For any Rugby fans on here... I watched the Melbourne Storm vs Canberra Raiders NRL semi-final today (won by Melbourne). One of the Melbourne wingers is a Fijian called Marika Koroibete - he is swapping to Rugby Union after the NRL Final and is being fast-tracked into the Wallaby squad for their European tour in November. He's one to watch out for - at 5'11" not very tall, but built like a muscle-bound locomotive & just as fast. Can see him doing some serious damage on the tour...
My daughter is living in Melbourne at the moment and is taking the opportunity to go to a lot of sporting events - Melbourne seems quite a centre
Once again, the question arises as to how much stronger Fiji, Samoa and Tonga would be if their best players weren't regularly pinched - primarily by New Zealand.
I don't think that Tim Murtagh celebrated as much as his Middlesex team mates on Friday night as he's currently playing an ODI for Ireland in South Africa.
It's not just the Kiwis & Aussies who benefit from the World Rugby's lax Regulation Eight - England, Wales and Scotland all do so quite regularly, having also had Australian, New Zealander and South African players represent them.The Regulation simply needs to be tightened up - again - but at least it's no longer possible to represent the senior XV of two countries as used to be the case. No more instances like Topo Rodriguez who went to bed one night a Jaguar and woke up the next day a Wallaby... The rules currently require either a residential qualification (36 continuous months) in the country you wish to represent, eligibility through a parent or grandparent having been born there, or having represented that country's second XV or sevens team. The problem with the last criterion is that some countries do have a designated second team (eg England with their Saxons team) whereas others have their U20's as their second team - leading to obvious confusion & arguments. One thing not covered by the Regulation is code switching. Koroibete, for example, qualifies to play Union for Australia as he has lived and played League there continuously since 2012. Prior to that, he played League in and for Fiji. I'm not too sue that anything can be done about such cases though.
MB now is in the same profession as me... semi-retired both of us of course... My step dad was an MCC member so we had quite a few tickets etc..
One of the legends of golf passes away - on the eve of the Ryder Cup. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-37469392
A really contrasting first day in the Ryder Cup. The Americans dominated in the morning but Rory and co came fighting back in the afternoon.
I don't know if any of have ever seen any Gaelic Games, but the replay of the All-Ireland Football Final was very close but I think the mistakes Mayo made handed the title to Dublin. I certainly wouldn't have said that after the first 10 minutes when Dublin were up by 4.
Have watched a few. I love the way the fans wear the old fashioned rosettes, with wording like Up Cork or Up Mayo - my favourite being Up Down.
Yes - he is not a happy bunny. Says how strange it is that every engine that has had problems this year has been his. He is still p*ssed off that they swapped his and Rosberg's engineers this year. German Mercedes consipracy anyone? Hamilton seems to think so.
As usual in the singles we are putting up a good fight with Stenson and Pieters in fine form but think USA will just do enough. Nightmare week for Willet (his brother's attack on the USA maybe had an effect)
England appear to be rushing headlong towards defeat in Dhaka - 161/8 chasing 273 to beat Bangladesh.
Yes - we were a bit lucky in the first test too. Going to be really tough in India! Some say we might even lose 5-0!
Given the number of players they have and their enthusiasm for the game you'd think Bangladesh should be a force in world cricket in the future. They might need to work on the pitches a bit though...the current one might come in for a bit of criticism. It certainly showed England's inexperience, incompetence even, against good spin bowling. Pitches in the County Championship which take a decent bit of turn tend to attract points deductions!
