@bones said in NH International Rugby:

Holy shit just saw the lead up to the first try too. That's crooked refereeing.

Great comments from Sam Warburton on that dodgy first try "I would livid if I was Owen Farrell and England."

@tim Choat? Is he in the squad?

I really like Nock's game, hope they stick with him.

@tim said in Hurricanes v Blues:

Not for the last time this year, I'm going to say that Pierce would've been the better Harbour lock to play in this game.

I thought GCT was good. Surprisng thing is that he adds punch to Blues scrum.

fresh&new.jpg

@pakman said in Coronavirus - UK:

@tim said in Coronavirus - UK:

@pakman said in Coronavirus - UK:

Aparently 50% of PCR tests are false positives.

That sounds very wrong. What is the source? I've seen nothing like that.

Hi @pakman, sorry I didn't reply to this. Had a busy and weird week.

I did read a comment, but not a paper, about changing the amplification cycle threshold to avoid non viable virus particles/remnants. I really can't comment without doing a deep dive into what is going on. I would like to see a lot more long-read sequencing data, at the least, to interpret this.

Quite possible that detecting many recovered infections, but sensitivity also very important to contain outbreaks from people who have been infected but not had time to develop an observable infection.

@nta said in SR Australia Round 2: Brumbies v Waratahs:

Overall, the Tahs improved quite a bit on last week - besides the ref having no idea about scrums, their set piece was solid, winning all their lineouts as well.

Some of the general play was better, but defensive alignment continues to be a problem. This is a mixture of the chasm in experience between the two sides, and the fact that the Ponies have been very settled while the Tahs' cupboard is bare.

Again: the back office fails to recruit properly or soberly, and we end up failing to develop players.

It seemed to me the Brumbies just needed to screw the scrum to get the penalty. The Tahs front row were looking at nobody when the penalties came.

@taniwharugby said in Coronavirus - New Zealand:

Given how the last 5 or so weeks have been in NZ, are people that fucking stupid or just don't give a shit?

Complacency was always going to be our downfall

Joe gets the win. Judges scored it 119-109, 115-113, 117-111. That 119-109 is pretty dodgy though.

Parker needs to leave Barry. He's made no progress in years.

Good news is that my mate managed to get a place in quarantine in Auckland, and will at least get to see his mum before she dies.

Hope he doesn't get COVID during that process ...

@tim said in Blues MOTM v Hurricanes:

Maybe Akira at 8 and him at 6 for some games?

Yes please

It’ll be interesting to see if they persist with the 6/2

@rancid-schnitzel said in Building myself back up:

@voodoo said in Building myself back up:

@rancid-schnitzel said in Building myself back up:

Anyway will be eating a whole lot more today.
Did 2.km in the pool then a 15km run. Absolutely blasted🤯

You should skip that mara and go straight for the ironman mate

He he. No thanks! I also haven’t ridden a bike in about 15 years.

The marathon will be an epic cnut. My calves are killing me and that was from just 15km! Admittedly the swim involved a lot of kick work but still. I’m thinking the best preparation for a marathon is getting used to a world of pain.

Good man. Cyclists are fluffybunnies

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@canes4life said in 'Super Rugby' 2021:

@gunner all games could be canned next week. Unless they play them behind closed doors.

Surely they go ahead with empty stadia?
At least folks can watch from home....

@mikey07 yeah he’s such a humble kid aswell. Hope he comes right.

Yeah I didn't see a lot of clear and obvious in the disallowed try. Looked like it came off a boot.

@sparky @booboo

The Daily Star continues to pump out brilliant headlines. Not sure if you’ve seen the recent news about Mr Potato Head being rebranded as Potato Head to appease the sexism and gender loonies? The headline was “Mr Potato Head loses his meat and two veg”. Utter journalism brilliance.

@billy-tell said in RugbyPass streaming:

@kruse said in RugbyPass streaming:

@billy-tell said in RugbyPass streaming:

@kruse said in RugbyPass streaming:

Hmmm... them putting all the Super Rugby content on liverugby.net - is a bit of a prick.
It seems liverugby has much smarter geoblocking (looks like it's in AWS? They might have a better list of VPN proxies to block, maybe?).
I can still login to rugbypass, and look at Six Nations and whatever... but no Super Rugby for me, from any VPN location I've tried thus far.

Where do you live??

Back in NZ now, covid-forced repatriation. Long story, should probably do a big whinge in one of the appropriate threads some time.
But this evening, after a day of riding over the Rimutakas, lunch at Lake Ferry, ride back over the Hill - some beers and barmaids flirting - back home, and liverugby still being too geo-smart for me... I go searching for a dodgy website, and find one immediately (and cast-able). Can't complain.

I try use legal means where possible, my €40 for the season will hopefully help keep NZ rugby afloat. But sky is pretty damn expensive from memory. I personally think paid streaming will be the future rather than traditional broadcasters.

Yeah - I was happy with pseudo-legal means, giving some money to the source, but avoiding the massive media-monopolies... especially when I thought RugbyPass was some sort of independent entity bringing rugby to the masses, and deserving of my money.
I think I read somewhere in this thread, they're actually owned by Sky, or have been bought by them? In which case - I might re-consider.

@Siam outstanding stuff mate, always love reading your musings on our summer sport. You hit the nail on the head about modern batsmen, as soon as the pitch is challenging the majority of them just don't have the defensive technique to cope with it.

To hell with flat pitches, there has to be a balance of course but there's nothing more enthralling than watching batsmen fight for their lives against a bowling lineup with their tails up. That's the situation that test batsmen should live for. Sort the mice from the men.

Last time I saw one of these flying it was dropping JDAMs on Iraq!

https://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/124381690/wings-over-wairarapa-big-b52-finally-wings-its-way-over-new-zealand

A big week or so in Aussie Politics.

Sexual assault cover up
Who knew what and when
Who chose to not know
Poor treatment and follow up support of the assault victim and of political staff generally
A new Rape allegation regarding a current Cabinet Minister prior to entering politics
A sudden health crisis for the minister who was due to go in front of the National Press Club and answer questions regarding the sexual assault that occurred in her office
And a labor opposition who have remained relatively quiet on the matter which could suggest they have a few of their own skeletons closeted somewhere.
And on top of all of that….

Handbags at 20 paces with Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook over the paying for news content that appears on Facebook. Only real winner there will probably be Rupert Murdoch. No details of the deal done with FB have yet emerged.
Craig Kelly, rogue crack pot and conspiracy theory loving Liberal MP now ex-Liberal MP reduces the Libs majority in the lower house to zero I think, so that the Libs now have to go and do deals with other crackpot MPs like Bob Katter.
A doctor completing botching the Covid vaccine doses and over-dosing a couple of elderly patients (who seem to be fine thankfully)

I am sure I have missed plenty

@taniwharugby words of wisdom right there

when subtitle transcript goes wrong...or maybe it's right, but was still wrong...

https://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/tv-radio/124381728/i-love-salmon-hilary-barrys-kiwi-accent-leads-to-rrated-seven-sharp-subtitle-gaffe

Paramount is trying to make a Fatal Attraction tv series. Will every episode will open with Glenn Close rising from the bath?

@mikethesnow said in Coronavirus - Overall:

@antipodean said in Coronavirus - Overall:

From the study:

This study’s sample presents an average age-at-death of 72.9 years; yet only a fraction of the YLL can be attributed to the individuals in the oldest age brackets. Globally, 44.9% of the total YLL can be attributed to the deaths of individuals between 55 and 75 years old, 30.2% to younger than 55, and 25% to those older than 75. That is, the average figure of 16 YLL includes the years lost from individuals close to the end of their expected lives, but the majority of those years are from individuals with significant remaining life expectancy. Across countries, a substantial proportion of YLL can be traced back to the 55–75 age interval, however there remain stark differences in the relative contribution of the oldest and youngest age groups (Fig. 2, Panel A). These patterns account for the proportion of YLL for each age group out of the global YLL (see Table S7). In higher income countries, a larger proportion of the YLL is borne by the oldest group compared to the youngest age groups. The opposite pattern appears in low and mid-income countries, where a large fraction of the YLL are from individuals dying at ages 55 or younger.

The wealthier the country, the longer old people generally live. Stunning insight again from a study of no worth. Paper doesn't make the effort to explain those dying at 55 are likely to have considerably contributed to their own demise.

Here's a better idea for the authors; YLL by BMI for younger cohort.

Does it take in to consideration how hard those years are too?

A 55-70 year old living in the UK has it so much easier than a 55-70 year old in Kenya for example

Not sure about the specifics, but it did take into account different life expectancies.

@kiwimurph said in SR Australia Round 2: Reds v Rebels:

That was a good game.

Personally although I supported Reds ,I thought game was a little disappointing. A bit pissed that refs are missing laws of the game while trying these new variations. Much as I dislike saying it no way should our(Reds) first try of been allowed under the laws that say you can only take a ball by hand and not swim back. I hope that not coming back into our game.

@kiwiwomble Yeah I think most TVs that support live streaming for Stan are 2016 models onwards. Only way to get it to work is to get a Chromecast or
an Android Box. I could be wrong.

It's all a bit repetitive isn't it?

@kruse said in Re: Movie review thread...:

Right, so, ... Tenet...
I didn't find it as confusing and un-understandable as I'd expected from reviews,
but... yeah, there was heaps of times I thought "nah, that's not how that would work"...
I'm really hoping that it's a case like Primer - where it doesn't make sense on the first watch, but makes more and more sense on each watch, but... not sure.
A lot of it at the back-end seemed like a big excuse for showing 'xplosions-in-reverse

I do kinda like Nolan's production/direction style (the lighting or lack-of) of it just looking like real life. The very first scene reminded me of one of the Batman movies... no dark-ish atmospheric bullshit, just... this is how the lighting is in an opera house, or outside, or on a boat, or whatever.

Watched it a couple of weeks ago. Still can't figure out if I liked it, or was so confused I was unable to make up my mind

I just finished The Test on UK Netflix. Follows the Australia cricket team for 18 months or so post sandpaper gate. Really enjoyed it. Came away thinking that they’re not all knobs. Warner still is though and Smith is eccentric as fuck along with his mini me lapdog Labuschagne.

Nice gallop from Brodie:

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Wrong thread!

Not a famous person as such but well known in the NSW Rugby circles and a close friend for many years. The article is written by Peter FitzSimons.

https://www.smh.com.au/sport/saying-goodbye-to-a-teammate-leaves-hearts-full-and-eyes-red-20210219-p5744l.html

We played a social (but highly competitive) game of touch together 2 or 3 times a week for a decade and often caught up for beers at the Rag and Famish pub in North Sydney until he and his family moved away from Sydney after which we sadly lost touch.

This really came as a shock, such a great character and yeah, only 3 years older than I am.

@higgins NZ under 20s fullback. Played very well at the NZ sevens event earlier this year. From Papamoa. May go OK in Scotland