John Goodwyn is a standup comedian and a rugby referee, very often at the same time. On occasion, we’ll post a curmudgeonly from John at RugbyZen, since Goodwyn’s rants are very often in line with our unedited takes on current events and culture as filtered through a rugby mentality. Take it away, JohnBoy.

Courtesy on the Road Chapter Two – Turning from the wrong lane

Last week I discussed turn signal abuse. This week I’m turning it up a notch and discussing a particularly egregious driving behavior. When douche nozzles do this, it displays complete and utter contempt and disregard for everyone else around. Who cares if they have places to be? I don’t want to miss my turn…

• Turning right from the left lane / turning left from the right lane

This is an easy, although extremely aggravating behavior. All of us have, at some point, found ourselves in the wrong lane when we arrived at our turn. You’re in a new city or looking for a place you’ve never been or just not paying close attention. It’s not a big deal. When it becomes a big deal is when you think your convenience trumps everyone else’s so you decide to stop, engage your turn signal, and wait for someone to let you over because you screwed up.

Why is this such a problem? If you’re really asking that, then you’re an inept, stupid asshole. By stopping and hoping someone will let you over, you’re basically giving the finger to everyone behind you and hoping that someone in the other lane will give everyone behind him the finger, as well. “Your time is way less valuable than mine, so you can wait while I fix my stupid mistake” is what the big lighted sign above your car should read.

The biggest reason this is such a monumentally asshole move is that it’s such an easy mistake to fix. Guess what… Most roads have multiple places to turn. You will NOT be stuck on that road forever, I promise. Keep driving, make a turn a little farther up the road, even if it’s into a grocery store parking lot, and come back the other direction to your turn. There, that wasn’t so hard, now, was it?

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Sandusky should now stand trial for murder. The bastard has blood on his hands and, given that he has no remorse for what he did to countless children, he’ll have no remorse for Paterno’s death. It doesn’t seem right. Sandusky will sleep peacefully tonight because he’s a psychotic monster despite what he’s done to those children, the university and now Paterno.

Given that there is no way to induce a conscience, Sandusky has to suffer some how else.

Any suggestions?

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So I had my man Jose take down the two useless, unsightly satellite dishes that were bolted to my roof; now that I have FioS who need’s ‘em? Jose piled them in my yard and left me with a question: What do I do with these things now? When I cancelled DirecTV’s programming I returned the DVRs and remotes to the local office, but when it comes to dishes, DirecTV wants nothing to do with them.

“We leave them up for advertising,” said the DirecTV customer service guy. “We don’t remove them. Why would you do that?”

“But I’ve taken them down, now what?” I asked.

“Just throw them away,” he said. “That’s what everyone else does.”

Seems like a huge waste of working technology, and an obscene thing to chuck into a landfill. So I advertised them as “free to a good home” on CraigsList.com ? Three people said they come get them and none of them did.

So I shoved them into the trash bin.

They’re gone, but I don’t feel good about it.

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http://tinyurl.com/ce4vhyh

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You have to wonder. Cheflebrety Paula Deen announces she has Type 2 diabetes and suddenly gets the job as spokesperson for the Big Pharma company that makes . . . wait for it . . . diabetes medication! Meanwhile she announces she has no plans to stop the way she teaches her fans to cook — with loads of lard, butter, heavy cream and refined wheat and sugar — and I suspect that’s to generate more customers for her new sponsor.

Crap like this makes the metal plate in my head heat up.

Instead of changing her ways and leading her Southern Fried fans into a promised land of better health through better food, Deen is committed to killing them one at a time, but only after long, lingering bouts with diabetes and, of course, all those prescriptions they have to pick up every time they go to the grocery store for more Crisco.

I don’t wish her ill, but I hope her show goes off the air soon. She’s a helmet-headed menace.

By the way, this reminds me of when I was an editor at a daily paper and my boss told me to run the winning recipe of some baking contest from the Midwest. I will never forget it, it was so foul: Take a box of Twinkies, slice them in half; layer the bottom a casserole dish with one half of the cut Twinkies, cream side up.

Now spread a 3-inch layer of Cool Whip across the Twinkies. Take the other half of the Twinkies and put them on top of the Cool Whip, cream side down.

Serves 4.

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What a load of horse hockey. The first paragraph is so unimaginably inane as to beggar a better question: What was this writer trying to do, prove how much he knows about months-old gossip?

And by the way, there is NO rugby in this Olympics, so I’m not really sure why England rugby players would be crashing the equestrian competition. Bollocks.

BzMc

By JERÉ LONGMAN

Where is the outrage over a grave threat to these Olympics: invasion of the equestrian competition by drunken rugby players? And by that we mean one rugby player in particular, the one married to the queen’s granddaughter.

The granddaughter is Zara Phillips, 30, an Olympic hopeful and the 2006 world champion in eventing, the equestrian equivalent of a triathlon. She is married to Mike Tindall, 33, a former captain of England’s national rugby team. Last fall Tindall found himself caught in eventing of an entirely different sort, this being a tabloid triathlon involving a mystery blonde, cheap booze and touring dwarves from Australia.

Six weeks after marrying Phillips, Tindall left to compete in September at the rugby World Cup in New Zealand. After England’s untidy opening victory over Argentina, a few lads repaired to rethink their strategy in the resort of Queenstown. They ended up at the Altitude bar, whose exotic and restorative training techniques include vodka shots, jelly wrestling and strip pillow fighting.

As it happened, the virtuous and unsuspecting boys visited the Altitude on a night of entertainment known as “Leprechaun Bar Wars,” among other names. What happened at the Altitude did not stay at the Altitude.

British tabloids reported then that Tindall canoodled with a striking blonde — not the same striking blonde who is his wife — while watching a dwarf-tossing contest. The papers described things the blonde did with Tindall’s head that did not sound as if she were checking it for lice. And they said the balding head in question ended up in a place on the blonde’s chest that suggested Tindall might have mistaken his face for a stethoscope.

Photographs emerged. Security camera footage was leaked. Damage control ensued, only creating more damage. Martin Johnson, manager of the England team, said, “I’ve had my arms around 50 women in Queenstown aged from 7 months to 77.”

One of Tindall’s teammates, Chris Ashton, said: “There were dwarves there, yes, but that was just the night the bar was having. We didn’t bring them with us or anything.”

Rich Deane, manager of the Altitude, wrote on Facebook: “There was no dwarf throwing. That’s just not cool!”

Not to mention condemned as inhumane by the United Nations.

Later news accounts said the rugby players had engaged in “playful” wrestling with the Australian dwarves, who were not tossed but did race each other through the bar while attached to bungee cords.

The mystery blonde turned out to be a former girlfriend of Tindall’s. Phillips, the daughter of Princess Anne, held her tongue, at least publicly, and was anointed as “the patron saint of the stiff upper lip.” Through a spokesman, she said the whole incident had been “blown out of all proportion.”

By all accounts, Phillips and Tindall are not unfamiliar with the tipsy arts. They met at a bar. At his bachelor party at a Miami nightclub, Tindall reportedly drank a carafe of red wine in one gulp, ran up a bar tab of $18,000 and ended the night wearing one of the club dancer’s tutus. The wedding reception featured a vodka fountain.

Among the sweet nothings Tindall has whispered is that Phillips can drink most men under the table. But there have been consequences. Twice, Tindall has been convicted of driving under the influence, according to British news media reports. Still, The Evening Standard of London thought Tindall and his teammates deserved a break for their escapades in New Zealand, saying, “Sportsmen are men and men like to get drunk and act dumb.”

True, England does not corner the market on lubricated rugby players. In 2010, a Welsh forward named Andy Powell pleaded guilty to drunken driving. His offense? Motoring a golf cart along a highway at 5:45 a.m. in search of munchies after a thrilling victory over Scotland.

“He stayed on the hard shoulder,” Conrad Gadd, Powell’s lawyer, said in court, apparently straight-faced. “The buggy was capable of doing about 20 m.p.h., but it was nowhere near that speed.”

But the boys-will-be-boys claim did not prevail in England. Two players were fined after the World Cup for harassing a female hotel worker. Another player was docked for jumping off a ferry into the harbor in Auckland. England crashed out in the quarterfinals, inquiries were held. Johnson, the manager, quit. Tindall was kicked off the team and fined nearly $40,000.

He was later reinstated, and his fine reduced, after he made a novel defense: He had not misled investigators because he was too intoxicated to remember what happened. But Tindall was not included when England’s remade rugby team convened last week.

Meanwhile, a New Zealand rugby player, Zac Guildford, has apologized for stumbling naked, bleeding and intoxicated into a bar in the Cook Islands and hitting two vacationers in November. Tindall finally resurfaced this month with Phillips at the world darts championships in London, wearing giant sunglasses and a long, fake beard.

So at the Olympic equestrian competition, be on the lookout for anyone doing the full monty or resembling a guitarist for ZZ Top.

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I pinched this from Wendy Young’s Your Scrumhalf Connection (she provides our national schedule below). It’s pretty interesting — looks like a Sevens team was created to play in the Vegas Sevens next month using social media to get the word out. I guess if players send video and rugby resumes, a coach could be confident enough to put his team into an elite division. Is this the start of a trend?

BzMc

During the summer of 2011 in Toronto the coach of the Senior Womens Toronto Saracen’s team Andy Ireland hatched the idea of taking a team to participate in the Vegas Sevens tournament. Initially the team would be made up of the Saracen players but as the fall came it became obvious that due to University schedules , work schedules and other reasons Andy would have to build his team around a core of Saracen players but he needed to recruit additional players. In discussions with sevens team manager Lee Bennet they decided to take advantage of the social media sites on the internet (facebook and linkedin) , to build a team. One key factor in building the team was Andy’s desire to have the team play in the Elite Level at the tournament one division down from the national teams. We were amazed at how fast the news spread that a team from Toronto ‘ The Beavers’ were looking for players. After a significant screening process 15 players were selected to travel to Vegas 6 from Canada , 4 from Europe and 5 from the USA.

When it came time to look for a kit sponsor we turned to Linkedin and was able to find a great company in Hong Kong Playmore Sports owed by Eddy Ou Yang that has an exceptional website that allows you to design your kit online. It took less than six weeks from the time we finalized the design to manufacture the shirts , shorts and socks and deliver it all to Slough in the UK.

Las Vegas bills itself as an International Sevens Tournament the Beavers are truly an International team. Stay tuned for game reports and updates during the Tournament from the Beavers. Andy has announced that he would like to continue to build on the development of the Beavers Sevens team and enter the Hong Kong Sevens and other sevens events scheduled in 2012.

Players from Canada
1. Tanya Bennet Toronto Saracen’s
2. Sabrina Mcdaid Toronto Saracen’s
3. Airelle Dubissette-Borrice Toronto Scottish, Uni Western Ont
4.Tiera Reynolds Toronto Saracen’s
5.Natalie Tam Toronto Saracen’s
6. Karla Telidetzki University of Toronto

Players from the UK and Europe
7. Meg Williams London Saracens/Toronto Saracens
8. Davinia Monteiro London Wasps
9. Desiree Emery Richmond RFC
10.Sandra Elfast Gothenburg RFC

Players from the USA
11. Liz Entwhistle Chicago Women’s Rugby Club
12. Lauren Daley TBA
13.Val Griffeth San Diego Surfers
14. Teresa Kane Chicago Women’s Rugby Club
15. Anne Venner Cambridge University

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It suddenly dawned on me who this guy reminded me of. I’m not sure which one is eviler.

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I came across this entry in a website called DadCentric.com. Jason, the author, has a lot of it right in describing his first U8 game as a dad coach. I feel his frustration when the other team’s referee/dad/coach doesn’t call a shoulder charge, but did Jason do the right thing in telling his son to give back as hard as he gets? Leave a Comment if you are so inclined. For my part, I would have stopped the game.

Buzz McClain

www.rugbybuzz.com

JANUARY 12, 2012

Rugby Tough

So we’re clear: rugby is the toughest of team sports. At the adult level, it’s ninety minutes of mostly nonstop running punctuated by pushing, shoving, tackling and getting tackled, all without pads. An adult American football player runs about 200 yards per game; an adult rugby player runs about five miles per game. You play defense, so you will tackle; you also play offense, so you will be tackled.

So we’re clear: rugby for 8 year olds is a slightly different beast. It’s two 15 minute halves, two-hand touch, and the coaches are on the field, directing the kids, telling them to stay in a line, don’t pass the ball forward, and don’t stop running. It’s the game stripped down to the very basics: passing, catching, running, forming a straight line across the field when defending, staggering diagonally when on the attack. The rough stuff comes later. Still, when you get fourteen kids on a field chasing after one ball, there’s gonna be some collisions. Most of the time they’re accidental.

My boys had played two back-to-back games that morning, and they were feeling it. It was opening day, and while we’d been practicing for a few weeks, the intensity and pace of actual game play had worn them down. They’d had an hour to rest before their third and final game. Two of them – Lucas and another kid whose dad coached the club’s U10 side – were second-year veterans. The rest were new to the game. They were loving it, but they were tired. And they had one game to go, against a team from Orange County that had twice our numbers – plenty of fresh legs to sub in. I had two substitutes. It was going to be a slog. But that’s rugby.

“Take a knee, boys”, I told them before kickoff. “You guys have played hard today. I’m really, really proud of all of you.” Not a lie – we won our first game, lost our second, but the kids played as a team, listened to me and my assistant coach, and had a blast. They were slightly glassy-eyed, but grinning in anticipation. “Let’s go out, focus on what we’ve learned, play our best, and good things will happen. Circle up.” We stood, put our hands in, yelled our team name – “THUNDER!!!” – and took the field.

And then things went south.

Rugby at this level is – or is supposed to be – academic, in the literal sense. U8 (kids eight and under) teams play “friendlies” – the coaches share referee duties, and take the time during the game to teach kids on both teams the rules and skills they need to learn. Yes, there are winners and losers, but that takes a back seat to getting the kids excited about the game and the culture that surrounds it.

I’d watched the opposing team’s coach during an earlier game, and the warning bell went off; he was scouting one of the other teams during their game, conferring with one of his assistants, pointing out certain players, plotting strategy. Eight year olds, dude, I thought. I wondered if he’d even played – rugby players at any age have a look about them, a hard-won confidence mixed with an almost jovial air; cameraderie is the cornerstone of rugby culture, and winning and losing take a backseat to the game itself. This guy looked like an over-the-hill junior high gym teacher, and he wasn’t having any of that touchy-feely crap. I introduced myself – “Hi, I’m Jason. Nice to meet you, Coach”. His response: “Yeah, hi.” Typically, when coaches act as refs, one team’s coach does one half, then switches with the other team’s coach. This guy wasn’t having any of that. “No, I’ll go ahead and ref the whole game. I’m fair.” The bells became klaxons.

And so it went, a few non-calls and a few bad ones, all of which benefitted his team in some way – a missed tag here, an out-of-bounds call there. My kids were still not savvy enough to know that they were being hosed; none of the wins or loses counted towards any kind of championship or trophy, so I gritted my teeth and encouraged the boys to play on. At the half we were down by three tries (touchdowns, in Yankee parlance). My boys were dirty, sweaty, tired, and looking to me for direction. They don’t care if they lose, but they don’t particularly like it. I reminded them of one simple strategy – stay on the line when defending, and the other team won’t – can’t – score on you.

And so they did, befuddling the other team. Every time they passed, the receiving player was face to face with one of my kids. There was no place for them to go. Meanwhile, my kids got their second wind, and quickly scored two tries. And that’s when it got ugly. One of their players started “tagging” with his shoulder, running right through my kids. Once, twice, three times, all in full view of his coach/”ref”, who did nothing. He tried it with Lucas, who was nimble enough to sidestep him, but still caught an elbow. “WHAT WAS THAT?!” he yelled at the kid, at me, at the other coach.

There is proably a long list of things I should have done. Call for a game stoppage and politely ask the coach to instruct his player on the rules, maybe.

But I’d had enough of this shit.

“Next time he tries that”, I said to Lucas, loud enough for the other coach to hear, “plant your feet and put your shoulder into him.”

The coach waddled over to me. “Hey”, he said, patting me condescendingly on the shoulder, “we don’t play like that.” “Really”, I shot back. “Then you need to control your player or get him off the field. Because I’m not going to let my boys get knocked around.” He blinked. And sent his player off. With that, the game resumed, we scored one more try, and ended up with a hard-won draw. The post-game Gatorade tasted pretty good.

Here’s the truth – I was bothered by how that game had unfolded for a few days; the other coach embodied everything I hate about youth sports, and its tendency to attract frustrated has-beens and never-weres. But I don’t feel bad at all about telling Lucas to knock that other kid on his ass. So we’re clear: rugby is a tough sport, and at some point, players need to learn to stand fast or they’ll get knocked over. They need to protect themselves. At every point, the coach needs to protect his team.

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