Rugby - New Year, New Coaches, New Laws

[finbar]

I was disappointed, yet again, not to see your name. A try-scoring hooker who can play fly half is a rare, um, boeuf.

[finbar]

Italy has a new skipper. Hopefully this one will spend more time on the field than in the bin.

[Havak]

I agree entirely Finbar. I live in a rural part of the county that is really quite beautiful - I wouldn't live in the City for any money.

[finbar]

I played a game of Civ 2 against the computer yesterday for the first time in eons. Being a masochist, I played as England. I built Lord knows how many cities. Leicester appeared way down the list. After, from memory, Bognor Regis and just in front of Carlisle.

[LDiCesare]

But did you build a rugby stadium in Leicester?

[finbar]

Wanted to. The Attitude Advisor suggested there weren't players of sufficient quality to warrant it.

[LDiCesare]

Are you sure it's not civ V? Civ 2 advisors didn't use to make sense.

[finbar]

Mmmmm. Fair point. Anyway, I created a new unit. An Argentinian with a pink tie. I parked him just outside Leicester. They tore him to bits.

[Havak]

I'm enjoying this - do please continue.

[finbar]

Sorry, I'm too gobsmacked after reading that D. Cipriani wants Wilko's job.

When and if he learns some defence.

And I wish they would pronounce his name properly!

[LDiCesare]

But pronouncing Italian names is an art mastered solely by Italians.
For isntance, my name is Di Cesare. This can be read in French [di sezar] ot in Italian [di chezare], but many French people will pronounce an in-between form [di sezare] which doesn't make any sense and cannot be justified in any way.
In French, it's sometimes very painful to listen to a match with Italy, since the commentators always misprounounce the 'c' and 'ch'. Come to think of it, it's often painful to listen to rugby commentators whenever there's a match, since most of them spout nonsence. Except for Jerome Cazalbou, who calmly repeats what I shouted to the tv set one second before, thereby allowing me to tell my wife I have a deep understanding of the game.

[finbar]

One of the joys of the Italian language is the certainty of pronunciation. There might be eight different words for the same thing, but the pronunciation is never in question. Sure, sometimes the accent - the emphasised syllable - can vary where it comes in a word, sometimes infuriatingly so, but you can always be sure that "ch" sounds like "k", and so on. Or in the case of Signor Cipriani, Signor Chee-pree-ar-nee. Not Signor Sipriani!

Most of my Sky rugby commentaries are in Italian. I'm absolutely certain that everything I scream at the screen in English is repeated by the commentators in their rapid-fire, unintelligible Italian.

[finbar]

Societe Generale said today a single rogue trader carried out a massive 4.9 billion euro ($8.22 billion) fraud at the French banking giant.

Now we know what LdiC gets up to when he's not either (a) scoring tries; (b) posting here; or (c) tipping mussels in white wine over his teammates.

[Havak]

Also I wonder if he realises that with our love of nicknames and contractions he would be called EL DIC here.

Pronouncing Cipriani is easy related to the Wilko quote:

T-O-*-*-E-R.

Low brow of me I know - but "Job done" as they say.

[finbar]

Thankfully there's some rugby on the near horizon to keep us meaningfully occupied. Relatively speaking.