Letters | On chickens, curves and dead rubbers

When rugby competitions stretch over long periods, such as the United Rugby Championships (URC), the chance of “chicken murder”, painful, demoralising uncontested encounters (like cricket scores), becomes so much higher. But, of course, the rugby gurus refer to this as learning curves. Should the URC take a leaf out of the Six Nations’ book?

(No sudden death such as finals, subsequently no “chicken murder”). Just a weekly, all out go at achieving the highest points aggregate. It would be a learning curve well taken, for players as well as spectators.

The advent of “dead rubber” games ( no interest) would be all but nullified. Take, for instance, the final game of the Six Nations. France hosting England, with, extraordinary, Ireland being the third “finalist”.

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(On points aggregate.) What a humdinger it turned out to be, a high-scoring, try-fest that was in the balance until the last second. Had England won, Ireland would have been champions. The rest is history now.

But in hindsight (in effect?), a learning curve: No finals could produce finalists of three, four or incredibly, even more in one single game, which, in a competition such as the Six Nations, is half (or more) of the competition’s interest. But spare a thought for the Irish (and Conor O’Hagan Ward), who must have rewritten the Guinness Book of Records. (Pun intended).

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