On a dark and despairing future

That glorious monument to open, attacking rugby, the 6 Nations, draws to a close this weekend.

What an extraordinary tournament it has been. England playing dull, forward dominated rugby, Wales showing skills aplenty and ticker in absentium. The Jocks, dour and downtrodden, plucking defeat from the jaws of victory. Who'd have thought it?

Contrast it, if you will, with the Super-Duper 14, a showcase for the modern world, where tries are scored by the hundred, tackles (spearing excepted) are forbidden, and each starting 15 has an average of 1.3 criminal convictions per man - St Dan Carter excepted.

Each hemisphere pours scorn on the other, siting their game as all that is wrong with rugby in the modern era. Worryingly, it may be that both are right.

Since turning professional, rugby has struggled, both with it's identity, and it's bank balance. The hemispheres have become polar opposite in their attempt to find a solution.

Critics of the south will point to the fact that sevens is a game best played by seven a side, whilst in the depths of Dunedin and the warrens of the Waikato, sturdy, ruddy faced farmers will point out that they prefer mud wrestling when the combatants are naked and nubile ladies, not 30 big, ugly men.

The answer, of course, is that rugby should have never turned professional - it should have remained a jolly, amateur game played by Ex public schoolboys, doctors, policemen and clergy-in-training. But these are far off hills to which we can never come again.

The game is in a terrible state. No two matches are played under the same rules, all referees are blind incompetents, stadia are half full, and Wales greatest try scorer has outed himself as a screaming knobgoblin.

Passes are all forward, scrum feeds more crooked than MPs expenses, a little bit of "argy bargy" gets reported to the Scuffers, and rugby jerseys now resemble the sort of thing you'd expect to see in a Village People video.

Of the 80 minutes nominally played, a good half is wasted in resetting scrums, the field is constantly populated by waiters bearing trays of isotonic sports supplements, and all the players can talk about in their insightful post match interviews is "composure". Bah! Composure is best left to Beethoven, Mozart and other highly questionable mittel Europa types.

Streakers have been outlawed, high tackles effectively endorsed - we don't want big hits, we want big tits. Bring back Erica Roe, I say.

In short, rugby union is in a mess.Sadly, and NOSF says this with a heavy heart, there is a solution at hand. It's currently played by the whippet-buggering burgers of Burnly, the roo-rooting Brads from Queensland, and a motley assortment of heavily tattooed Polynesians masquerading as New Zealanders.

I speak of course, of none other than rugby league. And it is the future of the Union game.

On the comeback

Like an over pampered rock star, waiting until the audience have screamed themselves hoarse begging for more, Tiger Woods has finally announced he is back for an encore.

Or could it be that, fearing he was about to slip entirely below the radar, his advisers have forced him into a return for golf?

It is news which provokes more questions than it answers:

Will bully boy, the universally loved Steve "3 wise monkeys" Williams be on the bag? And how will he cope with the inevitable drunken heckling of his boss that is so typical of the lively Augusta crowd?

Will anyone within a hundred mile radius be able to get a cocktail, as thousands of pneumatic, blond and highly intelligent waitresses descend on the hallowed turf of Augusta and scream "get in my hole" every time Tiger gets his hands on the shaft of his driver?

Most importantly of all, will he win?

NOSf hopes not. No man should be bigger than the game itself, and a facile victory would instantly return Woods to the bad tempered, arrogant man he has been since he first (dis)graced our screens in the Masters. I for one have had quite enough of that sullen, spoilt demeanour.

Woods is a man to be admired for his results, but precious little else. So let's hope big Phil can beat him down the stretch. That would be poetic justice indeed.