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I'm fairly and squarely in Fitzy's camp. The Heineken Cup has provided the most drama, the best rugby, the most thrilling spectacle and the toughest competition in the game. It's significantly above Super 14, the Guinness Premier League and the French Top 14. It is fast becoming the equivalent of the UEFA Champions League in soccer. I believe the northern hemisphere game will continue to develop so that the Heineken Cup transcends every other competition from a financial perspective and most importantly from a player and fan perspective. It will become a big draw-card for those of our players who want to try their skills in a new setting, at a very high level. I've worked with Munster on Peak Performance programs in the past and I thought this was their year. Ian McGeechan obviously felt the same having selected eight Munster men originally for the Lions tour of South Africa. Brian O'Driscoll and his Leinster men hadn't read the script. Unheralded Leinster captain Leo Cullen dominated the game and his second row partner, the veteran Malcolm O'Kelly really got into Paul O'Connell and Donncha O'Callaghan's faces. Leinster won all the physical battles at kick-off, lineout, scrum and breakdown and it must have worried McGeechan and the Lions selectors enormously. A couple of years ago Munster famously targeted Leinster and Puma No 10 Felipe Contepomi and reduced him to a gibbering wreck. This year they followed the same pattern but Contepomi stood up and relished the challenge. He was unfortunately then injured but was replaced by young Johnny Sexton where we saw the future of Irish first five's for the next decade. He didn't put a foot wrong and in the cauldron of 82,000 at Croke Park (a world record for a provincial game) he rose to the occasion splendidly. For pure passion, skill, commitment and real rugby values this game couldn't be beaten. The next day saw us at the Millennium Stadium to watch the Cardiff Blues play England's top club side Leicester. Almost 44,000 people saw an amazing game with terrific performances from New Zealanders Ben Blair, Xavier Rush, Scott Hamilton, Craig Newby, Glen Jackson and Aaron Mauger. But what a sad, sick outcome. Munster lost properly. Cardiff went out in the most ludicrous manner possible. A penalty shoot-out. A total nonsense and something that should be immediately extinguished from the law books. Rugby is not football. Rugby is a running game, not a kicking game. It's a team game, not a game of individuals. A penalty shoot-out is a dimwitted, thick, one-eyed rip-off from football. All footballers should be able to score a penalty from 12 yards. Why on earth should a prop or Martyn Williams know how to kick? Goal-kicking is not a skill required by more than two or three players in a side. Watching these guys take these penalties was like bullfighting, cockfighting or gladiators. Spectacular but degrading. And it might get worse. An administrator of the Guinness Premiership told me that if shootouts were required in their play-off games, the five penalties would not be taken from in front of the post on the 22. The first would be, the second and the third would be on the 15 metre line, the fourth and the fifth on the five-metre line. Even crueler and even more stupid. The solution to me is obvious - simply a golden point. After extra time you play until the first point is scored. After 80 minutes plus extra time people would be fatigued and errors would creep in. It would not be long before a penalty try or drop goal was squeezed over and I believe this outcome would be true to the game's integrity, heritage and history. It would be inarguable. And it would reward stamina, skill, relentlessness, pressure. I'm sure the "health and safety" dinosaurs would have a point of view but given the game is now played by 22 not 15 players who are in peak physical conditions I think this is political nonsense. I've also heard people say that this would heap huge pressure on referees. This is even bigger nonsense. That's what referees do. They live with this pressure all the time. This idiotic rule must change immediately. And on a happier note, my old club team Vale of Lune, won promotion back to the National Leagues of UK rugby. In the play-off game they beat Widnes 55-41. Who said the Poms can't score tries? Good on you Benny and the boys. And have you read Confessions of a Rugby Mercenary by John Daniell? This was published in New Zealand and has been nominated for all sorts of awards. Ebury have now published it in the UK to great acclaim, including a five-star review from that other Rugby World magazine in the UK. It's got great press coverage as the media there came to terms with the apparent paradox of an Oxford University, Wellington lock, playing in France and being able to write articulately. It also covers some hot topics such as eye gouging. If you haven't read this book, buy it now. |
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