Last Tuesday, to discuss the state of the scrum, that once proud edifice that too often nowadays resembles a steaming heap of rubble.
The scrum, at the highest level at least, is nothing short of a bad joke: currently, 60% of all scrums collapse in top-level internationals and 40% of scrums have to be reset. In addition, the average time to complete a scrum is just under a minute, which adds up to an awful lot of watching 16 huge men in a pile on the floor.
England coach Martin Johnson called at Murrayfield "a game of rugby trying to break out between scrums". And when , a former hooker who won 64 international caps, is so often moved to admit he hasn't got a clue what's going on at scrum-time, you know you've got a problem.
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My dad tells a story of the time he saw standing on a crowded Tube platform after a game, firing off autographs for a group of young fans before bidding a hearty farewell and boarding his train. Bentley, bear in mind, was the club's star striker and would skipper them to their only a couple of years later, in 1954-55.
I tell you this not because I thought you might fancy a whimsical skip down Memory Lane but because it is revealing in two ways: first, it demonstrates there was a time when our sporting gods lived among us, not in behind 12-foot gates; second, while the gods of yesteryear were revered and adored, those who revered and adored them kept a dignified distance.
You are more likely to bump into doing her big shop in Lidl than you are to see current Chelsea captain Β ridingΒ the 1730 from Fulham Broadway, so other-worldly have today's sporting stars become: buffered by media men and agents, over-marketed and over-branded, and this is where comes in.
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