The Crooked Feed
Australia was, understandably, hell-bent on preventing a repeat of the 2001's 'sea of red' that made the Wallabies' knees go all trembly. On that occasion, Lions fans also draped hundreds of flags and banners around the Gabba showing their support and, effectively, hijacked the party.
Showing fierce determination to turn the stadium yellow, sorry, gold, on Saturday, the powers that be in Brisbane handed out thousands of fashionably dubious yellow hats, the sort of thing that might be found on a circus clown or, er, a Wallaby fan. If you half closed your eyes on a shot of Saturday's crowd, it created an orange effect.
Few viewers seem to have noticed Australia's other trick; they used yellow, sorry, gold, paint for the lines marking the pitch. If you didn't notice either, the plan can be considered a failed attempt to do whatever was intended. Mental disintegration by paint colour? No parking during the match?
The IRB does not stipulate the colour of paint for pitch markings, so no rules have been broken by this patriotic piece of brilliance. It could catch on when Australia come visiting the northern hemisphere in November. They will find white lines at Twickenham, blue lines in Rome and Murrayfield and, logically, green lines in Dublin. Or perhaps the IRB should nip this nonsense in the bud and insist on white paint everywhere.
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Richard Seeckts' rugby career consisted of one school match where he froze on the wing and despite no substitutes being available he was withdrawn from the game at half-time for mocking the opposition's line-out calls. Thereafter Richard and the sport agreed active participation was not the way ahead, but that has not prevented him from avidly writing about and watching the game. He now contributes his random observations to the Crooked Feed blog on ESPNscrum.com
