Tag Archives: Heineken Cup

Another Round Of Heino, Please

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Another Round Of Heineken, Please

Orange and Canal+ executives must have been appalled by the carnage among the Top 14 clubs in the first weekend of the H Cup 2011. French rugby should be on the crest of a wave following the RWC2011 renaissance but Clermont, Racing, Castres, Biarritz all bit the dust, with Toulouse the only French H Cup winners on the weekend. In truth new-boys Montpellier salvaged the pride of Les Tricouleurs rugby with a gutsy draw against European champions Leinster, which could even have been a victory.  Continue reading →

Heineken Cup Pool 4

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IT’S THE GROUP OF DEATH! It’s scarcely credible that this phrase has taken hold in rugby and managed to survive in commentary. It doesn’t have any notable lineage [for example, it’s not old naval slang or public school code], it’s an enormous overstatement – nobody calls failure to qualify from another group a death, so why should this be a ‘group’ of death? – and it’s really quite crass.

It’s the sort of modern over-statement that doesn’t sit well with rugby, where the method of scoring is still called a ‘try’, and you still have positions like tighthead prop and second five-eighth. If rugby were to adopt the sort of language from which GROUP OF DEATH! has managed to cross over, we’d have Right Scrum Masters, Megaboot Generals and VICTORY TOUCHDOWNS! Continue reading →