The oddest sports story I encountered this week involved the Iranian international soccer team.

They scored a goal, the scorer accepted the plaudits of his team mates in the usual fashion, one being so enthusiastic he jumped on the celebrants, another team mate joined in but unfortunately, as he did so, his hand got caught in his buddie’s bahookie.

Result? A $40,000 fine for both Sheis Rezaei (the squeezed) and Mohammed Nosrati (the squeezer) and an indefinite ban ‘from all football activities for committing immoral acts.’ Indeed cleric and member of parliament Jahal Yahyazadeh described it as ‘a shameless act which had upset, angered and outraged all sports fans’. (I feel a rant coming on about sectarian singing/Government bans etc but that is for another day.)

You can watch it all happen here.

Of course, one’s immediate reaction was – what else would you expect from a country like Iran?

Then the thought popped up. ‘How would they deal with rugby?’ Sixteen guys hugging each other before six of them get very up close and personal in each scrum. How indeed would the laws get past the censor –‘in squint’, ‘crouch, touch, hold, engage’ and that is even before you get to ‘entering from the side’?

Chuckling at my western sophistication, I idly went to the IRB website only to find to my great surprise that Iran is indeed affiliated to the governing body having been granted the status of an Associate member in 2010.

Intrigued, I clicked on Iran and found exactly why preconceptions can make you look very, very foolish.

There on the website were the last couple of results for the Iranian National side showing they had lost 34-31 to Chinese Taipei but beaten India 30-19. That win against India ensures that Iran will play in the HSBC Asian 5 Nations Div 2 in 2012 but it was another fact which really made me rather ashamed of my previously held views.

Among the photographs on the site was a photograph of a member of the Iranian sevens squad – the Iranian Women sevens squad! Women’s Sevens is part of a development programme in Iran and the Sevens squad recently took part in the Asian Women’s 7s Tournament in Thailand. Whaur’s yer western sophistication noo, Ron?

Certainly the lady in the photo was wearing what appeared to be traditional headdress but the thought occurs that if some of the rugby fashionistas in the West End of Glasgow spot this, they may assume that it is the very latest in rugby headgear so it will be added to trends like neon coloured boots and support strapping in your team’s colours.

Hey, maybe I am more prejudiced against G12 than Iran!

Showing an aptitude for the in-depth interview which would make Homer Simpson envious, Will Carling and Ian Poulter discuss some of the burning issues in sport today.

The highly contentious subject of muscle development in golfers – ‘Tiger Woods goes for it all up top and skinny legs’.

They consider the huge market that is now developing in rugby strip design – ‘How about tight spandex strips and shorts?’.

The difference beween American Football and rugby comes in for some forensic analysis as well, although I wonder whether Ian Poulter will be repeating his description of NFL as ‘girly rugby with pads and helmets’ should he encounter, say, Pittsburg Steelers’ tackle 6’6″ 330 lbs Marcus Gilbert.

This post is sponsored, but the words and views are all mine.

The doc, the farmer and I were watching training last week. The doc expressed an ongoing concern about the height which players were being lifted at the line out. Or more precisely he expressed concern about how far they had to come down. ‘How many injuries had he seen in that context’ I asked. ‘Very few’ he admitted, ‘but the potential is there.’ You have to listen because the doc is a consultant surgeon who just happens to be a rugby nut but I pointed out that if I drive on the public road there is the potential for someone to crash into me but fortunately it doesn’t happen very often.

‘We should go back to no lifting’ growled the farmer. ‘In our day’ he included me with a withering glance ‘you just went up for the ball and the best jumper won. Throwing to number two was an art in itself.’ I had to point out that the previous evening I had chanced upon the 1974 Lions match against Transvaal on ESPN Classics and the line out in that match, including such luminaries as Gordon Brown and Willie John McBride, was a total shambles. ‘The scrum was a different matter altogether though’ I ventured and the farmer, no mean, sorry, very mean front row hooligan in his day, started to pay attention. ‘When the scrum was awarded, Ian McLauchlan and co bound together, got in position and the scrum formed, met, and do you know, there wasn’t a collapsed scrum to be seen.’ The farmer beamed but the doc blanched. ‘It is still an area of some worry’ he said. ‘But what if we went back to that’ said the farmer ‘and maybe we wouldn’t have as much as twelve minutes of playing time lost though re-setting of scrums.’

Now these are the sort of discussions which will take place wherever rugby is played, very often among people like the doc, who bring their expertise to the discussion and the farmer who broadens it out with his own vast experience.

That was what was so infuriating when I read a piece the next day headlined ‘Warning over dangers of school rugby’. Professor Allyson Pollock was at it again, nannying on about the risk of school rugby players being injured (I hesitate to ask whether the same risk applies to young club players, but their exclusion is typical of this panic inducing so-called research.). Yes, I am being very critical of a report which was either badly mis-quoted or was a grant attracting, headline grabbing mish mash of ill thought out opinions used to support Prof Pollock’s favourite hobby horse.

If any student had provided in their dissertation the sentence ‘Depending on how you define an injury and which data we used, the figure (of players at risk of being injured) ranges from 12% to 90% for each player over a season. But the message is clear. Injury rates due to rugby among schoolboys are high and most parents and children don’t realise how high’, an examiner would have binned it.

That data is so inexact and the definitions so badly expressed that one wonders just how much massaging went on for Prof Pollock to get them around to agree with her conclusions as she goes on to say ‘Government and education establishments need to collect injury data so that the public can be properly informed’, – my reading of that being that the current data collected by Prof Pollock’s team in fact does not keep the public properly informed.

Sorry, Prof, I am more likely, as are most people who want their kids to enjoy any sport, to listen to those at the sharp end like the doc and the farmer.

Now Will Carling isn’t tiny – physically that is – yet Stephen Fry towers over him. Perhaps the look of bemusement on Carling’s face when confronted by the great polymath was not due so much to an intellectual inferiority but more down to the fact that Fry reminded him of Jonah Lomu.

This post is sponsored, but the words and views are all mine.

Listen to Will Carling, Scott Quinnell, Zinzan Brook and Rob Henderson bounce around some RWC thoughts on this clip and it is worth it certainly for the banter if not for the meaningful insights. Maybe they tried for a Scottish pundit but Dodie Weir’s tartan troosers scared them off.

This post is sponsored, but the words and views are all mine.

As the World Cup continues, there is always the fun of watching what the lads in the Scotland team get up to, as you can see from this clip of Al Kellock prowling around his team mates bedrooms –hmmm!

This post is sponsored, but the words and views are all mine.

Time – 1.50 am (PST-Prestwick Summer Time)

Status – Asleep

Event – Text: “Hi, we are the end of the pitch looking down the field, just where we were when there were seven men and a dog watching. Packed today. C’Mon Scotland!!”

Scroll back. I had spent up until the weekend before the Scotland Romania World Cup opener agonising whether to dive on a plane and shoot off to Invercargill for Scotland’s two matches which are being played about ten minutes from my son’s front door.

As some of you may know, I wear a few hats (OK in the winter, but in summer it leads to what my grannie called ‘sweatie heid’), one if which is Rerite Sport, our results agency. A depleted match day team, the commencement of the Reserve Leagues and the fact that I wouldn’t get back until Saturday morning meant that my decision was made for me.

So I ended up at Firhill on Friday for the refereeing farce that was Glasgow v Munster, got home and finished work by 12.45, decided to record the match in NZ then get up to watch without knowing the result.

The text mentioned above landed ten minutes before kick off. From my son. And grandson. And the rest of the Evans crew in Invercargill. All, including the adults, face painted and bedecked in Saltires. I replied ‘Good Luck’ turned over and wished that I had made a different decision. I know the town and the ground well, I felt very emotional when I saw Scotland arrive in the southernmost tip of New Zealand but in the end I have to live with my decision although it didn’t make for a great weekend I can assure you.

My weekend was miserable enough without the shambles that was the results gathering from the Reserve Leagues. The two National Leagues are fine but they have been running since August 27th. Despite the processes put in place by ourselves and the hard work put in by the Regional reps to get results sent in, the total by close of play Sunday was a measly 27%. It can only get better but one thing which does help is when I go looking for results and find that a club’s website is powered by Pitchero. I know that it will be professionally designed, easy to navigate and – more often than not – full of great content. It really is a great free service and for anyone looking to improve or update their website, I would have no hesitation in recommending Pitchero on pitchero.com.

Now off to look out the Saltire for the next match.

“Welcome to the Six o’Clock News on Saturday August 13th with me Raschid Mc Leod. After a few days of calm, alarming reports are coming in of a re-emergence of the violence around Britain which caused such devastation and disruption earlier in the week. Unlike previous disturbances which were in areas experiencing severe deprivation, the outbreaks today appear to have taken place in more affluent areas. Our correspondent Ava Storey reports from one of those locations.”

“Thanks Raschid, and as you say I am in one of the most affluent areas of Scotland, the exact location of which I have been asked by the police not to reveal in case of copycat riots. However I can tell you that at around 3.30 this afternoon, a mob of thirty or more, all males were indulging in the sort of violence which differed from that which we saw earlier in the week when it was mainly property which was targeted unlike today when it was of a more personal ‘mano a mano nature’.

“The gangs involved were easily identifiable by their almost tribal uniforms which bore the logos of their local supporters and the police have admitted that the confrontations appear to have been pre-arranged, perhaps by a social media networking app known as ‘fixsecy’. Not only were the mobs well organised, with reserves on hand to augment their ranks if their numbers were depleted, they even had their own medical crews to tend to those injured in the fray and this is the aspect which is most worrying the police in that the rioters in some cases seem to be more organised than they are.

“Another worrying aspect of the clashes has been, as we saw earlier in the week, the number of people who were not directly involved but simply spectating while being in full support of the nefarious activities taking place.

“I spoke to one onlooker who wanted to remain anonymous but who said ‘It is a sign of the society we live in. All week these young people are cooped up in offices or lecture rooms although some do have outdoor vocations so they have to find some outlet for their frustration and if it means that bones get broken or heads cracked then so be it. We don’t want politicians telling us that what we are doing is wrong since most of them couldn’t run the length of themselves without having a heart attack and as for the police, well we know that they have very low key but active cell of mobsters like the ones I watch every week but you don’t hear about that very often.’

“Sadly, it is a sign of the disaffected, disconnected and disenfranchised young (and sometimes not so young) people today that they feel that they have to resort to this sort of violence in order to express themselves. Whoops, I can see a couple of them who are broad as they are high coming towards me right now and I don’t think they are about to ask me to go for a pint so it is back to you in the studio Raschid. This is Ava Storey reporting from somewhere in Scotland.”

There were several odd things which happened on my recent rip to America including being asked, while minding my own business in Central Park, to hold a bride’s bouquet during a wedding photo shoot while he went to the loo. I hope he washed his hands.

Then there was the surreal half hour spent with two New York crooks, one a Samuel L Jackson look-alike (think Pulp Fiction) the other like Sammy Davies Jr on speed, outside Penn Station at around midnight who, after having successfully bummed a cigarette off me proceeded to regale me in detail about crime in NY. CSI it ain’t!!

High up on the list of incongruous sights though was in Washington DC where, as I travelled on the open top tour bus, I spotted, between Capitol Hill and the White house, a rugby pitch. Not a very special looking one I have to admit, more your 3rd XV job or the juniors pitch at school that no one ever looks after but nevertheless with all the carry on in the American capital this week, it set me thinking.

If the Democrats and the Republicans couldn’t decide on where to put their debt ceiling-and after all what is a few trillion dollars between friends – why not pick a couple of teams , get them down to the pitch, have a winner takes all game then get back to the Senate, Congress or whatever for burgers and a beer.

It would not be single sex sides either. For the Dems, I can imagine Hilary Clinton being a pretty feisty No 9 while in the GOP team who better to have as your hooker than Sarah Palin. Fox News would report it as a clash of all-American, Christian values against big Government, big forwards, big bunch of  socialists and Pixar would buy the rights to the movie ‘Scrums’ with Tom Hanks and Bill Murray doing the voices.

Mind you a couple of well respected coaches have muttered to me that should the USA lose its obsession with baseball, basketball and American footie and take rugby seriously then they, like China where my confidants had also coached, will, by dint of numbers alone, rule the world.

We may be forecasting a home result for the upcoming World Cup in New Zealand but by 2023, it is conceivable that the name engraved on the Webb Ellis Trophy could be that of a country who, since they have come to dominate in so many other areas, have decided that rugby is the next land to conquer.

Season 2011-12 bounds (more of a stroll actually) into action on Friday night with the now regular pre-season warm up/injury threatening/burger scoffing session at Old Anniesland where the usual suspects, Hawks, Ayr, West, GHA and others will play a series of fifteen a side, fifteen minutes each way matches for the David Williams Trophy kicking off at 6pm. A week later at Lasswade on Saturday August 6th, a similar tournament goes ahead with Lasswade hosting Currie, Watsonians, Hamilton, Ardrossan, Forrester, Glenrothes and Murrayfield Wanderers with games ten minutes each way two pools and…

Hang on – the thought occurs that a game of two ten, fifteen or even twenty minute halfs at fifteen a side could be something which could catch on.

Let’s face it, there has been much angst and navel gazing recently about player burn-out because of too many games being played but why not make the games shorter and come up with something like cricket’s twenty-twenty.

Perhaps the player management/programme development/performance focussed/powerpoint obsessed gurus have been starting from the wrong end. Instead of fewer games, let’s have more matches, only shorter. That way, if it was raining, spectators would have only forty five minutes of getting soaked if there was no cover (what a boon at every Ayrshire club except Ayr and Kilmarnock), the bar would have about an hour more to do the trade which helps keeps the clubs in business and the players wouldn’t be so knackered.

The only downside I can really foresee is that we would all have to spend about another hour more listening to Jonathon Davies whinging in the studio during Six Nations matches!

I feel that this is something which deserves further research and I am willing, with the aid of an IRB grant, some Lottery funding and sponsorship from major hotel and airline companies to undertake what would be a hazardous and difficult task but one which would be ultimately rewarding and would be for the future good of the game.

Anyone prepared to fund such a project should contact me through my colleague Alistair at SRTV who will answer you once he has stopped laughing!