Sassenachs Surrender

Not a proud day to be English, I'm sad to say.

I watched the England vs Scotland game on the telly, with some trepidation, and my worst fears were confirmed - the Scots desereved to win, and well done to them for such a great defensive performance. No tries, but enough penalties and a drop goal to win the day.

England just couldn't seem to finish off when it mattered. I thought we were in big trouble when Danny Grewcock got himself sent to the bin for 10 minutes, but was mildly surprised that we didn't conceed any points during that spell.

Hey ho, at least that means the rest of the 6 Nations is now wide open. France put in a typically erratic performance in their game against Italy, the only highlight of which was Thomas Castaignede, who seemed to be back at his best after injury. Just hope he can play that well when he next pulls on the Saracens jersey!

I'm off to see the Men in Black against Bristol tomorrow, and I think we will be missing the likes of TC a great deal. I just hope we can pull oursevles up by the bootstraps and win the match. Watch this space...

À La Carte Menu

FakeBob and I were having another of our strange conversations. Nothing new there. We're both foodies, and a little silly, and the question was posed to me that, if rugby players were dishes [as indeed some of them are!], who would I choose for an À La Carte menu selection.

Never one to resist a challenge, I thought about it for about five seconds, and came up with my answers. Here we go:

Starter: Better known as a great finisher, Mark Cueto (should be pronounced Cute-O I reckon). Always light on his feet, and a nice appetiser.

Main Course: Would have to be the finest example of British Beef, Danny Grewcock [there you go, Bob, my first mention of Danny!!]. Probably would require to be Well Done, bearing in mind how tough he appears on the pitch. But little room left for side dishes or veggies.

After a suitable pause, we move on to Dessert: Kevin Yates, in the great tradition of stodgy puds like Spotted Dick and Custard [please note, I have absolutely no anecdotal evidence to back up this assumption].





Another pause required, and then we move onto a little something with the coffee: You can keep your waffeur thin mints (like Richard Houghton), but carrying on the theme, a wee French Fancy might be Dmitri Yachvili, or possibly Jean-Baptiste Ellisalde. They're so small, one would probably have both to round off the meal ;-)

My menu might not be to everyone's taste! But I think it would not require further nourishment to be taken on for some days. By the way, you were warned that this Blog has MAD in the title. Twice. You don't really expect me to be serious, do you?

Question of Sarries II

I had a very strange evening last night!

The Saracens' Supporters Association (SSA) held a joint "do" with the Club at their Hatfield training centre. Two teams of three Saracens players went head to head in a Question of Sarries evening, hosted by the lovely Kyran "Sue Barker" Bracken (see right). He really got into the part, dressed in drag!
Although he didn't go as far as Gavin Henson and shave his legs. Probably a relief all round.

There were plenty of rounds of silliness, ranging from Mystery Guest (Richard Hill cooking beans on toast in his kitchen), rugby quotes and odd one out (the best reason for picking Hugh Vyvyan as an odd one out was apparently, "he's a ginger"!). A mad time was had by all. We did miss the Feel The Sportsman round this time, which was greatly enjoyed when they held the first QofS event. Never mind, maybe they will do it again ... although Rupert swore once was enough, he's now run it twice. Give him time to come round to the idea!

Mad, Mad, Mad

Well, I've had my arm twisted to start a blog, and now its so far up my back I can only type with one hand... So what's it all about? Will anybody read this stuff? Is anybody out there?

You may be wondering about the title. I was looking for a suitable username, and this seemed appropriate. I've only become RugbyMad in the last couple of years. I've been generally Mad for a lot longer than that, but hey. The Rugby bit is my mate FakeBob's fault. We were yakking over lunch one day, during the RugbyWorldCup 2003, and I admitted that I didn't dislike rugby (in the way that I dislike bloody football) but I just didn't know what the hell was going on. A couple of days later, I found an article which he'd poached out of the paper - "An Idiots' & Girlfriends' Guide to Rugby" - left on my desk. [As a slightly worrying aside, since I'm not his girlfriend, he obviously thought I must be the alternative...]

Anyway, I read the article, watched the RWC semi-finals, then the Final with England's fantastic victory, and the rest is history. I went to my first Premiership game in Feb 2004, to my "local" club, Saracens. We lost to Northampton, but it was fun. And I've been hooked ever since.

I'm Mad about a few other things too, notably photography. You can see some of my pictures here. And the next inevitable step was to put the two illnesses together, and start photographing Rugby matches. So I did. Rugbypix.com was born...

I'll write more about my other madnesses later. Or maybe I'll just forget. For the moment, it's TTFN.