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Day: 5 November 2012

Four Nations snub leaves England trailing

The fact that Australia and New Zealand chose not to play in this year’s Autumn International series, traditionally named the Four Nations, perhaps speaks volumes of their ambition in their preparations before next year’s World Cup.

Instead of pitting themselves against the cream of Europe, the Southern Hemisphere sides decided it would be best to play a test series between themselves, in which Australia duly ran out winners.

As useful as the Autumn Internationals are in terms of match practice, that is all the matches really have proven to be – practice. Anything less than the systematic dismantling of their opponents which led to the 44-6 final defeat of France would have been disastrous.

Despite putting 14 tries past Wales, there are only actually two places between the two home nations in the world rankings; England are third and Wales are fifth, while France currently lie in fourth. Australia and New Zealand are above England, in first and second place respectively. This essentially means that England are third in a three-horse race.

Although there are only two places separating England from the pinnacle of the Rugby League world, there is still a massive gap. The last time the two nations played each other, in the 2011 Four Nations final, Australia eased to victory by 30 points to 6. Since then Australia have beaten New Zealand twice, as well as strengthening their squad with new talent such as James Tanou, the New-Zealand born front-rower who has already looked dangerous in the early stages of his international career.

Australia’s Rugby League supremacy has firm foundations. The Australian NRL is the pinnacle of the domestic Rugby League, and the State of Origin is also one of the most intense sporting rivalries around.

Unlike in England, the NRL is not in the shadow of its upper-class cousin Rugby Union. The stereotypical view of University ‘rahs’ choosing Union over ‘working-class League’ is one which continues to hamper the sport in the modern day.

The relatively recent disbanding of the Great Britain team has also hampered England in the short-term, as the governing bodies have been slow to formulate their vision for the future.

However, it is not all doom and gloom for England. Aside from a handful of fixtures in France, next year’s World Cup will be played on home soil. On a somewhat smaller scale, the home advantage could prove to be just as an invaluable bonus as it was for Team GB last summer.

England can also be grateful for the influence of talismanic captain Kevin Sinfield, as well as the creative flare of Tomkins and players such as Graham and Ellis, who have experience in the NRL.  This experience, along with that of the victory over New Zealand in the 2011 Four Nations, might just give England the belief that they can be serious competitors in the World Cup next year.

Unfortunately, for all the miracles performed by Sinfield in this year’s Grand Final, producing a similar turnaround in a World Cup final may be a step too far.

Live: Japandroids at Sound Control

27th October 2012

8/10

Indie-Rock is a term bandied around a lot, but Japandroids are one of the few bands that really exhibit the latter half of that tag. They offer a welcome respite amidst the current trend of misery in indie music, with bands such as Alt-J and The xx at the forefront. Celebration Rock is the name of the album this current tour is promoting, and also acts as an epitomising band motto. The duo open with a five-minute long jam and casually throw an AC/DC solo into the middle of one song; Japandroids are all about having a good time through rock music, and their mood is infectious.

Song after song, the distortion pedal stays firmly down, the drum beats are boisterous and the enthusiasm emanating from the band is palpable.  ‘Younger Us’ induces the first crowd surfers of the night, and with the floodgates open there’s jubilant chaos from then on in. ‘The Nights of Wine And Roses’ proves the pair are enjoying themselves just as much as the audience as they euphorically “yell like hell to the heavens”. Frontman Brian King even makes errors fun by joking “We don’t fuck up, we just make live remixes”.  By the time ‘Wet Hair’ is unleashed the song title applies literally to all those present in the sweat pit that Sound Control has become.

Japandroids’ desire for everyone to have a great time is exemplified when they invite a journalist, who has been conspicuously writing on a notepad throughout the show, up to join them and perform a stage dive. King declares the exultant chanting of “Notepad!”, for the newly christened folk hero, that accompanies this act as his “favourite gig moment ever”. I leave the venue with my exuberant mood only slightly marred by the fact I wasn’t more obvious with my own note taking.

MUSEA ARTS SOCIETY

MUSEA stands for the Manchester University Society for Emerging Artists. We aim to cultivate a collective group of like-minded people who are both interested in and have a passion for the practice of contemporary art. We are a forum in which Manchester students can develop artistic skills, techniques and ideas through regular workshops and socials, welcoming all abilities and study backgrounds.

We organise life drawing workshops, art classes, talks, events, gallery trips, film nights, socials and exhibitions. We currently have drawings from our last two socials exhibited at Font Fallowfield, with whom we have collaborated to display MUSEA art and receive10% off with our membership card. Membership also entitles you to discounts at Nexus art café and H.Blyth & Co., both in the Northern Quarter.

Is your society directed at people who are experienced artists, or is it an opportunity to learn to draw and paint?

It is without a doubt a platform from which art students or those interested in art can excel and get the opportunity to exhibit their work; but by no means is it specifically directed at arts students. Our workshops and life drawing classes purposely encourage development of skills, and we often have an art tutor to talk our society members through sketching skills during workshops. I am a management student and have learnt many creative techniques from MUSEA; hence the concept of cultivating emerging and budding artists!

What are the different workshops you offer?

Our signature workshop is the life drawing session, which takes place every two weeks. We have an up and coming paper silhouette workshop which will be accompanied by a city gallery tour, as well as t-shirt design and printing, to encourage interactive and personalised art. We regularly attend exhibitions to inspire new ideas for future workshops; first up is our trip to the David Shrigley exhibition at Cornerhouse.

Plans for this year?

This year we are trying to organise more regular events around our life drawing and encourage more integration from members which will help us qualify for the Manchester societies silver award. In addition we hope to collaborate with other like-minded societies to give our members more scope for creativity; consequently we have a workshop with Photo Soc coming up, and a social at Platt Chapel with Manchester Art group (Wednesday 24th October) We also want our members’ talent to be locally recognised, so we have organised continuous exhibition space at Font which will be publicised through celebratory socials! We’re also have a trip to Berlin coming up, so keep an eye on our facebook page for more details.

Facebook: MUSEA Manchester

Twitter: @_MUSEA

NUS President fears repeat of 2010 violence

The President of the National Union of Students (NUS) has expressed concern that a repeat of the violence seen at the student protests of November 2010 could overshadow this month’s #Demo2012.

Liam Burns, who succeeded Aaron Porter as NUS President in July 2011, said: “It would be stupid to say I wasn’t [concerned]. I’m not naïve enough to think that we shouldn’t mitigate the chance of risk, but one of the things I can’t do is stop any arsehole from coming along on the day.”

He also criticised some of the decisions made by his predecessor in the aftermath of the Millbank demonstration. “It would be disingenuous for me to say that he coped completely well across the board, because part of the reason why I ran [for President] is that I think we should have made some different calls,” he explains.

Burns’ comments came in an interview with The Mancunion ahead of the latest demonstration against cuts to education funding on 21 November.

This week marks the second anniversary of the infamous ‘Demo 2010’ protest against the trebling of tuition fees, which saw hundreds of students ransack the Conservative Party’s Millbank HQ. Vandalism and violence marred the demonstration, as footage of a student launching a fire extinguisher from the top of Millbank Tower became one of the abiding images of the protest.

Despite “broad support, if not enthusiastic support” for the demonstration amongst the vast majority of students’ unions, both Loughborough University and the University of Reading have refused to back the action. Tellingly, Burns mentions the possibility of a repeat of Millbank as “one of their main concerns.”

He also reveals that the organisers made a point of ensuring that the route did not pass Millbank, a move which he says would have “purposely antagonised the chance of heightened tensions.”

“I think we’ve done everything we can to negate violence,” Burns insists. “All of our students’ unions are quite clear about this being a peaceful demonstration. I think we’ve set the tone right.”

#Demo2012 will focus on the themes of education, employment and empowerment and, with the events of November 2010 firmly in mind, Burns is unequivocal that violence will form absolutely no part of the day. “For me the reason that violence will never form a part of this campaign is that it doesn’t make sense tactically. You want public sympathy on your side; violence is not going to engender public sympathy.”

“One of the things that I’ve always said about Millbank is that I don’t think the act of peacefully occupying a locus of power, when you consider the trebling of tuition fees, was in any way disproportionate,” Burns explains.

“But when you start smashing windows, causing vandalism and harassing people, it’s not Nick Clegg or David Cameron who’s going to come down and clean that up. It’s cleaners that work in the building and we’re trying to claim that we’re fighting to get their kids into uni.”

He continues: “Our members are perfectly clear of the expectations that we have. Our NEC has agreed that we’re not going to support any form of violence.”

At a pre-demo event last month, the organisation’s Vice President of Higher Education suggested that tactics used by the student movement in Canada – including bank blockades and direct action – should be replicated in this country.

She said: “That action clearly works, and it’s clearly important… it’s up to you what tactics you want to use. If you want to go and occupy something, occupy something. It’s about changing people lives and whatever you think works for that, do that.”

Meanwhile, Burns was critical of his predecessor’s handling of the Millbank protests. Whilst he accepts that Aaron Porter was under “exceptional” pressure at the time, he claims that the fallout left “a cloud over the organisation”.

“It won’t be lost on anyone that it was a difficult time for the NUS post-demonstration 2010, but there are decisions that should have been made differently. Would I have made them differently, with all of the pressure that he had? I will never know.”

Burns cites these decisions as his motivation for running to succeed Porter. “We needed to move on from the fee vote and the demonstration… it was about a process of reconciliation to ensure that we weren’t seen as a divided movement. I think broadly that was successful. We feel in a much more comfortable place now.”

Those involved in the Millbank protest include previous members of the University of Manchester Students’ Union executive. A former Campaigns Officer, Amanda Walters, admitted to being inside Millbank on the day. She told Sky News the following day that she “had no qualms about criminal damage” in the name of student protest.

Full interview with Liam Burns here

* This article has been amended to clarify that Rachel Wenstone’s comments do not necessarily conflict with Liam Burns’ stance.

Wenger’s moving measure of success

Arsene Wenger spoke to shareholders the day after his Arsenal side suffered their second defeat on the bounce, the comprehensive defeat to Schalke following a shock Premier League loss at Norwich. There he made the claim that simply qualifying for the Champions League is more of an achievement than winning the FA Cup or League Cup.

This statement sparks a debate on what counts as ‘success’ for a club in today’s football climate, and shows how quickly expectations can change from club to club.

Back in 2005 simply achieving a ‘top four finish’ would not have even been a target for Arsenal. Qualifying for the Champions League was a given, and a serious title challenge and perhaps a cup run was expected. Now it seems the top four is a big achievement for London club, with their Manager using it to excuse seven trophy-less years.

Arsene argued that, ‘if you want to attract the best players, they don’t ask if you won the League Cup, they ask if you play in the Champions League’. It cannot be argued that the top players wish to play in the Champions League, but surely to win trophies is the real desire for Europe’s elite, even the cups. After they retire and look back on their career, would the average player be happier to have seven seasons in the Champions League or a few FA Cups to their name?

The answer to this is perhaps best shown in the exodus of star players from Arsenal including Ashley Cole, Gael Clichy, Samir Nasri, Cesc Fabregas, Alex Song and Van Persie. All these players left despite Arsenal’s qualification for the Champions League and all (except this summer transfers Van Persie and Song) have gone on to win trophies.

Whether Arsenal fans agree is another matter, but it is clear that if Arsene ends this season without any trophies, for the eighth year in a row, but qualifies for the Champions League, he will deem the year a success for his team.

Contrast this with the case of Manchester City. They, with the aid a few hundred million pounds of investment, have in the time since Arsenal last won a trophy developed from a mid-table to relegation-fighting team into one of Europe’s elite clubs.

Such is their turnaround, that their supposed ‘underperformance’ in this year’s Champions League group stages has been met with great derision from fans and pundits alike. Rather than marvel at the fact this team has come so far, so quickly, the expectation is for City to reach the Knockout Stages.  That is what now counts as success, and anything less would be cause of shame for the club. Rewind a few short years ago and scrambling a UEFA Cup place via the Fair Play award was an achievement and a cause of great jubilation for the City faithful.

This shows how quickly the landscape of fans expectations and measures for success can change in modern football. Many will point to the extreme influx of money as the cause of this – best shown in the Manchester City example. And many fans would argue that great investment would curb the downward trend of Arsenal’s expectations. However, a note of caution must be taken with this approach, as Liverpool can attest. Hundreds of millions of investment has been met with relatively Premier League stagnancy for the Merseyside team, showing how money on its own doesn’t solve everything.

Arsene Wenger is undoubtedly one of the finest managers of his generation. But these comments depict a man not only slipping away from competing at the very top level, but more poignantly one that is settling for just that. Listing a top four finish as an achievement was probably intended to promote the strength of the Premier League. However, his words came across as more of an admission that his club now has lesser targets than the likes of Manchester United, Chelsea and the emerging Manchester City.

Women’s Football: How realistic is the five-year plan?

Following the success of women’s football in the Olympic games, the FA have recently announced a five-year plan named the ‘Game Changer’, in an attempt to spread the coverage of the women’s game in England.

The plan focuses around four main areas: the creation of an elite performance unit and the appointment of a head of elite development for development of youth, delivering a new commercial strategy for women’s football including further broadcast strategy, expanding the FA Women’s Super League by introducing second division in 2014 to enable promotion and relegation and finally to improve participation and extend the existing fan base.

The plan seems to be formulated on the back of the pride of the Olympic games that saw 70,584 fans turn out at Wembley to see Team GB defeat Brazil. David Burnstein believes that ‘women’s football is the area with the most potential for growth in the nations favorite game.’ With manager of the year nominee Hope Powell leading the charge, the plan seems to be grounded on solid evidence.

However, this seems a grand proposal that comes off the back of a very uncertain start for the Women’s Super League. The league was formulated following the cancellation of the Women’s Professional Soccer League, the first professional women’s league based in the United States. That league failed because of the lack of financial backing, and that seemed to be a problem for the new WSL even before the league began, with sponsors Yorkshire Building Society and Continental Tyres being announced days before the league started last season. This season only Continental Tyres remain as sponsors.

This not only puts this seasons financial state in doubt, but also undermines the idea of developing a commercial and broadcasting strategy that is specifically trying to gain a separate identity from the men’s game.

Considering the men’s Premier League received £3bn pounds for their latest television rights, it seems odd that Burnstein is distancing himself from this money which will be used not only to pay for ‘parachute’ payments for relegated clubs, for example, but also to help fund projects in grassroots football. In the place of the Sky/BT deal the WSL is currently supported by ESPN, a company who is under particular questions about it’s viability in the UK after losing out to B.T on a Premier League package, who are showing a mere 10 live matches the 2012/13 season as well as highlights, hardly enough to create ‘strong commercial partnerships to elevate the profile of the women’s game,’ an aim which is outlined in the Game Changer’s mission statement.

The competitive nature of the WSL is also something that Burnstein is looking to address. Arsenal Ladies, Birmingham and Everton have finished in the top three places respectively for the past two seasons, with Arsenal only losing twice in those two seasons. An introduction of more teams to create a second division, and perhaps a real sense of competitiveness is the only real point that carries any sort of weight. However, whereas clubs such as Manchester City seem keen to heighten the reputation of their women’s team, others such as Manchester United have not.

There is also a similar sense of realization regarding England’s coaching strategy. The well documented figure that there are only 2,768 English coaches with UEFA A and B pro badges compared to the 23,996 Spanish, 29,420 Italian and 34,790 German coaches applies to the women’s game as well. This prompted the recent creation of St. George’s Park, a state of the art facility in which the England teams train along with qualified coaches. In this sense, the ambitions of both the men and women’s team are similar- a longing for success in our national sport.

The last ambition of this four-fold plan is to make women’s football the second most played sport in England, behind men’s football by 2018. This final statement of the FA is the perhaps the most crucial outcome of the first three stages of the plan. However, they are a long way off reaching this goal. Despite the high attendances of the Olympics as well as the high viewing figures the BBC receive whenever a women’s match is televised, the average attendance for a WSL match is only 500 people – the attendance of some Northern League men’s matches.

The whole strategy may pay off in the long term and I fully believe that women’s football deserves far more coverage than it currently receives; however, it seems to be fully based on the idea that the same nationalistic fervor for the Olympic games will carry on into the future. The FA should confirm a 2016 Olympic women’s squad, highlighting it as the pinnacle of the women’s game, rather that trying to create a seemingly quick fix solution to the growing schism between the men’s and women’s game.

My Political Hero: Ho Chi Minh

Choosing French colonial and Vietnam War-era nationalist communist leader Ho Chi Minh was not a difficult choice for this column. I do not particularly support Communism in general, nor do I even consider myself to be especially left-wing, but the legendary leader is something of an inspiration to me. As a man who travelled the world and fought his whole life for what he believed in, he ultimately outfoxed and defeated both the French and the Americans to permanently liberate a country that was under occupation for 150 years, before which it had been subjugated for over a thousand years by the Chinese. He was also a shrewd, intelligent,  and extremely dedicated leader who is revered in contemporary Vietnam almost as a deity.

Born in 1890 near the city of Vinh, north/central Vietnam, as Nguyen Tat Thanh to a family of fluctuating wealth, his father (a teacher and magistrate) taught him Confucian ideas and imbued him with a disdain for French colonial rule, as well as a strong sense of Vietnamese nationalism. He moved with his family to the colonial capital of Hue (central Vietnam) as a young boy where he was educated at a good school, learning French there.

Ho became a sailor and travelled the world: he worked in numerous countries, including as a chef in a London hotel and on the dockyards in Brooklyn.  He also visited other parts of the French Empire and witnessed the exploitation suffered there, which mirrored the oppressive conditions of his own people. He joined revolutionary Vietnamese communist leaders in Paris in 1917 and read the works of Karl Marx, also helping form the French Communist Party. He then lived in Russia, China, Thailand and India for many years, fearing arrest by the French in Vietnam. However, the Japanese overpowered the French in Indochina (modern-day Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos) during the Second World War in 1940 and Ho seized the opportunity to propagate his nationalistic ideals and formed the Vietminh independence movement.

He had been away from his homeland for 24 years before his return in 1941; he was reportedly suffering from dysentery and malaria at this point and was close to death. Ironically enough, he was saved by American doctors. The Vietminh fought a guerrilla campaign against the Japanese (supported with Soviet weapons and American intelligence), and after the August Revolution of 1945 Ho Chi Minh became president of the new Democratic Republic of Vietnam.

Unfortunately, however, the French wouldn’t relinquish their pre-war colonial asset and returned to reclaim Indochina. Even worse, the Chinese Army also marched into North Vietnam. Ho made a deal to have the French return, reportedly saying  “I would prefer to sniff French shit for the next five years than Chinese shit for the rest of my life,” perceptive comments considering the outcome a few years later.

The Vietminh engaged in a fierce guerrilla war with France, until a shockingly decisive victory at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954 saw the French Army obliterated. This meant the communists could enter international negotiations with the upper hand. Vietnam was painfully divided at the 17th parallel into North and South, and peaceful elections never materialised in the context of an increased presence of American ‘advisors’.

They had become embroiled due to their belief in the ‘Domino Theory’ – that if one country fell victim to the evils of Communism, its neighbours would in turn also fall. By 1963, America was fully in Vietnam for one of the most unpopular wars of all time. Ho encouraged the merging of the guerrilla units into the NLF, more commonly known as the ‘Vietcong’, to fight for a united Vietnam (against both the US and her allies in the ostensibly corrupt South).

Led by his right-hand man and strategic genius General Vo Nguyen Giap (still alive today), with their trademark guerrilla no-holds barred frustratingly relentless total-war tactics. Unfortunately Ho died in 1969, six years before his dream was realised with a bitter and embarrassing American withdrawal and the formation of a reunified and independent Socialist Republic of Vietnam in 1975.

Known affectionately in Vietnam today as Uncle Ho, the great Vietnamese nationalist hero had Vietnam’s largest city (formerly Saigon) named after him and lives on in the hearts, minds and daily lives of the 88 million people of a country he was instrumental in forming.