@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

@Nepia Glory days pass by so quick - this time last year we had Frizell, Taufua, Squire and Blackadder fighting for games at 8.

This year it's Hugh - who could up his physicality significantly!

@Nepia Doubtless a legacy of the teachings of Mike Coman!

@Higgins said in Hawke's Bay v Canterbury:

I was extremely magnanimous in victory

It's over-rated, isn't it!

https://www.cyclingnews.com/races/uci-road-world-championships-2020/elite-women-road-race/results/

Good result for the women.

Nianh Fisher-Black (15th) and Mikayla Harvey (22nd) finish in the lead bunch - a bit behind most of the big guns.

The Dutch kill it!

@ACT-Crusader said in Hawke's Bay v Canterbury:

@Chris-B said in Hawke's Bay v Canterbury:

Congratulations Hawkes Bay!

Jeez - there's a bit of a lack of weaponry in that Canterbury team.

Give it to Mataele, but if he doesn't do something big, there's not many others who are regularly going to make big plays.

Was Mataele playing?

Not as well as they needed him to be.

@shark Lots of role players in that Canterbury team, but not that much that strikes fear in the heart. Reuben's almost got a team created in his own image.

I'd go with all of your changes. The pack is OK, though I continue to wonder what the point of conscripting Irish Oli to the Crusaders is/was. I'd probably start Christie ahead of Harmon.

Problems really start with Brett Cameron, who's a lot more Stephen Brett or Cameron McIntyre (perhaps not surprisingly) than Danny Boy. That AB call-up was definitely a roll of the dice. I thought Burke added some spark when he came on.

Midfield seems a bit anonymous and Knewstubb a bit DMac-lite. Need to add some more physicality somehow.

Congratulations Hawkes Bay!

Jeez - there's a bit of a lack of weaponry in that Canterbury team.

Give it to Mataele, but if he doesn't do something big, there's not many others who are regularly going to make big plays.

A great day in the sun at Traf. Park watching live rugby. I hope TJ and Kane enjoyed it as much as we did!

Went better than I expected, actually - especially the Tasman pack.

It was very windy, which probably contributed to the handling errors especially by the team playing with the wind. Other than that, I'll reserve any comments on the match until after I've watched a TV replay.

Halfway through Round 3 and we're the only unbeaten team in the Premiership. Who'd have thunk it?!!

And fifteen wins on the bounce - though who's counting. What's the record for that in the NPC anyway?

I see The Auks dropped their first game in 2008 so there's a good chance we've got the record for this Millennium!

@Hooroo said in Tasman v Waikato:

WE’RE GOING TO FUCKING KILL YOUR LOT!!!

It’s mid afternoon and I’ve been drinking at the air port. I hope they let me board....

That's some excellent provincialism, my friend - even if you were drunk! At least you had a crack.

Of course, to keep the universe in balance, there has to be an equal and opposite reaction!

Let's hope we don't have to see the end of that clip this year.....!

@Crucial Yeah - that link I posted also gives the intermediate split times at the bottom.

Bevin rode the second "half" 3 seconds faster than Ganna - just waay too slow in the first half. Van Aert, Kung and Asgreen all significantly faster than Ganna on the second half.

On the other side, Rohan Dennis was 2nd at the intermediate split - but, lost 20 seconds to Ganna in both sets of splits and three places over the 2nd leg. Probably went too hard early.

https://www.cyclingnews.com/races/uci-road-world-championships-2020/elite-men-time-trial/results/

Patty finishes 12th and 50 seconds off the podium.

When you look at the names ahead of him it is a tough gig!

Rohan Dennis only 5th and Dumoulin (nearly crashed) but 10th on the day.

@MN5 said in RIP Dean Jones:

@shark said in RIP Dean Jones:

Jones was pretty much done by the time I started following cricket around 1991/92, but I was certainly aware of his stature in the game. As others have said, he helped revolutionize the ODI format, but he also played some notable test innings.

Yeah good point. Sure, 10 years later Oz had class batsmen coming out of their ears but I note he finished test cricket in 1992. Surely he had years left in him ?

Just had a look at the end of his test career and his dropping was slightly odd timing.

He had a definite lean patch, starting with a 1990 test against us and ending with a 150* vs India. Averaged 26 over quite a few test innings.

They then took him to Sri Lanka and he was like a pig in shit - his last 7 test innings he averaged 85 (including that 150*). And then they dropped him.

I guess they thought he wasn't the man for a West Indies series - and they replaced him with Damien Martyn or Steve Waugh.