A happy New Year to one and all from Themultifarious.
As the year goes on, we will continue to provide our unique take on the world with more top tens, more irreverent news features, responses and fun.
This year’s first thought is about the pointless subject of New Year’s resolutions.
We have all made them, not stuck to them and by New Year have either forgotten what they were and made the same ones again.
Pointless.
People over emphasise New Year massively, we all know what we need to do, so why wait until Janauary to not do it when you can not do it any time of the year?
I’ve seen a lot of Facebook statuses ( or should that be stati?) wishing people all the best for the 2010 and, in particular, “hoping all their dreams come true”.
My dreams are either totally confusing or involve disasters at work, I don’t want either to come true thanks.
It’s all a bit silly really, ditch the resolutions, we all know what we need to do, so just do it, instead of meaningless promises you’ve already forgotten a month into the year.
As Joe Somebody from X Factor battles it out with a song released more than 10 years ago by a band which has split up for the prestigious Christmas Number one slot, Themultifarious takes a look back at some of the other tragically bad songs to hit the top spot.
This is the top ten worst ever Christmas number ones.
10.
Mr Blobby
The pink idiot from Noel’s House Party somehow became very popular in the early 90s.
One of the least funny characters ever, Blobby spent most of his time falling over.
This is his hit single from 1993, if you can bear it, personally I think it’s more vomit inducing than our top ten sports injuries the other day.
9.
Cliff Richard – Saviour’s Day
Cliff could make a top ten of his own with his sickening overly religious preachy nonsense.
I’ve decided on this one as it features a tin whistle.
Number one from 1990, lots of idiots bought it.
8. Shakin’ Stevens - Merry Christmas Everyone
This guy used to be a sex symbol, but this song, heard from October time in shopping centres around the country is a dreadful piece of festive filth.
Number one from 1985, this Shaky wearing a really terrible jumper on Top of the Pops.
7 . St Winifred’s School Choir – there’s no-one quite like grandma
My own grandmother, 95, would say “What is this ridiculous music? Turn it off” to this, and as always, she’d be spot on.
Ghastly, cringing, cheesy pap from 1980.
6. Benny Hill – Ernie (the fastest milkman in the west).
Benny Hill is a national treasure, but in my mind the bloke is about as funny as serious bowel surgery (he was irritatingly successful in America, which says it all).
This is his “song” about Ernie, a speedy milkman, number one in 1971
5. Wings – Mull of Kintyre/Girls School
Paul McCartney’s godawful band after The Beatles proved he was very much being carried by the rest of them.
His famous Christmas song, the grotesque “simply having a wonderful Christmas time”, mercifully didn’t get to number one.
However, this did and it’s bloody awful.
4. Renee and Renato, “Save your love”.
I think this was meant to be a joke, but not a very good one, as droves of halfwits sent it to the top spot in 1982.
It was a collaboration between Renato, an Aston Villa fan from the West Midlands, and Renee, British singer Hilary Lester to produce this sickly rubbish.
He died earlier this year after brain surgery.
That’s quite sad but there’s no excuses for this.
3. Michael Jackson – Earth Song
Jacko is a legend, but he had a horrible tendency to be ever so preachy.
This is one of his finest efforts, and the song which prompted Pulp singer Jarvis Cocker to invade the stage at the Brit Awards to point to his arse, signaling his displeasure at Jacko apparently making himself out to be Jesus.
Number one in 1995, here’s the video, and Jarvis’s legendary protest.
2. Boney M – Mary’s Boy Child-Oh My Lord
Number one from 1978, hilarious 70’s clothes, awful music and preachy music means this is flying high.
I love the guy’s hair.
1. Cliff Richard – mistletoe and wine
Yup, he’s back, topping all his other religious rubbish with his.
Cliched, cringy lyrics, choirs, cheesy images and old Cliff himself sends this flying to the top.
Why hasn’t there ever been a sniper handy when he gets his singsongs going at Wimbledon?
You’ve probably noticed the latest commercial offering from purveyor of frozen ‘delicacies’, Iceland; an advert that has all the festive spirit of a 7 hour speech by Josef Stalin. If you’ve seen this particular abortion of an ad, you’ll have noticed a spectacularly uncomfortable-looking Jason Donovan grimace and gurn through a musical number so forced in its jollity, most of of the cast and crew members are probably featuring in this at gun point. But my attention turned to Jas’s co-’star’, and the other reason why he might look so uncomfortable: one Coleen Nolan and her uncanny resemblance to child star, Linda Blair’s possessed character Regan in the cult horror film, The Exorcist. Don’t believe me? Have a look for yourselves:
Secret societies, the Illuminati, the Masons; hidden cabals of the rich and powerful have long been an obsession of cranks, weirdoes and conspiracy theorists, but recently the veil is being tugged back and the discreet relationships between those occupying high positions in society – both elected and unelected – is being dragged into the public eye like never before. A rash of exposés featuring government ministers and shady Russian business types, often taking place on yachts in exotic locations, have granted a glimpse into a world the likes of which us mere mortals can only dream of.
Channel 4 have latched onto the general zeitgeist of disillusionment with our leaders and have created a new website that explores some the network of relationships between these powerful, yet secretive, individuals and our politicians called ‘Who Knows Who?’. The website forms part of a larger idea that taps into the latest Internet buzzword: crowdsourcing. This hideous portmanteau (since when was an Internet-related portmanteau anything else but hideous?) means that a crowd of people on the Internet come together to achieve a common goal set by a 3rd party. The Guardian put this to very good use during this summer’s expenses furore, putting around 30,000 volunteer editors, recruited from the ranks of Guardian readers, to task sifting through the hundreds of thousands of pages of MPs’ expense claims, in order to find such gems as duck houses and cable TV pornography.
This time, Channel 4 are asking their viewers to contribute any information that they might have about the relationships between politicians, businessmen and women, media figures and religious types, and any other members of the great and the good.
The site is built using Flash, a rich media web technology, which most people will have installed on their browsers, so it has a potentially very large audience. The interface is very snazzy; each figure features in the centre of a large web of links which you can click around, find out how deep the rabbit hole goes (to drop briefly into conspiracy-speak).
I think this site is a very interesting and bold idea that combines contemporary relevance with an exciting and fresh approach to engaging with a new audience. It’s certainly very different from a lot of Channel 4’s recent youth-oriented websites. It’s also fascinating to see the popularity of websites like 38degrees, TheyWorkForYou and UnlockDemocracy, whose aim it is to help us keep tabs on our elected rulers. The Internet as a tool to empower grassroots activism appears to be really coming of age.
Great stuff – I think I am going to tape an X to my window tonight to see what happens!
Here we go again, moments that drive us all absolutely barmy, we see it, everyone in the stadium sees it, the world sees it but the idiot in the black uniform who matters the most misses it.
This is the top ten cheats
10. Rivaldo dive
This pathetic incident happened in the World Cup in 2002 in the game between Turkey and Brazil.
The Turkish player boots the ball to Rivaldo, who is waiting to take a corner.
It strikes Rivaldo gently in the leg, yet he goes down clutching his face as if he’s been on the end of a particularly good right hook.
Stupid ref then sends off Turkish player, much to the annoyance of the rest of the team, the management and the watching world.
Rivaldo was subsequently banned, on the grounds of being a twat you’d guess.
9. Neil Back
England rugby legend Back is playing for Leicester Tigers in the European Cup final.
His team were leading, but opponents Munster got a scrum not very far out, dead centre in the last minute.
Irish scrum half goes to put the ball in, as he does, the originally nicknamed “Backy” taps it with his hand back into his own side of the scrum.
For those of you not au fait with rugby, this is akin to punching the ball into the goal in football, a no no.
The ref, however, is standing on the other side, keeping an eye on one of the props, and so misses it.
8. Trevor Chappell
The least well-known of the famous Australian cricketing dynasty is probably the most notorious.
This is a clip from a one-day game against New Zealand in the 1970s.
After you’ve finished laughing at their kits, you’ll need to know New Zealand needed six of the last ball to win.
As a result, Chappell rolls it gently underarm along the ground, thus making it impossible.
The rules were changed after this.
I particularly like the way the batsman reacts.
Despite being a pro sportsman, he reacts in the way anyone else would, by giving him a look which says “you utter c**t’.
7. Tonya Harding
Ice skating is not well-known for scandal, but this is pretty unbelievable.
American Harding was embroiled in scandal after her husband hired a man to attack and injure herbiggest rival, Nancy Kerrigan.
The injury put Kerrigan out of the US figure skating championships in 1994, which Harding went on to win.
She was found guilty of helping to cover up the incident, but has always denied masterminding it.
It’s still a blatant act of cheating though, whoever is responsible, and there’s no doubt she benefited.
6.
Thierry Henry
Old Thierry is a fabulous player, but may well be remembered for a piece of handling Jonny Wilkinson would be proud of.
Running down the wing, the ball bounces up and he scoops it along with his hand before crossing it to William Gallas who whacks it in, thus winning France the game and sending poor old Republic of Ireland out of the World Cup.
Cue rage in Ireland, where there were demands for a replay.
They also conveniently forgot they won one of their earlier games thanks to an extreme dodgy penalty, but there was outcry nonetheless.
This is one of those things where you wonder how no-one saw it as it is so obvious, and anyway, who wants to see a load of Championship cloggers playing in the World Cup at the expense of messrs Henry, Anelka and Ribery.
5. Spain’s Paralympic basketball team
The sheer brass and morally wrong-ness of this is brilliant.
In the Paralympics of 2000, the Spanish team was stripped of the gold medal it had won in the intellectual disability competition after it was revealed 10 of the 12 players had nothing wrong with them.
The rules stated that to be allowed to play, players had to have an IQ of less than 70 (they could’ve asked the majority of Premiership footballers).
Spain didn’t bother to do the tests and were rightly stripped of the medals.
4. F1 Crash
I hate Formula 1 with a passion, so when I read about this I smiled.
The second most interesting thing that’s ever happened in the sport, after the tragic death of Ayrton Senna, was when Flavio Briatore, the mega-rich owner of the Renault team, instructed their driver Nelson Piquet junior to deliberately crash to help their lead driver, Fernando Alonso, win the Grand Prix in Singapore last year.
I know what I’d say if someone told me to crash while driving at 200mph but here’s the clip
3.Ronald Koeman
This is still the single moment that has enraged me most in any sporting ocassion.
This is the famous incident from the must win World Cup Qualifier in 1994.
First, Koeman hauls down David Platt when clean through on goal inside the penalty area.
Red card and a penno you must think?
No no, Koeman then convinces the ref not only was the foul outside the box, it was a mere yellow card.
As the script then suggests, the blond-haired get went and scored at the other end, meaning England didn’t qualify.
Happily, it did lead to the sacking of Graham Taylor.
A few points to make, if you look, he grabs Platt’s shirt just outside the area, however, he’s still got hold of it when he goes down very much inside the area.
He is also clearly the last man who has prevented a clear goalscoring opportunity, therefore a red card.
But the good old ref sums up why everyone hates refs by getting two massive decisions completely wrong, allowing good old Ron to stay on and score admittedly a very good free kick.
That said, have a look at who’s playing for England, Carlton Palmer, Tony Dorigo, no wonder we didn’t qualify.
Also check out the Dutch manager’s combover.
For some reason I can only find highlights in Dutch, which somehow makes it even more annoying.
And yes, David Seaman should’ve saved both, especially Bergkamp’s, which was rolling gently across the ground.
2. Ben Johnson
Somehow athletics officials failed to notice Ben Johnson’s yellow eyes and bodybuilder’s physique at the 1988 Seoul Olympics.
His time of 9.79 seconds smashed the then world record and is only slightly slower than Usain Bolt’s 9.58 seconds record 21 years on.
Of course, he was found to have pumped himself full of steroids.
You’ll notice a young Linford Christie finishing in third, which was pushed to second when Johnson was found to have more drugs inside him than an NHS Foundation Trust.
1. Diego Maradonna
Yes, who else could it be? Another dirty cheating foreigner who cheated our heroic footballers out of World Cup glory.
We all know about the “Hand of God”, but I have a few questions, why did no-one twig that it was very unlikely that Maradonna, about 5ft 3in, would be able to outjump a 6ft plus goalkeeper stretching as high as he could for the ball?
We also have to applaud the little twat for his first goal, probably the best ever, but why didn’t any of England’s lumbering midfield do what you or I would have done and booted him up in the air?
Mind you, they probably couldn’t even get close enough to do that.
As you marvel at the nimble feet of the Argentinian genius, take stock of how incredibly slow England midfielder Peter Reid is.
Here’s his amazing goal (with some really terrible commentary), which actually made it 2-0 after the handball debacle.
Not for the faint hearted this one, but we’ve all seen something horrible happen to our heroes on the pitch.
These are the very worst sports injuries.
10. Djibril Cisse
The flamboyant Frenchman is one of the most unfortunate players around as he has not one horrific leg break but two, one on each leg, very unlucky.
However, if you look at how spindly his legs are, then you can maybe understand why they are so brittle.
Here’s leg break number 1
and number 2
9. Sid Vicious
Not the dead Sex Pistol, but a wrestler who decided to rip off the name.
It’s another leg break, watch it flapping freely.
8. Wayne Shelford
The famous All Black rugby hard man was a bit of a headcase, as proven when during a game against France in 1986.
After a particularly vigorous trampling at a ruck, “Buck” as he was known suffered a split scrotum and ended up running about with one of his testicles hanging out.
Blood, screaming, hospital you might think, but not Buck.
“Stitch it up mate” he said to the phsyio, who did as he was told, by the side of the pitch.
Five minutes later Buck was back, proving the theory that rugby is indeed played by men with funny shaped balls.
Sadly, there’s no video for this one.
7.
Owwww.
Check out this massive weightlifter whose leg simply can’t take the strain. CRACK.
There’s also some amusing ice-hockey fights here too.
6. Eye Gouge
This is in Australian rugby league, apparently, it’s not as bad as it looks, which its pretty bad.
5.
Phil de Glanville
The young Bath rugby player was playing for the South West against the All Blacks in the 1990s when he found himself on the floor in a ruck.
Next thing you know 20 odd pairs of massive boots worn by a group of mean, heavy men have pumped into his face, leaving him with blood streaming from an horrific eye wound.
There’s no pics of de Glanville sporting stitches across his eyelid but being the All Blacks they got away with it.
No pics or video of this one either sadly.
4.
Kickboxing injury
Another broken leg here, not only does it look unimaginably painful, but he’s also got his wounded pride by breaking his leg by kicking someone.
3. Eduardo
Broken ankle this time and the Brazilian Croatian’s foot is very much hanging on by a small piece of bone.
Watch how hard defender Martin Taylor gets him.
2. David Busst
The poor Coventry defender suffered the worst broken leg football has ever seen in a game against Manchester United in and has had numerous operations on his leg.
Massive United goalkeeper Peter Schmeichel had to have counselling after seeing the injury close up.
1. Richard Zednik
Viewer discretion advised.
This is the horrific moment when ice hockey player Richard Sednik’s throat was cut by a flailing skate.
Horrid. It’s one of his team mates as well.
so that’s the top ten, but I’m interested in something I’ve heard about an athlete who tried to dry the sweat off his face using a crisp packet and ended up slicing off his retina.
If anyone knows about that one, please put up info, or even better a vid.
Why hello there! Well, fancy that, yours truly is editing the DigitalDigest® once again and in a week where in the real world jungle-hating, chesty non-entities dominated the headlines, we aim to provide an oasis of calm reflection and mild amusement by filling your heads with the latest in digital goings-on. This week: newspapers saved from recycling bin, the dark side of the web and a rather unusual, if extremely sad, wedding.
Extra! Extra! Newspapers saved by Satan’s minions!
Hooray! At least for now…Newspaper websites all over the world are (sort of) rejoicing at the news that The Dirty Digger and The Borg have joined forces to announce a revenue sharing deal for traffic referred to news sites by upstart search engine, Bing. A lifeline for news content or just another way to Rupe to line his pockets with crumpled fivers?
Government Digital Britain Bill spells misery for freeloaders
This week saw the parliamentary debate over the proposed ‘Digital Economy Bill’. Based on the year long report by Lord Carter, it sets out the government’s vision for a wide-ranging set of issues surrounding the digital economy in these shores, from copyright to digital television and beyond. Controversial in both things included and left out, not least the threat of permanent disconnection from the Internet for repeated illegal filesharing, or the lack of a provision for funding broadband infrastructure by levying a broadband tax, the bill threatens to become law before the end of this parliament
You will know the power of the dark side
Great investigative piece from The Grauniad on the dark side of the internet: Freenet, a place where your total anonymity is assured and where, content-wise at least, pretty much anything goes. As the ‘net cruises towards greater censorship and control, with big sites such as Google and Yahoo bowing down to pressure from repressive governments, the existence of the ‘deep net’ becomes more important; but how much freedom is too much?
9/11 as it happened: Wikileaks publishes pager intercepts throughout the whole terrible day
Text pagers, while uncommon over here, are often used in the US by persons operating in an official capacity to communicate with one another. Wikileaks have compiled a definitive list of all pager intercepts for a 24-hour period, starting from 3AM on the morning of September 11th 2009. Ranging from Pentagon employees to members of the NYPD, this provides the definitive account of how events on that unforgettable day unfolded.
Pointless contextual search ads…Now with 15% extra annoying!
Muted trumpets announce the latest innovation by search and advertising behemoth, Google: new search formats for their contextual advertising. With new video, shopping and Google Maps integration flavours available, advertisers will be scrambling to take advantage of this new technology to find ways of persuading you to part with your hard-earned readies.
Apple help glum Brits celebrate confusing American concept of ‘Thanksgiving’
‘Happy Thanksgiving!’ – a phrase guaranteed to be greeted by confusion and ambivalence by most Britons. But not any more! Shiny, plastic and brushed aluminium geek overlords, Apple, are launching a US Thanksgiving-related custom that people on these grey and damp shores might actually give a hoot about: Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving where shops and stores slash prices like crazy for 24 hours only! This is officially a ‘Big Thing’ in the US, so big in fact that people have died in the name of low, low prices.
At the time of writing, there are no discounted prices, but those of you with nice big limits on your credit cards might want to take advantage. Oh, and by the way, I could really do with a new Macbook Pro…just sayin’.
And finally…Japanese man fulfils the dream of millions of unpopular boys
From the early days of ogling Chun Li’s thighs to drooling Lara Croft’s pneumatic ‘talents’, fancying make believe videogame characters has been a rite of passage for the spotty, asthmatic, overweight and painfully single across the world. Now, bizarrely-named Japanese videogame enthusiast, Sal9000, has taken this childish fixation to its inevitable logical conclusion: by marrying Nene Anegasaki, suspiciously young-looking virtual star of computer game, Love Plus. Read more about the Internet’s new First Couple here. Just don’t think too hard about what they’re going to get up to on their honeymoon.
Guest post by Jack Rutter, co-founder of Cutmedia.com
The idea for this blog post came from the reems and reems of online column inches i have come across recently covering hyperlocal. Having an interest in it myself via Cutmedia.com and the first flagship publication Kingsroad.co.uk, i thought i should give my thoughts and allow anybody that is interested to check out the stories I have come across recently.
Recently I went to an event held at Channel 4 by 4ip where they are very keen to try and help young start ups with funding on projects that will help to shape the media industry. Whilst working out if Cutmedia.com could benefit from a partnership with 4ip i met a lecturer from Goldsmiths University called Angela Phillips. She is currently looking for funding with one of her projects, which is also focussed on hyperlocal, although that is all she would tell me!
We discussed the opportunity of hyperlocal and after a while got on to the topic of journalists and how they need to be innovative and play a more proactive role on the business side of their media work. I certainly think they need to pay more attention to how money and profit is generated as part of their business.
Many people in and around journalism fall in love with the romantic idea of the discipline and fail to understand how money and their wages are paid, which i think is very dangerous. For them journalism is firstly about holding people in power to account, getting a scoop before anybody else and producing killer articles that demostrate the written skills they were born with and secondly a business. I think that this is naive, especially in the light of the redundancies that have happen across the industry over the last year or so.
There are many ways in which publishers can generate revenue for their businesses and i expect that they will keep evolving over time as the publishing industry reinvigorates itself. The main task publishers face is to create robust products that can pay for for editorial so journalists can go and hold people in power to account, get that scoop and show us all what great writers they are.
Content alone does not pay the wages and the quicker they learn that the better.
New business models for journalism is something that has been discussed in the following articles:
GREETINGS, geeks and welcome to a brand new section The Multifarious: the Digital Digest, a selection of regurgitated slurry from this week’s web-and-tech-related news.
Nothing clever like a theme here, but instead a 2p pick-and-mix of chewy, gelatine-and-E-number-packed goodness from the dingy newsagents that is the Internet.
MP predictably slams ‘violent’ computer game: millions of gamers groan inwardly
Yes, I’m talking about the <ahem> ‘row‘ surrounding the release of a little game called ‘Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2′. Trumpeting the news that certain levels of the 18-rated FPS contained content that was – gasp! – quite violent, MP, Keith Vaz, threatened to raise hell in Parliament on behalf of the curtain-twitchers of Leicester. You’ll be very surprised to find out that the root of all this manufactured outrage started life in pages of the Daily Mail – fancy that! This hysteria accompanies the revelation that a French teenager, who was recently convicted of planning to murder his classmates and teachers, was a ‘video games enthusiast’ – something that the media took great pains to point out.
The UK games industry provides 1000s of jobs and remains one industry in which the UK can still claim to be a world leader: meddlesome politicians looking to score cheap shots before a general election should perhaps bear that in mind.
Live the future now (and look a teensy bit of a plonker)
TED (that’s Technology Entertainment and Design, in case you didn’t know) is a global forum where the world’s leading boffins mass together to give long talks about how clever they are in various mind-meltingly difficult subjects. Wait, come back! It’s actually very good and often turns up gems like this one, where MIT student, Pranav Mistry, brings us one step closer to a ‘Minority Report’-style future of holographic interfaces, controlled by simple gestures. The most amazing thing is that he’s turned the paradigm that each future application (as science fiction would have you believe) would require a different piece of hardware on its head, by employing an amazingly simple idea.
DEATH TO IDEAS!
Nice pictures of how the fragile butterfly that is a creative idea can be trampled beneath the hobnailed jackboot that is the process of getting out to the public.too many laboured similes, I know.
Google Library Scan FAIL
So, as Google’s plans to digitise every out-of-copyright book rumble on, questions are being asked as to whether or not they should be the sole publishers/custodians of such a vast repository of knowledge. This suggests that the big G is not quite ready to assume that mantle.
Adidas World Cup
Real-life German footballers act woodenly in a lavish intro to this high-concept World Cup digital promotion from Adidas Germany. But hold on! What’s this? Heavens! It’s actually a game! Plays a bit like Subbuteo, but slightly less fun. Thanks to James M for this first piece of World Cup digital marketing on the radar.
Usability and User Experience…zzzz
No, DON’T fall asleep: this might actually help your clients a little happier and your job a little easier to boot. Anyway, I happened across a couple of interesting sites that provide a very cost-effective alternative to expensive focus groups and UX labs:
With Fivesecondtest.com, you can upload a page design and either set up a quick memory test, where a user is displayed the design for 5 seconds and has to list 5 things he or she remembers about the design, or a more involved click test, where a set of click-based goals are set for a user.
The memory test could be useful for simple A/B testing e.g. working out the best location for a promotional container on a page based on which design has the best recall; the click test works in a similar way, but specific questions can be asked (although this is a premium feature). You can send the test design to an anonymous horde of testers, or circulate a secure link among people you know. At the entry level (11 results and no custom questions), this application is totally free, but if you need a bigger sample, then it creeps up a little bit ($12 for 46 results). I think it makes use of Amazon’s ‘Mechanical Turk ‘ service for the pool of testers – useful in its own right if you’re desperately hard up!
Feedbackarmy.com carries on in the same vein, this time with the ability to ask open-ended questions as standard, the twist being that you can send a link to a functioning website instead. The price for 10 responses? A very wallet-friendly $10. Luvverly jubberly.
And finally – man plays Guns ‘n’ Roses ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’ on an…
…how can I put this ‘unconventional instrument‘. I wish that John Lewis had decided to use Mr Handman’s version instead of this rather drippy cover. Anyway, I guess you could say it’s a real ‘parpy’ hit! Snort.
So, that’s it for now. Next instalment is due in a week’s time when I will be serving up some hot nuggets of web goodness.
A terrible, terrible game won by two penalties and a drop goal from Jonny Wilkinson and a Matt Banahan try, but the All Blacks wait for England and will be licking their lips after watching this display.
Christ almighty that was bad - slow, ponderous, no flair, no angles, very little aggression and pointless kicking were the main highlights of this dour encounter.
England have been training together for three weeks yet gave a strong indications that they had been introduced to each other in the pub before the game.
Ugo Monye, the Harlequins wing who was such a star of the Lions tour, looked like he had no idea what to do playing at full back.
It’s a classic English selection policy, pick form players and play them out of position, they’ve done it for years.
Monye is (or was, he’s probably lost every shred of confidence now) the form wing probably in Europe, but England want the giant, overly tattooed, massively cumbersome Banahan to play so they’ve stuck poor old Monye at full back where he looks about as comfortable as a nun in a porn theatre.
It’s actually quite hard to do a report of this game as bog all happened.
Wilkinson kicked a drop goal, then Argentina kicked a penalty, then Cueto wasn’t quick enough to score a try when he got hold of a loose ball, then Argentina kicked a penalty after someone dropped it and someone picked it up in an offside position.
It was 9-9 at half time, a thriller, with Monye looking very much like he wanted to go home.
England did manage to up the tempo at the start of the second half but for 20 minutes it looked like the main aim between the two teams was to see who could be more crap and make more mistakes.
Finally, in the 69th minute just about the only backs move of the game saw Bahanan lumber over to go under the posts.
Despite England’s attempts to cock it up at the end by bringing on Andy Goode, they just held on.
New Zealand await and could probably put out their under-18 side and beat this England team.
Tactically, England do some really odd things, time and time again Wilkinson gets the ball and boots it straight down the middle of the pitch.
This is the famous-for-kicking Jonny Wilkinson, surely he can get it off the pitch.
It’s clear this is a tactic, although for the life of me I can’t work out what the aim is.
Slow, slow ball, surely they can get it out quicker than they are, someone’s telling them to try to slow it down, New Zealand will crucify them if they try this.
Back play seems to be to pass it all the way to one wing, then back to the other, if no-one drops it, which they do.
Where’s the flair? Wilkinson is supposed to be brilliant for Toulon, Geraghty looks class running things for Northampton, yet England have as much flair as a Christmas pudding.
There have been a lot of injuries and players like Simon Shaw would have made a difference here, but it’s a real chance for some players here but they were just scared to death of taking it.
The pressure is very much on team manager Martin Johnson, but he needs to be strong.
There is clearly problems with the tactics and the coaching of these players and surely a stuffing by New Zealand would mean changes HAVE to be made.
England creaked in the scrum, they were turned over, they lost lineout ball, they took about half an hour to get the ball out of the ruck, they passed it from one wing to the other without even looking like making a break.
It was clearly obvious they were absolutely terrified of losing and tried to play a game where they took absolutely no risks.
The press will be right on their backs and rightly so, this isn’t acceptable.
They’re not as good as in 2003, the players aren’t there, but they should be better than they are and it’s down to the management to sort this out.
If they don’t, then they need to be sacked and that includes the mighty Johnson.
Player ratings:
15. Ugo Monye – Looked utterly lost, don’t blame him, blame the management. If I was him and they told me to play full back in the next game I’d go on strike. 3/10
14. Mark Cueto – tidy, solid, unspectacular, reliable, but you’d hope someone more dynamic comes along. 6/10
13. Dan Hipkiss – good club player who is struggling to step up to international level, like most of England’s backs got the ball above his head or standing still. 6/10
12. Shane Geraghty – the Midfield magician, the man tasked with getting England’s backs going has spectacularly failed so far, faces the massive powerful Ma’a Nonu next week and I fully expect him to be trampled. 5/10
11. Matt Banahan - looks cumbersome unless coming in off a long run up, which you would expect for a 6ft 7in winger, easy finish for try but needs to add some sublety to his game, another who could find it tough vs the All Blacks. 6/10
10. Jonny Wilkinson - missed a lot of kicks at goal which was unusual, tackled like a trooper, kicking from hand was rubbish, passing ok. 6/10
9. Paul Hodgson – brought in for his “tempoing” skills (awful, awful word), but only on occassion could speed up the game, can’t pass very well either, not bad though. 6/10
8. James Haskell – another one out of position, some good charges and turnovers, but needs to learn how to be a number 8, also gave away a really stupid penalty. 8.10
7. Lewis Moody - lacks creativity but not effort, a fearless headcase around the pitch was again outstanding. 9/10
6. Tom Croft – a star of the Lions looks lost playing for England – 3/10
5. Steve Borthwick (c) - offers nothing in terms of ball-carrying, useful in the lineout but not an international standard lock, let alone a captain. 3/10
4. Louis Deacon – a joke of a selection, what does he offer? Not a lineout forward, not a ball carrier, offers no skill, no tackling and is invisible around the field. There are so many better locks in England. 2/10
3. Duncan Bell – Fatty was invisible around the field and pushed around in the scrums by the meaty Argentinian forwards, who all look terrifying.
2. Dylan Hartley - needs to put the effort into playing he puts into snarling at everyone and mouthing off, but had a decent game. 7/10
1. Tim Payne – it took me a while to remember who was playing. If others were fit he wouldn’t be anywhere near the team. Average at everything, in for a long afternoon next week.
Replacements:
Steve Thompson (hooker) how is bringing him on going to change the game?
Joe Worsley (flanker) how is bringing him on going to change the game?
Andy Goode (fly half) you’ve got to be kidding me, the biggest indication of how clueless the coaches are is that this long-haired clown is seen as England’s second best fly-half. Did his best to lose the game in the very short period he was on but just failed. Danny Cipriani must consider another career when he watches this joker. 1/10 (and that’s generous).
Danny Care (scrum half) – only on for a bit but I saw him wait for hours before passing it from a ruck and put a kick straight into touch. 1/10
All in all – garbage, the All Blacks will destroy next week.
New Year’s Revelations – Don’t kid yourself
A happy New Year to one and all from Themultifarious.
As the year goes on, we will continue to provide our unique take on the world with more top tens, more irreverent news features, responses and fun.
This year’s first thought is about the pointless subject of New Year’s resolutions.
We have all made them, not stuck to them and by New Year have either forgotten what they were and made the same ones again.
Pointless.
People over emphasise New Year massively, we all know what we need to do, so why wait until Janauary to not do it when you can not do it any time of the year?
I’ve seen a lot of Facebook statuses ( or should that be stati?) wishing people all the best for the 2010 and, in particular, “hoping all their dreams come true”.
My dreams are either totally confusing or involve disasters at work, I don’t want either to come true thanks.
It’s all a bit silly really, ditch the resolutions, we all know what we need to do, so just do it, instead of meaningless promises you’ve already forgotten a month into the year.