Held together by petroleum jelly

Apart from a few times in pubs when it’s been on and once, many years ago in a muddy field somewhere in Sydney, I’ve never really watched a game of rugby. This weekend is the beginning of the Six Nations competition. (It took me a while to work out who the six nations were but can now report that they are, England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, France and Italy.)

The BBC is providing live coverage of all the games in the competition so, mainly because Mirinda is presently in Florida, I thought I’d watch the games today and see what I thought.

First up was Wales v Ireland, played in Cardiff.

Now, as a kid, I watched many league games with the sadly performing Penrith Panthers, so I know the rudimentary rules governing rugby. Two teams of big, beefy men try and move a ball from one half of the field of play to the other in order to score points. The points are scored in one of two ways; by kicking the ball between the goal posts and by scoring a try. The team with the most points wins the game.

Given this little bit of knowledge, meant I could watch and enjoy it on the most basic of levels. As the game progressed, like the true sport-literate male I am, I picked up more of the finer points of the game.

One thing I didn’t know was that the liberal application of petroleum jelly is a good way to stop blood gushing from a head wound. While affective for a bit, if the wound is bad enough, stitches will need to be added to the mix.

I learned this very quickly into the first game when a close up of one of the players showed some sort of off field assistant, smearing it all over his head. The mix of blood, sweat and petroleum jelly made for a colourful, if somewhat gory, look.

The other thing I learned was that the game is played in two 40 minute halves (rather than the 45 minutes in football). I wonder why? I think I’ll ask Ben as he’s my oracle in all things rugby (he’s also a Tory oracle but I don’t really need to know a lot about them, though I’m led to believe that Tory and Rugby go together like strawberries and cream).

Anyway, Ireland completely dominated the first half, making Wales (the current holders of the cup) look like a bunch of muppets who’d never learned how to play. Whatever the coach said to the Welsh team at half-time had some sort of supernatural effect because the team that returned to the field was entirely changed. Not with a new team, I hasten to add, but with a whole raft of skills that were missing in the first half.

Wales then played out of their skins, scaring the Irish into defence. Sadly, it wasn’t enough and the game went to the Irish but at least the Welsh put in a bit of effort otherwise it would have been a rather dull, one sided affair for the whole 80 minutes.

The second game I watched was between England and Scotland. Unfortunately, the person in the studio was the detested (by me) John Inverdale. He was the guy who forgot to praise the athletes during the Olympics, preferring to ask silver medal winners why they didn’t try harder for the gold. Fortunately I didn’t have to put up with him for long as he wasn’t commentating and I turned the sound off when they crossed to the studio.

Anyway, the first half was a brilliant, crunching affair with lots of excitement and end-to-end action. I even whooped a few times. I thoroughly enjoyed it, possibly because the teams were both evenly matched…or so it seemed.

Apparently they’re not evenly matched. By the second half, the Scottish team were showing signs of fatigue under the English onslaught and the game descended into a waiting for the clock to tick down affair. And England won, convincingly.

All in all, it was very enjoyable and I’m looking forward to watching France v Italy tomorrow. It seems France are the favourites to win the whole competition and Italy are the underdogs so I’m thinking it maybe a bit one sided.

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I did do one other thing, apart from watching rugby. I put our Australia photos on the site. You can view them here.