Short term vs Long term

Been busy today but will need to even busier on the morrow. However….

Gloucester 28 - Worcester 16
I’m quietly pleased. I’ve been guilty recently of thinking short term about my favourite sporting club and moping somewhat instead of gazing wistfully into the future and imagining a rosy future involving quality centres and big, ugly lock forwards. I don’t think Gloucester are a long way from becoming a very tidy outfit and, with a clever summer recruiting folk worthy to wear that shirt, we should compete more next term. However, longing for 05/06 is the equivalent of wishing one’s life away so it is important, starting today, to appreciate the finer aspects of watching the cherry and whites. I would have settled for the dourest of 3-0 mud fests today and it reflects Gloucester’s superiority over a frankly limited Warriers (snigger…) fifteen that I left the temple of the oval ball regretting a lost chance for a bonus point.

Gloucester played with plenty of passion and a few players seemed to be leaving a period of iffy form behind them. Jake Boer covered a lot of ground today, and, ok, if he wasn’t sprinting fifty yards and sidestepping hither and thither, then he was doing all the murky spadework that he revels in. And murky spadework in, er, spades is precisely what the club needs. The captain played very well and was my man of the match. Henry Paul had his best game for a long while. His shimmy-shally to set up the noble Terence ‘Cigs’ Sigley for the last try was worth the admission price alone. He just seemed keener than he has done for a long while to me. Perhaps it’s a confidence thang. My final candidate for a ‘back on form’ gong was Andrew Gomarsall who was a dogged soul and harried his opponents all afternoon. His charge down and score was well deserved. He hope he stays at the club but only if he is sensible about his wage demands.

My other thought about today was how the inclusion of Sigley instead of Bezuidenhout has improved the side considerably. The affable ex-bouncer is swifter and smarter around the park than the monster South African and adds a new dimension to our play. Finally, I also would rather see Thinus Delport in a Gloucester 15 shirt than Jon Goodridge but today Goodridge, I admit, outshone the South African World Cup star. His kicking and positional sense were spot on while Delport would have struggled to catch his breath.


S pointed out to me earlier that on Wednesday my posting mentioned the Gang of Four song, ‘I Found the Essence Rare’. Of course I meant ‘I Found that Essence Rare’ and I simply can’t apologise enough.

I enjoyed the first programme in BBC4’s series, ‘Jazz Britannia’ although I have always shied away from Trad. Jazz with all its Acker Bilk and Midnight in Moscow connotations. It is a shocking confession but I think if I’d been around in the fifties I’d have been wearing a tatty turtleneck, beret and goatee with the best of them. I may have ejaculated the occasional, ‘Daddy-o!’ too. On the strength of the show I have added Stan Tracey’s Under Milk Wood to my Amazon wish list. According to the British Council’s website, of all places, it is a ‘masterpiece that single-handedly defined UK jazz’ and one of the top 30 British CDs of all time.