UFO Info Week-End

What more do you want?6 Tony Diprose SaracensOut of position here but class knows no boundaries

What more do you want?6 Tony Diprose (Saracens)Out of position here, but class knows no boundaries.7 Pat Lam (Newcastle)The isotonic islander. A peerless all-round loosie.8 Dean Ryan (Newcastle)Because every side needs a bit of nasty Bless him.. ST AUGUSTINE is claimed to be the oldest settlement in America, which must make it one of the few places in the country to be on a par, age wise, with the Old Course at St Andrews. Last weekend saw the opening of the new World Golf Village near the town. “St Andrews will always be the home of golf,” said Michael Bonallack, secretary of the Royal and Ancient, “but these days everyone has a second home, especially here in Florida.”

The centrepiece of the Village, a $350m (pounds 216m) development which will include six golf courses, shops and a hotel, is the World Golf Hall of Fame. Nobody did it better.9 Agustin Pichot (Richmond)Under-valued, under-paid but still over here Just.1 Roberto Grau (Saracens)An absolute bear of a man. He’ll be missed.11 Austin Healey (Leicester)Cheeky chappie or complete wind-up? You’re the judge.10 Michael Lynagh (Saracens)He had the lot, damn him.

Everybody’s favourite midfield maestro.12 Philippe Sella (Saracens)No linguist, but one hell of a centre. All of the map.Chris Hewett’s Premiership dream team15 Chris Catling (Gloucester)Simply the best counter-attacking full-back in town.14 Ryan Constable (Saracens)Bags of pace, plenty of brainpower and no fuss.13 Allan Bateman (Richmond)Majestic. (It would be interesting to know exactly how Cotton’s increasingly dinosaurian splutterings are viewed by his local club). The new 14-team format is well over the top – a quality control expert would describe 12 as just about workable and 10 as spot on – but with Bedford, that grand old rugby town, back on the boards and West Hartlepool consolidating the North-east revival, rugby is very much on the map. But then, Saracens must also reorganise now that Michael Lynagh and Philippe Sella have opted for pipe and slippers.In fact, every Premiership side will spend the summer upping next season’s ante; Bath and Leicester have already committed themselves to buying big, as have Sale. Cottonites will of course accuse them of being in it for the money, but the fact of the matter is that after a single season of Premiership rugby, England can now point to a high-profile club competition that bears comparison with the French championship. Much of the dynamite was planted by Hall’s Newcastle and Wray’s Saracens, but not all of it; Richmond brought something new to the domestic scene, Gloucester enjoyed a startling and thoroughly heretical flirtation with the 15-man game and if the more traditional heavyweights flattered to deceive, some of that flattery was made of top-drawer material.”The owner-clubs have made it clear that international and representative rugby are total irritants that constitute interference with their commercial interests,” insists Fran, his famous chin jutting from coast to coast.

But few of the hundreds of thousands of paying customers who patronised this season’s Allied Dunbar Premiership are able to work out how the Cotton knickers – all white, presumably, with a red rose on each cheek – became so unfathomably twisted.
What those rank and file supporters witnessed between the middle of August and the middle of May was club rugby of a standard unimaginable a mere two years previously. “Maybe you bring me luck,” he suggested, as he headed off for a well-earned shower He can speak for himself.. THE communist credentials of Sir John Hall and Nigel Wray are rather less than impeccable, but Fran Cotton continues to pursue them with McCarthyite zeal. “They are failing England in every respect and we would be well rid of them,” he storms in the latest dispatch from his witch-sniffer’s chamber. Clearly, he will not rest until his bete noires are burned at the stake in central Twickenham and their private parts brought to him on an oval-shaped platter. Hall and Wray have certainly acted with a degree of temerity in reinventing the English game; to be sure, Bath and Leicester may never forgive them for gatecrashing what used to be a very private party. I’ve just got to make sure I take it.”His century the other day in Derby would not have done him any harm, then, in this case, even if he felt bad about holding me up.