A Viscount Speaks

"Not enough Oxford chaps" - jolly well said, Bills!

What ho, proles!

Interesting comments from Peter Bills:

Of course, defences are far better organised nowadays, that is undeniable. But it might also be something to do with the fact that nowadays, the professional game has all but excluded the real thinking players, those who wish to study and become doctors, scientists, lawyers or captains of industry.

In 1962, the Lions were led on their tour to South Africa by a Scottish wing, Arthur Smith, who became a nuclear scientist. Brilliant minds abounded throughout the game and although it was then an amateur sport, the brain power was often in evidence simply by the way the game was played.

Nowadays, those past great breeding grounds of knowledge, Oxford and Cambridge Universities, which supplied endless numbers of players for the national rugby teams of the world, including South Africa, Australia and New Zealand, produce hardly any.

The professional game has different creatures, and I suspect, the vast majority are of infinitely less cerebral capacity.

'Tis true, is it not?  Modern rugger players are dullards.  They don't read.  They cannot converse in Greek or Latin.  They don't attend the opera.  They don't complete the Times crossword.  Often, their cultural hinterland extends no further than the Nintendo Playstation.  And then we wonder why their play is similarly witless!

Bills is onto something here.  Johnson ought to get on the telephone to my alma mater and request a few of their finest rugger men.  Tim Catling and Ross Swanson ought to be top of the list.  We need beef; we need beastliness; but we also need brains.  

Yours, etc

Viscount Crouchback

Mike "Le Boeuf" Tindall is back

What ho, Englishmen!

I called for it, and it's happened.  England's foremost - only? - beefcake back, Mr. Tindall, has been selected at outside centre for Paris.  This is a splendid move by Johnson.  Tindall is no glittering firefly of a runner, but he offers heft and punch and brute strength.  England's backs have looked much too lateral thus far and Tins ought to be the man to sort things out.  His clash against Bastareaud will have beef lovers across the world reaching for the Kleenex.

The best thing about Tindall is his phlegm and poise.  He is one of those rare specimens who seems actually to enjoy playing rugger for England.  Too many of his team-mates appear scared out of their wits. Encouragingly, Ashton and Foden seem to be cut from the same cheeky cloth. 

The Hask can have no complaints about being dropped.  He needs to add some nous and cuteness to his rather one-track game.  Wilko, too, deserves to be omitted.  The only surprises about Monye and Armitage were that it took so long.  Johnno is perhaps loyal to a fault.

All in all, a much more exciting XV.  One wouldn't back England if one was a betting man, but there's just something about this fixture that seems to play with the minds of the French.  The sight of fifteen plucky shire yeomen seems to stir the Frogs' natural cowardice.  We could well be celebrating another famous victory in Paris could Saturday night.

Yours, etc

Viscount Crouchback

Vitai Lampada

What ho, men of Empire!

Watching David Dimbley's "Seven Ages of Britain" last night, I was struck by the segment on Britain's public schools.  Dimbleby mentioned Sir Henry Newbolt's famous poem of how the virtues learnt on the playing fields of Eton could translate to pluck on the battlefield.  It is a terrific poem:

Vitai Lampada

THERE'S a breathless hush in the Close to-night -
Ten to make and the match to win -
A bumping pitch and a blinding light,
An hour to play and the last man in.
And it's not for the sake of a ribboned coat,
Or the selfish hope of a season's fame,
But his Captain's hand on his shoulder smote
"Play up! play up! and play the game!"

The sand of the desert is sodden red, -
Red with the wreck of a square that broke; -
The Gatling's jammed and the colonel dead,
And the regiment blind with dust and smoke.
The river of death has brimmed his banks,
And England's far, and Honour a name,
But the voice of schoolboy rallies the ranks,
"Play up! play up! and play the game!"

This is the word that year by year
While in her place the School is set
Every one of her sons must hear,
And none that hears it dare forget.
This they all with a joyful mind
Bear through life like a torch in flame,
And falling fling to the host behind -
"Play up! play up! and play the game!"

Now it seems to me that these sublime sentiments of self-sacrifice, leadership and honour are precisely what England's rugger chaps consistently fail to display.  Perhaps Johnson ought to pin Newbolt's poem up in the dressing room in Paris and invite his men to reflect upon the words before they go out to confront the Frogs. 

Yours, etc

Viscount Crouchback

Why can't all Celts be like this?

What ho, chums!

Kevin McKenna has written a super article in The Observer.  McKenna is one of those rare Celts who jolly well admires the English and merrily cheers them on in sporting competition.  Read these sublime sentiments:

Nor can we justify our anti-Englishness by citing historical grievance. We willingly entered a union with them which, economically, has been extremely advantageous to us and England provides the biggest jobs market for us outside Scotland. Our tourist economy is built on the Bank of England pound. We even run their government and many of their biggest institutions. More distressing still is that most English people will support Scotland in every endeavour we undertake.

England has a splendid squad and an excellent manager. Wayne Rooney is perhaps the finest all-round footballer I have ever seen. And, though I am not yet convinced that their nation is the land of milk and honey that they claim, I'll still be singing "Jerusalem" if they do the business on 11 July.

I say, now that is the spirit!  I'm rather hard on the Celts on this blog - unavoidably so given that many of them are rather feckless and unsympathetic characters - but we English must remind ourselves from time to time that there lurk within the glens and lochs and bogs and valleys of the Celtic lands some jolly decent sorts who happily observe the basic requirements of good neighbourliness.  Even in deepest, darkest, scariest Munster there reside thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of fellows who would happily fly the Union Jack if the Queen's men marched down the High Street again.  Indeed, several of these splendid chaps comment on this blog.

It is natural for man to focus on his fiercest enemies rather than on his inoffensive chums, but we English must not tar all Celts with the same brush.  Of course, God has given the English the onerous task of educating and civilising the ruder sort of Celt, but this must go hand in hand with welcoming to our bosoms those fine Celts who have proven themselves worthy of the name, "Briton".  

The hand of friendship for the amenable; the whip for the recalcitrant. This basic principle of Empire remains as apt today as it ever was. 

Yours, etc

Viscount Crouchback

Bully Boys of England - Your Country Needs You!

What ho, men.

Right.  Chaps.  This is not an easy thing for me to do, but the time has come for me to say it: I've bloody well had enough of The Hask.  I'm absolutely sick of the rotter.  I like beef as much as the next man but there comes a point at which one has no option but to conclude that what looks on the surface like a magnificent, prize-winning Red Poll is in fact nothing more than a bog standard Jersey.  The Hask, I am afraid, is a bog standard Jersey.  There is absolutely no use in looking like Tarzan if you play like Jane.

It's sickening, absolutely sickening, that all that shire beef we had on display today - Borthers, Deacon, The Hask, Nick "The Dominator" Easter, and Joe "Melon-Head" Worsley - consistently gave away yards in the collision.  Consistently.  It took an escapee from a boy band - Foden - to actually mete out a bit of biff to those Scotch savages.  The Hask & Co should be ashamed to be shown up by a little squirt like that.

What the deuce is wrong with these England chaps?  Why aren't we beasting like we ought to?  Where is the mongrel?  I am convinced that the problem lies in the schools, especially in schools like Wellington which were once rigorous, spartan institutions which proudly proclaimed their military ethos; but which now, since going co-educational and coming over all "progressive", instead churn out pansies and girlie men.

A chum of mine visited Wellington last year and he informed me that the Headmaster, Seldon, bangs on about "emotional intelligence" and "holistic education" and even permits his young chaps to take modern dance classes.  If the intention is to breed a generation of homosexuals, then Seldon is going the right way about it.  Frankly, I think the man is a lunatic and ought to be locked up before he perverts any more of England's finest young men.

Indeed, I believe the time has come to introduce a more Gladiatorial element to England selection.  I do believe that the much scorned Rudolf Straeuli actually had the right idea.  He, remember, was the chap who dropped his Springboks naked into a nature reserve and forced them to engage in hand-to-hand combat with one another.  I suspect that if Johnno were to do the same, he would quickly discover who are the real Beastie Boys in his squad.  The quietly effective Dan Cole would, I think, rank high among their number.

Yes, chaps, I am officially an Apostate from the Creed of Beef.  It's time to look beyond biceps and thunder thighs and power ratios.  The sole criterion of selection must be: Could this fellow beast a Boer in hand-to-hand combat in a burning kraal outside Bloemfontein?  If the answer is No - as I fear it is for The Hask - then jolly well get rid and get a proper bully boy into the XV.

Yours, dejected and confused,

Viscount Crouchback

Friday's Beefcake of the Week

What ho, Aberdeen Angus Afficionados!

There are various types of rugger beefcake.  A chap writing a university thesis on this topic might identify four different breeds:

(i) The Jailhouse Bully: out-and-out orcs who are born to beast - think Dallaglio or Sheridan;

(ii) The Pocket Battleship: short, squat, thunder-thighed, bicep-heavy chaps - think Tom May or Will Carling; 

(iii) The Boy Band Oik: greasy, bronzed plebs who really ought to be playing soccer - think Mike Phillips or Lee Byrne;

and then, perhaps my current favourite type of beefcake:

(iv) The Cary Grant Charmer: tall, lithe, handsome chaps, possessed of a gentlemanly mien and a cheeky twinkle in the eye - think Cozza or, if I may be so bold, the chap below: Phil Dowson.  Big Phil has been in quite splendid form for Northampton this season.  An England call-up surely awaits.  He is my well-deserved Beefcake of the Week.

 

Yours, etc

Viscount Crouchback

On the nature of Anglophobia

What ho, chaps!

Interesting blog by Mick Cleary over at the Telegraph.  He asks: Who hates England the most?  A timely question indeed.  For it often seems as if half the world is engaged in a ferocious battle to be Champion Anglophobe.  Oddly, one tends to find that the more indebted a nation is to English genius and pluck, the more bitterly it detests us.  This is true of the colonies, the Irish, and the infernal French.  I suppose it's some kind of Oedipus complex.

I also wonder whether the sheer moral presence of the Englishman sometimes discombobulates these poor foreigners.  Hugh Farrelly, the Irish Independent rugger columnist, recently wrote a column in which he stated that he "felt like a bumpkin" when surrounded by the English rugger press. 

This is the thing you see, chaps.  We Englishmen don't always realise just how inferior these foreign johnnies can be made to feel by our mere presence.  Our natural articulacy, our straightforward common sense and good humour, our superb breeding, our dandy threads - all those aspects of our bearing that bring to mind Tennyson's "genial, broad-shouldered Englishman" - are, to a chippy sort of chap, precisely those things which invoke a kneejerk Anglophobia born of a deep-seated sense of inferiority.  Note that it is always the more self-confident sort of colonial or Celt - Sir Terry Wogan, say, or Jan Smuts or the superb Tony Abbott - who disdains Anglophobia.  These naturally confident fellows have the rare courage to value what is great about the Englishman rather than to disdain it.

So bear all this in mind the next time some red-faced Celtic hedgerow-dweller buttonholes you at the rugger and launches into some interminable tirade about "English arrogance".  English arrogance is not the problem; Celtic inferiority is the problem and will remain the problem until they jolly well grow up.

Yours, etc

Viscount Crouchback

Yet to be convinced

What ho, Englishmen!

So what do we make of the England XV to take on the Scotch then, chaps?  Rather underwhelming, no?  I'm happy enough with the pack - lots of beefy yeomen who won't let Her Majesty down - but the backs trouble me.  I tend to agree with Jim Telfer about Monye and Armitage - they are a lazy pair of blighters who ought, by rights, to be eating melons in an African kraal rather than representing Blighty at rugger.  It baffles me that Ashton and Foden (regrettably oikish though they may be) haven't been given the nod.  Moreover, I think we lack a Will Carling-type character to marshal the backline.  There are too many footballer types and too few officers. 

Carling, alas, is retired.  But we have the next best thing in Mr Tindall.  This son of the Yorkshire soil is a magnificent beef merchant with a cracking taste in fillies.  He might not be the most elegant centre of all time, but he has phlegm, he knows how to defend, and he can carry England over that all-important gainline. 

One more thing: what the dickens is Johnno playing at including a dashed Boer in the squad?  Good heavens, "Hendre Fourie from Burgersdorp" wearing the Red Rose?  Whatever next?  First Maoris, now Boers: which ancient tribal enemy of the English will Johnno pick next?  An Aborigine on the wing?  A North American Indian packing down at hooker?  Some psychotic Pashtun at centre?  Quite frankly, chaps, I think it's getting beyond a joke and it's high time that someone at the RFU had a quiet word in Johnson's ear.

Not sure about this Johnson fellow.  An over-promoted sergeant major, if you ask me.  Time will tell.

Yours, etc

Viscount Crouchback

It's time to clean out the back yard

What ho, Englishmen!

What is it about the Scotch?  What makes them such miserable, chippy bastards?  Living next to the English, I hear you say.  Well, yes, but the Welsh do too - and they, at least, make an effort to leaven their bitterness with a little wit.  The Irish, meanwhile, so crave approval that they at least make a pretence of being chummy.  But the Scotch?  Cold, dour, tight, mean, resentful buggers, the lot of'em.  Utterly impenetrable.  Scarcely human, I would venture.  Half-men, half-beasts.

It takes a special kind of chippiness to refer to a rugger opponent as "Lord Snooty".  Indeed, I believe that only some monstrous kind of half-Scot/half-Colonial hybrid could possibly be Anglophobic enough to use such a term.  Step forward Dan Parks.  I mean, really!  To call a fellow "Lord Snooty" in this day and age is just not on.  It demeans aristocrats everywhere. 

And then there's old Jim Telfer.  This Pictish savage - one quarter man, three quarters beast - has crawled out from his Borders lair to claim that:

• England are "so naive"
• England are so bad that they are no longer worthy of being Scotland's rivals
• Scotland are a better team than England, and have "more mature ideas"
• He would "rather die than vote Tory"

What an impudent Scotch swine, what!  Good God, I don't mind taking a bit of lip from the Irish or the Welsh, but from the dashed Scots?  No, sir!  I will take no lip from the fellows who just lost to Italy and are on course for (yet another) wooden spoon.  I should sooner be lectured on humility by Piers Morgan.  Or on humour by a Boer.  Or on honesty by an Arab.  

Yes, there's a damned good reason why the Romans never included those swine in their Empire.  Some breeds are just too rude and brutish to be civilised.  The Scots are like a feral dog who require constant beastings to keep them submissive.  The moment they think we English are weakening in our resolve, they'll be clambering over the wall and savaging Northumbria.

If England's rugger chaps have an ounce of pride, they will come together in a circle at Pennyhill Park today, clasp hands, and swear by the spirit of Edward Scissorhands to march up beyond the wall and give those contemptible barbarians an absolute rogering.  I want Pictish blood flowing through the streets of Edinburgh.  I want to see Lewis Moody standing aloft the ramparts of Edinburgh Castle with the severed head of Dan Parks in one hand and the severed head of Jim Telfer in the other. 

Come on, chaps.  Let's spank those sweaty Scotch bottoms.

Yours, etc

Viscount Crouchback

Tabs dished. Oxonians rejoice.

What ho, rugger lovers!

It won't surprise you to learn that I'm not the world's greatest fan of rugby league.  Prole sports, as a rule, are not my thing.  I do, however, appreciate the Crouchbackian virtues of beef, bash, biff and beasting no matter the guise in which they appear.  All of these qualities were on display last night at The Stoop, where Oxford gave the Tabs a damned good thrashing in the 30th Varsity Rugby League Match, coming back from 16-0 down to win 32-22.  My favourite Old Harrovian, Ross Swanson, ran in a superb hat-trick. 

I admit that this doesn't quite make up for December's unfortunate events in the proper Varsity match, but it goes some way towards redressing the balance, and I now look forward to Oxford tipping the scales still further by meting out a resounding beasting on the Thames in the Boat Race.

Yours, etc

Viscount Crouchback