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Listed below are comments made by dummy_half between Thursday, 21st August 2008 and Saturday, 14th November 2009.

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What England must do to beat Australia 10:36am on 14 Nov 2009 Raskham

In many ways, the hooker in league is most like the scrum half in Union, in being the first player to get the ball after each breakdown. As with a good union SH, the hooker needs to make the right pass from dummy half and pick the right time to run himself. Only real difference is that in all my time playing there, I never put up a box kick. Another similarity with the RU scrum half is that in defence you're often in the thick of the action, against bigger players, so you have to be prepared to put in a few tackles.

The league scrum half is more like a playmaking fly half or inside centre in RU - guys that will take the ball up to the defence and then look to put runners in gaps, and now with increasingly clever kicking games.

Sinfield wouldn't normally be your typical 9 (who is often one of the smaller players on the pitch), but has such good ditribution skills that he manages that aspect fairly well and provides a greater running and off-loading threat than most.
Capello can plot World Cup glory 1:32pm on 10 Sep 2009 Very good team performance for about 80 minutes last night - a couple of sloppy 5 minute periods (easly 2nd half and when Croatia scored), when we didn't keep possession very well, but otherwise excellent.

It's good that we can beat a top 10 ranked team 9-2 on aggregate over two legs and yet still see room for improvement.

GK - The problem is we have several who are at about the same level, and no real stand-out (yet). Green is in possession of the shirt at the moment, and so it's his to lose.

RB - Johnson and Richards are both better going forwards than defending, Wes Brown a better defender but lacks that edge of pace to be top class. Given that a lot of the attacking threat with England comes from the full backs, I think GJ will hold his place.

Centre forward - I'd give Carlton Cole a couple of games to see if he can play like Heskey with added finishing ability. We need someone who plays well with their back to goal, as this lets Rooney sit off and thread passes to the runners from midfield, which is part of why Gerrard and Lennon looked so good last night.

Players we can't afford to lose pre tournament - Ashley Cole (because of the lack of depth in replacements), Gareth Barry (the heartbeat of the midfield in how he retains possession and buys time to find a good pass), both of Gerrard and Lampard (although missing one wouldn't be a disaster), Rooney (obviously).

I definitely see Joe Cole in the squad, as he can play the left midfield role as Gerrard does, and is the next best playmaker if Rooney is missing.

Beckham? Could be a luxury we can't afford in a 23 man squad, with his primary position already being competed for by Lennon, Walcott and SWP (and potentially Ashley Young). Yes, he is still the best dead ball striker we have, but not by that much ahead of the likes of Lampard, Gerrard and Rooney.

So plenty of reason for optimism, but accepting that we're still a bit of a work in progress, and have to improve a fair bit to really challenge Spain in particular.
Cricket misses the point again 1:20pm on 02 Sep 2009 The problem seems to be that last night none of the players or umpires seemed willing to think about alternative ways in which the game could have gone ahead, and that a couple of small wet areas were sufficient to prevent the game when otherwise conditions were acceptable.

As has been pointed out, 20000 people travelled to the ground, with all the consequential costs - for that they deserve to at least see that every effort is being made to get play going. The fact that this was only a 20/20 game should have made the players and umpires a bit less precious about the conditions they were playing in.

I wouldn't advocate going as far as preventing the quick bowlers coming in off a normal run-up (although remembering the old county Sunday league games, where bowlers were restricted to a 20m run-up, it can be done), but surely there was another strip available somewhere on the ground that was playable - is the county game today being played on the same strip as was supposed to be used last night?

In the longer term, LCCC need to address the provision for covers of the pitch and run-ups, especially as Old Trafford is one of the wetter grounds. Why isn't there a large inflatable cover that extends across the pitch and the critical last few metres of the bowlers run up, with sensible drainage?
Flintoff a very English hero 09:48am on 24 Aug 2009 Undoubtedly a very talented cricketer and for a shortish spell (maybe 2.5 years from 2004) was playing great cricket - not quite enough for him to be considered a great cricketer overall. To cross sports, I'd compare him with Shane Williams, the Wales rugby winger - a good amount of talent but only produced true greatness (absolutely world class level performances) for a short period in a longish career, although in Fred's case probably more because of his body not being up to the demands that he put on it.

Had a touch of Botham about him, although very rarely reached quite the same heights - definitely had a bit of Both's 'Golden Arm', in that he'd take wickets with poor balls or when nothing much was happening in a game, but didn't have the same ability to run through a side. Unlike Botham though, I don't think he would ever have meritted his place in the side on batting alone - had a spell of consistently scoring 50s but didn't convert enough to hundreds and particularly big hundreds.
Is Owen still worth a gamble? 5:35pm on 15 Jun 2009 Owen has always been a streaky player - gets one goal and could well score 8 in the next 7 games. He just needs to recover from all the niggling injuries and have a bit of a run of games.

He does though need to be careful in which team he chooses to go to (and yes, I do think there will be several after him this summer), and pick one with a good record of keeping players fit - Newcastle always seemed to have more injuries than most, maybe due to their training regime?

He'd still be a good signing for at least half the Premier League - would sell them shirts and season tickets, and could still be a 20+ goal a season striker if he stays healthy.

OK, he has lost a little pace (although I think this is over-stated when he's fit and in shape), but he is one of the cleverest players at finding space in the box - look at how many headed goals he gets for a relatively small man.
O'Driscoll and co still inspire hope 3:43pm on 27 Feb 2009 But look at last year's result and performance. England did a good job of dismantling Ireland at Twickenham - in fact it was so one-sided that even Jamie Noon looked like a good player...

As someone who has been an England supporter both through the successful times under Carling and Dallaglio/Johnson and through the rather desolate years both before Carling and between these two eras, I don't quite understand why beating England is such a big thing for the Celtic nations - we've had bad teams before, and a sight worse that this current one.

Surely beating (or being) the best team in the Championship is much more important. That's why I have usually considered Engalnd-France as the biggest game - over the last 20 years or so these are the two teams who have most often challenged for the title.
Blood, guts and old-fashioned Six Nations thunder 00:13am on 15 Feb 2009 A great game, with fantastic physical confrontations all over the pitch. Could have gone either way, and with better goal kicking from England would have ended as an absolute thriller. Can't imagine that Johnny Wilkinson (as of 2000-2003 era) would have missed either the conversion or late penalty - five points given away that would have given the last 10 minutes a different complexion.

The difference was really that this Welsh team understood how to win this game, by withstanding England's pressure late on.

Worsley deservingly man of the match - not a conventional #7 performance but immense in the tackle, taking everything Roberts and Powell threw at him. Pity for him it was in vain.

Flutey is starting to look a really good inside centre - now we just need players to understand how to provide supprt for him.

Gethin Jenkins must have booked himself a Lions shirt. So much ground covered for a big lump, so many tackles made and yet still held his own in the set piece.
Your choice has never been so difficult 3:50pm on 11 Nov 2008 A seriously difficult year to make a selection. Most years, with their performances through the season either Hamilton or Murray would have been certainties for the award. When was the last time a British F1 champion didn't win?, and Rusedski won the award easily in 97 despite having a less good year than Murray.

However, I wouldn't give it to either of them because I expect them both to have better years in the future, and because of the Olympics.

Most deserving of this for their career achievements are either:
Ben Ainslie or Nicole Cooke.

For performances this year alone, it could be any one of about half a dozen cyclists (Hoy, Wiggins, Cavendish, Pendleton, Cooke or Romero) or it could be Rebecca Adlington.

Really a lot now depends on how the BBC promote the award and the show, so who they bring back into the public memory.

Team of the year? The Olympic team overall or the GB cycling team if they are considered eligible. Otherwise it's between the Wales RU team and Manchester United.
Dramatic athletics - but Britain beware 12:57pm on 26 Aug 2008 It was a really mixed bag from the T and F athletes.

The most disappointing aspect was the number of athletes who didn't live up to their expectations - coming into a major championship, the minimum an athlete should be aiming for is a season's best (exception could be longer distance races, if conditions aren't condusive). How many of our athletes acheived this?

On the men's side, positives or at least acceptable performances came from:
Edgar, Malcolm, Rooney, Idowu (ok, so someone jumped better than he did, but his performance level was OK) and the high jumpers.
Disappointments: the other sprinters, long jumpers, pole vault.

On the women's side, the biggest let down was Kelly Sotherton - ran well but her jumps and throws were way below standard.
They all need a lesson from Goldie Sayers - go out in the big event and break your PB. Can't ask for more than that.
Idowu pipped on night of disappointments 8:05pm on 21 Aug 2008 You can only control your own performance, not that of your competitors.
Philips jumped a season's best, which is really about the minimum acceptable performance at a major championship. It wasn't his fault that an opponent produced a surprisingly good distance and narrowly beat him.
He should be disappointed but more that he was unlucky than that his performance wasn't at the level it should have been (unlike in some previous championships, where he has fallen well short of expectations).

It was really the flip side of Ohorugu's gold, where she perfomred above expectations to take the gold from the favourite - this time Evora over-performed and Philips didn't have quite the capacity to respond.

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