Monday 8 October 2007

Great one-liner

"Belts and shoelaces please." - A Scottish spectator to downcast All Black fans as they streamed for the Millennium Stadium exits.

Sunday 7 October 2007

Bird watching

And while I'm here and have got the rugby thing off my chest for another four years, I'm posting another little video clip taken yesterday while I was off rat catching in the forest again. I came across this Kereru feeding in some bushes as I walked along. It's not so common that you can get so close to one, although admittedly they're not the quickest and smartest of creatures.

You're oot.....again

Well, I guess it was inevitable. I forgot my own Golden Rule: the team that I support never wins. And just in case Bedrich is suffering from a fever and is tempted to post something here, I'm getting in first. I well remember his texted message while travelling back to Prague from Brno in 1999 when the All Blacks were turfed out of the World Cup by the French: a very sympathetic "You're oot!"

And so it happened again. Absolutely fucking amazing. We had 72% of the possession and we still managed to mangle it. The ref had a howler of a match by yellow carding Luke McAlister for a dive taken by a French player and not calling the forward pass that led to the last French try, but a great team should overcome bad reffing decisions. The ABs actually played well, but the coach's rotational policy counted against them in the end as the combinations weren't tried and true enough, and Daniel Carter should not have been playing ahead of Nick Evans because of the injury that eventually forced him from the field. But one must give credit where it's due and the French defensive effort was superb, the break by Michalak a classic and the discipline tremendous not to concede a penalty in the last quarter.

What we need now is to play some really shite ruby for the next four years so that we don't have the burden of being labelled the best team in the world. That shouldn't be a problem actually because this current team will be cleaned out now as a big number of them head toward the money in England and France, so we'll be in a rebuilding stage for a while. I just hope either France or Argentina win the cup coz I couldn't stand the gloating that would come from an English or a Saffer victory.

Wednesday 3 October 2007

Cute doggies

Feeling very unimaginative sitting here listening to Bruce Springsteen's latest, Magic. Very bloody good it is, too. The novelty value of posting little video clips hasn't worn off yet, so I just took this one of Lidunka and Petr, plus you get the added bonus of seeing a piece of the back yard and an incredibly well-constructed deck. Nice birdsong too, if you have sound.