Murder

I like my murdering. I was brought up on a diet of Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie. The latter wrote about seventy murder whodunnits and the library in Wewak, Papua New Guinea had all but a handful of them and I re read them between ploughing the fields and catching lots of spanish mackerel when I lived there in the mid seventies. I still reckon the Sherlock Holmes collection contains some of the best constructed plots written - Arthur Conan Doyle was a doctor of course so maybe I'm biased.

Midsomer Murders is my kind of comfy English middle class rural intrigue with the occasional lashing out of a bale hook thrown in to keep you interested. Being a cheapskate sort of a bloke I only have one Sky decoder in the house and it has become normal practice of a Saturday evening to switch over to the murdering halfway through the second half of the rugby. Imagine my horror last week when DCI Barnaby had been replaced by a program called 'Wire in the Blood'. I am yet to work out what the title is about but, assured by my wife that it was good, I watched. Gruesome this program most certainly is. You don't get murdered on this show by having an overdose slipped into your coffee. A bit of torture and then blood on the ceiling is your lot if you get selected for this one. The main thrust of the program however is the workings of a psychologist as he outwits plod and points to the killer by just having a think.

Is there a point to all this lengthy preamble? Yes there is. I out thought the psychologist on Saturday night by an hour and knew that the female police inspector was the murderer by proxy as we went into the third ad break. I am therefore ideally equipped to tell you why my next door neighbour's plane ticket to Paris for this afternoon is not looking the item of envy it did but twenty four hours ago. I am the psychological expert you need to lead you to understanding why the ABs are coming home. The Herald is full of All Black doom and gloom this morning making the Monday paper even more unreadable than usual. The ersatz Society Page is still there as are the stupid green pages - this week it's what cars 'prominent' (in their eyes, not mine) people drive.

But in there somewhere is one person who puts their finger on what came to me as I drove back from the golf club yesterday. It is the government's fault. Forget the ref (please) you don't lose to an inferior side (and that the French were) just because of two piss poor decisions (and that they were). If we were already twenty points in front, who would have given a toss. The debacle in Cardiff is the result of years of left wing, politically correct safety at all cost education and thinking.

It seems to be generally accepted that we had the best thirty players and yet they lost - again. Chokers? Of course they are. They can't handle pressure because all their lives they have been shielded from it. The ABs ran onto the pitch yesterday to not lose. They didn't run on to win because that would involve risk. All those endless and pointless pick and goes. They are a riskless way of spending thirty seconds. They don't achieve very much other than reducing the risk of losing the ball. But in a negative sort of a way they are safe. You usually don't lose much from them.

I firmly belive that this country will never win anything in a pressure situation that involves doing what the real winners do - take risks - because it is ingrained into us that is not what you do. We are an OSH driven society and that is reflected in what happened yesterday. They were not prepared to win but focussed on not losing.

Stand on the tee with a lake running down the left side of the fairway and the surest way of getting your ball in the drink is to say to yourself 'There is that big lake on the left, I must not hit it in there'. Splash - every time a coconut. 'Look at the width of the fairway 200m off the tee'. Straight down the middle.

'We must not lose to France.' Plane on Wednesday. 'The best way to score tries against this mob is to spread the ball wide because we are good at that.' Smash England next weekend. 'If we spread the ball wide we might drop a pass or suffer an intercept. Safer to pick and go even though they have defended that without problem for the last hour' Plane on Wednesday.

This is a very very difficult mindset to get out of once it has been ingrained from primary school age. Anton Oliver said during an interview last night (when he wasn't being beeped out). 'We said all week that we mustn't do things we had been guilty of all tournament and still we did them'

As I said it's all the fault of the left and of course it is in particular Helen Clark's fault.

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