Pro-14 semi-final playoffs: can anyone stop the Blue Meanies? Can our heroes defeat plucky underdugs Edinburgh?
Then there’s North Island v South Island where, as Iks says, How does one pick ‘my’ team in that N – S clash? Darkness or more Darkness? Sauron vs King Ghidorah? Who are the underdogs?
And some English Premiership matches with some rather gruelling-looking midweek fixtures as well as the weekend ones.
And …
Happy 60th to TRISKAIDEKAPHOBIA!
On the telly
Friday 4th September
| Worcester v Bristol | 18:00 | BT Sport Extra |
| Leinster v Munster | 19:35 | Premier Sports 1 |
| Northampton v Exeter | 19:45 | BT Sport 1 |
Saturday 5th September
| North Island v South Island | 05:00 | Sky Sports Arena |
| Rebels v Western Force | 06:00 | Sky Sports Arena |
| Reds v Brumbies | 10:15 | Sky Sports Arena |
| Saracens v Wasps | 12:30 | BT Sport Extra |
| Harlequins v Bath | 14:00 | Channel 5 / BT Sport 1 |
| Leicester v Sale | 15:00 | BT Sport Extra |
| Gloucester v London Irish | 16:30 | BT Sport 1 |
| Edinburgh v Ulster | 19:35 | Premier Sports 1 |
Tuesday 8th September
| Bristol v Northampton | 19:45 | BT Sport 1 |
Wednesday 9th September
| Exeter v Gloucester | 17:30 | BT Sport Extra |
| Wasps v Leicester | 17:30 | BT Sport 1 |
| Sale v Saracens | 18:00 | BT Sport Extra |
| London Irish v Harlequins | 19:45 | BT Sport Extra |
| Bath v Worcester | 19:45 | BT Sport 1 |
Ovally Balls 
*speech.
Ffs Craig’s you dumbass.
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Yeah, Bananaman scores a cracker against Exeter.
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Wasps battering (stinging?) Tiggers. Doesn’t seem to matter if its Leicester’s A, B, C or D side.
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Tiggers are toast, apparently.
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Games abit unbalanced this evening
My only comment re the Exeter game is that Glos.appear to have only a remote relationship with the off-side rules………………otherwise, they kept trying and there was friendship nearly all round after the final whistle.
I contrast this with Saracens in their last game (farrell’s) where there seemed to be a strong whiff of entitlement about them. I see that Sale did the ecent thing to their ‘B’ team this evening.
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I accidentally started a rugby conversation at a work meeting today. It’s all because someone said they might wear a fez.
Feel I might have lost the room except for a small handful of people, including the Canadian Wasps supporter. (And where is LADOAB?)
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I was doing a bit of genealogical digging sort of and found out that the Irish great-grandfather I know little about went to a school called the Belfast Mercantile College. It’s now Belfast High School. His dad was a ship’s captain and lived in Newtonards so my g-grandfather boarded/lodged in Belfast.
The place he boarded was the headmaster’s house. The headmaster was a solid Presbyterian chap called Pyper and had a daughter and 5 sons. 2 of those lads were a few years older than my g-grandfather and were keen sportsmen. Talented as well as keen in fact that they were regulars for Cliftonville football club and both won a number of caps for Ireland around the turn of the 20th Century. Both went on to be ministers in the Presbyterian church.
Their names were Jack and Jim. Boring enough. The sister was Lilly. OK. The other lads had resplendent names – Spring Pyper, Drury Pyper and Wilber Pyper.
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Missed a trick not calling one of them Pied.
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Jacko?
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Windscreen?
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Wall?
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Scottish?
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Saddest steal ever. *Blows party pyper squeaker thing*
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Iksy (and BB), Cliftonville’s ground is called Solitude.
Reminds me of the old joke about George Best’s favourite team in Belfast – Distillery.
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@TomP – Great name. As Wikipedia says: “God knows when the main stand will be demolished to make way for a new main stand”.
Real Cricket’s home ground is called The Retreat. It’s a very important place in the history of mental health care (and not just mine).
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That’s exactly what you want for a name. Just read up on the history. It certainly is one of the key sites,
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I taught at a summer school in Hertfordshire 23 years ago. We were housed in this place: http://desertedplaces.blogspot.com/2017/01/the-abandoned-royal-masonic-school-for.html
Thanks to its proximity to Elstree, it’s been used in lots of films – they were making a terrible film with what’shisdace out of ER who isn’t Clooney or the young one at the time.
They also filmed a TV series about a football club for a Bastard’s satellite TV company and had a number of sets built on the site. One was a bar and they had real bottles of booze in this bar. Those bottles may have been liberated on our last night there.
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Discovered the term ‘motivated reasoning’ this morning. This will be very useful.
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That’s a close cousin to confirmation bias, no?
Player A smiles when he scores a try. If he’s Irish, it means he’s disrespecting the opposition. Worse than Ashton.
Player A smiles when she scores a try. If she’s not Itish, it means she’s happy in achieving one of the goals in the sport. Exemplary.
Player B doesn’t smile when he scores a try. If he’s Irish, it means he’s a box-kicking, choke-tackling automaton who fails to understand that try scoring is part of the game. Burn him.
Player B doesn’t smile when she scores a try. If she’s not Irish, it means she’s a professional who understands that the collective is more important than the individual. Admirable.
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I looked it up and decided it looks just like confirmation bias. And then I found a blog with the title “Confirmation Bias & Motivated Reasoning” and it says:
Which sounds like they are the more or less the same thing, but that’s probably my confirmation bias showing through.
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Motivated reasoning seams to involve more effort. Personally more into confirmation bias.
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There’s a fair bit of it around at the moment with Keir Starmer’s performances. It’s quite near wishful thinking as well.
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Oh the “forensic” Keir, of course. He’s a barrister.
Much of the covid-19 discussions are prime examples of this as well.
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Either way, they both fit neatly into our echo chambers. Life is so simple, thanks to them.
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ProWoo Dream Team:
15. Blair Kinghorn (Edinburgh Rugby)
14. Monty Ioane (Benetton Rugby)
13. Rey Lee-Lo (Cardiff Blues)
12. Stuart McCloskey (Ulster)
11. Duhan van der Merwe (Edinburgh)
10. Jaco van der Walt (Edinburgh)
9. John Cooney (Ulster)
1. Pierre Schoeman (Edinburgh)
2. Joseph Dweba (Toyota Cheetahs)
3. Leon Brown (Dragons)
4. Scott Fardy (Leinster)
5. Grant Gilchrist (Edinburgh)
6. Max Deegan (Leinster)
7. Will Connors (Leinster)
8. Bill Mata (Edinburgh)
Hmm.
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Looks weak. Can’t find a decent 4, so resort to an Aussie?
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No Ospreys…
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Ronald Bell, from Kool and the Gang has died, aged 68. Wouldn’t say they’re one of the more underrated groups, but possibly a looked over group? Love their stuff.
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Or overlooked.
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Confirmation involves going to church so I might go for the other thing. If I’d kept the biased relay test set I found when clearing stuff out at work I could’ve just used that, but it went in the skip.
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Anyway this carry on with Player A and Player B says nothing to me about my experience of playing rugby. What do they do when they don’t score a try?
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In that situation, they’re Keith Earls.
I think.
It’s been some time.
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Ian Ronald Bell is a fine 21st Century English cricketer.
Makes me wonder if he was named in part after the Kool & the Gang founder member.
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So it’s still Kool and the Gang then? Or is Kool dead too and it’s just a smaller Gang?
I need to know.
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Save the date people 04/01/2021 is my moving back in date*.
* proposed. Subject to the usual bullshit.
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Kool\s still alive. He’s Ronnoe’s brother.
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Shit typing.
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Shit typing.
Well if AI can write for the Guardian, I think we can accept Shit penning the odd opinion here.
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Does anyone on here not do shit typing? *
* apart from HRH Thaum of course
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Am on a laptop so can’t even blame my phone.
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Me. My typing is practicly purfect.
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I blame Tomp’s phone.
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I blame Tomp’s phone too. Can’t entirely absolve Tomp though.
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Diana Rigg RIP
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OT – like a boss
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No disrespect to the guy, but if Jaco van der Walt is the dream stand off, it’s.., well I’ll spare us all the obvious gag.
I like him, he has played well this season, and I guess he plays all the games whereas the star guys from other teams are missing for internationals or are rested or injured, ie Carberry, but if Edinburgh are to kick on we really need a top level fly half.
I’d like to think Chamberlain could be it.
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Hope so. ‘cos we’ve got naebody else
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I still haven’t fully recovered from the weekend’s disappointment, if I’d had an Edinburgh shirt it would have been in the bin.
Sick as a parrot, as they say.
A twelve point lead on 58 mins and we give it up.
Twelve, fucking bastarding shitting points.
Fuck.
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classic Embra lead-spunking
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Poor game management. Doing the wrong thing at the wrong times. so many opportunities blown.
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