No Delport in a Storm

I’m actually very keen to pen a little bit on here each day. For a while I’ve been thinking about whether to get writing once more and have certainly considered all the options. I have been in recent contact with Sportnetwork and I know they are desperate to have some sort of Gloucester RFC input on their pages but, for now, I’m going to plump for a weblog. My reasons? Sportnetwork would possibly require more dedication than I can provide and I would always not be able to write what I wanted so little gig and film reviews and musings on what I’m listening to and reading would - naturally - be off limits. I won’t rule out volunteering my services though. Currently the online message boards for Gloucester supporters somehow fail to interest me as much as they used to and fewer and fewer posters possess the wit and realism and maturity to hold my interest. I know my tastes don’t always align with the mainstream but I would like some, any ‘product’ that gives me a buzz, that I can relate to. I guess this weblog will have to suffice for now. The Ikeda quote was certainly the catalyst for my restarting an online journal.

The opening of these pages coincides with a certain personal ambivalence towards the city rugby club I have supported since a lad. This has proved a messy old season and Friday night’s defeat at Ulster certainly means that the club’s chances of qualifying for the last eight in Europe hang by a series of rather inadequate threads. The club requires its own ‘miracle match’ against Stade Francais next weekend with a bonus point a prerequisite as well as the need to stop the mighty Stade from scoring a certain number of tries. Frankly, I feel it is beyond Gloucester. Injuries have disrupted the season but the malaise had set in before 04/05 kicked off when the impressive Delport left the club and was not properly replaced (Goodridge is merely an adequate replacement) and the key positions of centre and outside half were not targeted in the pre-season recruitment drive. In recent weeks the club has failed to remotely replace the key, injured playmaker McRae and neither Fanolua nor Mauger have been able provide any support to the sharpness of Paul. With Simpson-Daniel, keen as mustard and Gloucester’s one class act, injured after playing one whole half of a rugby match when he palpably should have been replaced immediately, missing and with the sensational Forrester woefully underused, my feelings of disappointment have grown over recent weeks. I would not be surprised should either of our young stars look to play their rugby elsewhere before long. My current wish list is to reach the Powergen Cup Final and somehow ensure European qualification for next season by which time we have signed a Delportesque fullback (maybe even the man himself!), a centre worthy of the name, back up for the clever McRae and an ugly big lock. Time will tell.

I’m not listening to many guitars at the moment. I was keen to zap a good deal of the Warp Records back catalogue recently and my Christmas stocking brought me plenty of Autechre which I have been playing to death and gradually getting into. Autechre don’t deal in hummable choruses (thank goodness!) but repeated listening provides hidden depths and undercurrents to what appear, at first, to be rather bleak, emotionless electronic soundscapes. My attention shall need to head guitarwards in just over a fortnight when I shall be setting off to see Gang of Four at the Bristol Academy. Frankly, I am unable to wait. In fact I might go and put on A Brief History of the Twentieth Century now.