Alternative Sports Star Fantasy XV

Being as I am a massive rugby nerd, one of the pages I follow on Facebook goes by the name of ‘Rugby Banter Page’. In the last few months, they have also set up a website, on which they recently posted this rugby fantasy XV made up of stars of other sports. And Dan Carter. Sitting with a couple of mates watching the Leicester-Worcester match the other day, this team came up in conversation and all thought that, although good, there was enough potential in the world of sport to rival even this star-studded line-up. One thing lead to another, and in the space of a few minutes we had our own, rival squad ready to face down the opposition. And then I thought ‘hey, I have a blog, so I might as well share’.*

Front Row: 1. Wanderlei Silva, 2. Chad le Clos, 3. Magnus ver Magnusson
In the props, we’ve gone big and nasty. Silva is a record-holding Brazilian MMA fighter, and although some might claim what he does isn’t really sport, I would invite them to say so to his face after hearing of his nickname ‘the Axe Murderer’ and watching this. Despite this wanton aggression, he is known as being a consummate sportsman once a fight is over, so should fit into rugby’s post-match drinking culture perfectly. Together with four time world’s strongest man Magnussen (who, whilst retired and without quite the pedigree of RBP’s chosen strongman Mariusz Pudzianowski, gets a place in the team by virtue of his name alone), they form possibly the hardest and most imposing front row unit imagineable. In between them is South African swimmer le Clos, included for two reasons beyond the natural rugby-playing ability imbued in every native South African. Firstly, being a double Olympic gold medal winner in butterfly is sure to give him ‘overarm throw muscles’ capable of throwing a lineout ball to the far side of the pitch, and secondly his dad will give someone entertaining for the TV people to interview.

Second Row: 4. Nikolai Valuev, 5. LeBron James
We felt that RBP’s second row combo of heavyweight boxer as enforcer with overly-tall basketballer for lineout time was a good one, but personally reckon that better candidates are available than their chosen pair if we consider rugby-applicable skill. In place of Wladimir Klitschko we have former heavyweight champion Valuev; whilst not as successful a boxer as Klitschko, Valuev played basketball and water polo as a child which should give him good handling ability, and at seven foot tall he offers a serious lineout option as well (even if lifting him could prove a challenge even for Magnussen). To combat the sheer height of Tao Ming in the lineout, we’ve gone for the shorter but infinitely more skilful LeBron James- frequently considered the best basketballer in the world, what he lacks (relatively speaking) in height he will more than make up for in agility.

Back row: 6. Ian Bell, 7. Lewis Smith, 8. Ashton Eaton
With RBP selecting big hitter Gayle at 6, we thought Bell would be a perfect, utterly fearless opposite number as a player who, when fielding, is frequently asked to get solid lumps of wood and leather smashed at his head from three metres away- and then catch the thing. Not to mention the fact that he likes to give the ball a smash now and again too. At openside, gymnast Smith has, we feel, potential to become a real star; with superb upper body strength and posture, long arms for rangy tackling and a cheeky bit of cheating at ruck time, and all the agility needed to challenge in the air as a third lineout option or ball-stealer, he might even be able to show off some fancy footwork after winning last year’s series of Strictly Come Dancing. Finally, Ashton Eaton is the world decathlon record holder and current Olympic champion, with incredible speed, strength, power and all-round skill that belies his slight physique and gives him all the skill-set and more for an attacking, combative No.8. He’s called ‘the world’s greatest athlete’ for a reason.

Half Backs: 9. Ronnie O’Sullivan, 10. Andres Iniesta
Whilst O’Sullivan’s mouth has frequently got him into trouble in snooker circles, being gobby is a prerequisite for every good scrum-half, and when you throw in his hand-eye coordination, characteristic flair and speed of thought (he still holds the record for the world’s fastest 147 break) we have a seriously promising half-back on our hands. Since RBP already bagsied Lionel Messi, we went for his Barcelona team-mate and World Cup winner Iniesta at fly-half. With superlative kicking ability, attacking flair and not inconsiderable turn of pace, the man voted UEFA player of the season last year should be a natural fit at 10.

Centres: 12. Ramy Ashour, 13. Johan Blake
Few of you may have heard of Ramy Ashour; neither had I until my brother introduced me to him. The Egyptian is currently world squash champion and current holder of just about any major squash title you care to mention, and if his being a champion of one of the most technically difficult of all sports didn’t already alert you to his superb reactions, dexterity and speed over a short distance and dexterity then this might, not to mention revealing his near-supernatural levels of all-around perception and the sheer deftness of his hand motion. In all, his skill would form the perfect foil to sprinter Blake’s sheer speed and power, which would make more than a few defenders wonder if another Tuilagi brother had been let in.

Back Three: 11. Lawrence Okoye, 14. Sam Tomkins, 15. Jonty Rhodes
Some would argue that choosing Okoye is cheating a bit; although the former Olympic discus thrower now plays American Football in the NFL, he played on the wing (yes really, wing) for Whitgift, the noted rugby school. Still, he’s not technically a rugby player now, so I think he counts- plus, he would put the fear of God into any opposition winger. At fullback we have another cricketer and another retiree; Rhodes was a South African international until 2003, who gets in our team for having the safest pair of hands in the world. Don’t believe me? Watch this.
Finally, on the right wing, comes our permitted one actual rugby player, although rather than fishing in my preferred code of union (George North was a serious consideration) I chose instead to go for league player (for the moment at least) Tomkins. I could justify his selection by talking about his creativity, versatility (he would be able to slot in at either half back position should the need arise) or sheer pace, but one statistic does all the talking for me: 149 games for Wigan, 144 tries. End of discussion

*Our rules: All contestants must be male (despite some argument, we eventually agreed to maintain rugby’s single-sex rules), none may have been picked by the Rugby Banter Page’s team, retired players are acceptable, one should attempt to choose from as wide a variety of sports as possible and the resulting team must on no account be taken seriously.

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The Encyclopaedia Webbanica

Once again, today’s post will begin with a story- this time, one about a place that was envisaged over a hundred years ago. It was called the Mundaneum.

The Mundaneum today is a tiny museum in the city of Mons, Belgium, which opened in its current form in 1998. It is a far cry from the original, first conceptualised by Nobel Peace Prize winner Henri la Fontaine and fellow lawyer and pioneer Paul Otlet in 1895. The two men, Otlet in particular, had a vision- to create a place where every single piece of knowledge in the world was housed. Absolutely all of it.

Even in the 19th century, when the breadth of scientific knowledge was a million times smaller than it is today (a 19th century version of New Scientist would be publishable about once a year), this was a huge undertaking, this was a truly gigantic undertaking from a practical perspective. Not only did Otlet and la Fontaine attempt to collect a copy of just about every book ever written in search of information, but went further than any conventional library of the time by also looking through pamphlets, photographs, magazines, and posters in search of data. The entire thing was stored on small 3×5 index cards and kept in a carefully organised and detailed system of files, and this paper database eventually grew to contain over 12 million entries. People would send letters or telegraphs to the government-funded Mundaneum (the name referencing to the French monde, meaning world, rather than mundane as in boring), who in turn would have their staff search through their files in order to give a response to just about any question that could be asked.

However, the most interesting thing of all about Otlet’s operation, quite apart from the sheer conceptual genius of a man who was light-years ahead of his time, was his response to the problems posed when the enterprise got too big for its boots. After a while, the sheer volume of information and, more importantly, paper, meant that the filing system was getting too big to be practical for the real world. Otlet realised that this was not a problem that could ever be resolved by more space or manpower- the problem lay in the use of paper. And this was where Otlet pulled his masterstroke of foresight.

Otlet envisaged a version of the Mundaneum where the whole paper and telegraph business would be unnecessary- instead, he foresaw a “mechanical, collective brain”, through which people of the world could access all the information the world had to offer stored within it via a system of “electric microscopes”. Not only that, but he envisaged the potential for these ‘microscopes’ to connect to one another, and letting people “participate, applaud, give ovations, [or] sing in the chorus”. Basically, a pre-war Belgian lawyer predicted the internet (and, in the latter statement, social networking too).

Otlet has never been included in the pantheon of web pioneers- he died in 1944 after his beloved Mundaneum had been occupied and used to house a Nazi art collection, and his vision of the web as more of an information storage tool for nerdy types is hardly what we have today. But, to me, his vision of a web as a hub for sharing information and a man-made font of all knowledge is envisaged, at least in part, by one huge and desperately appealing corner of the web today: Wikipedia.

If you take a step back and look at Wikipedia as a whole, its enormous success and popularity can be quite hard to understand. Beginning from a practical perspective, it is a notoriously difficult site to work with- whilst accessing the information is very user-friendly, the editing process can be hideously confusing and difficult, especially for the not very computer-literate (seriously, try it). My own personal attempts at article-editing have almost always resulted in failure, bar some very small changes and additions to existing text (where I don’t have to deal with the formatting). This difficulty in formatting is a large contributor to another issue- Wikipedia articles are incredibly text-heavy, usually with only a few pictures and captions, which would be a major turn-off in a magazine or book. The very concept of an encyclopaedia edited and made by the masses, rather than a select team of experts, also (initially) seems incredibly foolhardy. Literally anyone can type in just about anything they want, leaving the site incredibly prone to either vandalism or accidental misdirection (see xkcd.com/978/ for Randall Munroe’s take on how it can get things wrong). The site has come under heavy criticism over the years for this fact, particularly on its pages about people (Dan Carter, the New Zealand fly-half, has apparently considered taking up stamp collecting, after hundreds of fans have sent him stamps based on a Wikipedia entry stating that he was a philatelist), and just letting normal people edit it also leaves bias prone to creep in, despite the best efforts of Wikipedia’s team of writers and editors (personally, I think that the site keeps its editing software deliberately difficult to use to minimise the amount of people who can use it easily and so try to minimise this problem).

But, all that aside… Wikipedia is truly wonderful- it epitomises all that is good about the web. It is a free to use service, run by a not-for-profit organisation that is devoid of advertising and is funded solely by the people of the web whom it serves. It is the font of all knowledge to an entire generation of students and schoolchildren, and is the number one place to go for anyone looking for an answer about anything- or who’s just interested in something and would like to learn more. It is built on the principles of everyone sharing and contributing- even flaws or areas lacking citation are denoted by casual users if they slip up past the editors the first time around. It’s success is built upon its size, both big and small- the sheer quantity of articles (there are now almost four million, most of which are a bit bigger than would have fitted on one of Otlet’s index cards), means that it can be relied upon for just about any query (and will be at the top of 80% of my Google searches), but its small server space, and staff size (less than 50,000, most of whom are volunteers- the Wikimedia foundation employs less than 150 people) keeps running costs low and allows it to keep on functioning despite its user-sourced funding model. Wikipedia is currently the 6th (ish) most visited website in the world, with 12 billion page views a month. And all this from an entirely not-for-profit organisation designed to let people know facts.

Nowadays, the Mundaneum is a small museum, a monument to a noble but ultimately flawed experiment. It original offices in Brussels were left empty, gathering dust after the war until a graduate student discovered it and eventually provoked enough interest to move the old collection to Mons, where it currently resides as a shadow of its former glory. But its spirit lives on in the collective brain that its founder envisaged. God bless you, Wikipedia- long may you continue.