen today but rubbish kicking will see Scotland in trouble from the counter attack - be careful ye wee Scots. So back to St Etienne, who are a team playing in Div.1 of the French Soccer League - in eleventh place actually...and their next game is against Marseille on 6th October at ten past five local time - unluckily, it's a home fixture for 'Saints' otherwise there would have been ample time to have watched England grind another win, scoot across town and pay up for another big clash. But here I go again - 'digressement generale' - it aint gonna happen! To finish for now - I have to go and do my Mum's shopping and cleaning for a while - here's St Etienne and 'Nothing's gonna stop us now!' - for your delicatation. A nice video, decent riff - but lousy sync! Up the skirt wearers!
Some people have asked how to read the previous 'articles' in this blog.(Well, the ones that are total insomniacs, have read every page on Wikipedia, saddos, tramps etc...)
To see everything for the month, click on 'Archives'. To read any observations made by others following the article, click on 'Comments'. To leave a comment, click on Comment, enter your / a name, email address and hey presto! - you write. Click 'Post' and watch your words appear. If you have stuff to post, or photos to show then write to me using martinflackatblueyonderdotcodotuk - in the obvious email address format. Try it - it doesn't hurt! (That damn bleu, blanc rouge gets in everywhere doesn't it?!)
Notwithstanding all the fuss about a glut of incompetent buteurs complaining about the match ball, the venerable Sylvain, the Editor in Chief of Le Parisien, has been out and about talking balls in Paris. (We have all done it Sylvain, I assure you!) You can take a look at his balls here...
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