In the good ole days, boys used to go to football and gels would stay home and do their make-up, their nails, go shopping for a new dress. So that when their man came back from footy they’d be ready to go out. Her in her new finery and fresh from 5 hours of ‘me-time’, him drunk as a skunk, blood all over his shirt, with 16 mates in tow all in a similar condition and singing loudly.

The main difference, in fact, between the sexes was knowing the offside rule. If you didn’t know it, couldn’t define an ‘offside trap’, weren’t aware of that defender on the sideline just playing him onside, then you were simply ‘not a man’.

Its different today. Women can be seen at football matches. Sometimes looking a bit rough without their me-time, but they’ve made the effort. Most even know about offsides.

Whereas the English rugby team, the most manly of Herculean, gargantuan, testosterone-fuelled super-muscly behemoths ever gathered outside my mirror, were bamboozled by the Italian team’s diversionary tactics on Saturday because no-one on the England team, basically, knew the offside rule. I won’t bore you with the details. Because of the nature of rugby and its inherent violence, it is a wonderfully complex and rule-bound game. Even though it looks like total fucking chaos, everything is done within very very carefully defined parameters. What we call ‘rules’. And they are complicated. To avoid unnecessary death.

What Conor O’Shea, the Italian coach (well our coach is an Aussie, so why not??), had his team do was confuse the English. And for an entire 40-minutes it worked a dream. Our players kept asking the ref for explanations, for help. As he said, quite rightly, ‘he’s a ref, not a coach’.

England were totally frustrated by the tactic. Couldn’t play. The first half was an un-spectacle. Crowd booing (and they’re gentlemen at rugby, they don’t do ‘booing’). By the second half Eddie sorted his team out and normality took over for a comfortable win.

But Eddie Jones (who I dearly love) turned into Arsene Wenger (who I dearly… have some respect for). Moaning about the tactics, how they should be banned, the RFU should make this illegal, blah, blah, blah. Like Wenger bemoans any team who play Arsenal without trying to imitate their style. ” ‘ow can we play a tim ooo play long balls all de time? who are very physical? who do things in a way we don’t???” kind’a Wengerism. And that’s wrong. ‘Lower’ teams can do anything within the rules to try and influence the game, whatever the game is; sometimes its their only chance. A good tactical coach will exploit such things when, if played more ‘normally’, their team would get hammered.

Live with it Eddie. Just prepare the team should it happen again.

Spurs won a magnificent match, 4-nil, in the first half on Sunday and then stopped. But didn’t concede, didn’t ‘leave the building’. Great result. And Leicester won. With the style and grace that Ranieri gave them. Even though he was only there in spirit.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx