I was much distressed last night - watching the Blues/Ospreys game on S4C. Good game. Didn't mind who won. And then Martyn Williams gets the red card. Disaster. Martyn Williams is no Ritchie McCaw but is the best openside Wales has got - and now he will be banned for the start of the 6 Nations. The incident set me off on one of my pet causes - a cause where I admit almost no-one agrees with me.
I was probably the only football fan who thinks Zinadine Zidane was fully justified in head-butting the Italian moron in the World Cup Final, who wound him up by profanely insulting his loved ones. I grudgingly accept that he should have been shown the red card - but the frenzy of hypocritical condemnation that flooded the media cut no ice with me at all. It seems that its OK to insult a man's wife and family and boost about what sexual indignities should be visited on a man's wife and sister in the most graphic terms - but its not OK to headbutt the despicable moron who utters the words. Well, just as I supported John Prescott when he thumped the yob who hit him in the face with an egg during a General Election campaign, all of my sympathy was with Zidane. I have the same attitude to politics. A straightforward attack in the open is fair enough. Politics is a brutal business sometimes. Its the sneaky, behind the back briefing that I can't stand.
Last night, the Ospreys Jason Spice just gratuitously clipped Martyn across the ear, behind the referee's back, for no reason at all. It was a tense game and Martyn saw red - and 'brushed his forehead' against Spice's face. And Wales loses a key player for the start of the 6 Nations. If I'd been the referee, I would have accepted that Martyn deserved a yellow for loss of control - and I would have given Spice a red card for gratuitous spite. I am really glad that Cardiff Blues won.
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