@kiwiinmelb "Nice guns, Sonny".

"Thanks, Jack - I like your hair".

@Siam said in Indian Cricket Tour of NZ 2020:

Wags out. Baby coming.

But don't worry Henry called up

Don't know why Mrs. Wags can't do this on her own - the delivery is bound to be short, or very short!

@mn5 said in All Blacks v Argentina - Nelson:

@mariner4life said in All Blacks v Argentina - Nelson:

Shit team in a shit location. lucky the Warriors are on

DO NOT diss Nelson you Queensland Bogan fluffybunny.

Ignore him, MN5.

What would a fucker who lives in Cairns know about locations? He's choosing to live in a swamp, inhabited by nasty, poisonous biting creatures - and that's just the people, don't get me started on the wildlife.

In fact, do. Go to the beach - get eaten by a crocodile. Go for a run - get bitten by a snake. Go for a shit - get bitten by a spider. Go anywhere and get bitten by dengue-ridden mosquitos or some other fucking insect largely unknown to science.

Go to the pub and be entertained by Tex Morton and his pet bantam, Stu - singing "Blue Bayou" - a song about living in a swamp.

In summary, he wouldn't know a good location if it bit him on the arse - and in Cairns it probably will!

How have I never seen Pinky the Loving Cat before?

@sparky said in Savea goooone Skudder in:

@Crucial Selling Comics.

Worst Wing Ever!

Well, that was pretty exciting and given that I hate losing far more than I like winning, I'm remarkably sanguine about the result.

I think some of you guys are being pretty harsh on the execution. The Lions defence was extremely good - no weak links - and I think the ABs decided they needed some pieces of magic to score. Maybe a lack of patience at times, but the two tries we scored both had a fair degree of magic to them - especially the second one. Taking pop passes into a close defensive line and getting smashed isn't the best way of retaining the ball - but, it's also a good way of breaking the line. On another night we could have scored four or five tries - we certainly created opportunities - especially in the first half.

I haven't really seen a massive decline in Hansen's coaching - we just came up against a team chock full of talented players and with the depth to match and possibly better the advantage we usually get from the subs bench - particularly once we lost a few players.

On the final penalty, I guess Poite will give a Gallic shrug and say something like "Il n’est pas la bonne décision, mais c’est la belle décision."

Which means, "It is not the right decision, but it is the beautiful decision." At least that's what I typed into Babelfish to get that result!

Right now, the Crusaders have won the same number of games as the Australian teams combined.

@Kirwan said in US Politics:

In decades of observation, the most egregious management fuckups are done by people who can't do the simplest shit right. They're the same arsebandits who try to use Excel as a database.

The things I have seen built in Excel over the past 20years...

But, I wanna talk about Windows 8.1. I mean that was terrible. So terrible. Really bad. An affliction on the American people. And everyone else. And I was the only person to tell the truth about how bad that was. So bad. And so-called experts here tried to tell me it was good. Sad. Very sad. I mean Bill Gates. And by the way Bill Gates is a great friend of mine. And a great American. He's done so well. But even Bill Gates said how bad Windows 8.1 was. It was so bad Bill Gates gave everyone a free upgrade to Windows 10. So just listen to me in future. No-one knows more about IT than me. And halfbacks. Even Nepia will tell you that.

Firstly, good effort Wallabies. Turns out last week's first half effort was more of a fluke than the second half.

I was wondering about that - but, we were at home this week and struggled to win.

Secondly - fail on behalf of the AB coaches not to identify that. We spent quite a lot of this game playing like the result was a foregone conclusion and buried ourselves in a ditch for a while by not playing proper test rugby.

Thirdly - Man of the match - Nepo Laulala. If our scrum had been less dominant in that game, we would have been well beaten. Coles and Moody can take residual credit. No more of this Ofa bullshit, Hansen!!!

Fourthly - second man of the match, Rieko Ioane. Looked like an AB back out there, when several others didn't.

Fifthly - show some class Chieka. It's not fucking soccer!!!

@mariner4life

@barbarian said in Australia v India:

Amazing win by India. To pick the team they did and win at the Gabba? Truly remarkable. I have genuinely never seen anything like it in my time as an Aussie cricket supporter.

We've lost home series before, but it's been to genuinely great sides: South Africa with prime Franz Botha Dale Steyn, England with Cook, KP, Broad, Swann et al.

This side doesn't have the names, but man they have ticker.

It's hard as an Aussie fan, as there isn't a glaring scapegoat or error made by anyone. We were just beaten. Sure, Mitch Starc tired badly, Nathan Lyon couldn't find anything when we needed him, too many batsmen made a start and then threw their wicket away.

But there's a very real chance our next test XI will be very close to this one. Pucovski will come in for Harris, and maybe Wade will go IF someone can make Shield runs to displace him. But that's not certain.

They will have to reasses how they play Starc as well. On his day he is world leading. I remember he was imperious in Adelaide, but a broken man by Brisbane. This series is hard to assess on that front, though, with it's bubbles and squads and condensed format without breaks.

Fabulous effort by India.

I think the rain (and the prospect of rain) on the 4th day helped them win this last test.

Judging by Paine's declaration in the third test, I'm pretty sure that he doesn't subscribe to Mark Waugh's "280 is plenty" theory, so I reckon if there hadn't been rain in the offing he would have liked an extra 70 runs. But, the Indians had forced his hand by keeping the series even when they arrived in Brisbane, so good luck to them.

Series averages show not enough substantive contributions by Australian players. Only Marnus, Smith and Paine would be satisfied with their batting efforts and only Cummins and Hazlewood as bowlers.

https://stats.espncricinfo.com/ci/engine/records/averages/batting_bowling_by_team.html?id=13667;team=2;type=series

https://stats.espncricinfo.com/ci/engine/records/averages/batting_bowling_by_team.html?id=13667;team=6;type=series

Pant was superb for India and Gill excellent, but the key man might have been Pujara - faced 154 overs in the series - a lot of work for the Oz bowlers.

@Rapido

Vincent was born in Warkworth, New Zealand and is the son of well known ABC NewsRadio sports announcer Mike Vincent. Vincent became interested in cricket at an early age as his father used to represent Eden Roskill Cricket Club of Auckland in first grade cricket and took Lou to all the international matches at Eden Park.

At the age of 15, his parents separated with Mike and Lou moving to Adelaide in Australia where Lou began playing in the age-tournaments. After Vincent was left out of several important age-group games by his coach, he decided to move back to New Zealand at the age of 18.[6]

When Vincent returned to New Zealand he had the opportunity to play for New Zealand in the 1998 Under 19 Cricket World Cup.

@MN5 Didn't realise his average was so good! I see he got 100 hundreds in all forms of state/provincial cricket.

@mariner4life said in Australia v India:

@Chris-B there's a heap of those guys

I know - and we couldn't find an NZ grandparent amongst them?!!

@Siam said in Australia v India:

Coincided with a time that Sheffield Shield was huge. There were many names that never or hardly played for Oz but would have walked into any national side: law, Elliott, divenuto, hills, siddons, maher even Lehman off the top of my head. You had to make 1000 runs every season for at least 3 to get a mention. Now, nobody gets 1000.

Martin Love - averaged 50 in Sheffield Shield - 46 in the few tests he played, but could barely get a game.

@Siam Yeah - poaching of resources has also had an effect on the ABs. The Charles Piatau and Steven Luatua effect.

And for Oz - it is quite strange that they're having to field people like Wade, Burns and Harris.

Maybe that's why they've had to prepare pitches that haven't deteriorated as much as they've needed?

@Siam said in Australia v India:

God this might be gay but I just see a tiny bit of similarity in the slight decline of this aus team and our ABs after such dominance over a long time. Players pretty much the same but now good teams are doing to them what they dined out on for ages.

Declining empires? Probably reaching but something's not the same in both teams

I'm inclined to think for almost opposite reasons - or maybe the same reasons, but comparisons in different spheres .

India has been an underperformer for almost forever - with a massive population, but fuck all resources. Now they've harnessed their financial and institutional resources - used the IPL to develop their players - and they've become super strong in depth. If they carry on like this it will be increasingly difficult to beat these bastards!

ABs have punched above their weight because other countries (i.e. England, maybe France) have failed to properly harness their resources. If and when they ever properly do, we might be in deep schtumm.

Overall, it's a pretty amazing outcome given that the last two tests you would have expected the world-class Australian attack to blast out the Indians in the fourth innings. Got to ask the question as to why that didn't happen - and I don't really think the answer is in the quality of the bowling.

Brilliant stuff from India!

Possibly a case to send in a bunny as a pinch hitter?

I'll tell you what - this will scar Oz nearly as much as VVS!