England's long road to redemption

The autumn internationals are nearly over for another year and again the topic of English rugby rears its head. After an initial promising first season as England coach Stuart Lancaster is having that difficult second album. In music terms the band knows what it is all about in the first album. Come the second album the band has started to feel full of its self importance and forgotten the reason they are there.

For English rugby last season was all about establishing English principles of rugby. Tough forward play and confidence in set piece play. Don't worry about what the rest of the world is doing England plays the English way and it works. This season things seem to be going slightly wrong. The set piece looks shaky to say the least, both the scrum and lineout are unreliable but without a consistent reason for the unreliability, different things go wrong every week. Forward play is unsure and weak with an urgency to play the ball out wide without doing the grunt work up front. These issues are compounded by a captain who is making the wrong calls for penalties and lineouts. Next week England face a great All Black side a good performance will give England some redemption, another stuttering performance and England will be under pressure for the six nations.

Why do people stop playing Sport?

I love watching sport. I find it inspiring and exciting most of all unpredictable. Watching sport is great but playing is better and far more fun. The great irony of our society is that sporting stars are adored but nobody plays sport everybody has an opinion on the England football team but how many people lace the boots up on a Saturday afternoon.

The developed world over people are getting fatter and media companies have paid more and more for access to sports rights. It's like an inverse ratio the more people play for sports the more people watch the more unhealthy people have got.

Just an observation.

Lance Armstrong and the bad old days

Blogging has been a sporadic past time. However if you have any interest in sport and life it would be wrong not to comment on potentially the story of the year. Lance Armstrong was the only cyclist that moved out of the consciousness of the cycling public and into the public consciousness. His story was not only compelling but exciting. He gave America a knowledge about the Tour due France and a hero to follow against the nasty Europeans. Unfortunately he was a liar a cheat and worse a bully.

Is cycling damaged for good for the tour followers yes. However the signs of a revival are good. The revival is coming from two unlikely places. The first place is the uk a non-traditional  place for the two wheeled past time. The other place is women, GB cycling has made super stars out of these untainted girls and that it is where all the positives for cycling lie.