Spanked bottoms

This week we will be mostly concerning ourselves with spanked bottoms…

Welcome to Loose Pass – our weekly assortment of disjointed thoughts. This week we will be mostly concerning ourselves with spanked bottoms…

Ah, the curious case of the Ospreys' 16th man!

Sounds like a spy novel, doesn't it? And judging by the excessive clamour, our rogue agent might as well have been standing on a grassy knoll with a smoking rifle in his hand.

We've got Leicester's head honchos recruiting “a leading firm of sports law specialists” to represent them, and the Ospreys declining all comment until a legal ruling has been reached.

Yes, a three-man “independent Disciplinary Committee” will now convene in Dublin to mull over the results of an investigation carried out by an ERC Disciplinary Officer. Lawyers, officials and witnesses will also be in attendance.

Come on, lads. Is all this really necessary?

Can't we just agree that it was an honest mistake and move on? What's with this penchant for spanking bottoms? Is it the boarding school thing?

Okay, we admit that it was fun to watch referee Alan Lewis give both barrels to the Ospreys' hapless logistics manager for sending Lee Byrne back on without going through the fourth official.

“It's a nonsense! An absolute nonsense!” he bellowed.

Referees have copped a great deal of flak for their perceived “incompetence” in recent months, and the discernible schadenfreude in the Irish official's rebuke was one of the highlights of the weekend.

That the simple act of replacing one player for another can end in court might just give clubs pause for thought. You see, governing a game of rugby union isn't easy. Now it's up to the Ospreys to simply acknowledge that fact.

As for the Tigers, well, Leicester boss Richard Cockerill deserves a little credit for his magnanimity in the wake of the game.

“I am sure they [Ospreys] didn't do it purposely,” he said. “We were beaten fair and square. I am a lover of the game and I am sure it was a mistake by somebody.”

Pity, though, that he was subsequently silenced by his superiors.

Pity, too, that Cockerill seems unable to extend the same benefit of doubt to referees: he has just returned to the touchline having served a four-week suspension for verbally abusing match officials.

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Think England might break their try drought during the Six Nations? If so, you stand to make quite a bit of money.

The UK's largest bookmaker has priced up who it thinks will be among the tournament's top try-scorers, with Ireland's Tommy Bowe leading the charge as 7/1 favourite.

Scan down the list and take in the names of the other hopefuls. Here we find the like of Shane Williams, Julien Malzieu, Vincent Clerc and Leigh Halfpenny.

Now scroll down a little more Рpast Brian O'Driscoll, Lee Byrne, Aur̩lien Rougerie and others Рand there you will find him: the first Englishman on this list, Ugo Monye in eleventh place. A 20/1 outsider.

The new indignity follows a woeful November for Martin Johnson's side, accusations that Premiership has lost its pizzazz, and the near-total expulsion of English clubs from the Heineken Cup.

All these problems have been traced back to a lack of tries, so it's hard to question the bookies' reasoning.

But recent evidence suggests that the English (well, clubs based in England) are patching up their relationship with the whitewash.

Premiership clubs each scored an average of 14.4 tries during the group stage of the Heineken Cup. This compares favourably to the French sides (14.3) and the Italians (6.5) and the Scots (6).

But way out ahead were the Irish with 16.3 tries per province, whilst the Welsh representatives managed 14.75 apiece … so quite how only the Ospreys made the last eight is a bit of a mystery.

Indeed, Leicester dotted down 23 tries (second highest tally after Clermont on 24) and still they did not progress, which seems to suggest that one needs more than tries to win.

First and foremost, winning is about confidence. Regrettably for Johnno, that's the hardest area of the game to coach.

The bookies' money looks exceedingly safe.

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Gouged by Julien Dupuy. Gouged by David Attoub. Stamped on by Danny Grewcock. Yes, Stephen Ferris can now surely be considered the game's most effective loose forward – he's obvious a pain in the proverbial at the breakdown. Who will he annoy next?

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QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“Papa used to always say he ranked a distant third in nana's affections behind Frank Sinatra and Glenn Miller. We all knew that was just a tease – he was actually fourth behind Gregor Townsend.”
– Gregor Lawson shows a familiar turn of phrase as he addresses the mourners at the funeral of the man he called 'papa' – his grandfather, the great Bill McLaren.

Incidentally, McLaren once commentated on a game in which wee Gregor starred for Heriot's. His electrifying run through a maze of Melrose players would have moved most grandfathers to happy tears, but not 'The Voice'.

“His mother, my daughter, expected me to say 'that's my boy', but I thought he'd get an awful ragging from his pals,” said McLaren.

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Our sympathy goes out to the family and friends of Ruben Kruger, that great servant of South African rugby who has died aged 39 after calling a truce in his long battle with cancer – he was never one for 'losing' battles.

The epitome of the Boks' line of granite-hewn loose forwards, it is fitting that Kruger lately gained immortality in the film 'Invitius'. Let's hope he got to see it before he left us. Not that he needed an actor to spell out his achievements, of course. He was named the South African Rugby Football Union's player of the year in that World Cup-winning year of 1995.

Fittingly, a lovely story links our two recently departed friends.

The Springboks were surprised to find McLaren and his wife, Bette, awaiting their arrival on their first trip north following South Africa's re-admittance to international rugby.

The reason behind the impromptu welcoming party? Simple. McLaren just wanted to check how the big man wanted his surname pronounced.

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A royal poke in the eye for those planning to tut about tax-payers' money during the Six Nations. Prince Harry won't be larking about at Twickenham, he'll be there on a strictly professional basis.

Yes, it has been announced that the young scamp is to become vice-patron of the