Loose Pass

This week we will mostly be concerning ourselves with holiday reading, rescues at sea and age-old questions of scheduling…

This week we will mostly be concerning ourselves with holiday reading, rescues at sea and age-old questions of scheduling…

It's a smidgeon late for me to be making gift suggestions, but there's probably a good few of you received – as I did – a few book tokens for Christmas.

Wondering what to spend them on? Sick of the bland metrosexual dross cluttering up the shelves? Over the proliferation of B-list celebrities making one last choking, gasping clutch at their celebrity status by ordering marketeer and promoters to line our bookshop walls with autobiographical drivel which makes even reality TV producers shudder into their Starbucks?

Well, you could start with Bernard Jackman's autobiography, the somewhat dramatically-titled 'Blueblood – The Story Of Leinster In The Cheika Years', in which Jackman is pretty candid about the ruthlessness required to reach the top, including a harrowing account of the effects of the multiple concussions that eventually forced him to stop playing.

Other Irishmen of other allegiances will doubtless be racing off to nab a copy of the intriguingly-titled 'Quinny Red Blooded' (who came up with the idea first? We'd love to know – the books were even published on the same date!), in which Alan Quinlan is slightly less colourful (well, Leinster played more attractive rugby) about his career. But there's a good few pages on the moment where Quinlan's finger found its way into Leo Cullens eye, giving his Lions tour hopes a poke in the eye too.

There's also Stewart McKinney's 'Voices From The Back Of The Bus', which is as good a collection of coarse rugby stories as has been stitched together for some time and for the anoraks and collectors among you, John Griffiths and Paul Morgan's superb new IRB Yearbook for 2011.

For the Welsh, there's a new take on the seventies called 'Nobody Beats Us' by David Tossell, and a long overdue autobiography by Bobby Windsor – co-written with Peter Jackson – called 'The Iron Duke', which is the best book out of the lot by far.

Windsor not only addresses the issues of payment during the amateur era, he gives an account on the boxing bouts he used to have on the side and what he did to become blackballed by one of the world's most famous clubs.

Brian Moore's extremely personal volume has now gone to paperback and is well worth a read too.

But for sheer enthralling rugby tension, at every level, we still think that John Daniell's epic, 'Confessions Of A Rugby Mercenary', which takes you through Daniell's season at Montpellier five years ago, is the best rugby book on the shelves (or on the kindle menus, if you prefer). It's not even a recent publication – it was published three years ago – but we still rate it the best rugby book we've read.
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Christmas in the South is not quite the scarf-wearing, gluhwein-glugging, frozen white paradise it is up North, lest we forget. Cape Town basked in 30-degree heat, New Zealand was exceptionally clement and Australia was much the same.

Meaning that on, and in the run-up to, Christmas, holidaymakers took all sorts of opportunities to go and enjoy the beaches and fine weather, with rugby's luminaries no exception.

Former Wallaby Mat Rogers was enjoying just such a break, when panels on a boat, lowered to protect the passengers from an approaching storm, inadvertently trapped carbon monoxide fumes in the boat, leading to a man passing out and tumbling overboard.

Rogers was able to jump into the water to save the man as he was less the worse for wear… and the reason? Rogers' rugby fitness. Our sport is the best hey?
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So – the cameo by Gavin Henson aside – is there anybody out there who really enjoyed the live TV Aviva Premiership mach on Boxing Day? Is there anybody who thought, as I did, that the teams looked plain knackered, certainly during the first half? Is there anybody who reckons that Sarries' 13-6 win was the culmination of an unimaginative war of attrition? Those players who did not play like Christmas puddings certainly played as though they were dreaming of them.

This Christmas period has been more benign than most, with the festivities falling on weekends and the cold weather's steely grip on the UK forcing postponements, but teams not fortunate enough to have been given a break by the weather have now been slogging themselves stale for four months now, with five – in some cases, six – more months still to go.

The French used to give themselves a winter break, but even that tradition appears to have fallen by the wayside.

European rugby is in a rut at the moment, with many many teams using the same homogenous moves and little evidence of progressive thinking or imagination – in plenty of cases, things seem simply to exist week to week, with avoiding defeat rather than winning being emphasized.

Would it not be beyond the wit of tournament organisers or sponsors or promoters or whoever, to simply get a little mid-season break in at Christmas? For freshness' sake? Just a fortnight off would surely be a little injection of tonic, a little thinking time for the players and coaches to sit back for a day, take stock, and brush things up a bit?
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But here we come to 2011, a Rugby World Cup year. In eleven months we'll know for sure if the south really is that far ahead or whether the north has a few well-organised plans up its sleeves.

Rugby has come a long way even in the past three years, with new laws, old laws being reinforced, new stadia, new stars. 2011 looks to be the best year for rugby in the professional era yet, and we're looking forward to going through it with you.

Merry Christmas and a happy new year from Planet Rugby!

Loose Pass compiled by Richard Anderson