Dee dee dee dee de de dee de deeeeeeee

Look, look, there's... Stuff. It's happening!

In random updates of news *cue news-type music*

The Phoenix are made of win and goalkeeping! It's the season that just keeps on giving! There was a fan day with the Hurricanes, and that was actually a whole lot of fun.

The Hurricanes are winning and the Crusaders are not! Haha.

The Aussies are coming! They have some very quick bowlers. I'm taking bets on how many concussions our lads end up with.

Brett Lee is retiring from Test cricket to play twenty20 and be bitter about women. Or something close to it.

Kane Williamson and BJ Watling win the men's one day title. I assume there were other players involved, but pft.

I still haven't paid attention to the Winter Olympics.

And I have participated in a podcast! Listen to me be drunk and opinionated with the dropkicks.

Yer wot?

I recently saw someone on the 'tubes describe Danica Patrick as "The Anna Kournikova of [motor] racing." (To be fair to him, I don't think he really believes that, but rather threw that statement out as a point of discussion. Well, it worked.)

To which I say BOLLOCKS. And this is for the following reasons:

(Yes, it's another list. Deal.)

1. Danica Patrick has actually won something.

2. The rules of Ms Patrick's sport were changed to make it harder for her to win things.

Neither of these applies to Anna Kournikova -- the first because she's not actually that good, and the second because there's no need.

Now, notice what's just happened here.

I've had to defend a sportswoman for actually being _good at her sport_ rather than mere eye candy. And, rather alarmingly, in order to do so I've had to denounce another sportswoman as mere eye candy, which made me more than a little queasy.

Now, as much as we on the Cheap Seats are partial to a bit of eye candy, I doubt very much that most professional sportsmen have to put up with the same kind of comparisons, at least, not on a regular basis.

As far as we've come towards equality of the sexes, sportswomen are still judged more for their looks than their ability, and the amount of training and effort they put in is seen as largely irrelevant as long as they look good doing whatever it is they do.

And even beyond that, it doesn't matter if Danica Patrick was the greatest Indy car driver the world has ever seen -- she wouldn't get a look in at an F1 race because... she doesn't have a penis.

F1, much as I love it (and I do, oh how I do) is probably the most macho professional sport on the planet. There are no female F1 drivers. No woman has even been given a trial (at least a serious one -- Red Bull gave Danica Patrick a trial as a PR stunt). And such is the machismo surrounding the sport, it's unlikely that any woman will drive in an F1 race for quite some time.

And you know what, that's just daft. Like any other discrimination it's judging people on criteria other than how well they do the job. And that's just stupid. For all we know there's a female Lewis Hamilton out there, but she'll never get a chance to show the world what she can do.

For fuck's sake, people. What century is this, again? When sportswomen are paid less than men for the same work, judged on their looks rather than their ability and outright excluded from the most prestigious and lucrative sports out there, one could be forgiven for wondering.

Especially in bed

So, who else is excited that Andy McKay got into the Black Caps?

Okay, that'll be me, his fiancee and Cameron Merchant (who seems just bizarrely excited about everything.)

I've been watching lots of twenty20, because I apparently have no life. But it has been rather good this year hasn't it? I love the way the Black Caps are actually getting to play on the domestic circuit, the way the games have been marketed, and the way it's no longer just a slog-fest with the bowlers going regularly for ridiculous RPO's.

Went to a thing for Wellington members and listened to Owais Shah speak. Sounded like a bloke not dead from the neck up, and quite nice to boot. He did provide more info about the food at Lords than I ever needed to know (it's really really good.)

Am I turning into a twenty20 convert then, you might be asking. Well, no, not as such. Any form of the game would gain an upswing in popularity having been marketed as aggressively as the HRV cup has. Free mini-bats make everything more awesome.

If this had happened in a novel, we'd have said it was implausible

I have a story to tell you. Settle in. You might want to get a cup of tea or something else nice and soothing. Gin is a good choice.

After the second test in Wellington, the one the Brat attended, some of the French rugby team went out on the town, as you do.

The next day, Mathieu Bastareaud appeared with stitches in his face and said he'd been attacked by five big brown guys. The police, aghast, started an investigation. Bastareaud went home to France. New Zealanders were horrified that something like this would happen here -- we love our rugby and we are as flag-wavy as the next guys about it (and consider that the next guys are Australia), but it's a bit beyond it to go attacking opposition players.

Now, I thought about posting something when this happened, but had this niggly feeling that there was a bit more to it, so decided to sit on it all for a while.

Fast-forward a few days. Bastareaud goes on holiday to the Caribbean. NZ police keep the investigation going. Then the manager of Bastareaud's club, Stade Francais, went to the media and told them that Bastareaud had told him that he'd lied about being attacked. Yep, that's right -- he lied, so he wouldn't be chucked off the French team for getting really, really pissed, doing a PFO[1] and whacking his head on the bedside table, resulting in the stitches in his face.

So, a person could be forgiven for thinking that's enough WTF for one week, right?

This has turned into a clusterfuck of massive proportions. Rumours are going round France that it wasn't a bedside table Bastareaud hit his head on, but rather a fist belonging to another member of the French rugby team. The whole matter has been referred to the French rugby disciplinary board, and it's going to be interesting to see what comes out of the investigation.

No matter which way it comes out, the person this has been hardest on is Bastareaud himself -- not only did he get injured (even if it's still not clear how), he lied to police in New Zealand about what happened, may be part of a coverup of appalling behaviour on other players' parts, and is currently in a psychiatric ward after apparently cracking up under the strain and attempting suicide.

The poor bastard. I genuinely wish him well and hope he feels better soon -- this is not a good state for anybody to be in.

But wait, there's more!

For an extra dose of WTF, the French government has apologised for Bastareaud's behaviour. Which is cool. Unutterably cool. Seriously, seriously cool. And marks a sea-change in the way the French government treats appalling acts of awfulness committed by its citizens in other countries.

See, I am old enough to remember the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior, for which the French government has not yet apologised.

I'm sure there's more to come out of this whole sorry mess. Let's hope it includes Bastareaud's full recovery. Even if his international rugby career is effectively over, he does deserve that.

[1] Pissed, Fall Over

Well, the All Blacks went to the UK and Ireland for the Grand Slam and, as expected, waxed the lot of them.

This post on Public Address has some really useful things to say about the Grand Slam and rugby analysis in general.

Of more importance to me, however, with my visual nature and attention span of a gnat, were the links to a couple of graphics that make it clear what was really going on in the England vs NZ game, and also the differences between Northern Hemisphere and Southen Hemisphere rugby.

From The Times Online -- Must Try Harder: Stats, ratings and analysis

Also from The Times Online -- How the Southern Hemisphere teams are kicking the Northern Hemisphere's collective arses

Three years till the 2011 Rugby World Cup, Northern Hemisphere. There's time.