Keep The Heid - Bad Rehearsal, Great First Night (hopefully)

PERHAPS the biggest little white lie of the 21^st century is, after a scandalous event, when our mainstream media forgets it is involved in a real-life 'Year of the Sex Olympics,' (Google it – you will immediately see what I mean) and for once does its job by holding “them” to account, some jobsworth of a “PR person” or “Media spokesman” either says something personally, or, coaches some minor official to stand in front of the media and parrot: “Lessons will be learned from this.”

We might expect the hapless “Buddy” Horler, the SRU's principal posterior orifice to either spout such shite himself, or suggest Gregor Townsend says this, as we try to move on from Saturday night's Nice car crash. The trouble is, poor wee Buddy, is still trying to pick-up the toys he reportedly flung out of his pram, plus the dummy he spat, on reading recent posts on here and in David Barnes' The Offside Line, after we drew attention to the subtle differences between reality and some recent SRU press releases.

Having had ample time to reflect on what happened on the Riviera on Saturday night, I find myself not quite as downcast as some. When it comes to sporting losses, we Scots have never been able to take a Kiplingesque view of the twin impostors and treat them both the same. To be Scottish, is to be born with the wind semi-permanently in your face.

The simple fact is: better to have a disaster such as we witnessed on Saturday night happen on 17 August, than on 22 September, when we face Ireland in Yokohama. As I have said before, matches such as Saturday night's, and the three remaining warm-up games over the next three weeks, are designed to have us hitting the ground running in Japan.

Over this weekend's return game with the French, and the game against Georgia, in Tbilisi on 31 August, Toony will decide which members of his current 40-strong training squad have played themselves out of the World Cup squad; he will announce the final squad on Tuesday, 3 September, then cross his fingers that nobody gets badly hurt in the final pre-Japan Test against the Georgians, at BT Murrayfield, on Friday, 6 September.

We must never forget how disappointing Saturday night was, but, it was only a first hit-out, let us remember that sage advice which has been largely ignored by generations of sporting Scots and keep the heid.

In the great journal of Scottish sporting disasters, that loss in Nice is nowhere close to the front page.

SOMETIMES, when watching a sporting contest, a wee incident catches my attention, and I feel obliged to take it further. There was such a moment of clarity in the second half on Saturday night.

The referee's microphone clearly picked-up Nigel Owens telling one of the French back row – who was claiming that a Scottish forward was impeding the French pack's ability to dig the ball out of a ruck: “No, I am not going to penalise him while you are holding him in there.”

Now, that might seem a reasonable attitude for the great Welsh arbiter to take, but, for me, better perhaps that he had blown his whistle, halted play, then told the French player: “You are trying to cheat there, I am penalising you – this is not soccer.”

I do not say this, merely because it was a French player holding in a Scot, the same should happen regardless of the side cheating. Ever since match officials were first “miked-up”, we have become aware of them “coaching” players on-field: telling them when they were offside, not to handle in rucks and so on. I have long felt this is wrong.

If a player wants to break the law, let him, then penalise him. After he has given away sufficient numbers of possessions and squandered good field position, two things will happen:

• Either the player learns sense and stops
  
  
• Or the coach or team management realises, this guy is such a penalty machine, he is costing us games, and drops him.
  
  

One way or another, the recidivist mends his ways, and we get a better game. With today's video analysis, and professionalism, surely the teams can quickly cotton onto the fact, they have a guy who by his indiscipline is costing them points and games, either he mends his ways or he is got rid of.

Rugby is such an attritional game, for the safety of the players, we need to adopt a really hard line on bad behaviour, but, I fear, in the professional game, we are becoming more like soccer. Time for a crack-down.

SCOTTISH Rugby, and in particular Glasgow Rugby lost a giant at the weekend, with the passing of wee Tom Howie.

Tom Howie

Whether representing Glasgow Academicals, Kilmarnock, Ayrshire, Glasgow Hawks, or during his many years involvement with the old Glasgow District, Tom made friends and influenced people. He was one of the great stalwarts of the game in the West of Scotland.

I shall miss his no-nonsense critiques of my work – usually: “You wrote a pile of shite there” - and his razor sharp observations of how a match had gone.

Tom will be sorely-missed, my sympathies to his family at this time.