Frank Keating: Notes From the Touchline

It is astonishing that England have played 55 rugby internationals since Lawrence Dallaglio lost the captaincy in 1999 after his appalling entrapment in the News of the World's drugs scam. It satisfies natural justice and the dramatic unities that Wasps' mighty rock-chinned Schwarzenegger has been recalled as successor to the outgoing hosanna'd emeritus Martin Johnson.

The presumption is that, had Dallaglio in his aberration not told, as he put it himself, "a pack of lies" to the sly Sabbath honeytrappers, he would have led England right up to last November and it would have been him, not Johnson, who would have been first officially to lay his giant mitts on the World Cup in Sydney.

I am not so sure about that. Dallaglio's final match as captain, a couple of months before the News of the World debacle broke, had been in the spring of 1999 when Wales sensationally beat England in injury-time at Wembley.

It was a defeat marked down to Dallaglio. England were cruising to the last whistle at 31-25 when the white-shirted barnstormer chose brazenly cocksure self-assurance over prudent insurance, disdaining an easy kick at goal for a flamboyant corner-flag touch and a probable seven-pointer to rub Welsh noses in it. Of course, Wales not only escaped but, as the clock wound down, they operatically scored a seven-pointer themselves to win 32-31. So a full Wembley's last ever communal chorus became:

Why, why, why Dallag-lio

(Shove your chariots up your bum)

Why, why, why Dallag-lio . . .

I daresay there and then Woodward decided that Johnson, already the Lions captain, might be safer for destiny.

Henmania at Keating Towers

I knew it. The certainty of it stared you in the face . . . After Saturday morning's nine o'clock news bulletin on Radio Five Live they announced the regular and unmissable sports magazine programme would be delayed because Tim Henman was on the point of closing out his third-round match against a cannon-fodder South American.

"Tim leads 4-1, final set, so straight over to Melbourne, live for the final rites" was the excited and jingoistic tenor of the handover. "Hang on a mo," I said. "Do they realise they're talking Timbo here? Four-one up, final set - that's the sort of score his opponents like. You see, Henman will lose from here."

I was shouted down (yet again) as a scoffing, besmirching, un-British cynic by the breakfast table of family and friends. Three-quarters of an hour later, as the poor British commentators' chirpy certainties had turned to a mumbling apologia of despair, Tim's last double-fault and the young Argentinian's concluding match point had dogs hiding, cups thrown, doors slammed, family plans changed, a whole day ruined and me left all alone and glum at an empty table. Pig, rotter, sad sceptic, unpatriotic misanthrope were just a few of the words thrown at me as they had left the room in their fury.

Sure, Tim, I'm aware it's tough at the top. It's also tough on family life being a hard-boiled know-all.

British bob goes for an early spin

On roughly the same subject - why can't I resist? - this week 80 years ago the first Winter Olympics began at Chamonix - 16 countries, 294 competitors - and this very day, January 30 1924, the team that one day would be graced by Eddie the Eagle made its bow in the chilly fiesta, in the four-man bob.

The Manchester Guardian was not there but the Daily Telegraph was: "The British team were first to undertake the descent. On reaching one of the turns, the sleigh ran off the track and completely capsized. Captain F Browning, an officer of the Brigade of Guards, was picked up unconscious, with both legs broken, and his fellow competitors were badly bruised."

Don't mess up Lansdowne

I care not whether the Scottish Rugby Union flogs off Murrayfield - the snide and nasty insecurities of the tartan middle classes have in recent years been distasteful when England play there - but I am in two minds about the Irish government's multi-million plans totally to rebuild Lansdowne Road by 2008.

That dear, darling, dilapidated and decaying old place is redolent of romance and sportsmanship. After any match, win or lose, you can sense the ghosts of Jammie Clinch and Ernie Crawford still relishing the comradely revels in those old drinking-pavilion clubhouses at either end of the auld relic. I loved the way a train - "the Dart" - always seemed to pass under the main stand when Ollie Campbell was lining up a vital kick. The rumbles and rattles, to my knowledge, never put the bonny booter off his metronome's stroke.

Aeons ago I went to a match with my late Uncle Kearney from Cork. He looked around the crumbling edifice with pride. "My father and his brothers helped build this place in 1907," he announced.

"Did they now?" a voice behind us said. "Then wherever they are your fellows should be absolutely bloody ashamed of themselves."