So: England not in the cup this year? Who are you supporting? Me - find out after the jump!
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Oh. My. God.

I lost a bit of interest in the Rugby World Cup after Wales got untimely kicked by Fiji. I can’t blame Fiji - they won on penalties which meant it was essentially Wales’ fault but still, they were looking good and distinctly better than the averaging England, whose arses I was expecting to get arses resoundingly kicked by Australia in today’s quarter final.

But no! Johnny Wilkinson single footedly thrashed the Wallabies, converting 4 penalties against the Ozzies converted try and penalty.

As of this writing, the All Blacks are 10-0 up against Les Bleus. I don’t see the New Zealanders having too much trouble of putting the French back in their box and stepping forward to do the same to England next weekend.

Tomorrow I shall be routing for Scotland against Argentina. It would be nice if our northern cousins got through to the semis as well.

SUNDAY MORNING UPDATE: Oh. My. God. France beat the Kiwis! I definitely did not see that coming. France vs England in the semi finals then. Delightfully unexpected! Suddenly, England retaining their title seems a vague possibility!

In a recent “Pick your winners” type event, I successfully predicted that France would score 12 points or less in their match against Argentina. Go me. Unfortunately, I failed to predict that Argentina would rock the boat this early on by scoring more than France in the first match of this years Rugby World Cup.

That’s what I love about this event and the game in general - there are always surprises. My money - like everybody else’s - is on New Zealand to win again. Over the last year they have outplayed everyone and have been the most consistent of all the teams. Australia may well challenge again though - they have a habit of coming good when necessary. England are right out. I think they’ll perform better than people expect (and certainly better under Billy Ashcroft than they ever would have done under Andy Robinson) but getting to the final is a long shot.

Wales, as usual, is where my loyalty lies (but I’m not from North wales - if England do get the final then I will be cheering them. Unless it’s against the dragons army of course!) but while I think they will easily come second in their group (behind Australia and providing they beat Fiji) I very much doubt that they’ll get past the first round playing either England or South Africa.

But as we’ve seen tonight, with the host nation getting beaten - nay, humiliated (laughing? moi?) - in the opening match by Argentina, anything could happen!

With all the brouhaha surrounding Gordon Ramsey not catching fish and Bear Grylls not sleeping under stars, I still can’t understand how the red tops get away with irresponsible and misleading “journalism”. There’s recently been alleged reports that a Great White Shark was spotted off the Cornish coast and The Sun had blurry footage recorded by some holiday maker of said shark leaping out of the water after a pod of dolphins.

This, of course, sent that particular rag into a feeding frenzy of mockups and spotters guide and the usual rubbish that you expect. What tipped me over the edge, however, was their helpful spotters guide to the “Worlds deadliest sharks”. The Great White, of course, was top of the page. I’m just surprised they didn’t do a comparison image to show how it dwarfed a double decker bus or even St Paul’s Cathedral. It also features the Tiger shark, which is a very aggresive shark and will have a go at just about anything, the Bull Shark, which is also very territorial and aggressive, and the Mako (shortfin in this case) which is large but less aggressive and rarely, if ever, attacks humans.

However, there are two other sharks on that diagram - the Nurse Shark and the Sandtiger or, to give it the more common European name, the Grey Nurse Shark. If you look at the diagram, the Nurse shark looks to be as long as a Tiger and nearly as long as a Great White (the largest ever found being 6.4m in length). The average size of the Nurse is half that - anywhere between 2.5 - 3m (maximum of about 4m). They are dangerous to humans in the same way that dogs are - if you piss it off or provoke it then it’ll bite you. Which, if you ask me, is fair enough. Most of the time, especially during the day, they can be found in shallow waters resting on the bottom doing nothing except sleeping. At night they hunt and they can be dangerous and you should be careful - especially if you happen to be a crab or lobster or even a small fish. When I learnt to dive in Thailand, we saw a lot of nurse sharks and they did nothing as we swam around them and we even stroked its tail while it lay sleeping. They are beautiful creatures and certainly not one of the deadliest of its species.

The Sandtiger, on the other hand, only averages 2.5 - 2.8m long. The Shark Foundations database entry for the Sandtiger/Grey Nurse Shark lists it’s likely danger to humans as, wait for it, “harmless”. Not even “mostly harmless”, simply “harmless”.

It angers me to see such blatant crap passed off as fact. I know some of it must be tongue in cheek but - and I’m aware of how snobby and patronising this must sound - does the average Sun reader really take everything they read with a pinch of salt (insert appropriate fish and chips gag here) or do they know that some (most) of it is just crap? People decry video games, cartoons and rock music for leading our youth astray but here’s a national newspaper just feeding our nation false facts. And it’s(allegedly) sending a journo out with dive gear and speargun to hunt the supposed Great White which is, if you haven’t been keeping up, as listed as an endangered species.

When I’m ruler of the world, I’m going to have a big pool full of sharks with fricken laser beams attached to their heads and I’m going to feed this fucking lot to them. Of course, the sharks would be Nurse Sharks coz they’re so damned cute but hopefully the laser beams will lacerate, eviscerate and mutilate. Or maybe just burn them badly. I’d even settle for giving them an extremely annoying itch!

It’s the day after Tough Guy Nettle Warrior. If I didn’t know this because it was in my diary then I’d know it by looking at the amount of search results that have hit this site over the course of the day. Most of them are looking for pictures or for information about the event. One was looking for Savlon Nettle gel (to whom I shall say only this: deal with it. Nettle stings are nothing compared to the pain and suffering of existence. Or something similarly zen. )

I didn’t do TG this year - first time in four that I haven’t. There’s no particular reason other than I didn’t get off my arse in time to enter. I do intend to do at least one of the events next year though (and that’s likely to be the January Tough Guy as it’s the one that I feel I haven’t properly conquered yet.)

Anyway, to all those who visit this site looking for info about yesterday’s event, I’m afraid there isn’t much here. I hope it went well for you and I hope you’re still buzzing from the experience. If you want to share how it went, feel free to leave a comment.

Aquaasho is in Cauterets (which only sounds like a medical condition affecting the eyes) in France this weekend, running for Ireland in the European Mountain Running Championships. Here’s wishing her the best of luck!

So today’s Wednesday. And it’s June already. Gosh. Time, flies, fun and that sort of thing. On Friday, I fly up to Scotland and on Saturday, it’s LAMMin’ time. It hasn’t, however, all been plain sailing.

The ups and downs of the weather (which is the only reason I can find) have played hell with my immune system. After a week of extremely bad sinusitis and a weeks recovery, I managed to pick up a slight cold and chesty cough. My lungs, fortunately, seem clear although I am still expectorating occasionally. I did manage a run of about 12-15 miles (I daren’t measure it in case it’s considerably less!) on Saturday but it took me quite a while and was comparitively flat compared to this coming weekends terrain.

On Sunday, however, I got a call from Blue (as he shall now be called - he tends to wear blue when we run and I, unsurprisingly, wear black. From henceforth, we shall be known as “Black ‘N Blue”!) who was in the far north of Scotland doing his munro-bagging thing. Apparently, he had pulled a muscle in his groin. Last time he did this he was out of action for 6 weeks and suddenly it was looking like I’d have to find another partner at last minute. Then he dropped himself in it by saying that even so, he’d still manage to do the last days hard walking up a particularly steep munro. Anyway, we agreed to speak later in the week.

It now being later in the week, I’ve just got off the phone with him (I say just, it was actually a couple of hours ago) and we’ve decided to go ahead with it anyway. But we’ve also made a sensible decision (in so much as any decision regarding racing up and down mountains carrying full packs can be considered sensible) and are dropping the next class down which is marginally shorter by about 5k but averages about 500m less in terms of ascents/descents. It also has a slower completion time and is the only course to give an estimated walking time (which is 11 hours which is a lot of walking!) The advantages of this are that we can take it easy if Blue’s strain is playing up or I’m being crap but alternatively, if we feel fine then we could do quite well on the course. As I pointed out, I’d rather take it steady and finish comfortably than push it hard, not enjoy it and get depressed because we can’t finish it. It would be different if we’d completed the OMM back in October but failing two in a row would be disheartening and discouraging.

So, we’re all in and ready to go. More or less. One more kit check and packing tonight and then tomorrow we will finally find out where it’s all going to happen. (Blue concurs with Endie’s guess that it could well be around the Pitlochry area. He’s quite excited by this as there are munros there that he hasn’t been up.)

Last weekend, most people seemed preoccupied with some football match or other. No idea what all that was about. Instead I was delighted - nay, overjoyed that Wasps secured victory in the Heineken Cup Final and are European club champions once again.

I didn’t get to see the match, unfortunately. Plans to go to Twickenham were put on hold because of family commitments and there didn’t seem to be any pub that had the capability of both showing the rugby and accomodating families with young children. Still, as it seemed apparent that Leicester were going to win, considering their indomitable performance of late and I wasn’t going to be too disheartened at not watching Wasps lose.

One game, 2 tries and 25 points to 9 later, Lawrence Dallaglio raises the cup. Leicester manage to score 9 points in the first half thanks to three penalties scored by “Fat” Andy Goode. Wasps rub salt in the wounds by having tries scored by scrum half Eoin Reddan and (this still makes me laugh) Raphael Ibanez, the Wasps hooker. Yes, the hooker. The short, fat man in the middle of the scrum scores a try in the European Cup final.

It can’t get better than that.*

*Well, it could have done if they’d come higher than fifth in the premiership and hadn’t been knocked out of the EDF Energy Cup in the the group rounds.

Two years ago, headCleaner() resurfaced again. The first post was about the historic (can I call it that? I think I can) victory by Wales over Ireland to claim their first six nations win in over 20 years. Two years later and they’re first in line for the wooden spoon without a single win on their score card.

Still, if you’re only going to get one win in a tournament, a 27-18 victory over England on the last weekend of the championships is probably the one to go for. I just can’t help but wonder what the score line would have been if Wales had fielded a full team rather than the James Hook one man floor show.

Just installed a Lightbox plugin and this is to see if it works.