What does this beauty spot have in common with the England 23 selected to play Ireland on Sunday?
The only other exciting news to report is that Ticht found an old version of AoD still extant.
On the telly this week
Friday 21st February
| Crusaders 33 – 13 Highlanders | 06:05 | Sky Sports Action |
| Wales U20 14 – 11 France U20 | 19:35 | BBC Two Wales / BBC Sport website/ BBC red button |
| Zebre 0 – 28 Munster | 19:35 | FreeSports |
| Edinburgh 41 – 14 Connacht | 19:35 | Premier Sports 2 |
| Ospreys 13 – 21 Leinster | 19:35 | TG4 / Premier Sports 1 |
| England U20 21 – 39 Ireland U20 | 19:45 | RTÉ Two / YouTube / Sky Sports Mix |
| Sale 36 – 3 Leicester | 19:45 | BT Sport 1 |
Saturday 22nd February
| Rebels 34 – 26 Sharks | 03:45 | Sky Sports Action |
| Chiefs 14 – 26 Brumbies | 06:05 | Sky Sports Arena |
| Reds 64 – 5 Sunwolves | 08:15 | Sky Sports Arena |
| Stormers v Los Jaguares | 13:05 | Sky Sports Action |
| Italy v Scotland | 14:15 | ITV |
| Bulls v Blues | 15:15 | Sky Sports Action |
| Wales v France | 16:45 | BBC One / S4C |
| Glasgow v Dragons | 19:35 | Premier Sports 1 |
| Ulster v Cheetahs | 19:35 | Premier Sports 2 |
Sunday 23rd February
| Wales v France (women) | 12:00 | BBC Two Wales / S4C |
| England v Ireland (women) | 12:45 | RTÉ Two / BBC Sport website / Sky Sports Action |
| Exeter v Northampton | 13:00 | BT Sport 1 |
| England v Ireland | 15:00 | ITV |
| Italy v Scotland (women) | 16:10 | BBC Alba / website / red button |
| Cardiff v Treviso | 17:15 | S4C / Premier Sports 2 |
| Scarlets v Southern Kings | 17:15 | Premier Sports 1 |
Ovally Balls 
@ticht
‘Shiel (please dog let it be Shiel)’
Pfft. It’ll be Pyrgos & Groom. Cockers seems to have a strange blindness on this matter. Otherwise probably about right.
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Very patched up backline. Maybe Lee Lo will come back to lend some experience, but that’s the only upside. Whatever back row is put out will be decent. Front 5 will be piss, irrespective of who plays. Tovey will be the worst starting outside half in professional rugby this weekend.
Cardiff only have wins over the two Saffa teams, Benetton, the Ospreys and Dragz this season, so you can look forward to a bonus point win.
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The Kingz would fancy taking that team.
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I’m saddened to learn that The Establishment have now decided to impose a UK entry into the Eurovision Song Contest rather than relying on the Song For Europe process that made it better in my day. It means we are denied such beauties as this one
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Embra to face the might of the ‘diff
15. Damien Hoyland (73)
14. Eroni Sau (9)
13. James Johnstone (48)
12. George Taylor (19)
11. Duhan van der Merwe (56)
10. Simon Hickey (33)
9. Charlie Shiel (15)
1. Jamie Bhatti (11)
2. Mike Willemse (17)
3. Simon Berghan (77)
4. Lewis Carmichael (44)
5. Grant Gilchrist (147) CAPTAIN
6. Nick Haining (10)
7. Luke Crosbie (38)
8. Viliame Mata (70)
Replacements: 16. Cameron Fenton (19) 17. Pierre Schoeman (39) 18. Pietro Ceccarelli (23) 19. Sam Thomson (7) 20. John Barclay (13) 21 Henry Pyrgos (34) 22. Jaco van der Walt (54) 23. Chris Dean (87)
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Cockers wrongfooting me there. Shiel Starts (yay!) and no Groom to be seen. first choice centres rested but Taylor / Johnstone decent enough. Schoemann also doesn’t start for a change.
Not a first choice team but still a decent pack especially the back row. should be some impact from the bench.
Yosoy’s pessimism means I’ll be disappointed with anything less than 5 points.
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Hopefully Sau will have discovered how to catch a ball (and be given the ball in space). I rate Taylor he’s really stepped up this year and in many respects not much of a step down from Scott. Johnstone has good points but he’s not a Bennett. We really need to unearth a decent up & coming SQ 10 from somewhere.
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I’m reasonably happy with that, Chimpie, the big miss is Scott but Taylor has been excellent this season, he’s really stepped up and taken his chance. Any other year he’d have played himself into the 12 jersey, but Scott is back to his very best.
We’ve got fifteen players listed as unavailable due to injury and international duty, so with that in mind it’s not a bad side at all
I’d love to see Bhatti step up and get to the form he showed in the latter half of last season.
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Weedgies to visit the blue evil
G Bryce; T Seymour, H Jones, N Grigg, K Steyn; P Horne, G Horne; A Seiuli, G Turner, D Rae, T Swinson, R Harley, R Wilson (captain), T Gordon, M Fagerson.
Substitutes: M Dolokoto, A Allan, E Mcquillin, A Davidson, C Gibbins, J Dobie, R Jackson, N Matawalu.
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The bad guys
H Keenan; D Kearney, J O’Brien, J Tomane, J Lowe; H Byrne, L McGrath; P Dooley, S Cronin, M Bent, R Baird, S Fardy (captain), J Murphy, W Connors, M Deegan.
Substitutes: J Tracy, M Milne, J Aungier, J Dunne, R Ruddock, J Gibson-Park, C Frawley, The Ferg.
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@Ticht.
It’s more than decent all things considered. If Taylor continues as he has done he’ll be in the international set up next season I’d hope. Especially like that back row, serious fizzicality, pace & some skillz too.
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We’ll probably have a yos-pleasing horrorshow after all this.
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Feeling more than a little smug right now. The disc drive on my PS4 wasn’t working for some reason and I managed to deduce from conversations with my 2 boys that there may be more than one disc in the player. So took my entire PS4 apart this morning, removed the disc drive and found 2 PS4 games, a Thomas the Tank Engine DVD and a Wonky Donkey DVD all rammed into the slot (karl).
I pulled those out and rebuilt the PS4 and it works! All screws accounted for too. With minimal fucking skillz.
When you don’t have to go to work there is so much you can achieve.
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‘When you don’t have to go to work there is so much you can achieve.’
I know, I was off sick for two days last week and made some great progress on Fallen Order.
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Kudos to anyone who can approximate the correct pronunciation of J AUNGIER….
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Anger?
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Jagger
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Oh yeah!
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Like “grainger” without the GR.
Quite a well known street in Dublin city centre is Aungier St.
Others to trip up the unsuspecting tourist and amuse locals are D’Olier st – Doh-leer and Dorset st always called Dor-SET St
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Ow-n jeer
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Craigs… next time you’re in Dublin – flag a cab at the airport and ask to go Ow-n jeer Street – the taxi driver will love you…. he’ll regale his passengers with that for the next 5 years ….
There must be some from British cities, no? I suppose Glasgow with Milngavie? Cork has “South Main Street” in which all three words are equally stressed – never SOUTH Main Street
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Kirkaldy
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there are quite a few of these in Scotland, I’m going to have to have a think though.
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OK here are some
Culzean
Freuchie
findochty
Kirkudbright
Ballachullish (nice pyritic slate here)
Wemyss Bay
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And the surname Menzies.
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No “L” (if IIRC) and Strathaven is Stray-ven???
Yeah, we got loads here too – mainly though on where you put the stress – Clones is Cloh-ness, Thurles is Thur-less, Cashel (as in Rock of….) is Cash-ull.
More kudos if you get anywhere near the correct pronunciation of Youghal* – seaside town east of Cork – famously associated – in their own minds anyway – with Walter Raleigh (apparently pronounced Raw-lee not Rally)
* helps if you’re from the US South
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Isn’t the issue there that a lower case “g” was confused with a cursive script “z” ??
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that’s part of it
Youghal = Yule?
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Milngavie & Finzean are the two of those Scottish names that always spring to my mind. Then there are places like Anstruther which are pronounced as per, but not if you are local.
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Kilncadzow.
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And of course, CMW’s favourite, Lesmahagow. Which, disappointingly, is pronounced as it sounds.
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Youghal = Yawl (or Y’all)
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Thinking about difficult to pronounce Czech and Welsh place names but once you know the rules of the language they’re not so difficult. Near me is a place called Hrdlořezy, which means cutthroat.
Bicester, Leicester, Gloucester, Cirencester is one of my favourites – features in a Will Hay WWII propaganda movie called The Goose Steps Out.
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Kilncadzow is pronounced Kill-cay-gae.
Obviously.
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Worcestershire is pronounced Lee & Perrins
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I refuse to pronounce Swansea correctly.
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If you’re down in the dumps about Covid-19 watch this and the world will feel better
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Squidge! (Italy are actually quite interesting)
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Thanks OT. Not the lifeline from the dumps that works entirely for me though. More like a rung on a stepladder.
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Your Mighty Wolves went through in Europe, despite losing tonight. Included a ‘brilliant’ open goal miss from Neto.
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Trisk – when I eventually I’ll get to Dublin. I can’t think of a street but ‘Putney’ gets mispronounced quite regularly.
Especially a posh guy I met once who told me he cycled to the City from Pooot Neigh. The last part was almost exactly like a horse.
Also, my local village of Biddenden is quite hard for people to pronounce at first. No syllable is emphasised over another so in regular conversation people either get scoffed at for saying BidDENden or mumbling ‘biddndddn’.
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One of the syllables must be stressed, craigs. It’s kind of a rule. My guess is the first syllable.
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OT
brilliant – thanks.
my knee feels a whole lot better!
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Can’t really go wrong with place names in Wales, all pretty straightforward really.
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I suppose you could go wrong on Wind Street in Swonzee.
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Most of the English ‘say not what you see’ ones that come to mind are contractions of a sort like all TomP’s ‘cesters. Wymondham in Norfolk would be a favourite, perhaps I’m just a windy person.
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@BB – You’ll regret it when I start singing.
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“One of the syllables must be stressed, craigs. ”
Poor Craigs.
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If you don’t want your syllables stressed then don’t go to TomP about them. I guess we knew that already though.
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“Tovey will be the worst starting outside half in professional rugby this weekend.”
That’s just the coronavirus making your point for you.
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