Hello and welcome to a hastily-created blog to serve former followers of AoD and any other random rugby union fanatics as well.
Now that rugby season is upon us, it seemed intolerable not to have somewhere to share our pain, our hopes and our squabbles.
Please pile in BTL! There will no doubt be much tinkering with the site. Suggestions for improvements are welcome but may be discarded out of hand. We do not possess Sag-like wizardry.
thaumaturge
Ovally Balls 
@expro
I do remember Norm Hadley. Famous for interrupting a couple of miscreants on the tube who were giving someone a hard time. By ‘interrupting’ I meant “being physically assertive towards”.
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‘I see others – cough – don’t rate Kwagga. Prolly ’cause they’re Stormers and Bulls fans. Blinkered, blinded and bereft of insight.’
Deebee is just grumpy as his side got beaten by a side that only had 13 men on the field
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@pro
Oh, that’s sad to hear about Norm Hadley – missed that somehow.
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Hello, everyone. Hope you can recieve this
Thanks to Thaum for setting this up and Brookter for putting it on AoDTwatter.
Missed you all so much over the last few months. Anynews on his Sagness? Hope he Is ok
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@expro
Awful news. Dont know why I only heard about it now. ‘Stormin’ Norm Hadley was a legend of rugby, a Canadian great and a Wasps stalwart.
In the words of Mickey Skinner “a fine figure of a man”
Vale
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Haven’t watched a great deal of RU since the 6N.
One game I did watch was that incredible Aus performance against NZ. What a game!
I have a problem with these intra-6N ‘warm ups’. Would it not be better for the likes of Wal, Eng, Ire to play, for example, Romania Georgia or Namibia rather than re-hashing the fixtures they play every year in the 6N.
Imagine the emotions of a ‘2nd tier’ player running out at Twickenham, Aviva etc.. Or, even better facing the top 6N teams in Tblisi or Bucharest etc.
Plus, from the pov of the 6N players, the 6N itself is too emotional. You can’t play a genuine ‘warm up’ game against your greatest rivals
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How many consecutive comments are needed before I steal this blog?
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In the very same week that Hadley died former Canada, Rotherham and Doncaster centre John Cannon died of cardiac arrest aged just 35 – a really shit week for Canadian rugby.
Weird that neither death seemed to make the international news, despite both players having played at World Cups and for foreign teams.
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‘I have a problem with these intra-6N ‘warm ups’. Would it not be better for the likes of Wal, Eng, Ire to play, for example, Romania Georgia or Namibia rather than re-hashing the fixtures they play every year in the 6N.’
Scotland are playing Georgia.
‘cos we’re heroic.
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We’re also playing France.
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wonder which France and which Scotland will turn up for those games.
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@Utna
Yeah, it would be a great chance for the Big Guns to play the likes of Romania.
Although having said that a Tier One team with places to play for fresh out of training camp could absolutely hammer a Tier Two team. Or, they could struggle and suffer embarrassment.
I reckon it must come down to TV audience and selling tickets.
This agreement that England and Wales will play backups in the home game does seem odd.
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“Scotland are playing Georgia.
‘cos we’re heroic.”
It’s a brave fixture to play. They are massive and occasionally push T1 teams all the way (Ireland 2007). Anything other than a decent win and the doubts might start to creep in.
I like what the ABs used to do: Probables v Possibles.
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@expro
Yes, you are right. Ticket and tv sales are the reason – I didnt think about that aspect.
On the playing side, there would obviously be a risk of say, England, experiencing a “humilating” loss to a lesser light (who am kidding? Only Wales lose to unfashionable teams with any regularity)
But, it is unlikely. And from England (or whoevers) perspective it is a chance to try things out and build combos in a relatively low pressure game (especially if it was away from home.
Let alone the massive benefit to the ‘2nd tier’ team
Opportunity wasted from a global game perspective imho.
And its not as if a warm up game between 6N teams will replicate the intensity of the 6N itself (or RWC) anyway
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Deebee is just grumpy as his side got beaten by a side that only had 13 men on the field
Pfft! Currie Cup is ours to lose.
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So this brackety shit works on here! Woohoo!
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I’ll leave. Hugs to you all! Great to be back! Oh and for anyone who used the Graun for their rugby updates during the Great Rupture, you’ll be pleased to know the Boks won the Rugby Championship. No mention of it anywhere on that useless rag.
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Wasn’t the RC just a bit of a kick-about this year in preparation for the RWC?
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It’s all about the skrilla. I don’t understand why someone would pay a not insubstantial amount of £s to watch Wales play England or Ireland in an occasion that’s not going to be as good as a 6 Nations match, but 70 odd thousand people have paid that money and the WRU desperately needs that money to function, so that’s why we have these games.
They are dull, dull fixtures, mind.
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The Curry Cup
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These warm up games are a big money spinner. Especially judging by the amount I’ve shelled out for tickets.
M-field will be mostly full for both home games I hear, good for the SRU cash flow. If not mine.
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Does make me wonder why I go to rugby games. Especially Scotland and Embra ones. Costs money and, more often than not, pain.
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@Dova
As far as I can tell, the only way to enable a Reply button is also to turn on the awful nesting, so I’ve plumped for the lesser of two evils.
You can do it the old-fashioned way with an html href tag, like what I’ve done here.
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You can do it the old-fashioned way with an html href tag, like what I’ve done here.
We’ve all become too lazy. Time to go manual again.
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Is it or
Ridiculously pleased by my small haul of onions this year (considering the weather we’ve had). Not quite so chuffed with the garlic.
Hoping I’ll be able to upload the picture otherwise this post will make no sense (so what’s new?)
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Ach, bugger. OK techy-minded bods. How do I add a photie? Do I need to do fancy stuff, ‘cos if I do there’s nae chance. You’ll just have to believe me about the size of my onions…..
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BB – you can upload your photie to a photo-sharing site (for example), and copy its URL ending in .jpg or .png, and include that in your post on its own separate line with a return after it.
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eg
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Ach bugger. OK, thanks Thaum. I’ll have a closer look later – tea-time now!
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Test
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Not sure why that didn’t work, BB; it seems to think the photo doesn’t exist at that URL. Do you have security on it?
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*Shudders*
In the spirit of ovally balls, that pic compels me to reveal that I had an op to remove a hydrocele swelling from the sack of joy last month. It was about the size of that onion apparently.
Happily I’m back to a pair of peeled and slender shallots now, and gravity must wait a little longer before having the last laugh.
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Thanks Thaum, but I’d just added the .jpg to the photo in Google photos, which was obviously a bad idea. I’ve loaded it to Google Drive so I’ll see if that works.
20190813_163502.jpg
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BB – if you bring up the photo in your browser, you should be able to right-click on it and ‘copy image address’. That’s what you need to paste.
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Last try. If this disnae work then I’m off to a corner to have a wee sob….
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Ah, well actually it works if you click on it, but you need a login!
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If I close the site and re-enter, it takes me to the 1st comment and I have to go forward a page at a time. Does anyone know a way round this (other than staying on the site, obviously)
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Thaum – I tried that, but the ‘image address’ seem to take up a huge amount of space, and I’m a bit reluctant to post that as I remember something similar causing problems on the old site.
‘Sigh’
Anyway, thanks for all the suggestions Thaum.
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Coddfish – that’s odd; it’s set to display the last page of comments. I’ve just tried the same thing, and that’s what I got. Have you maybe bookmarked the first page of comments rather than the home page?
BB – if your link is good, it won’t display all that rubbish.
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@Thaum – may as well get this out of the way. Do you need cash to run this? I don’t think we should wait a few years like last time.
Sorry, don’t mean to be awkward.
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Another way to navigate more quickly is to edit the URL at the top.
Mine currently looks like this: https://ovallyballs.sport.blog/2019/08/10/example-post/comment-page-7/#comment-341
If you want to jump to the 5th page of comments, for example, just change the page to 5 and delete the rest of the URL: https://ovallyballs.sport.blog/2019/08/10/example-post/comment-page-5/
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Craigs – thanks! But this is a free version so far. Which is why it’s a bit crap.
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“As far as I can tell, the only way to enable a Reply button is also to turn on the awful nesting, so I’ve plumped for the lesser of two evils”
Well yes, we don’t want an infestation of tiny wrens.
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Would have said giant wrens, but Iks’ logic last night was fairly convincing and now that he’s introduced his giant swollen testicles I’m certainly not going to argue with it.
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There are wee bits of AoD available on the Wayback Machine; sadly just the basic html of the home page: https://web.archive.org/web/20190320170348/https://www.aodrugby.com/#content
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I have another Welsh friend who has lived in Heidelberg and recently developed scrotal pearls. Not sure what this tells us.
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31 all final score between SA Schools A and Wales U18. Some top paaaaaace here:
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Thanks Thaum, that’s fixed it.
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