I was top tier in the temporary seats for 2011 final.

When Cruden got injured and tehre was a delay, i nipped down to get some beers ... in my haste to get back, I tripped over entering the stand (beers were ok though), and as I stood up and continued walking in, the cop/security guard standing there, put his hand out to stop me. I was expecting all sorts of shit, and questions as they were being pretty hard on drunken behaviour. Started panicking about kikicked out etc. Instead he slowly turned his head, looked me dead in the eye and said

"Before you go back to your seat, you need to know that Stephen Donald is now on the field"

SA Rugby In Shock After TMO Correctly Rules In Favour Of The Away Team

Shockwaves went through SA rugby today, when a TMO (television muppet official) correctly ruled against the home SA team for the first time ever in a televised game. Late on in the match, with the Lions looking to close out the match it looked for all money that the Lions had scored with time almost up to put the game beyond reach. Despite the ball clearly having not been grounded, expected transmission began with the assistant referee running in to let the referee know that the ball had indeed been grounded correctly, and he'd had a clear view.

However things began to unravel shortly after, when the referee decided that it was worth another look, leaving all viewers confused. After looking at 3 angles, of which the clearest had correctly been blocked by a spectators head, the TMO then sent seismic waves through the community by correctly saying the ball hadn't been grounded. The Blues then went on to score a last minute winner, although replays clearly showed there were at least 5 potential reasons for the referee to completely fuck up and call it back.

Lions coach Johan Ackermann when asked about the incident was inconsolable and somewhat confused. "I didn't really see it and haven't had time to review it, as like all good coaches I wasn't looking at the 42 live screens in front of me all showing the replays. This is however a huge shift change for SA refereeing, and I'm wondering if there is any point in even having home advantage anymore. Fans don't turn up, and if the referees are going to police things correctly and without bias, then we may as well just play away".

Team captain Warren Whitely concurred, simply saying "it's not my job to comment on referees decisions, but if the home teaming isn't getting all the 90/10's, let alone the 50/50's, it's going to be tough from here on in"

Blues coach Tana Umaga was delighted with the result, the first time in his tenure that his team actually did anything decent. "It's great to get a win against a well coached and strong Lions team, although I don't have time to talk right now, as I've got to help Sonny Bill get a flight to Port Elizabeth - he's got an old pal or something there he wants to catch up with".

SA referees were approached for comment, but politely declined as they, quite rightly commented that like all controversial decisions their view is firmly to have their heads up their arse.

And she's finished ... What a labour of love that was. I can't drive it properly yet as it needs to go through the Caterham check, then the government check (IVA), then registered etc. All of this is expected to take around 6-8 weeks, so it should be ready right about when spring is really kicking in. Perfect timing.

I did take it for a quick spin around the block though ... and the front wing fell off! Which I guess is good, as it gives me something else to fiddle around on.

It's been an absolute labour of love, full of swearing, foul language, frustration, irritation and pure anger.

But look at her. Isn't she beautiful. I can't wait to go and hang the arse out.

All this talk of respect - seriously, fuck off.

Year and years of Richie's a cheat, New Zealanders are classless, the constant fucking moaning against everything NZ rugby, the pissing and bitching from Aussies during RWC visit, I'm totally fucking over it.

I really can't be fucked with insults & advice from Australians about respect in sporting circles.

On the whole, I've done my best over the years to provide some reason where I think we are getting ahead of ourselves / shown arrogance / demeaned the opposition. But over this weekend, there has been a clear narrative to do everything in their power for global "neutrals" to demean the fantastic achievement of 18 wins in a row and divert attention away from it. The usual shit of Ab's offside (we were, we got penalised btw), AB's favouritism from refs, and then the final nail if this shower of shitness, the global attention on Chieka's whinge being FAR FAR greater than that of the achievement of this bunch of blokes.

And people want to talk to us about respect, or lack there of.

@stargazer said in All Blacks v France Test #2:

@tim Good to know that basically nothing has changed since last weekend. Hope the media (esp those of the NH), which generally either lacks intelligence or pretends it lacks intelligence, understands it, too.

[tin foil hat]

Don't be so naive. The NH media has really ramped things up, and you want to know why? Because Gosper, Pichot and co, LISTEN TO THEM. They write unbelievably one-eyed biased bullshit, and will continuously attack attack attack at points which are not really relevant to the context of what happened in the game, to divert away from anything which could be written as positive. And, "co-incidentally" enough, it's always NZ, or if not NZ, at least the SH, which is in the bad.

It's fucking bullshit and frankly, for all that is written about NZ, rule leniency etc being a "blight in the game", it's the cancerous journo's who really are the blight on the game. Here's a short list I've compiled:

Luke Pearce, the English ref. Apparently in test one, he was "let down by his TMO peers", or "leaned by the pro AB crowd", or "succumbed to the world rugby sponsored view that the AB's play to different rules".

Paul Williams, the NZ ref for Ireland - Aus "a disgrace to the game" - this was tweeted DIRECTLY at Gosper. Wanna know why? Because he didn't give Ireland a yellow card for continual Aussie transgressions. Maybe a point, but a DISGRACE? Especially after a week of continual media hum drum about the "unfair yellow" (where the poor young outstanding english ref was let down by everybody around who wasn't english) ruining the game in NZ.

Gardner - "should have certainly taken ALB's run into account", "a red card for ALB shouldn't have been out of the question given his part in it" ... this isn't from rabid one eyed fans, this is from JOURNALISTS ... who are sending messages to Gosper!! Seriously, here's the fucking video:

ALB did JACK SHIT. His eyes were on the fucking ball too, it doesn't even look like he touched him, let alone ran from 50 yards away to directly push poor skinny Fall into Barrett to milk the red card. The world rugby media release here is COLOSSAL BULLSHIT, written purely to appease the same NH media they infuritated with their COLOSSAL BULLSHIT media release from a week earlier about Ofa.

And you want to hear the ultimate shit in the face ? During the England - Tunisia football match, Harry Kane was tackled in the penalty box, rugby style .. One Walrus wrote ... "Some of the high tackling on Harry Kane in the Tunisian box would have even got an All Black carded. Lord Harry I should say"

Not a big deal really, for the pompous alanis morrisette style irony fellow, but you know who liked it?

His BFF Brett Gosper.

[/tin foil hat]

@antipodean said in Bledisloe I:

we don't have many right wingers running around,

Try the politics forum.

@booboo said in Black Caps v India - Semi Final:

For the Ganguly fans.

Fried bum face.

https://t.co/dMqC576nlE
(

I’m a bit drunk but I have zero criticism of Smithys commentary there.

His chin, yes.

I'm not sure I'm ever going to feel well again. Shit got real in Singapore. I'm going to tell the story from the start.

When you let an almost 40 year old male with 2 young kids off the leash, in an Asian city for 48 hours, at which time, said male will attend a concert of a 90's rock icon ... I'm not sure what you are going to expect. But it happened.

Blasted down on Friday early doors, straight into a pub to watch the cricket, rugby, consume, consume and consume. At 2am, I was done, having taken about 250 selfies with people due to my red bandana, axl sunnies, and gnr singlet. I walked in in standard white man attire, polo, jeans etc, but somehow at some point, acquired some kit - I have no idea where from to this day. Little was I to know that at current figure, how much I actually did look like the singer - well, when standing on the scales anyway. Anyway, woke up Saturday on concert day with probably the worst hangover seen since the sevens a few years ago. Had crashed on the floor of a mates hotel, after my accomodation source had trap doored earlier on whilst I was busy signing off a bar tab for rining the bell at Mogambo's and subsequently buying the whole bar a shot.

So, as I raised my weary head, and casually checked my wallet to make sure my GnR ticket was still intact, the thought occurred to me that today was going be rather tough. To cut a long story short, after a casual lunch, an hour getting a foot rub and a long shower I started to turn for the better, so casually made my way to meet the boys at a hawker centre for pre loading. The food went down well, the ice cold beers, gentlemen jack less so, but then at 6pm, a mate of ours called Dave announced that our bus was here. So we trudged off and about 50 metres from the car park started to hear the relaxing, dulcet, calming, measured sounds of SWEET FUCKING CHILD OF FUCKING MINE. Our transport, was proper, proper baller. Decked out van, with a sound system Jonah would have been proud of, complete with ice boxes loaded with piss, a smoke machine, a light show and leather chairs .. there was a pole too, but I'm not sure what that was for ....

So we get in, in front of a crowed of about 100 people, and make our way out. Took for fucking ever due to the retardeness of Singapore to hold a 35,000 person concert (apparently) in the middle of nowhere with no public transport. Think Eden Park ... but in the middle of Karaka. Anyway, so fianlly get there, the drivers like I'm gonna fucking own this, and drives right through the crowds of people to drop us off about 2 metres from the entrance. It was fucking epic.

Anyway, get in, make our way to in front of the sound box, have about 15 mins to get some beers in , before they come on stage. So, I guess I should now right about the concert.

Nigh on 3 hours of their greatest hits. Fucking epic set list. Yeah, Axl is fat, and his voice is pretty bloody ordinairy these days, but the band is as good as they have ever been. Slash is just a god, Duff still has it (in a truck driver with egg on his shirt sort of way), Fortus is more of a lead guitarist than an Izzy, but he let nobody down, and Ferrer is arguably a better rock drummer than either Adler or Sorum are (to give credit to Adler though, the Appetite sound is lot to do with his drumming). They didn't miss a beat. The light show was awesome, the rig and setup was great. If I wanted to complain, I could say it wasn't even close to loud enough, but if you read the above, I was ok with that. And maybe the setlist was perhaps just a little too long ... don't get me wrong, but when you play November Rain (complete with about 5 minute intro of Layal), Coma and Estranged in full ... well, thats about 45 minutes right there. I would have happily sacrified a bit of knockin on heavens door, chinese democracy songs, and etc to really hear more of Axl giving it top beans as opposed to saving his voice. 90 minutes of old Axl, would shit on 2hrs 45 of new. He did his best on the jungle intro, and gave it shit for parts of Nightrain, Paradise & a couple of others .... but you know, he's old, he's fat - there's lawns to tell kids to get off these days and cheeseburgers to eat.

Annyway ... so it finished up at around 11:15am ... and given the complete clusterfuck of traffic, we were wondering how it was going to work. Litttle did we know ...

The driver of the baller-mobile, had basically ignored a whole bunch of Singaporeans cannot, and blasted his beast right through where you were supposed to stop and parked up EXACTLY where he dropped us off. People were streaming out everywhere wondering what the fuck this van was - he had paradise playing this time, with full light show, full smoke effects literlaly right in front of the main fucking gate. Oh, and he'd fully restocked the bar with fresh cans of beers, vodka, mixers and kit. I asked him if he had a cheeky durry ... at which point he leanded over and casually flicked open the glove box to see a selection of MArlboros finest. Unbelieveable.

Anyway, the boys piled in, and after rejecting about 5,000 people looking for a way home who were asking to join, trundled off through the crowed. We had the windows down, GnR on full tit, beers flowing for the 90 minutes it took to get back, literally crawling through swathes and swathes of people slowly trudging back to their cars/buses. IT WAS EPIC.

Anyway, the rest sort of peters out after that ... it was another late night and slow start yesterday, but nobody wants to read about that.

So, in summary ... yeah, GnR still have it, Axl less so, but fuckin hell, he gives it a go. Singapore is not a great place to go for a rock concert, but if you organise things right ... there is simply nowhere better.

It's not worth doing any analysis on the Cane uproar.

Fact of the matter is that if that exact tackle had been done by the Irish, nobody, on either side would give a shit. All these "neutrals" would be quiet and there would be no demanding of anything.

It's a contact sport, these sorts of things happen - everybody knows it, everybody agrees it. Until it's the AB's and then suddenly it's a big issue.

Call me tin foil hat, whatever. As far as I'm concerned that's fact.

First Blood (Rambo)

'twas on last night when I was about to hit the hay, but as we all know, first rule of being a man is that when Rambo is on, you watch Rambo.

5 Rambo's out of 5 Rambo's.

Because Rambo.

@MiketheSnow said in Coronavirus memes:

Jesus, that is fucking rough.

Have forwarded the shit out of it though.

@mariner4life When did you last listen to In Your Honour?

After trudging through the two previous albums I was pretty bored of the Foo's and unexcited about this coming on. But was pleasantly surprised.

@Hooroo said in What are you listening to, right now................:

@voodoo said in What are you listening to, right now................:

Listening to Pearl Jam's new album Gigaton on the deck in the sun right now

Verdict??

It's Pearl Jam. Wouldn't say they have tried anything new. It's a good listen tho.

@sparky yeah I’ve heard murmurings ... this been confirmed yet or just rumours?

Massive rise in the UK today of deaths. Although expected it still hits when you see it.

Keep telling myself that 3500 a day die in the UK on average regardless, but today it doesn’t really help with emotions.

@Catogrande said in NH International Rugby:

Wasn't quite sure where to put this, here seems as good a place as any.

The Walrus has excelled himself

https://www.ultimaterugby.com/news/carter-and-wilkinson-ranked-10th-and-8th-in-the-10-best-flyhalves-off-all-time-by-british-pundit/626299?fbclid=IwAR1sC7Ql8O9a4JdmNSN7Nc6YeBOMl6liBs73-hRAr9SUZdxtNvX066tQJIk

Him and Barnes are just trying to stay relevant at the moment. Barnes is publish lists which most people would agree with, Jones just publishing his friends and rare Welshies basically. Hernandez he's always rated, pretty much so on club play.

So, I've been doing a Foo Fighters a thon at home. I just listened to Concrete & Gold the other day and that got me really into them again so I thought I'd listen to each album and rate them in order.

Firstly, I must say, the Foo's music doesn't really evolve. And it does get bloody tiresome when you are on to about your 6th hour in a row of Grohl's voice. Anyway, here's my thoughts after all this time.

Foo Fighters - The mix has really dated. In kind of the same way Appetite has. IT's very snare drum heavy and sounds quite tinny. However it is still a cracking album. I'd love for them to release a live concert of just this album. Suspect modern mixing would lift this up into the stratosphere. Standout Track - Alone+Easy Target

The Colour And The Shape - This album just put me back at 2nd year uni, old farm road in Hamilton, first year flatting. It really is an absolute peach. The mix has dated just a little bit, but still sounds super modern next to Foo Fighters. Standout Track - My Hero.

There Is Nothing Left To Lose - Grohl himself has said that this and next album were not great in his opinion and basically just fillers. I used to strongly disagree. However, having listened to all of them now in a short space of time, I agree with him. Not bad albums, but you get a little tired of them when doing a Foo-athon. Standout Track - Stacked Actors. I appreciate this will be probably unique but I first heard this song live and I thought it was fucking amazing. Every time I hear it now I'm right back in that mosh pit with a short haired grohl in a white/black long sleeve t, shorts and chuck taylors less than 5m away from me giving it full beans. Great moment.

One By One - Same as previous, an album full of generic Foo's songs. Some catchy numbers, and I can happily hum/sing along to all of them, but I guess I like to be "challenged" a bit more now by music that I listen to. Standout Track - Come Back. Honours to All My Life, as I've seen the Foo's 6 times now I think, and 3 of them they opened with All My Life. Not a better song to get a crowd going fucking nuts. Done done on to the next one ......FUCK YEAH!!!!

In Your Honor - This was easily my least fave FF album ... until this listen athon. I really enjoyed it, as they started to move a bit more away from the previous two generic albums and mix things up a bit. I've not listened to this in years, but it'll be on more regular repeat now. Standout Track - DOA. Acoustic Standout Track - Cold Day In The Sun.

Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace - Perhaps a shit back more to the generic but still a good album. Perhaps a bit more peaky than others with some ordinary tracks in amongst some killer ones. Pretender, Summers End, Come Alive and then my favourite FF song of all time. Standout Track - Let It Die

Wasting Light - Probably where the FF shifted (as little as it was, but it was a shift) to their new sound. A bit heavier, a bit more punky. Dave certainly started to scream a lot more from this point. This album also reminds me of the 2011 RWC which is a pretty good memory :). Standout Track - I Should Have Known

Sonic Highways - Shorter, more experimental album which just didn't really work for me. Not sure why. Nothing necessarily wrong with it, but undoubtedly my least favourite in this list. Standout Track - Outside.

Concrete and Gold - A modern classic. It really is. It's kind of like the FF took lessons from every single other album and put them together on this one. It's sort of like a generic Foo's album by then lifted in every facet. Yes, it does bring back some great personal memories of moving to the UK, building my car and taking some time the working life as well, but like In Your Honor, if you've not listened to it in a while, put it on. You'll be amazed at how good it is. Standout Track - Run, Honorable mention to Sunday Rain.

So there you go. MajorRage's definitive guide to the Foo Fighters back catalogue. I expect pretty much so nobody to agree.

@MiketheSnow said in Coronavirus - Overall:

Needed now more than ever.

Publicise the shit out of it.

Show the public that if they don't fucking wise up and listen to government directives then they will be admitted to a system which is understaffed, understocked, and unprepared.

That's providing factual information not fear mongering.

My mate who sent me the link is an ICU nurse.

He wrote 'Ironically I can guarantee you many of the doctors in the NHS voted Tory'

Yes, that is one angle. The other is balancing the power of fear. People must feel secure in the NHS, regardless of it's short comings. Having said that, I don't agree with gag orders either, so perhaps I contradict myself internally.

Nothing ironic in NHS doctors voting Tory. Anybody could see the opposite party's views on what they were going to do to the NHS was unachievable, would cause shocking disruption to society in general and would also see them significantly out of pocket themselves, in unnecessary additional taxation.

@MiketheSnow said in Coronavirus - Overall:

@MajorRage said in Coronavirus - Overall:

@MiketheSnow said in Coronavirus - Overall:

Here were go

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/mar/31/nhs-staff-gagged-over-coronavirus-protective-equipment-shortages

Time for a whole tranche of incompetent jobsworths killing the NHS from the inside to be jettisoned.

Every member of staff should pull a Spartacus.

The fuckwits can't send them all home.

Maybe I'm missing some local terminology / cliches, but could you please elaborate on your additional points?

What is your view on the article? I genuinely don't know! Am curious though, as I have one and wonder if we are on the same side of the ledger.

Hope not, as agreeing is boring ...

Gag order.

Shut up or you're done.

Bollocks in my book.

If all NHS staff post that the PPE measures in place are inadequate or non-existent then it will nullify the bullying of middle management.

In normal times I would agree with that. But I do think there is a fine balance between publicising the short comings of the NHS and putting fear into the general population.

@MiketheSnow said in Coronavirus - Overall:

Here were go

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/mar/31/nhs-staff-gagged-over-coronavirus-protective-equipment-shortages

Time for a whole tranche of incompetent jobsworths killing the NHS from the inside to be jettisoned.

Every member of staff should pull a Spartacus.

The fuckwits can't send them all home.

Maybe I'm missing some local terminology / cliches, but could you please elaborate on your additional points?

What is your view on the article? I genuinely don't know! Am curious though, as I have one and wonder if we are on the same side of the ledger.

Hope not, as agreeing is boring ...