Peter Jackson: Cliff was out of this world, but Barry was untouchable!

Olly KohnNew Year gongs will be all the rage all too soon, a good enough excuse to enter the festive spirit and award a few of our own inspired by events of the last 12 months:
And so it came to pass, one Saturday in early September, that a revered Welsh outside-half made his bow on the Elysian Fields.
St Peter had greeted Cliff Morgan at the Pearly Gates, acutely aware that the dearly departed had arrived not a moment too soon at the end of his colourful earthly journey from Trebanog in the Rhondda to Bembridge on the Isle of Wight and a thousand points in between.
An out-of-this-world series would be kicking off that weekend and, as first among the Twelve Apostles, Peter had been instructed to raise a team for the opening match against God's Untouchable XV.
There would be no commercial breaks, no video referees, no game clock, no black market for tickets, no coaches and no substitutions bar one.   The Lord could make one change if and when He felt it necessary.
At half-time with Morgan in his element, St Peter's chosen ones are 19 points clear and cruising. And so the opposition felt the need to make a tactical change, introducing another Welsh outside-half for the second half.
His ghostly skills turned the match upside down and inside out. At the end, after Morgan's last-minute drop-goal had given the Apostles the most of honourable of draws, Cliff approached St Peter with a quizzical look.
“I didn't know Barry John had died,” he said.
“No, no, that wasn't him,” St Peter replied. “That's God. He just thinks he's Barry John…”
Proof, if any were needed, that rugby truly is the game they play in heaven…
Ban Ki-Moon's United Nations XV of the year, composed entirely of players who have switched allegiance or are in the process of qualifying to do so:
15 Jared Payne (Ulster: to Ireland)
14 Hanno Dirksen (Ospreys: South Africa to Wales)
13 Danie Poolman (Connacht: South Africa to Ireland)
12 Byron McGuigan (Glasgow: Namibia to )
11 Noa Nakaitaci (: Fiji to )
10 Tommy Allan (Perpignan: Scotland to Italy)
9 Kieran Marmion (Connacht: Wales to Ireland)
1 Daniel Kotze (Clermont: South Africa to France)
2 Rob Herring (Ulster: South Africa to Ireland)
3 Michael Bent (Leinster: New Zealand to Ireland)
4 Sebastien Vahaamahina (Perpignan: New Caledonia to France)
5 Tim Swinson (Glasgow: England to Scotland)
6 Billy Vunipola (Saracens: Tonga to England)
7 Bernard le Roux (Racing: South Africa to France)
8 Thomas Waldrom (Leicester: New Zealand to England)
Substitutes: (Saracens: Tonga to England), Richardt Strauss (Leinster: South Africa to Ireland), Jim Hamilton (: England to Scotland), Robbie Diack (Ulster: South Africa to Ireland), Manoa Vosawai (Treviso: Fiji to Italy), Alberto di Bernardo (Treviso: Argentina to Italy), Tommy Seymour (Glasgow: to Scotland).
The Ronnie Biggs get-out-of-jail free trophy: To the All Blacks for their mass break-out from the new Lansdowne Road in Dublin on November 24.  Not satisfied with pulling off one of the great escapades, they stripped their Irish jailers into the bargain.
Lord Lucan memorial prize for vanishing without trace: England's Grand Slam, an assumption inspired by their rout of the All Blacks before Christmas but exposed as a flawed concept during the home struggle to cope with Italy.  Six days later, the Red Rose didn't so much wilt before Wales in the furnace of the Millennium Stadium as disintegrate.
Cain and Abel family feud annual award: Endless bickering between the parent body, the Union, and their rebellious creation, the four regions, turned what would otherwise have been a fiercely competitive category into a no-contest. Now in danger of heading to a High Court near you.
The Usain Bolt medal for the gone-in-a-flash Test career: Olly Kohn.  Nobody in the Welsh camp knew of his ancestral claim to a cap until almost all their front-line locks went down before the start of the Six Nations.    Picked among the subs on the strength of his grandfather, David Lewis, having been born in the Gwent village of Fleurs de Lys, Kohn appeared for the last seven minutes against Ireland.
And that proved to be his lot.  The 31-year-old Bristolian would have been on hand for a second appearance against France in Paris the following week had he not damaged a hamstring during the team's run-out the day before the match.
Muhammad Ali rope-a-dope champion impersonators: Scotland against Ireland at Murrayfield on February 24 with an astounding example of how to spend most of the match on the ropes and still win it.  It astounded Scott Johnson so much that Scotland's colourful head coach delved deep to find a suitable historical analogy, comparing it to the Rumble in the Jungle in 1974 when Ali out-foxed George Foreman.
Ali's use of the ropes encouraged his opponent to punch himself almost to a standstill and ultimately lose the fight. Unlike Ali, Scotland had no choice.
“At half-time I thought I'd just watched the first six rounds of Ali-Foreman,” Johnson said.  “My neck was sore from looking down the same side of the pitch.”
Lennon-McCartney gold disc for showing that Money can't buy you love: Jacky Lorenzetti, the big-spending president of Racing Metro.  The more money the owner throws at the team, the more they seem to lose.  And that despite splashing out more than £2m on a quartet of Lions but then Babe Ruth could have told him to wise-up.
“You may have the greatest bunch of individual stars in the world,” the pre-War Red Sox baseball superstar once said.  “But if they don't play together, the club won't be worth a dime.”
Money can buy you love: Mourad Boudjellal, but then he's been at it a bit longer than Lorenzetti.  Toulon's inveterate collector of global masters contradicted the Beatles in spectacular fashion – watching his team win the European Cup in Dublin at the end of last season.
The Battered Burger: “I miss hurting people, being hurt and waking up in the middle of the night in pain” – Saracens' Namibian flanker Jacques Burger suffering withdrawal symptoms during the course of being put back into one piece.
The Greatest Show On Earth: Not a Spielberg remake of the Cecil B de Mille classic but Ellis Park on the first weekend of October – Springboks 27, All Blacks 38, a nine-try blockbuster so good that it had to be seen to be believed.
After playing his part in the supreme Test of the professional era, Springbok captain Jean de Villiers said: “The world sat up tonight and saw what two teams can do.”  And nobody could accuse him of over-egging the pudding.
Tired and Emotional: Gavin Henson, out for a very long count after being chinned by team-mate Carl Fearns during an old-fashioned bonding session at the Pig and Fiddle.
It prompted head coach Mike Ford to give the celebrity Welshman a warning: “He knows he can't be found with another drink in his hand.”
Mike Phillips, sacked by Bayonne in late October for allegedly turning up drunk to a video session.  Alain Afflelou, the Basque club's chairman, accused the Welsh Lion of “treason”.
Australia full-back James O'Connor suspended after being refused permission to board a plane because of what the described as “failing to uphold the behavioural and cultural standards expected within the team”.
Kurtley Beale, another Australian full- back on his brush with the bottle: “I really don't think I have an alcohol problem but sometimes alcohol doesn't agree with me.”
 

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