This weekend sees the resumption of the 2009-2010 European Nations Cup. As well as the glory of winning the cup, the winning team and second place team in this year’s ENC will qualify automatically for the 2011 Rugby World Cup in New Zealand.
At the half-way mark, Russia currently lie second in the table, a point behind leaders Georgia, and a point ahead of third placed Portugal. All three sides have an excellent chance of making it to the finals; either through one of the two automatic qualifier spots, or through the absurdly complex playoff that the third placed team will be entered into.
Team
Played
Won
Drawn
Lost
Points
Georgia
5
4
1
0
14
Russia
5
4
0
1
13
Portugal
5
3
1
1
12
Romania
5
2
0
3
9
Spain
5
1
0
4
7
Germany
5
0
0
5
5
Russia’s first and last matches will be key this year.
They kick off the season with a home match against Portugal, and given that they won 18-14 in Lisbon last year, they’ll be fairly confident that they can pull off the win they need. Last week’s comfortable win over Namibia, who have already booked their place in the World Cup will have helped to boost confidence, and to sharpen the players skills as well. Portugal, though, will be no push-over. They’ve been to the World Cup before, and will want to go again. And, when they travelled to Georgia last season they matched the title favourites all the way to a sensational 20-20 tie – they’ll be hoping to go a point better against Russia.
If (big if) the results this season follow the formbook exactly, Russia’s last match of the season against great rivals Georgia will be the title decider. Russia’s ‘home’ match last year was played in Ukraine because of tensions between the two countries following the 2008 war, and Georgia defeated Russia 29-21 in a bruising encounter. To ensure parity, and because tensions are still pretty high, this season’s fixture (nominally a home match for Georgia) will be played at a neutral venue in Turkey. Georgia normally draw fanatical crowds of 40,000 plus for their home matches, so Russia will be hoping that the more subdued environment in Turkey lead to a more subdued performance from the Georgian rugby team, too.
Other big matches to watch this season will be Portugal’s return encounter with Georgia on February 13th (in fact, these first two games will decide Portugal’s entire season), and Romania’s matches with all three sides – Romania are no-where near as good as they were in their ‘glory days’ during the 1980s, but they remain a tough team to beat, and still harbour hopes that, if the results go their way and they pull off a shock or two, they could sneak into third place by the end of the season.
Over the next couple of months we’ll be keeping you up to date with the latest results as, fingers crossed, Russia fight their way through to their first ever appearance at the Rugby World Cup.
In this week’s cartoon, Berlusconi visits Belarus, and leaves behind a lovestruck Lukashenko. You can find more of Spanish illustrator Juan Rodriguez Morales’ cartoons at Spanish language Russia blog La Mirada al Este.
The play, in which Tennant plays the role of Murray, chronicles the former Ambassador’s disgust at what he perceives to be British complicity in tortue in Uzbekistan, his decision to publicly speak out, and his subsequent falling out with the Foreign Office.
Playwright David Hare, who is well known for writing political plays (see ‘Stuff Happens’ and, most recently, ‘The Power of Yes’) adapted the play from Murray’s autobiographical Murder in Samarkan. He apparently didn’t want to just take Murray’s word at face value, and travelled to Uzbekistan to further research the play and to speak to people who knew Murray at the time, in order to get a more balanced view. However, the play is said to be relatively sympathetic to Murray – to quote the Guardian newspaper:
The play reveals different sides of Murray: he is an idealist, who takes an immovable moral stance, but also a drinker and womaniser.
Murder in Samarkand will be broadcast on Radio 4 in England on 20 February, and David Tennant’s participation ensures that Murray’s story will receive a far wider audience that it otherwise would have. Whether this is a good thing or not, I’ll leave for you to discuss in the comments…
Formula One team Renault have signed Vitaly Petrov as their second driver for the 2010 season. Petrov, seen here perched uncomfortably on his new car’s rear tyre, will become the first ever Russian to race in F1 once the season’s first race begins this March, in Bahrain, and he’ll be hoping to play more than just a supporting role to Polish team-mate Robert Kubica (pictured, left).
Petrov is a well known and very successful racer – he finished second in last season’s F2 championship. He is, according to his Wikipedia page, known as the Vyborg Rocket in Russia – presumably because he’s from Vyborg and, erm, goes really really fast. Or, possibly, just because someone in the media was searching for a nickname, and was feeling uninspired that day.
Renault’s decision to sign Petrov will have been based mostly on his performance to date in lower formulas, but it won’t have hurt his chances that he also brings what is rumoured to be between $10 million and $15 million in personal sponsorship with him from top Russian bank Sberbank and natural gas company Gazprom. Petrov beat out two other Russian drivers to become the first Russian in Formula 1 – Sergey Zlobin and Roman Rusinov are reserve drivers for the Minardi and Midland teams, but presumably didn’t make the cut because they didn’t bring quite such impressive sponsorship packages to the table grid.
The long awaited 5th generation Russian Stealth Fighter, classified as the Sukhoi Pak-FA T50, flew its first test flight on 29 January 2010.
Piloted by Sergei Bogdan, a test pilot for Sukhoi, the T50 made a successful 47 minute testflight, taking off and landing from Sukhoi’s factory runway. On touching down, Bogdan told reporters that everything went well, and that he was impressed by the way the T50 handled:
“In the course of the flight we’ve conducted initial evaluation of the aircraft controllability, engine performance and primary systems operation, the aircraft had retracted and extracted the landing gear. The aircraft performed excellently at all flight-test points scheduled for today. It is easy and comfortable to pilot”
Here’s a video report of the test flight, courtesy of Russia Today:
The T50 is Russia’s first 5th generation plane, and is their answer to the US F22 and F35 fighters, and the long awaited European Joint Strike Fighter. It has stealth capabilities, much improved on board electronics (which will take a lot of load off the pilot) and the ability to fly at supersonic speeds for the entire length of its flight, but opinion is divided as to it’s true quality.
Obviously, Sukhoi and the Russian government are talking up it’s qualities, but others are less impressed. Military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer (who, it should be noted, is usually critical of the Russian military and government) had this to say:
“It’s a humbug. It’s just a prototype lacking new engines and a new radar. It takes new materials to build a fifth-generation fighter, and Russia lacks them.”
When you combine this with cautious statements from Prime Minister Putin, who called the test flight of the Pak-FA “a big step forward,” but tempered his praise by noting that “a lot remains to be done in terms of engines and armament”, it’s fair to observe that Russia’s plane may not be of quite the high quality of its US and European competitors.
Nonetheless, Russia has pumped almost $10 billion into research and development for their new stealth plane. In order to recoup all that money, they won’t be able to just reserve it for the Russian military. Yes, the Russian air force will order around 150-200, at a cost of around $100 million apiece, but the investment will be realised when Sukhoi makes them available on the international market. India, who were partners in the development of the fighter are said to be going to buy around 200-250 and, if the Pak-FA is of good enough quality and at the right price point, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see global sales top a thousand pretty quickly.
(By the way – in a surprising move, there are rumours that the Pak-FA’s sold to India may actually be constructed in India, in order to keep costs down. If this proves an profitable strategy, we may see the production of even more Russian military equipment outsourced to countries where labour is cheaper.)
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