Blackheath R.C.

Blackheath R.C.: "[to eliminate hacking would] do away with all the courage and pluck from the game, and I will be bound over to bring over a lot of Frenchmen who would beat you with a week’s practice."

This is one of my favourite sporting quotes of all time...it's from Francis Maude Campbell, the chairman of Blackheath FC, who attended the first ever meeting of the fledgling Football Association in 1863. Upon hearing they were proposing to outlaw the deliberate kicking of an opponent he promptly walked out making the above statement.

Everton played out a fairly tame Nil-niller with Charlton at the Valley enlivened mainly by Richard Wright's criminal misreading of a bouncing ball that lead to him sprinting towards his own goal and swatting the ball off the goal line at the last moment. The lad isn't doing himself any favours.

We spent the afternoon at Waterloo. It was a fairly miserable day until we got there when the sun came out and it turned from 'freezing' to merely 'bracing'. It turned out to be a fairly comprehensive win against a slightly rude Harrogate side (two fairly un-nescessary fights)...couple of really good tries went in just in front of us.

Our horses in the National did absolutely nothing but didn't end up in the big glue factory in the sky.

Spent yesterday DIYing and doing a tiny bit of gardening...it was a windy weekend and it's blown a blackbirds nest (complete with eggs) from one of the trees which is a bit sad.