Saturday 1 December 2012

Wales need to persuade the fat lady to sing earlier

You could almost hear Victor Meldrew saying' 'I don't believe it,' when the Aussies snatched victory against Wales in the last seconds yet again.
I felt a bit like dear old Victor as I sat through the pre-match "entertainment". You used to be uplifted by Welsh coral singing but this eeems to have become increasingly marginalised in favour of loud and discordant fanfares from the p.a. system interspersed with even louder advetrs on the big screen. The loudness of the p.a. system means that wehn they actually allow the choir to sing your hearing cannot take in the harmonies. Nevertheless the National Anthem was belted out with all its usual fervour and still makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. I hope that they will never decide to slip an advert in between the first and second verses although I'm sure that someone has thought about it..
I suppose we had better get back to the match. These are two evenly matched teams who try and play a similar style of rugby. Suffice it to say that two very strong defences were on top with line breaks few and far between. Wales had two chances to score from breaks from their own 22 but didn't take them and Australia with the last move of the game took their chance at the death. It was exciting stuff with the lead changing hands through penalties throughout the game. Wales really wanted this victory and carried on in a similar vein to the second half against the All Blacks . At 12-9 up, with under two minutes left and with a lineout right on the Aussie line you almost felt convinced that Wales could win. Memories of the matches in Australia this summer came flooding back and it somehow seemed inevitable that Australia would find a way to come back. The nervousness of the crowd was palpable and must surely have been felt by the players. The rest as they say is history.
Maybe those wizards who operate that fantastic p.a. system could blast out some music by a fat lady with a minute or so to go. Maybe we could have a choir of fat ladies in the stand ready for these kind of eventualities.
I still don't believe it.

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