When I was a college student in Montpellier, France back in 1981-82, the 1982
World Cup was taking place at several different venues in Spain. 

Prior to 1982, most of the soccer/football world had kind of a paternalistic,
condescending view of African Football. You have to remember at that time, that
there were no African players who were starting or creating a buzz in England,
Germany, Italy and Spain-then as now, the top 4 leagues in Europe. The majority
of African players in Europe were in France, like Roger Milla of Cameroon with
Bastia and Algerians Salah Assad with Mulhouse and Mustapha Dahleb with PSG
(some players, like Algeria's Lakhdar Belloumi -some feel the greatest Algerian
player of all time- refused to play in Europe) 

The 1982 World Cup started to change the popular conception that African
football/soccer was inferior. Cameroon did not lose a game in a group that
included World Champs Italy and 3rd place winner Poland. Algeria created the
shock of the tournament, defeating eventual finalists West Germany 2-1. One can
argue that this ranks right up there with the greatest upsets in World Cup
history, along with US beating England in 1950, North Korea beating Italy in
1966 and Cameroon beating Argentina back in 1990.

One of the pictures that I remember the most after the shock win against the
Germans was a picture of Salah Assad leaving hulking German Forward Horst
Hrubesch in his dust. The Algerians looked a sure thing to make the second
round-which would have been a first for an African country. They had two wins
and one loss. The problem for the fast and slick Algerians was that Austria and
West Germany would work out a perfect non-aggression pact that would see them
through to the next round-and condemn the Algerians to a trip back to North
Africa. Germany scored in the opening minutes, and then the Germans and
Austrians played kick ball with no attempt to score. The 1-0 result was the one
result that see the Teutonic nations through and send the Algerians out. I
remember L'Equipe showing a picture with Algerian fans in Spain flashing paper
money lit on fire, they knew that the fix was in. It was a sad, cynical chapter
in World Cup history that makes Theiry Henry's handball against Ireland look
sporting, by comparison.

The Algerian's had a poor World Cup in Mexico in 1986. And had not been back to
a World Cup ever since. 

The sentimental part of me was very glad to see that Algeria not only beat Egypt
in Khartoum on Wednesday to punch their ticket to South Africa,astunning first-half strike by defender Antar Yahya gave Algeria victory in the
playoff match.

Read more: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/soccer/11/18/african.roundup.ap/index.html#ixzz0XMGRbNKA 

The winning goal was very high on style points. It was scored
on what Spanish Language commentator Andres Cantor would call a "Gol-azo"-a
wonder goal.
After the lucky way France qualified for the World Cup, it was good to see some
underdogs, like Algeria and Slovenia, qualify for the World Cup on a couple of
great goals. 

One thing for sure-The performances by both Algeria and Cameroon in 1982 were a
watershed moment that changed the face of football in Europe forevermore. Their
performance opened the door for players like Didier Drogba, Michael Essien and
George Weah to be considered not just great African players, but great
players-period. 

In a busy last day of matches to qualify for the FIFA World Cup, to be played in South Africa in 2010, it would have been nice to discuss the upsets by Greece, Algeria and Slovenia against Ukraine, Egypt and Russia, respectively.

However most soccer fans have been talking about France’s qualifying tie against Ireland at the Stade de France. The fact that France was able to qualify against the plucky Irish was not a shock. France was heavily favored going into this playoff tie after underperforming their way to a second place finish in their group. It HOW they qualified yesterday.

I was listening to the radio broadcast via www.rtl.fr and I have have to admit that I was even blown away by how much the French commentators were ripping on the French performance for the better part of the second half and overtime- and how much they were talking about how well Ireland played. (The French announcers for soccer and rugby are well known for taking homerism  and chauvenism to new depths) If the radio announcing team on RTL was restless, it was nothing compared to what had to be going through the minds of the 80,000 fans in St. Denis. They had to have visions of 1993, when they allowed a last second goal to Bulgaria to keep a talented French side from competing at the 1994 World Cup. The announcers railed at an awkward dive attempt by Nicolas Anelka during an overtime that was made necessary after Bobbie Keane’s goal in the first half tied things 1-1 on aggregate.(with a great set up by Damian Duff)

In Overtime, Theirry Henry took control of a pass on the left flank not with just one, but two touches of his left hand that allowed him to control the ball to William Gallas, who slotted home a goal that never should have counted. Even Henry, in the post match interviews, admitted that he used a handball to control the ball.

The Irish, understandably, felt very hard done by the entire proceedigns. They are hoping that a protest with FIFA will disallow the result and make them have a replay with the under-achieving French. Don’t look for this to happen-ask any England fan who remembers Diego Maradona’s infamous “Hand of God” goal in the 1986 World Cup in Mexico. (At least Henry admitted he used a handball…something Maradona still has not done)

In the end, sport is a lot like life. It can be very arbitrary and unfair. But least the French get too cocky, they should remember the words of the main charachter in the comedy series “My Name is Earl’: “Karma is a funny thing.” It’s too bad for Ireland-they really did deserve a much better fate than what they received yesterday.

My daughter Rachel has been with a friend near Antwerp, Belgium for the past couple of weeks. She has had an overall great time-but hey, if you can’t have fun in a country where they are magicians with beer and chocolate, you might want to switch to de-caf…or you just are not trying hard enough.

Rachel has recently joined the blogosphere. Here is a link for her last posting, which talked about the harrowing ferry ride from France to England: http://putasporkinit.livejournal.com/3331.html

Even though she’s my own daughter, I thought the posting was funny as hell.

I guess the apple really does not fall far from the tree…

For those of you who have been regular visitors to my blog, the subject of concussions has become a very near and dear subject to my heart after my wife’s travails since suffering a concussion in late September during a car accident. She missed a month of work, and has still be noticing all manners of things that have changed, both little and small, since her concussion. She has noticed that things like food tasting different, having a harder time multi-tasking, and that she has a very low boiling point when things frustrate her-it does not take much to get her angry.

I stumbled onto an interesting posting thanks “Ref” at http://refblog.co.uk/2009/11/02/ref-abuse/   In his posting you can see the links and video clip that tie in with this posting.

My wife would be shocked to learn that she has something in common with rugby prop forward in this regard. In this case, the prop is the Zimbabwean born Brian Mutaji, who has been capped 12 times by South Africa, and currently plies his trade with the Northampton Saints of the English Premiership. To compare my lovely red-headed bride to a six-foot, 260 pound prop forward seems like a stretch, but in this case, the comparison is apt.

Back on October 6th, Mutaji, and his Northampton Saints, were playing away to defending French Champions Perpignan, when during the course of the game, Mutaji gave match referee Nigel Owens a really blatant, two-hounded shove in the back. Normally, such an infraction of laying hands on a match official would handled in the most severe of fashions, normally a 24 week suspension. Northampton and Mutaji came up with a novel approach to get the suspension trimmed to a mere six weeks: During the match, it seems that Mutaji suffered a concussion. This meant that the Northampton prop was “not in his right mind” when he gave the Welsh referee his two-armed shiver in the back.

I have mixed feelings about this, as somebody who has played the game of rugby(as a prop, no less), but I have also been a match referee in high school soccer(football) and wrestling. It’s very tough to rationalize a physical assault on any match official. That said, I have to say that with my experience with my wife, and also working with patients with TBI (Traumatic brain injury), that there are people with head injuries really do have low boiling and frustration points.  Now granted, my wife has not taken a swing at me, nor have I seen her hitting our dogs or cats, but I do think the issue of TBI is not going to go away any time soon. Beyond the green rugby pitches of Europe, society in the United Stated and Britain are having a whole group of people coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan suffering the effects of TBI and concussion syndrome. Some of these soldiers and Marines have a very real chance of running afoul of the judicial system.  Will the legal systems in the US and Britain give a virtual hall-pass, or hold these people to a different standard as the International Rugby Board seems to have done with Mutaji? To be fair, he did admit guilt in the incident.

Still, I think that this incident highlights what may end up becoming a growing problem that will extend beyond the rugby pitch for Mutaji. If this prop has had multiple concussions, how will these concussions affect him as he goes through the rest of his life, his relationships with women and even how he disciplines his kids. Will he be more prone to lash at his friends and loved ones? If he was able to do this to a match official-and in rugby, the match official is held on a very lofty place compared to other sports-what will happen the next time Mutaji is having to deal with a frustration in his life-and what type of support will he and his family have?

There is a lot to comment on from this past weekend’s rugby: The All Blacks beating Wales,  England losing at home to Australia and Leicester’s shock win against the Springboks as the November Internationals got started on European soil. It would also be very easy to talk about my club, The Metropolis RFC of Minneapolis beating Cincinnati and Detroit to qualify for the USA Division I playoffs, and the right to host a playoff game in Minneapolis in March. (Where conditions can range from cold and wet to just plain shitty) It was certainly a huge win for my club, and it capped off a great fall season.

For the American rugby fan, all eyes are going to be on what happens in far-off Montevideo, Uruguay this coming weekend, where the Eagles will play Uruguay in the first leg of a home and home series to decide the final qualifier from the Americas for the 2011 Rugby World Cup in New Zealand.  The US could have avoided this trip to South America had they taken care of business a few months ago against Canada. The US won the first game against the Canucks in the heat and humidity of South Carolina-only to lose their cool (Paul Emerick was red-carded early in the first half) and eventually the game when they got blown out 41-17 in Edmonton, Alberta.

The USA’s Irish coach, Eddie O’Sullivan will go with some old favorites like Chris Wyles, Mike Hercus, Todd Clever, and Alec Parker. O’Sullivan will throw Cory Blair, Phil  Theil and Jack Sprague into the mix for their first USA Eagles selection.

There is no question that the playing conditions will be tough in Montevideo- a miserable pitch and aggressive fans will be a tough game for the Eagles. The main thing is that they have to keep it close and hope that they can seal the deal and win the return leg in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. I have mixed feelings about the choice in venue. I am sure the weather should make for more open, ball in hand rugby, but would USA rugby have been better served by picking a venue with more inhospitable weather like Denver, Chicago or New York that might have made it more difficult for Uruguay?

If the USA cannot qualify for the 2011 Rugby World Cup, it will be a huge blow for the sport in the US. To borrow the phrase from the movie Apollo 13:

Failure is not an option.

For the future of the oval ball here in the United States-at least for the Men’s game-the USA Eagles have got to leave Uruguay in their dust.

The beat just goes on for South African Springbok and Blue Bull fly half Morné Steyn. This past weekend he took part in his fourth major win of the 2009 season, a veritable rugby grand slam: Super 14 title, a series victory against the touring British Lions, a Springbok victory in the Tri-Nations, and this past weekend in Pretoria, a Currie Cup (The South African National Championship) victory in a thrilling  36-24 win against the Free State Cheetahs.

The blue-clad crowd at Loftus Versfeld had hardly settled into their seats when the Blue Bulls took advantage of some individual brilliance to take a quick  14-0 lead. At one point, they led this match 24-0, but the gritty team from Bloemfontain fought back and more than made a game of this match.

Steyn showed great leadership and poise, along with his tactical acumen. He scored a key drop goal and also hit a monster 50+ meter penalty to keep the Cheetahs at bay. It cannot be underestimated just how much it has to mess with the pysche of an opponenent, when you know that any little penalty like holding onto the ball, going off your feet or from the sides in a ruck from anywhere on your side of the pitch can get punished by giving up three points. Playing in great conditions at altitude only added to the likely conversion of penalties by the Blue Bulls number 10.

Steyn’s great year also mirrored those of teamates Fourie Du Preez, Bryan Habana (in his last game in a Blue Bulls Jersey), Pierre Spies, Bakkies Botha and Victor Matfield, who all got to sample this special vintage of a year with a rare grand slam of international club and national team victories.

The scary thing for Blue Bulls and Springbok opponents is that he will only get better, and by the 2011 World Cup, should be at the height of his game.(Barring injuries, of course)

It’s been a very busy month, between my wife healing up from her concussion, and going back to phone triage through the Children’s Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota. I still pick up at least two shifts a month on the Spinal Cord Injury/Disorder’s unit at the VA Medical Center in Minneapolis.

To say work has been busy would be an understatement on the order of saying that Morné Steyn has been a decent fly-half for the Blue Bulls and Springboks.

The health care workplace has been nothing short of insane this past month-due in no small measure to the H1N1 Virus (Sometimes called “The Swine Flu”). Every night at work, we are so busy, that we have patients waiting anywhere from two to 8 hours for a phone triage nurse to get back to them to go through their or their child’s symptoms(And this, after my work hired several new nurses to man the phones). In the world of phone triage, handling over 50 calls a night was a busy night-about 6 an hour with the odd bathroom and snack break. This past two weeks, I have been averaging over 70 calls per 8 hour shift.

It has been the perfect storm brewing: many people in Minnesota were already getting flu symptoms back in early September, there are a lot of people with flu-like illness out there, but in my opinion the biggest driving force has been the media in the US, to say nothing of the media here in the Twin Cities, which has parents absolutely white with fear that the minute their child has the sniffles, they are going to die after news of a person who died of flu complications hits the airwaves(Most fatalities, by the way, the person had an underlying health issue). Add all of this together, and it has made the perfect Halloween season witch’s brew of panic here in the upper Midwest. As crazy as it has been at work, the people I really feel sorry for are the nurses and doctors working in the packed Emergency Rooms and Urgent Cares, who are having to deal with this mass of coughing, sneezing and febrile humanity. The thing is, most people don’t need to be going to the ER. Sure, there are people who are having respiratory distress symptoms who should be there, but most people don’t realize that this is a VIRUS-antibiotics don’t work. There is an antiviral drug called Tamiflu, but contrary to what some parents think, it is NOT a cure-it should help decrease the severity of the symptoms and may lesson the flu by a day to a day and a half.

The people who SHOULD be on the Tamiflu are people within the first hours of onset of flu-like symptoms(Fever, cough, sneezing, sore throat, headache, bodyaches are the most common) are people under the age of two, people with diminished immune symptoms and chronic illnesses like asthma, heart problems and diabetes and pregnant women(Women’s immune systems take a hit when they are pregnant)-to name a few. For most healthy people, it’s a question of giving over the counter medicines for fever and bodyaches, pushing fluids and riding the flu out.

The one thing that people are forgetting in these panicked times is that the fatality rate of H1N1 influenza is THE SAME as regular seasonal flu.

I guess that I should not complain, I am not actually having people cough all over me like those in the ER’s, UCC’s and clinics, and as one of my co workers pointed out during a particularly busy evening this week: “At least we have job security”. A sliver lining to think about during these tough times.

It’s been a tough flu season, but to try to put this into some level of historical perspective, I would strongly recommend the book “The Great Influenza” by John M. Barry. This is a book that dealt with the great Influenza Pandemic of 1918-19. (This flu killed more American Soldiers than German bullets and artillery during WWI) If you read this book, it gives a whole level of perspective to the current flu season that we are having.

I used a little of my birthday money to get John Carlin’s book, “Playing the Enemy-Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation.”

I strongly  recommend this book. It’s not so much a rugby book, it’s really a bit of history with rugby as a very important supporting character.

John Carlin interviewed many of the important figures from diverse backgrounds as Nelson Mandela, François Peinaar, ANC political figures, De Klerk, Viljoen, Mark Andrews,  Bernard, and Louis Luyt-among others.

The thing that really struck me in reading this book was just HOW close South Africa very easily could have descended into chaos and civil war-particularly after the assassination of Chris Hani. Unlike US President Barack Obama’s recent awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize, President Mandela REALLY earned his Nobel Peace Prize. When you think of how Mandela had to win the hearts and minds of Afrikaners and members of his own ANC, it was an amazing, and tenous balancing act. For most black South Africans, rugby was the white man’s game, and even more than that, the game of the Afrikaners who wanted to keep the status quo of the Apartheid system. For white South Africans, they had a very real fear of the unknown of what would happen when the ANC achieved power.  Mandela used the 1995 Rugby World Cup as a way to try to unite his nation in very stressful times. Carlin weaves amazing images of Mandela wearing the Springbok Jersey, of other black South Africans cheering for the Springboks, of this mostly white team singing the new national anthem, Nkosi Sikelel iAfrika, whith real emotion, and of the mostly white crowd at Ellis Park singing the Zulu song “Shosholoza”-a miner’s song more associated with black fans at soccer games.

Mandela used the game of rugby at the 1995 Rugby World Cup as sort of a carrot on the stick to create his vision of a multi-racial South Africa united under a new flag and a new spirit of forgiveness and redemption. “Playing the Enemy” is a fantastic story of perseverance and the power of the human spirit to overcome obstacles. It’s a great read that I think rugby fans and students of history will both enjoy.

I am 49 years old today. I have a lot to think about on  this , the beginning of my last year of being in my 40’s.  I count my blessings that I am in good health(Hope to be off the blood thinner Coumadin so I can play rugby next year), I am happily married, I have two great kids, a fantastic grandson, a phenomenal daughter-in-law-to-be in Andrea(My son proposed to her last week, and she accepted), I have a job(which has been insane thanks to the H1N1 influenza, and the media scaring the shit out of parents) and it’s a sunny, fantastic fall day here in Minnesota-something we have not had too much of this October in the upper midwest.

I guess age is relative. I don’t feel any different, but when I look into the mirror, I see a few more wisps of grey hair. I guess maybe that is part of the secret is that at the heart of the matter, I still am a kid at heart-albeit a prop-sized kid.