Davies left London Welsh in 1972 to join Swansea, giving up teaching to work as a sales manager for WA Blyth of Swansea, suppliers of industrial safety clothing to the mining and steel industries.

I too would think of turning a school teacher into a sales manager.

Well, I would if the school teacher were the Wales No 8, just back from a victorious Lions tour of New Zealand and my sales were all to the rugby mad mining and steel industries of South Wales.

Recall, these were the days when the Welsh front row all worked at the same mine, played for the same club and, unkindly so it is said, shared the same one tooth.

We’ll have all sorts coming out of the woodwork claiming that this shows what is wrong with contemporary society etc. And they may well be right.

But what they’ll be missing in their calls for changes in the law, for community owned football clubs, for mutuals, for the crucifixion of tax dodgers and all the rest is that what we’re seeing here is the system dealing with a couple of screw ups.

Continuously lose money and not have a sugar daddy to cover the losses? Go bust.

This isn’t therefore evidence of how the system is screwed up. This is evidence of the system dealing with screw ups.

Grossly overpaid footballers are a constant topic among sports lovers. They are resented for the impact their excessive salaries have had on admission charges;

You’ve got the cause and effect arse over tip there.

It’s the ability to charge high admission prices (plus all the other cash, TV, replica shirts etc) which drives up footballers wages. This is true opf any business where it’s human capital that makes it all work: the cash is going to flow to those with the scarce item, the human capital. True of banking, true of the movies, true of football.

As the surrounding society has got richer, as the amount being spent on leisure increases even more rapidly, that cash flows as a river in spate through football clubs. And it’s the footballers who get the bulk of it. Just as it’s the film stars who get most of the money in the movie business: rarely indeed is it the investors.

So, no, high wages do not lead to high ticket prices. It’s the ability to screw high ticket prices out of people that leads to the high wages.

While spectators are being urged to abandon their cars and embrace public transport, 4,000 brand new BMWs have been ordered to escort dignitaries and officials to events.

Their worst innings in a century.

But, umm, they’ve still a decent chance of winning the match.

Odd game, cricket.

“Playing in the World Cup was a dream and playing in New Zealand was special. What other time are you going to play in New Zealand? The five planes it took us to get there was worth the trip,” he said.

“The local people embraced us completely and made us feel at home. In Blenheim, our host town, they even put up the road signs in Cyrillic. They don’t get many Russian visitors there, they had done it for us.”

Yes, well done. Clap clap clap.

He was brought up in Zelonograd, a large town north-west of Moscow with a proud rugby history. He took up the sport at the age of nine but it took off when his parents sent him to Dublin to improve his English.

And that is amusing too. Zelenograd was built to be the Soviet version of Silicon Valley. All electronics and chip making. Must be the only place on the planet where the geeks play rugby.

The Olympic stadium fiasco laid bare

How did the saga begin, how has it gone wrong and how will it end?

It began with politicians spending other peoples’ money it went wrong as politicians spent other peoples’ money and it will end badly and expensively.

Because, y’know, politicians have been spending other peoples’ money.

But I think that Wales today would have walked through France today. So, Wales in the final and I sorta assume NZ will be there too (although, come on you Pumas!).

Actually, I wouldn’t want to bet against Wales today beating NZ sans Dan Carter.

Wisden looks at it all rather differently from many others.

Update: So it appears he is. Which is a bit of a blow.

Yes, I know, it’s a team game, nothing to do with the individual.

But, but, there is a part of what we’ve all been waiting for gone. Is he really as good as we all think? We’ve been (OK, in a minor manner but still) waiting for 4 years to see him, mature and in his pomp, bossing what is almost certainly the best rugby team in the world through the knockout stages of the World Cup.

And now we’re not going to. This isn’t to say “Boo hoo” for New Zealand or anything, rather to say that watching the very best perform at their peak is part of what this thing is all about.

And now we won’t, poor us.

And maybe the sad decline of Fiji and, to a lesser extent, Tonga as rugby powerhouses is not surprising. The sides these countries put out in this World Cup are third or fourth teams at best, the top players having long ago relocated to countries who can offer attractive wage packets.

There are eight Islanders in the All Black squad, seven in Wallaby colours, seven more representing America, another three turn out for Japan, Samoan Manu Tuilagi is England’s hottest property and Toby Faletau is an important asset for Wales.

In all, there are 120 players at this World Cup, 20 per cent of the playing population were born on the islands, or who consider themselves Pacific Islanders. And all that rugby talent from a combined population of around a million. Get the pick of them back to their countries of origin and this match might have been the final of Rugby World Cup 2011 rather than the washout it was.

Paul Ackford

I know we’re not supposed to talk about “race” as it’s not a concept which really translates into humans, we’re all the same species. Perhaps “genetic origin” or “genetic prevalence” is better?

But perhaps it is correct that whatever that gene mix is in those Pacific Islands is the one that is best for the unique demands of rugby? In the same way that West African is for sprinting (and definitively not for swimming), North and East African for long distance running?

Great upper body strength plus explosive acceleration?

All very strange, the aim of the game is that the big blokes in the white shirts grumble up and down the field, isn’t it?

But those who wanted football to carry on here acted admirably quickly, and launched the new Chester FC as a “phoenix club”. Crucially, it’s a mutual: owned by its supporters, who can pay a minimum of £5 a season to become active shareholders. And it is not alone: the night I watched them play, their opponents in the Evo-Stik League premier division were the fan-owned FC United Of Manchester, founded in protest against the debt-laden misrule of the Glazer family. There is also AFC Wimbledon – whose fans took similar umbrage at their old club’s move to Milton Keynes and are now back in the Football League – and, among others, Brentford, Exeter City, Cambridge City, and good old Runcorn Linnets.

If that’s the way you want to organise things then you go and organise things that way. Isn’t the freedom and liberty to do your own thing a glorious possession?

As soon as it becomes law, they want government and local authorities to aggressively use the provisions of the localism bill to identify football clubs as assets of community value, thus opening the way for mutualised local ownership. More generally, they’re pushing for a sports law that will recognise that clubs amount to much more than privately owned businesses, and toughen the regulation on who can own them.

No, fuck off. The freedom and liberty for you to do your own thing necessarily means that others have the limilar liberty and freedom to do their own thing. You don’t get to use the law to confiscate the property of others.

Francis Baron, the former chief executive of the Rugby Football Union, has called for the governing body’s acting chief executive, Martyn Thomas, and the five elected board members criticised in the Blackett report to be charged with bringing the game into disrepute.

I’ve seen occasional pieces but not one which explains what the basic problem is.

Is it the last lot snarling at the new? Handbags in the changeover in a bureaucracy?

An old management structure not up to the expansion of money and time and interest in the game?

A few timeserving committee men promoted above their competence levels?

Anyone actually know?

Startlingly good centre, playing for England against Wales?

Made a fool of?

Anyone remember Matthew Tait against Gavin Henson?

Ah, yes, The Guardian does:

It is six years since England named a young, trembling debutant called Mathew Tait to face Wales, an experiment that ended in conspicuous failure. Now they have picked another youthful centre with the same initials to wear the No13 jersey against the same opposition, fully expecting a happier outcome. It says everything about the potential impact of Manu Tuilagi, England’s new hunk of Samoan muscle, that those currently doing the trembling are likely to be the Wales midfield.

The mood was defiant, but a stirring musical expression of that defiance hadn’t yet appeared – until the fateful night at the Drury Lane theatre, when “God Save our King” was sung on stage by the company.

The audience was electrified. As the Daily Advertiser reported: “The universal applause it met with, being encored with repeated Huzzas, sufficiently denoted in how just an Abhorrence they hold the arbitrary schemes of our invidious Enemies, and detest the despotick Attempts of Papal power.”

Well, we don’t fear Papal power any more. But isn’t there a threat of despotic powers of a different kind being wielded just now, under the guise of “saving the euro”?

It’s surely time to stiffen British sinews, and the perfect musical encouragement lies ready to hand, in the anthem’s second verse. They’re not much sung these days, so you may have forgotten how the words go.

Here they are: “Lord, our God, arise /Scatter her enemies /And make them fall. /Confound their politics /Frustrate their knavish tricks /On Thee our hopes we fix, /God save us all.

Well, yes, but if we are to scatter her enemies, confound their politics and frustrate their knavish tricks, don’t we have to go and hang all the politicians?

Not that I’m against this as a general principle you understand, not even against it as a national rallying cry or something that should be sung before every national sporting occasion.

Actually, it would make international sporting occasions rather more fun, hanging a randomly selected Cabinet Minister from one of the two nations competing after the game. The only difficult question would be deciding whether it should be one from the losing or winning team that does the hemp fandango. If the losing side, would teams actually compete to win? Or would the incentive be greater if it were the winning team that lost one of its parasites?