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Dean Ryan leaves Gloucester. Given 7 years of big budgets, big name players and no silverware (not forgetting the  countless drubbings in crunch games) it’s no surprise. I guess the utter embarrassment at the hands of the Blues at the end of last season was the final nail.

The only question is… can Redpath do better?

Why oh why oh why do they always manage to pull it out of the bag?  Wasps do it again.

So. England get humiliated by the South Africans 36-0 and a reasonable amount of blame is placed at the door of ex-League superstar, Andy Farrell. The question is asked (yet again) can players change code and continue their careers at the same level?

At the same time, rather overshadowed by the farce of the World Cup, the Guinness Premiership kicked off this weekend, and another code switcher made rather a different debut. Start, as they say, as you mean to go on.

(I’m glad my South African colleague doesn’t care so much for sport. Any other South African I’ve met would be making my life hell all week after both the rugby and the cricket)

They may be the pariahs of world cricket, but apparently they can still play.  It’s hard not to laugh…  No…  Let me correct myself.  It’s hard to try not to laugh…

Absolutely fantastic match.  I’ve got no nails left.

Just wish we‘d won. (and slightly glad I wasn’t there with Kent man Rich as I’d hoped to be.  I have a feeling he wouldn’t have let me hear the last of it)

I know, I know. We lost. And it wasn’t even close.

England got booed off the pitch after their abysmal defeat to South Africa.

So predictable. So dull. It sums up the whole competition really. Only 3 or 4 exciting matches so far (South Africa v Sri Lanka, England v Sri Lanka, Ireland v Bangladesh, any more?). Teams looking bored, pointless matches, predicatable results. The only excitement has come off the pitch.

What’s really annoyed me is that whenever I’ve turned the TV on I’ve been able to identify the winner of almost every match within 10 minutes – it’s been so uncompetitive. I said some time ago it looked like New Zealand v Australia for the final, and there’s nothing that’s happened since then that makes me change my mind.

England’s appalling performance is just the sludgy icing on a very muddy cake.

It’s been 86 years since the last Ashes whitewash. And now it’s happened again. All I can take from this is that Australia will be a completely different team the next time we play, and so will we. Hopefully the balance will be in our favour then, but 2009 seems a long way away.

Strangely 86 years is already symbolic in sport – it’s the length of time it took the Red Sox to lift the Bambino’s Curse. Not sure if that’s significant, just thought I’d mention it.

It’s a dead horse. Stop flogging it. Blood a few new players, play for pride and get the hell out of Dodge. That’s my advice anyway. Of course, Duncan Fletcher has his own view:

Coach Duncan Fletcher is still hoping that England can attain the mammoth 557 needed to win the third Ashes Test.

That’s torn it. Well. At least we had hold of them for a year and a half.