Help Please

I understand that there is an important rugby game on Saturday. In case I catch some of it in the pub, I admit to knowing very little about the game and would like a few questions answered, to help me appreciate the finer points of a sport which confuses me greatly.

Why doesn't the Welsh team get half a dozen Sumo wrestler like Konishki (pictured) to play - he is 6 foot 8, about 50 stone, can push like a tank and has hands like a excavator, so presumably he could just hold the ball and amble towards the goal line. The scrum thing seems very much like the start of a sumo contest where the opponents, charge at each other from about a metre - butting and punching as they approach. If there are no Welsh fellows large enough, I understand that the eligibility rules are quite relaxed, as most of the Ozzie and New Zealand players are from Samoa and Fiji. Anyway, the rugby authorities could probably be easily convinced that the sumo guys are Chinese not Japanese and have Welsh grandmothers from a Chinese restaurant in Dyfed.

I also see that rugby has borrowed from either ballet or pairs figure skating, where at the throw in one player can hoist another in a sort of human pyramid. Why don't they borrow half a dozen tumblers from the circus now over Aberafan - they could stand one on top of the other - the top one would be about 30 feet of the ground and could catch the ball. They could then run towards the goal line and as the bottom one was tackled, the next 5 then 4 then 3 then two could keep on running. If the opposing team adopted similar tactics - maybe the two ideas could be combined. Say, have 4 sumo guys at the base, going up to a few midgets of dwarfs in the top rows. This combination would be unstoppable.

Come to think of it - and warming to this theme of one sport learning from another - the Swans tactics most of this season seem to be derived from rugby - "Gary Owen" I think - in which case maybe we could get Konishki to play as centre forward - perhaps he would need a haircut so as not to be labled a gypo, but he could stand in the D and could intercept the up and unders and head them into the net.

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