I must first apologise for not posting for a while - work has somewhat taken over my life. As a result, I thought I'd package all of my thoughts from the last two weeks into one long post. We'll cover everything from England rugby's humiliation in Cardiff to England football's triumph in San Marino, from the season opening F1 race in Melbourne to why test cricket is the best form of the game as England earn a draw in Auckland.
So to Cardiff. England are on the brink of winning their first Grand Slam in 10 years. In their way, a resilient Welsh team who, coming into the tournament, had lost 7 straight test matches. They had galvanised the team after a first weekend defeat against Ireland and put themselves in a position that, were they to beat England by more than 7 points, they would win the championship. England, for their part, simply needed not to lose. Now, I hate to say I told you so, but I did predict when Ireland played England that neither would win the Grand Slam. What I didn't expect was for England, who had played really well at the beginning of the tournament and progressively got worse, to capitulate like they did.
It was a very physical game, everyone saw that. It wasn't the physicality that caused England to lose, and lose badly. It was their lack of drive, passion, and the ability to score tries. What is the point of having a world class finisher in Chris Ashton on the wing if he has to come off it in order to get the ball? Then, when he does, he is ineffective because he is unable to break through a central defence.Everyone knows that Tuilagi is a crash-ball player and is more likely to take the ball into contact than ship it out to the wing. Look at how the Welsh managed it - quick ball out, good hands and two tries. Simple.
This is a young team, and they clearly have a lot to learn about test rugby. For the most part, I really hope that Chris Robshaw goes on tour with the Lions, he has been outstanding for England and has really led from the front. I know that Gatland is more likely to pick a mainly Welsh team, but can you really trust a team that lost 8 games before finding form? You're not going to have the luxury of that in Australia.
Moving onto football and, as I'm writing this, England are preparing for a match against Montenegro, the world's newest footballing nation. Despite this, they are top of the World Cup qualifying group. Montenegro? Really? I know that their strikers are Serie A players but come on. England demolished San Marino last week and this should be as straightforward as that. It isn't, however, and England should be wary after the 2-2 draw late on in the Euro Qualifying. That draw showed that there were still many flaws with a team that had, up until then, won every game possible and these were brutally exposed at the European Championships last summer.
That said, I expect England to comfortably move on past Montenegro this evening and put themselves in the driving seat for World Cup Qualification. Joleon Lescott and Chris Smalling are excellent centre-backs and I hope they do well against two of the more prolific strikers Italian football has to offer. Steven Gerrard should keep to playing football, talking really isn't his strong point, and England will do well I feel.
So the F1 season has started, and ignited like a furnace in recent days. The season opener on Melbourne threw up a few surprises. Red Bull still have the fastest car in qualifying, but it seems as though Lotus have a quick car too. Ferrari will be there or thereabouts at the end of the season but the biggest surprises have come from Mercedes and McLaren. Without the aptly named 'Hamilton Effect,' Button seems to have lost a sizeable amount of pace. He is in a car that will develop and evolve as the season goes on but he might be missing out on valuable points early on in the championship.
Where Mercedes are getting their speed from is beyond me. Sure they looked quick in testing but that rarely translates into actual race pace. Again, this might be down to the 'Hamilton Effect' but then Nico Rosberg is looking quick as well. I wouldn't be surprised if the both of them were in the hunt towards the end of the season.
On another note, I hate team orders. I think they should be scrapped absolutely and any team caught up in them should be severely punished. They ruin races. Look at what happened in Malaysia. I doubt Webber will be able to stay at Red Bull if they don't punish Vettel for what he did. But then what did he do wrong? It was exciting, wheel to wheel racing. It was just what the fans tune in to watch. What they wanted to see was Rosberg having a go at Hamilton and then Hamilton coming back and him running out of fuel. Not some dreary end to an otherwise exciting race weekend. Do I think Vettel deserved the win? Yes, he did. He was driving quicker.Webber should have turned his engine back up and tried to get him back. Think of all the epic races between team mates. Prost and Senna at McLaren. Mansell and Piquet at Williams. Amazing races where they were allowed to race against each other in cars that were a lot less safe than they are now.
Where to now? China on the 14th April. The FIA needs to look at what happened in Malaysia and make a decision on team orders. I understand the teams' position. We pay you, you are our employee, you do what we say. Bollocks. The fans and sponsors give the teams the money to pay the drivers. You work for us, the fans. We want to see racing and we want to see it now. We enjoy the action, the racing and yes, the crashes. But we enjoy the crashes a lot more now because there's less of a likelihood anyone is going to be seriously injured. Look at Robert Kubica's crash in Canada a few years ago. It destroyed the car and yet he was back the following race. Then there was Felipe Massa's accident in 2009 when a piece of car came off his compatriot Barrichello's car and embedded itself in Massa's crash helmet. Were it not for the recent redesign of the crash helmet and the fact that it was 9 layers of carbon fibre thick, he would have died. We want racing!
Finally onto a point I have been trying to bang home for ages. Test cricket is the best form of the game. Simple as that. Americans won't get this because there has to be a winner with them. It's the principle that you can go and watch your team play for 5 straight days and then, right at the end, the best result for your team is a draw. And you celebrate that draw too. Take England over the past 5 days. Abysmal is how I would describe it. Right up until the final day at Eden Park. Chasing a total of 400+ runs, England came out and batted right up to the end of the day. This left no other option than for the match to be called a draw and for New Zealand to wonder where it all went wrong. With 16 balls remaining, England were down the their last wicket. And it was Monty Panesar, who faced 5 balls. Not really who you would like to see as your last man standing but an admirable two runs meant he finished the match with an envious run rate of 40. What a match!
With a rather humiliating series defeat in the sub-continent for Australia, who knows what the Ashes has in store for us this year? With England having the advantage of playing another test series against New Zealand, again, on home soil, it will be difficult to see how Australia will improve ahead of the Ashes but we will wait and see.
Until next time!
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