Writing On Literature

Times Column 11/09/04 Fifty-one thousand people turned out at Twickenham last Saturday to swing a bottle at the launch of the Zurich Premiership 2004/5.  A new campaign begins, and in rugby, the winter season in hostile weather most closely resembles a naval campaign. From about the time of the Battle of Trafalgar, and not only because in Europe the French are still the biggest obstacle. All the clubs know where they plan to go, with a fair wind, and at every level of the game from Premiership to South Lancs/Cheshire 4, everyone has a chance at glory. The professionals get the treasure.  The rest make do with rum and sea-shanties, but as in those Master and Commander Men o’ War,

From Rugby World, April 2004 www.rugbyworld.com We have the 6 Nations. Guam has the True GRIT 10's.  Richard Beard brings back the good news 'If you build it,' (to paraphrase the disembodied voice in the Kevin Costner film Field of Dreams), 'they will come.' On the Pacific Island of Guam, 3,000 miles west of Hawaii, the Guam Rugby Club have built an impeccably grassed, automatically-irrigated, international-sized rugby field.  It has stands, scoreboards, lights - and a fringe of palm trees as a natural barrier against the jungle.  This is Wettengel Rugby Field: one of the most distinctive rugby venues on earth. And, fulfilling the second part of the equation, here come the players: the Budweiser true GRIT 10's has hosted

From The Observer, 23/11/2003 The Observer Richard Beard Sunday November 23, 2003 It mattered so much, and it turned out so well. I don't know which was harder to believe, that England won or that it could matter so much in the first place. Whatever the differences between Australia and England as nations, this week has proved that we have one fundamental weakness in common: we get far too uptight about sporting fixtures. But at last, after so long, in this area of human behaviour known as sport, we have managed to behave more successfully than the Australians. If it sometimes seemed, in the excitement of yesterday's final, that the identity of each individual spectator and ultimately of the nation