Keyboard warriors are fighting phony battles
The devil makes work for idle hands they say, and this fallow period, when there’s next to no rugby to watch, is always a fun time to have a look at the Premiership clubs’ supporters’ websites.
During the season there’s the previous match to gloat or bitch about, and another one just around the corner where we can be hopeful, but at present, zilch, zero, nothing, so we have to speculate.
If you’re missing a director of rugby, as Bath and Worcester are, then it’s open season. We briefly had the rumour, soon quashed, that Bruce Craig had sold the club, but we still have who will he appoint as the main man at the Rec. Will George Ford stick it out under the new appointee, and what was the story on Kyle Eastmond’s departure? If you sometimes think that Eastenders or Coronation Street have complicated plot lines, look out for Farleigh House, coming to a cinema near you, sometime soon!
At Worcester, of course, it’s all about Dean Ryan, who left three years into what he regularly said was a five-year project. The problem is that no-one is saying why Ryan decided to up sticks, nor are they yet saying where he’ll pop up next, and those are the perfect conditions to generate speculation.
Suggestions include a falling-out with the board, dislike of the new plastic pitch, unease about the level of the playing budget, and that old favourite, ‘personal reasons’, although if it was the latter, why not just come out and say so?
We were told that he wouldn’t be moving to another Premiership club, which killed off speculation that he might be off to Bath, but that leaves open a return to punditry – at which he’s seriously good – or involvement at international level.
Ryan’s old boss, Nigel Melville, has moved to the RFU which might open some doors, and with the uncertainty about Joe Schmidt’s future in Ireland, there might be possibilities there, too.
Of course, there are some happy forums: Sale’s fans have had the announcement about their new board of directors, and who wouldn’t be happy to have Fran Cotton as their club’s chairman, with Steve Smith also coming on board? If optimism was high when the new owners were announced, then it’s just reached new peaks.
That phrase ‘Northern Powerhouse’ might have died a political death last week, but I’m starting to believe it in a rugby sense.
Kit is always a staple of summer debate, and it manifests itself in any number of ways: new suppliers, good and bad, too expensive, the sponsors’ logos clashes with the rest of the shirt, the new Stade Francais shirt is the maddest yet – that appears every season, and is always right! I’ve never really understood the obsession with replica shirts, but it seems I’m in a minority – by all means wear them to matches, but surely that’s where it ends?
I especially enjoy the threads where traditional rivals have a go at each other, and there’s generally one on the Leicester Tigers website poking fun at Bath. Just as with Gloucester’s obsession with their rivals from down the A38, class is at the heart of it, with Bath being characterised as the posh boys in Barbours and Hunter wellies, who park their ‘Chelsea tractors’ on double yellow lines while they pop into Waitrose.
With that in mind, surely one of the conditions of his employment should have been that that their managing director Tarquin McDonald changed his first name by deed poll. Tarquin was just too much of a godsend for the keyboard warriors!
Ispluttered over my breakfast coffee last Sunday when I saw the front page of The Rugby Paper, where Ben Kay was suggesting that Martin Johnson should be part of next year’s Lions management team.
He believes that ‘Johnno’ would inspire the players, and they would think ‘Wow, this is the guy I want to follow’ – no, no, no! If ever there was a case of misplaced loyalty to a former team-mate, this surely is it.
It’s more likely that some of the players would remember the 2011 RWC debacle, and wonder where Johnson had been since then.The Lions party should be made up of the best players, and the strongest available coaches – only the most one-eyed optimist could put Johnson’s name forward.