Oh dear...

The Forum at the professional club was "temporarily" down last night. Could it be anything to do with this news story?

It's probably a story to generate financial support for the club rather than a real panic, but it's an example of how hard it is for professional rugby to survive outside the top twelve clubs in England. We're number 15 in the country - if we were the 15th ranked football team we'd have million pound superstars all over the place and sponsors ramming money down our throats.

We aren't actually the same team now, having split before this season started, so I'm a member of Nottingham Boots Corsairs RFC and merely a supporter of Nottingham Rugby but it still hurts to see them in trouble. My kids have been trained by a lot of the players from Nottingham Rugby over the years; they arec a great bunch of blokes and they deserve better than this.

I don't think the management of the club has been great since the game turned professional but you can't fault the efforts of the members in working to drag it back up. It's just a shame these efforts seem to have come to nothing. Some teams did better than us, some did worse.

However, it isn't helpful to criticise just now, or even to dispute some of the things I just heard the Chairman say about the money they spend on supporting the amateur club. Let's just say that from the point of view of the parents of NBCRFC it looks like we gave them plenty too.

Things you see when you don't have a gun

When I first played rugby I had black boots. If you had white trim you were thought to be rather bohemian. Of course, in those days I also used to score three-point tries with a leather ball. Though not often.

How times have changed.

No conspiracy after all

Sadly, it seems I am unable to pin the cancellation of the Under 16 match on the minis. Seems Nuneaton had players away at a county match and, with four last minute cancellations, had to pull out. It seems that the person they thought was going to ring us forgot. I have a poor memory too, so I can sympathise with that.

I would much rather it had been a conspiracy though...

This leaves me in a position, like the comedians Ross and Brand, of having to offer sincere apologies. In my case it's only to the non-contact ankle-biters so it doesn't really matter. I'm certainly not in danger of losing a lucrative contract over this.

Today's question -

Should children be allowed to play rugby before their voices stop sounding like badly-oiled door hinges or not?

Stranger and stranger...

We arrived at Nuneaton for the Under 13 match without being cancelled. I've only been once before and could remember standing water but on arrival was pleasantly surprised by the state of the pitches. On spiking the umbrellas into the ground I discovered why - lots of gravel. I wish I could say the same about Nottingham.

On one of those days when everything went right (well, nearly everything, but I'm not here to discuss the weak points of our game) our pack roamed the field like a pride of lions and the backs produced an exhibition of free-flowing rugby. The result doesn't actually matter, it was just so good to see the kids enjoying themselves and producing great rugby. As we left the changing rooms the opposition scrum half told our kids that they were going to slaughter us. Where do scrum halves get their genes from?

Sorry about the poor quality of the picture - the way things are these days I daren't put up a picture that actually shows anything.

Fifty minutes later, he must have wished he'd kept quiet. It was 29-0 if you are statistically inclined. The kids seem to be getting the hang of this.

Meanwhile the Under 16s waited patiently for their opposition (Nuneaton U16s) to turn up. On ringing to see if they were lost they found out that someone from our end seems to have cancelled the fixture. Suspicion is focused firmly on the Mini Section who were hosting a tournament at The Bay this morning and were worried about space. If this was CSI I'd be after getting a subpoena and a phone dump but as it's not, I'll have to be content with posting my suspicions in cyberspace.

Must alter time stamp - it's 8.34 not 10.34 as the last post shows!

Gale force winds, driving rain.

As yet there is no news of cancelled matches.

If things run true to form we will be 20 miles from home when the news arrives.

Time to set off so here goes...

Is it that time already?

It doesn't feel like seven days since Saturday was last here,and looking at the blog, I seem to have missed a day entirely. As this will appear on Sunday, despite being about Saturday, you might even say two.

Southglade Leisure Centre, as mentioned by Stew in the last post, proved to be a little warmer than usual, though still as cold as a taxman's heart. However, after an hour of standing there feeling cold and lonely (no other parents were stupid enough to turn up and watch) things suddenly took a turn for the worse. The clouds, which had been shooting overhead at a rapid pace, decided to turn grey and stop.

Now, I can put up with cold, rain and wind; they are all part of being a parent of sporting children. What aggravates me is how the rubber crumbs of an "all weather pitch" stick to my shoes and lower extremities in wet weather. And the cones, balls,water bottles, children...

You name it - it ends up with a rubber crumb stuck to it. I have often wondered how long it would take to steal an entire pitch, assuming you wanted one, but fortunately have never been bored enough to try and calculate it.

After that we went to IKEA. In some ways it was better than last weekend (I managed to get to the canteen before it stopped serving, for instance) in other ways it was worse.I will come to that later. Strangely, in one way it was exactly the same. We had a family come through the checkout - one with a British Lions shirt,one with a Leicester Tigers shirt. Regular readers will know what I am about to say...

...we didn't get a penny from them. I don't know what it is about a Tiger's shirt but they are not, based on our recent sample of three, a sign of open-handed generosity. In fact the whole day was characterised by a lack of generosity as a procession of miserable-looking shoppers made their way through the tills. Some were still very pleasant - members of Scunthorpe, Lincoln and Keyworth rugby clubs to name but a few.

The worst one was the chap who decided to have a go at my wife for daring to help pack his bag (though his wife had agreed to it). I won't go into detail but if his wife ever cracks under the pressure of living with him I hope (a) the right poison is readily available and (b) she gets away with it.

(This a personal opinion and should not be mistaken for the official position of Nottingham Boots Corsairs).

Anyway, better go now, have to be up early for a trip to Nuneaton.

Ah, the romance of junior rugby!