KeithQuinnRugby
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18 August 2014
Nanjing Diary Day Five and Day Six
Hello everyone; Sorry about the delay in getting this diary updated for you. The facts are that time is racing along here in Nanjing now since the night of the wonderful Opening Ceremony. Now the early days of events and the commentary of them (my main purposes here) have started up and that is the job on hand now for the about 25 or so men and women who have been assembled here from around the world to report and commentate on them.
[I also have very much come to the conclusion that in New Zealand as far as connection to email, twitter, face book and emails etc goes our country (or is it the whole of the Western world?) is way ahead of China.]
I definitely think so. Getting things connected has not always been easy this week.
Still never mind - I am not complaining one jot. It is great to be here for the Second Summer Youth Olympic Games and the event is running along just great. The whole event and the city's reaction to it feels just like all of the other 'Olympic' events I have been lucky enough to go to in my time.
In the first days I am here to broadcast as the sport of rugby sevens returns to the Olympic scene - and that all is going well. My commentary colleague is a likable Englishman, the Birmingham-born Mark Tompkins. He and I are getting along like a house on fire; he listens patiently to my myriad of 'Back in the Good Old Days' stories while totally and utterly I rely on him to find our way through the maze and haze of life among eight million people. I just follow...
Here's how a typical day unfolds; (I feel like I've lived here a lifetime, honestly)
Mark and I meet in the foyer of the hotel at about 6.40am. We then catch the 6.50 bus from down the road a bit. We get off and change to another bus line and there we can settle back a little. The ride takes about 50 minutes! To the point where just when we are getting sick of sitting or standing our rugby arena rises out of the morning grey and mist to great us.
The rugby fields are part of a sports hub built especially for the Summer Youth Games. Situated 20 kilometres from town it is an amazing complex. There are arenas with grandstands, playing fields, BMX tracks, Volleyball courts of the indoor and beach variety, restaurant halls, medical rooms and hospitals, an admin block, a cycle track, walkways, weight rooms, gymnasia of all kinds; you name it is all here - and it is not the biggest Sports hub - IN THIS CITY - let alone the biggest in the country!
The rugby event is going so well I wonder if the NZRU is now looking at the Youth Olympic movement in a new light and is perhaps saying to itself - 'shouldn't we have found some monies to perhaps have found 12 promising boys and girls to have represented us in Nanjing in the rugby. (We did qualify to be here via our teams in Moscow last year). Instead now a dozen young Aussie kids will have learned how to merge themselves into the unique Olympic way and will perhaps therefore be better prepared than our kids at Rio in 2016?'
We shall see I guess.
In the meantime, let me try and file this on keithquinnrugby.com and I'll talk to you here tomorrow.
By the way; I'm picking China's women and Argentina's men to win the rugby gold medals here. With the Aussie girls right up there.
You see if I'm right here in two days time!
.....
Comments 0
He lived most of his life in the far flung East Coast of the North Island but grew to be honoured all over the rugby world.
DAVIES, GERALD
Cardiff, London Welsh and Wales
46 internationals for Wales 1966–78
5 internationals for British Isles 1968–71
One of the most brilliant wings the game has known, Gerald Davies was the prince of sidesteppers, a master of speed and a crowd-pleaser in the extreme. Had he not missed several tours for personal reasons, his talent would have been more widely acclaimed.
Davies finished his schooling and education at Loughborough College and Cambridge University. Imbued with their spirit of playing enjoyable rugby, he soon made his way into the Welsh team. His first international was against Australia in 1966, as a centre.
He played 12 full internationals in that position before making the change to the wing. If he was a success as a centre (good enough to be chosen as a British Lion to South Africa in 1968) he became a wing of exceptional class. His size (only 73kg – 111/2 stone) meant that he was rapidly becoming outmoded as a centre at a time when crash-ball specialists were being used more and more. It was as a wing that he could display more expressively his talents for speed and balance.
Davies was considered one of the best sidesteppers the game has seen, especially off his right foot. Many of his markers and opponents could attest to this, none more so than the Hawke’s Bay team in New Zealand in 1971, which played the British Isles at Napier. Davies sidestepped repeatedly at high speed and ran in four brilliant tries.
Davies played all four test matches for the Lions on that tour, having earlier played in the third test at Cape Town in South Africa in 1968. He declined to tour twice with the Lions, to South Africa in 1974 (uncomfortable with what he had seen of the apartheid policies in 1968) and to New Zealand in 1977, but continued as an international until June 1978, when he quit at the age of 33. His last test match was Wales v Australia at the Sydney Cricket Ground.
At the time his 46 appearances on the wing and at centre made him Wales’s most-capped three-quarter. He and Gareth Edwards then shared the record (20) as the highest try-scorers in Welsh internationals.
Gerald Davies later joined the list of former players who wrote and broadcast about the game. He had a number of books published and was also been an expert television presenter and commentator.
His standing in Wales was such that he was chosen to be the Opening Ceremony ‘voice’ of the Rugby World Cup in Cardiff in 1999.
In 2009 the respect in which Gerald Davies was held was confirmed when he was invited to be the Manager of the British and Irish touring team to South Africa. He also played significant roles as a member of the Board of Directors for the Welsh Rugby Union and a sitting member of the International Rugby Board.
Why did the Wallaby rugby team only practice in the afternoons at the 1987 Rugby World Cup?
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