@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!

Well done, lad!

https://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/other-sports/126150980/paul-coll-becomes-first-new-zealander-to-win-the-british-open-mens-squash-title

Biggest win by someone from Greymouth in a while.

Dave McKenzie won the Boston marathon, but he was from Runanga.

How have I never seen Pinky the Loving Cat before?

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!

@sparky said in Savea goooone Skudder in:

@Crucial Selling Comics.

Worst Wing Ever!

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.

@mariner4life

In the end it's Hindley who cracks Carapaz on the final mountain stage. He's got almost 90 seconds going into the final time trial, which should be enough as long as he stays upright.

A surprise to me, I guess. Like many others I thought Hindley had got lucky with his 2nd place in the 2020 Giro - but, he's shown he's an elite rider. Probably not quite in the Pogacar, Roglic, Bernal class, but in the next group on their heels.

@Stargazer I've only seen a few minutes of this, but that Sititi looks promising!!!

@Stargazer You'll know more about the process than me.

It was clearly dangerous, but also looked reasonably clear that Matera got lucky and the guy landed on his shoulder first, so I thought the referees ruled it consistent with instructions.

Some interesting stage in the Giro have culminated in a direct shoot-out between Carapaz and Hindley over the final three stages. Carapaz has three seconds over the Aussie and neither has been able to crack the other to date.

Landa is a minute back, but it's hard to see him making the time up - he's been able to stick with the other two, but they've outpaced him in sprints to the line and I think he's the weakest time trialist. I guess he'll have to go all in on the fi8nal mountain stage and hope to crack the others.

Akmeida had been hanging in, just slightly off the pace in the mountains, but threatening to stay close enough to steal it in the final time trial - but, he shipped more than a minute in the stage a couple of nights ago and then tested positive for covid and is out.

@Toddy said in Crusaders. v Reds:

The thing I don't like about the arm/shoulder mitigation is that it's often through the actions of the player being dumped on their head as to whether the tackler is yellow or red carded. Stick your arm out to try and save your neck and the tackler is often given a yellow for what should clearly be a red card.

It's an odd rule really. In big games it arguably creates an incentive for the tackled player to "take one for the team" and try to fall awkwardly.

@Chris Hopefully Hall and Reece are both OK!

@Chris Bower's popping up around the park as well. Going alright this year!

@Machpants said in All Blacks 2022:

@Chris-B Interestingly Foster said

“36 [players] for the first squad, that’s sort of a standard Steinlager Series-sized squad, but that can change,” Foster told The Breakdown.

“Maybe it won’t go up, but it could change slightly down based on injuries and who we have left standing after Super Rugby.”

To me that means if, say, ALB is unavailable they may not pick someone to cover him unless they really need to - they are going to tightly focus on who they want. Really any non capped players have got the proverbial ice cubes hope in hell I think

I reckon he'll pick 36 if he's allowed to - unless there's a whole heap of injured players and he's reaching the point in the barrel where he'd have to start picking people who are pretty clearly never going to be test standard.

I think there will be one or two uncapped players. I could easily see Newell making it and maybe a loosehead prop. RTS or Sullivan in the midfield - maybe even TUG. Faingaanuku or Perofeta in the outside backs.

Interesting question will be how they structure the make-up of the squad.

They'll surely need:
6 props
3 hookers
4 locks
6 loosies
3 halfbacks
2 first fives
4 midfielders
5 outside backs

Which is 33 players - and then they've got three sort of discretionary spots - one of which is probably another loose forward. If DMac happens to be available, another could be him as a third first five and fullback cover. But, it could also easily be an extra lock, an extra midfielder, an extra outside back, or even a seventh prop.

Wouldn't surprise me if they also pick at least a couple of extras to train with the squad - the likes of Newell or RTS if they don't make the initial selection.

Frizell is quite a lot more than 108kgs.

Remember when Fozzie said he could potentially cover lock?

Read this excellent article about how big they want these guys for various positions.....and that's 4 years ago.

Sport, Rugby

ABs' weight evolution: Super-size only

The All Blacks, in the forwards at least, have become a team for only the super-sized.