September 2007 Archives

IT'S always advantageous in sport to know what the other lot are doing. Having an idea of such things as how they defend at corners or whether or not they're likely to play with wingers is the sort of information managers can't do without. Maybe - I'm guessing here - that's why they watch so many of their rivals' matches.

Having someone from the other dugout present one of your backroom staff with the whole game plan - diagrams, methodology, the lot - is therefore not to be scoffed at. It is, at any rate, precisely what appears to have happened in Formula One this year.

McLaren (racing team, not England manager), came close this week to being thrown off the track altogether, but were instead stripped of all points in the constructors' championship and fined £50million, after the FIA (the blazers), decided their chief designer, Mike Coughlan, had been receiving confidential information about Ferrari from Nigel Stepney, one of the latter's engineers.

Apparently the folks at McLaren - though not the boss, Ron Dennis, a man of unimpeachable character, by all accounts - knew about Ferrari's refuelling strategy, as well as such things as the weight distribution of their chassis, stuff about suspension and, yawn, their fuel system designs.

Now, unless you are a follower of F1, in which case you most likely have a degree in physics, I suspect you are thinking what I am thinking, which is this: Who gives a monkey's about a motor's chassis? If they must race, then get them on the grid in the same or similar cars, painted in different colours, and we'll see who can go the fastest.

Besides the fact this sort of leaking of information has probably gone on since day one, surely a sport stops being a sport when it is all about electronics, aerodynamics and inflating your tyres with a top-secret type of air.

It has not escaped general apprehension that F1 is now incredibly dull. Since 1990, 28 teams have pulled out. The 2005 season was overshadowed by a 'tyre war' between suppliers Michelin and Bridgestone, which was about exciting as wondering who would be Manchester United's next kit sponsor. But worst of all, there's just hardly any overtaking anymore, whether because the FIA, ironically enough, keeps banning bits of technology that are deemed to allow unfair advantage, or because of health and safety regulations, the latter being, in any case, the result of some fairly nebulous thinking: if you're prepared to get in a car and drive at up to 230mph, the chances are you won't be a regular subscriber to Safety First.

There is an antidote, however. It involves a big wide track, nifty cars capable of cornering at high speeds and mentally flawed individuals who don't mind taking a knock. It's known in the States as NASCAR.

This article appeared in the Sunday Herald

IT would rightly be supposed you might need a decent bit of recovery time after having had your head stood on for 80 minutes before you were up for some more of it. Such are the arrangements for down time during the Rugby World Cup, however, that the bally thing lasts six whole weeks.

Yes, we might as well get used to it: six weeks of bloody rugby, more than 40 days and 40 nights of uncommonly large men rolling on the ground and kicking the ball out for a throw-in.

With the International Rugby Board hoping for profits of more than £90 million, France '07 is the biggest rugby event ever. Organisers have worked hard in recent years to maximise the sport's global appeal. What, then, are we to make of the mess the IRB have made of media protocols this week?

Negotiations were ongoing yesterday over the governing body's imposition of a disclaimer enabling it to change the terms and conditions of media accreditation whenever it pleases - which has seen a coalition of news agencies suspend their coverage in retaliation.

The IRB's pig-headedness would be surprising were it running anything other than rugby, a game still harnessed to its own image problem as it attempts, with frequent misadventure, to turn itself into a credible professional sport. You wonder if these buffers even realise when they've done their cause a bit of no good.

Besides galling arrogance, the other thing you can be sure of in international rugby is the dredging up of martial-fedual history. An hour spent with the wireless before Friday's kickoff thus threw up all manner of references to French legions, warriors' battle-cries and Welsh firebrands.

In this pageant, Scotland goes all misty-eyed and anti-English, the English themselves turn to St George and Lord Nelson, and the Aussies do what they always do, which is to swarm around being patriotic and calling you "mate", except in greater numbers.

In a way it's fitting that rugby likes to harp back to its Victorian public school origins: have you seen the chaps playing it these days? The home nations alone could have the British Empire back on the map by lunchtime, so elongated are they by centuries of huge family dinners starting with turtle soup.

The class-based nature of rugby is part of what continues to hold it back, at least in the northern hemisphere. Club rugby attendances in Scotland are woefully low, while the atmosphere at internationals is leaden with rugger-bugger types on their best behaviour and middle-class bores.

It would take a seriously ill-bred and ungracious observer, however, not to revel in the sheer rapturous violence of rugby, or its exposition of power and muscularity. This time there are even as many as three teams with a chance of winning. Here's a quart of port to that.

This article appeared in the Sunday Herald