Rugby Mad Blog

For some time, I’ve been meaning to give my rugby photography site a bit of a fresh coat of paint. Plus, the way the site was put together was a little archaic, so I’ve taken the opportunity to do it the right way, adhering to Web Standards, which should make it faster to load, easier to use and generally more accessible to a wider range of readers. It should also work nicely on your mobile phone, if you have internets on it!

So, out with the old:

[outdated look and feel]

And in with the new!

[nice shiny new clothes]

On other notes, I see Danny Grewcock has lost his appeal against the six week ban he received for punching during the ECC Final. This rules him out of all the England RWC warmup games, and the first few fixtures of the tournament. Brian Ashton has said he can’t name a banned player in his 30-man squad, so Grewcock really has let another moment of madness ruin his chances at a last World Cup place for him.

I’m also pleased with the new format for the Anglo-Welsh Cup. To be honest, I was getting a bit sick of Saracens always having to play Wasps and London Irish in their group, seeing as we meet them regularly in the Premiership. So it will make a great change to be able to see Leeds, Bristol and Llanelli Scarlets this time round.

The season is almost upon us again, and that means two things – the Middlesex Sevens tournament at Twickenham and Streakers!! Yep, apart from a great day of sevens rugby, we got two streakers on the pitch.

So good value for money! Of course, modesty prevented me from taking pictures when the gents were running the other way… but what I want to know is, how come the security folk left it to the most petit WOMAN on duty to go and round them up?? LOL. But you had to admire their determination, it was pretty cold and windy and not really the sort of day you wanted to be cavorting around in the buff.

You can see more serious pictures of the rugby at Rugbypix.com, and there are some extras in my Flickr account.

Now then, a fortnight’s countdown until I’m back at Twickenham for the London Double Header – Wasps v Saracens and Quins v Irish. Good stuff.

But who will win the war?

I’m talking about the persistant skirmish between Premier Rugby Ltd (representing the Clubs) and the RFU, who look after England‘s interests. The RFU istrying to squeeze in a special 4th test outside the usual IRB International window, on 5th November. They want England to play the All Blacks as a celebration of the new South Stand opening. Great news for the fans, but PRL have been resisting and citing the fact they need their best players for Club duties that weekend.

The wrangling has rumbled on for months, and finally the High Court has made a decision – in favour of the RFU. PRL are deciding whether they wish to appeal.

Better rugby minds than mine have proposed various solutions fo the whole sorry club vs country mess, but it seems that both sides’ positions are fairly entrenched, and I don’t suppose it will get solved any time soon. In the meatime, I’m plotting how I might get my hands on some tickets for said game

Talking of Men In Black, I’ve just sent off my application form for Membership of Saracens. I didn’t do it last year, as I couldn’t see much extra benefit, but they have come up with some more incentives this season, so I’ve parted with my fifty quid and hope to be able to attend some of the Memebers Only events with the players over the coming season. I’ll report back here, of course.

Spare a thought for the poor guys doing their strength and conditioning training in this heat. Apparently they can lose up to 4Kg per session, and the squad as a whole are getting through about 250litres of drinking water per day.

I met some really nice folks last night at Roger Kondrat‘s Blogger/Web2.0 event, and it was great to talk with other people who are so passionate about the web and future developements.

After the round of swapping business cards, I was browsing the blog for Crowdstorm (run by two great guys, Chris and Phil who I chatted with quite a lot last night). Phil had posted a rather silly picture he’d seen in Wimbledon Village, showing a Pelican Crossing For Horses which rather tickled my funny bone. This led me to remember one silly image I’d taken myself, during my Arctic Husky Adventure (see right) – Parking For Dogs.