How well I shall iron my fishing shirt to welcome it back from the

How well I shall iron my fishing shirt to welcome it back from the depths of the cupboard. How polished my reels will be and how I shall wind them back and forth to prepare myself for the sound of them singing for real on the river bank. I am surrounded by people that do not know one end of a fishing rod from the other and think what I do is queer. Hurry up spring! When the trout season reopens and I can dig out my favourite Parachute Black Gnats and flick dry flies onto pretty rivers to raise wild brownies. In place of twinkling sunlight there is electric light that neither warms nor cheers me like the proper stuff does.

I AM nowhere near a river and am sad. There is no crisp, frosted grass to crunch over, only horrid grey carpet tiles separating horrid grey desks all around. Clive Woodward’s men are confidently predicted to overwhelm Scotland by 32 points this weekend, with Wales set to scrape past Ireland.The defeat of Graham Henry’s team at Murrayfield dropped Wales to 11th in the international list – and it is predicted they will suffer a 56- point rout against France in Paris.. “If the French had won by as many as predicted, then their score would have gone up by about 40 points,” said Pembroke.”As it was, they won an international match away from home, which still has some merit.”Another feature of the IBM rankings is a computer prediction for each match – if the results are accurate, England will take the Grand Slam, mainly thanks to a thrilling one-point win over France at Twickenham.

If he makes tackles and breaks downfield with the ball as well, then he will receive bonus points.” Similarly, the balance of points for teams is based heavily on them achieving their “core” aim of winning the match. Thus France increased their overall total by 18, despite their fortunate win over Ireland in Dublin. I’m sure coaches will find the information very useful.”Pembroke admits that the method used for assessing player performance may need some tinkering, owing to the discrepancies in scores of different positions.In the first round of Five Nations matches, Ireland’s hooker Keith Wood came out the top performer with 98.40 points, while Scotland’s Paul Burnell managed only 58.40 as the highest scoring tight-head prop.Pembroke said: “The most marks are for core skills, which for a hooker would be hitting his line-out jumper and striking the ball in the scrum. But over a period of time we hope to be able to show the strengths and weaknesses of each international team and their players. “The whole process takes about 10 hours for one game, so it’s very time- consuming. An extension of the Planet Rugby internet site, the IBM rankings offer ratings for international teams based over their last 12 matches. Not surprisingly, the Tri-nations winners and World Cup favourites, South Africa, come out on top, with France the leading European nation in third.
Player ratings have been added following the start of the Five Nations’ Championship, and the process will continue for every international match played across the globe.