Sports Personality of the Week

One definition of a personality I will quote, comes from dictionary.com:

"a person as an embodiment of a collection of qualities: He is a curious personality."

So with this in mind, and it being BBC's sports personality of the year award this evening I would lke to nominate Roy Keane as my Sports person as an embodiment of a collection of qualities aka he is a curious personality.

Keane brought out emotions in us all that embodies the curious nature of a personality. We wanted him to succeeed. We wanted him to fail. We wanted to see the emotional frailty of the man; we wanted to see the steely strength of a guy that cannot be compartmentalised. Above all, we wanted to see how long he could grow that beard.

So what now for sport in general? Where is next week's personality coming from? Two words...Joe Kinnear.

Lessons to be Learned

Taking stock of the Southern Hemisphere raiding Europe in the recent rugby autumn internationals, isn't it obvious what Europe needs to do? Obviously, it it isn't obvious otherwise we'd be doing it.

By Europe, I generally mean England. English rugby should have continued to be at the pinacle of the game. With a robust professional structure and an apetite for the game around the country, why then have we structured something that is unworkable?

It isn't all rosy in the Southern Hemisphere. They are not perfect - South Africa's internal union is in turmoil, Australia still don't have an effective professional domestic structure and NZ can't match the salaries on offer in Europe.

But England still fudge through. The latest agreement between the elite clubs and the RFU generally is an act of appeasement - stopping all out war. It is no plan to take the game forward, despite the general sounbites coming from Twickenam.

The game needs to be structured so that the season culminates in our tours down under. Yep, sounds radical but until we look at ceating a logical step from national to European to international level, we will always be found wanting when it comes to the crunch.

As in the game, knowing where the goal line is and when to peak is all important.

Tour de Lance

Unless you were transfixed by I'm a Celebrity, you can't have failed to notice that Lance is going to have another crack at the Tour this summer. I won't go into the why's and wherefore's of this decision, nor will I whip up a frenzy around drug testing.

What I am fascinated with is the route. Yes the Pyrennees and the Col du Tormalet. yes the Alpine stages with three arduous days. It is Mont Ventoux in the penultimate stage that makes the hairs stand up in the back of my neck. No easy comeback then.

The Tour have made a bold move to prove it is not the Lance Armstrong show. Lance may have other ideas...