On the ball

City firm Norton Rose is getting ever so excited in the run-up to the Heineken Cup rugby final in Cardiff later this month to which it is taking, get this, 700 guests, mostly aboard a specially chartered train.

The firm is one of the cup's sponsors, which entitles it to perimeter boards and so on at all games, including the final, which is being held at the Millennium Stadium.

Another strand of the effort is an 'innovative' marketing campaign, which in fact amounts to a series of specially commissioned black and white postcards snapped in the City and featuring Norton Rose partners in action shots with rugby internationals Scott Quinnell (above with Peter Martyr and Jeffery Barratt) and Danny Grewcock.

These postcards are being distributed around London restaurants and health clubs, but, nice as they are, they hardly count as truly innovative.

More exciting are the Norton Rose-branded gum shields (presumably tested out by the litigation department) and disposable cameras 'styled with a rugby theme'.

How this has been done we cannot say, sadly, for as yet the Norton Rose largesse hasn't extended in our direction.

And that makes us about the only people in London who can claim that.