WELL, WHO WOULD HAVE KNOWN?

 I've had a really good sport's weekend having bought a Sky Pass (a week's worth) in order to watch the All Blacks play Australia and the Black Ferns play Japan with the bonus of the All Whites playing Socceroos (Australia).

Richard bought a pass as well and apparently enjoyed watching the All Blacks beat Australia but he forgot to watch the Black Ferns annihilate Japan (he is getting on a bit).

This afternoon I watched the All Whites play Socceroos (Australia) and, while it was an exciting match the result was disappointing. Australia won. How unfair is that?

An interesting thing I noticed in the match (admittedly, even though I played soccer at school, I don't usually watch the game on TV) was a new ploy when a free kick is being played. In addition to a wall (a few defending players standing between the ball kicker and the goal with the defenders protecting their own balls with their hands), now, one of the defenders lays down behind the wall to block any low shots.

Like this

Now, this got me thinking.

Richard, as anyone(?) reading his blog would know, never played soccer at school. He played rugby.*

If this free kick blocking rule had been in force back then (many, many, many years ago) I can imagine that Richard would have been in great demand by the soccer players and they would have been queuing up to enlist him into their teams.

* In the interests of full disclosure he played as a forward  which was one of the 8 guys left over after the proper team (of backs) was selected.