If I Was Johnno ... Part 1

I know I'm not anything like Martin Johnson. I'm a girl, I'm 5'4" and I've never played rugby. But if I could be in his (rather large) shoes for a day, who would I pick as my England squad to go to the World Cup?

You would think that today's match against Wales would have made things easier after the dire result, but for 30 minutes in the first half, England dominated. Unfortunately domination without scoring is meaningless, but I'm concentrating on the fact that this was a "friendly", if such a word can be applied to any match involving England and Wales.

It was a test. Johnno needed to try different combinations of players from last week's England victory, hence 13 changes. He is due to announce his selection a week on Monday so these matches are the only way he can get a good look at his options.

So who would I choose? Tonight I'm looking at the backs.

15. Ben Foden. Give him the ball and he's a nippy little fellow. He can score tries.

14. Chris Ashton. With or without the Swan Dive though hopefully with plenty of them during the World Cup.

13. Manu Tuilagi. Immense young player and he's already scored his first England try. It takes a few players to stop him once he gets going.

12. Matt Banahan. Two massive lumps of rugby players in the centre, Banahan and Tuilagi, would be powerful.

11. Undecided as at time of writing. I would have picked Ugo Monye, to be honest. But he's staying home. More thought required.

10. Alternate Jonny Wilkinson and Toby Flood. Jonny is the master, Flood is solid with a good boot.

9. Ben Youngs, who (fingers crossed) should have recovered from knee surgery in time to get a match in against Ireland.

Biased Or Not Too Biased

Stuart Barnes. What can I say about Mr Barnes that hasn't already been said by hundreds of rugby supporters, particularly those of us who support Leicester. Ours is the team he most loves to hate.

Lately his comments seem to seriously wind me up, so I have taken to turning down the sound on the television when matches are on Sky Sports. Instead I crank up the volume on Bleddyn Jones' radio commentary. Is Bleddyn biased towards Leicester? Of course he is! But he's not commenting on a national platform but on local radio.

I was glad I was actually at Leicester's semi final match against Northampton after hearing Barnes' reaction to the Ashton v Tuilagi fight. And it was a fight. Ashton took a pop at Manu in the back of the head with his knee and Manu came up swinging. Both were in the wrong, both accepted responsibility for their actions and both took their punishment (yellow card for Ashton, yellow card and five week ban for Manu).

To hear Barnes' views, Manu would appear just short of evil incarnate. His article on the Sky Sports website use the words "thuggishness", "assailant" and "battery", while he describes Ashton's knee to the head as "a gentle shove to the Samoan's neck". (http://www.skysports.com/opinion/story/0,25212,12062_6933401,00.html 15 May 2011)

I won't continue with Barnes' description of how Manu should not be allowed to represent England in the World Cup (although Dylan Hartley, a player I absolutely adore unless he's playing against Leicester once had a ban for eye gouging, a far more serious crime in the game of rugby and he represents England) or how Cockers behaved abominably at the same match towards the referee assessor (who did not seem to be aware he had been abused). You can read Barnes' own words via the link.

But the problem is Barnes' verbal diarrhoea was not contained to the events of 14 May. In today's Rugby Club on Sky Sports, he claimed that Cockers has turned against Players Player of the Year Thomas Waldrom following the Tank Engine declaring his availability for England selection, thanks to his dear Granny. This was widely reported in the media on 23 March 2011.

Since this announcement, Cockers has obviously shunned Waldrom:

Bath v Tigers - start
Quins v Tigers - replacement
Leinster v Tigers - replacement
Tigers v Gloucester - start
Falcons v Tigers - start
Tigers v London Irish - start
Tigers v Saints - replacement

If this is a sign of Cockers' displeasure, I would hate to see what he does to a player he likes!

It's a good thing the Premiership Final this Saturday is being broadcast on ESPN. Austin Healey might be a gobby git, but he's OUR gobby git!


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The Season So Far

We are five rounds into the Premiership season and two rounds into the Heineken Cup, and we're on the verge of getting into the autumn internationals, along with the LV Cup. Rugby is well and truly back!

As usual, Leicester has started the season off in haphazard form. That close call against Exeter at Welford Road in the first home match was enough to give me a heart attack! But Cockers seemed to put a rocket in the Tiger's arses at the half, and we managed to make it to 80 minutes in the lead.

Our main struggle has been at number 10. What was the management team thinking, letting Sam Vesty go? Now he's down in Bath, playing a top class game for one of our biggest rivals, while we have had Flood injured and soon to be off to international duty, and his back-up Staunton has been damaged as well. Twelvetrees has been giving it his best, learning as he goes, but he's still a young lad making young lad mistakes.

We have also lost vital experience in our forwards over the summer, with Lewis Moody going to Bath and Ben Kay moving to ESPN. Two new signings, George Skivington and Thomas Waldom, have proved to be excellent ones, and hopefully Jordan Crane will be back from injury very soon. It was excellent news to hear that Castro wants to spend the rest of his playing days with Leicester. Some say it's because he is about to open a second restaurant in the area. I don't mind. If it's what keeps him with us, he can open ten!

Tomorrow I'm off to Welford Road for our second Heineken Cup match. I hope to find a team that has improved its line out after a poor performance in that area last weekend. The Scarlets had a great match last weekend, and we can't afford to screw up our set piece, not to mention giving away the stupid penalties. We've been leaking them like a sieve so far this season!

More to look forward to in the next few weeks: our home match against Bath next weekend and a friendly against Australia in November!







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Who Has the Whitest Legs in Rugby?

You would think that, with the sun finally starting to shine after a long hard winter, pasty complexions would start to darken, but it is still early days.

At yesterday's Leicester v Harlequins match, my friend Rachel and I were trying to decide who has the whitest legs in the Leicester starting 15. Johne Murphy was up there. So was Lewis Moody.

But the big winner was my favourite Tiger and club captain Geordan Murphy!




So who are your candidates for rugby's whitest legs? Send your pics to me via my Twitter - @TigersChickMel - or email them to me at melinda.rice@ymail.com, and I will post the best of them here.

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Twitter Addiction Strikes Again

Twitter is almost too easy sometimes.

When I got started, I tweeted everything under one account. Since I didn't use it much, it worked out just fine. But eventually my rugby addiction caught up with me, and @melindarice developed multiple personalities. Every day tweets relating to writing, the kids, work, chavs, etc stayed with @melindarice, and the sporty personality broke off to create @tigerschickmel. There I could tweet rugby and F1 as much as I wanted for those who were only interested in my rugby and F1 thoughts.

But soon that caused problems too. I love following Leicester Tigers official tweeter/twitterer, but I also love tweeting what I see, think and feel when I'm on the Crumbie Terrace as well. As you may know from my last blog post, this got me into a spot of bother at our last home match. For once my 3G signal didn't disappear and it wasn't too cold to leave my gloves off, so I had a blast giving my unofficial commentary. I was accused of being biased.

Multiple personality number three has emerged: @tigersrugby. This will be an account dedicated purely to this biased verbal outpouring from matches or from my living room or local pub while watching matches on the telly. I will say upfront that I am a Tigers supporter and will tweet as such. But those of you who aren't interested but who still kinda like the other rubbish I come out with can have the 20 or 30 glowing matchday tweets filtered out.

I even have three followers. Okay, two followers. I'm sad enough to have started the ball rolling by following myself.

-- Post From My iPhone

Passionate About Rugby and Proud

I love the world of Twitter. Through it I have come into contact with some fabulous characters from fellow Leicester supporters to newcoming neutrals to professional players. It's an incredible way of sharing a sport I love.

I first realised the value of Twitter in 2009 when David and I were on holiday in Majorca during the Heinekken Cup semi-finals. We managed to find a pub showing the Leinster match, but when it was time for the Cardiff v Leicester match, we were kicked out for a switchover to some obscure football match that actually emptied the pub.

All we could do was follow updates on the Internet back at our hotel. David checked the BBC live scores, and I followed on Twitter. I generally knew what happened before David did thanks to my fellow "Twits". It wasn't ideal but it was still very exciting. Not to mention it was probably warmer by the side of the pool in Alcudia than it was in Cardiff.

I tend to tweet a lot from the matches I attend, and my intention is to, first of all, share what's happening with anyone who is interested and, second, share my passion for my club.

Today I had the surreal experience of being told I am biased in my amateur commentating.

I make no apologies. I am a Leicester supporter and of course I'm biased! I could be no other way, and I have yet to find another supporter of any club who tweets without bias. And that's the thing I love about Twitter. I would never trade the banter that generates for all the Leicester fans on the Internet. All I can say is that there is an option to unfollow me if my tweets are biased and boring. The joy of Twitter is to put my opinion out there, and I will always respect the opinions of others even if I disagree with them.


-- Post From My iPhone

One Gutted Tigers Supporter

Lewis Moody is moving to Bath. Lote Tuqiri is heading back to Australia. It is the saddest week in my rugby life since Martin Corry announced his retirement.

I have a soft spot for Moody. Almost a year ago I met him at his testimonial event Beers With the England (and Ireland) Boys, and until then I admired and respected the guy, but I came away really liking him as a person.



Moody is a really funny guy. As part of his testimonial duties he told a few tales, including the story of being red carded for a punch on his Leicester team mate Alesana Tuilagi when they faced each other at in an international match at Twickenham in 2005, the first time an Englishman had ever been red carded at HQ. Tuilagi is also a funny guy as he commented, with as much of an innocent look as he could manage, that he never felt Mad Dog Moody's punch.

One of the charity auction items up for grabs at the event was a weeks' stay in his villa in Spain. While it was actually being auctioned, David disappeared for a few minutes and then reappeared chuckling.

He had been to the gents' toilet at the same time as Moody, and he commented, allegedly as they were both having a pee, "That's your villa they're auctioning out there, Lewis".

"Oh," he replied. "I guess I better get the f*cking thing built then".

I saw the lady who won the auction. She wouldn't have appreciated the joke. I'm surprised she could go outside in the sunlight and even therefore consider a trip to Spain.

Most of the people at the event didn't seem to have any real interest in rugby or the Leicester Tigers, which probably explains why, on hearing I was a season ticket holder, a couple of the players stopped looking like they were just going through the motions of the autograph-pose for photo-chit chat routine and were happy to have genuine conversations. Moody was one of them.

As it was coming up to the end of the Premiership season, David and I asked him how he fancied our chances of making it to the final. He told us to book our tickets. We did, and we not only made it to the final, we won. I'm sure Moody's confidence was shared by the team which is why Leicester was so successful.

But my favourite part of the conversation was when Moody shook David's hand and then bent down (quite a distance really since I'm only 5' 4") and gave me a kiss on the cheek. That was it. I was smitten.

And now he's leaving us for Bath. I suppose it could have been worse. He could have signed for Wasps.

The second blow of the week was having to bid a fond farewell to Lote Tuqiri.

To be honest, before he signed to play for Leicester I never heard of Tuqiri. What can I say? I am still very ignorant in rugby terms. But David assured me that it was a big deal, and I knew he was telling the truth when Tuqiri came off the bench in our match against South Africa in November. Our incredible match where the Leicester scrum dominated that of the World Champions ...

But back to the point, as soon as Tuqiri's name was announced and he ran onto the pitch, you could feel the electricity go through the crowd. He was, indeed, a special signing.



I was there, on the Crumbie Terrace at Welford Road when, right in front of me, Tuqiri scored his first try for the Tigers. And then in the same match when he scored his second. That was an incredible day.

Unfortunately I never had the pleasure of personally meeting Tuqiri, but after a few exchanges on Twitter regarding rugby and Wellies, I think that he, too, is a really nice guy. He will be sadly missed, and I wish him the very best in the next stage of his career Down Under. I hope he won't need those Wellies so much.


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