Quite a lot of that sort of stuff towards the end, not that that’s terribly surprising. Italy were really good though and I thought deserved the win. They kept attacking when they were ahead too! That said I would have been quite happy to see an open, attacking, exciting Italy get turned over to make up for all the tedious shit from them over the years, might happen later on I suppose.
Despite having so many good players the Belgians never really managed to get the bit between their teeth when chasing the game, at least not in the way that Croatia and Switzerland did in the previous round anyway.
He played two five set games this week and was against a guy about 10 years younger and who had a walkover in the last round. He’ll never get back to where he was, but he’ll keep going as long as he feels able to.
The report suggests Shapovalov was simply better, Murray seven years ago could deal with Nadal, Federer and Djokovic when they themselves were at their peak.
I doubt Murray will be challenging for any Slams again, but he is one of our greatest sportsmen/women.
I had cause to look this up earlier, Fed won his first Slam in 2003, since then there have been around 65 GS tournaments, Fed has won 20, Nadal 20 and Djokovic 19, so 59 of them.
That must be unprecedented in any sport.
Probably though the differences between sports are quite important in that. I guess Nicklaus and Watson were pretty dominant in golf majors at one point and that’s a sport that very much lends itself to getting more different winners. Steve Davis and Stephen Hendry dominated the snooker world championship for a long time, but it was one taking over from the other. Similarly but with a bit of overlap and at least a racquet sport I think there were two guys called Khan who won an awful lot of squash for about twenty years between them.
I find the Federer/Nadal/Djokovic thing beyond tedious and can’t understand why anyone’s still watching. Surprised Murray has continued with his comeback as it seemed to be obvious he wasn’t going to be able to compete with the big three, but he must like playing.
For team sports (irrelevant really!) then as most football leagues are dominated by no more than three teams over many decades then there would be some obvious examples.
Those three tennis players are utterly remarkable of course, just time they moved on!
I read the other day that the 400m hurdles record was broken, having stood for a very long time. Down to new shoes apparently. Anyway I assumed that Ed Moses must still have had it, but it turns out someone broke it just after he was done. I do remember that he won every race he ran for years on end and it seemed like the same guy was second in most of them so perhaps that counts!
Carl Lewis had a really long unbeaten record in the long jump, but didn’t compete too many times in the event cos he was getting the big money in the sprints and being sanctimonious. And then Mike Powell beat him and got the world record in one leap.
Joe Davis is the king, no? He was world champ for about a million years when you had to win 95 frames to win a snooker match and doubled up to win the billiards world title a few times.
Just looked up the billiards championship. This pair of sentences caught the eye:
There were many challenges for the title before 1911, but the competition was then amended to cope with the influx of new professionals and it became an annual tournament. Walter Lindrum won the title in 1934, after which the championship collapsed. Only two challenge matches took place over the next three decades, one in 1951 and another in 1964.
While on a trip to Australia in 1968, Rex Williams decided to travel to Auckland to challenge the reigning champion Clark McConachy for the billiards title. This was the first contest since McConachy’s 1951 win and, aged 73 by this time, his play was affected by his Parkinson’s disease. In what turned out to be a poor-quality match, Williams won the title.
I’d always assumed that the ancient Italian count that the Hemingway character in A Farewell To Arms plays became billiards world champion in 1892 and still was.
“I find the Federer/Nadal/Djokovic thing beyond tedious and can’t understand why anyone’s still watching”
Whilst I sort of understand that point of view, these guys are the best generation of tennis players that there has ever been, for fans of the sport they really never had it so good.
The likes of Sampras on super fast Wimbledon was awesome, but boring.
@Ticht – Just too much of a good thing, they’ve made their point. I don’t want to keep seeing the same players in finals over and again (or the same teams in team sports).
I can still watch Federer for a bit as the way he moves is so wonderful, never really been excited by the others so much. Obviously he’s mostly been losing to the other two for a long time, partly just as he’s older so I find that uninspiring too.
It’s not about one single dominant figure, it’s about more than that.
Schumacher was untouchable and no one thought his record of championships could be beaten, now Hamilton has equalled the record and will probably beat it, if not this season then next, but it’s pretty obvious that both of them were in the best car at the time, so it’s not the same
Ray Edmonds’ 3-1 win over Norman Dagley in the 1985 World Billiards Championship must have nearly killed the sport. People would have been disappointed the year before when Mark Wildman only scored 1,045 in beating Eddie Charlton given that you needed 9000 plus in the 70s, but really.
@CMW, I like records being made, so I like to see them still at it, even if Joker is the only real contender now at the tail end, just as Fed was the main guy back in 2003.
In 1879, a variant called the “champion’s game” or “limited-rail” was introduced with the specific intent of frustrating the rail nurse. The game employed diagonal lines at the table’s corners to regions where counts were restricted. Ultimately, however, despite its divergence from straight rail, the champion’s game simply expanded the dimensions of the balk space defined under the existing crotch prohibition which was not sufficient to stop nursing.
cmw, that’s when they play one ball hitting the other two, or something, isn’t it?
I think I remember seeing something about it, basically you can go around the table non-stop, just hitting one ball off another against the rail, it could go on for months
@Ticht – It (straight rail) is the basic old European one played on a table with no pockets where cannons are the only way of scoring points and there are no restrictions on them.
English billiards, which is the only one I was properly familiar with other than bar billiards, also gives points for cannons and I think they’re the main way of scoring, but you can also score by potting balls (ordinarily the red as if you pot your opponent’s white it stays off the table) and going in-off.
just had a chat with this guy in Guildford, Bought a coffee off him and he saw my packet of tobacco without UK gov ads. Got chatting, and turns out he is a muso, took a trip to LA in March last year and had an interesting 3 months on the road in lockdown . Got fired at with rubber bullets at a BLM protest in LA too.
Ovally Balls 
Kunavula signed the day after Smith was all over Twitter having been signed for three months, so not really linked
The search continues
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This isn’t Belgium’s night
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Belgium with a mad scramble keep the ball out the net. Pity. They could’ve pulled level otherwise.
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Scots still make the best whisky.
That’s as may be, but proper whiskey is preferable.
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Pfft
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Job done, tiptoes quietly out the room.
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Someone shot the Italian keeper, terrible stuff
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Now another one, they are spraying bullets like it’s prohibition era New York
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Italia! Italia!
Brilliant game and well deserved win for Italy.
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Quite a lot of that sort of stuff towards the end, not that that’s terribly surprising. Italy were really good though and I thought deserved the win. They kept attacking when they were ahead too! That said I would have been quite happy to see an open, attacking, exciting Italy get turned over to make up for all the tedious shit from them over the years, might happen later on I suppose.
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Despite having so many good players the Belgians never really managed to get the bit between their teeth when chasing the game, at least not in the way that Croatia and Switzerland did in the previous round anyway.
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Murray lost 6-4 6-2 6-2
I don’t know if that spells the end for him, the heart is still willing, but the body is wearing out.
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He played two five set games this week and was against a guy about 10 years younger and who had a walkover in the last round. He’ll never get back to where he was, but he’ll keep going as long as he feels able to.
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The report suggests Shapovalov was simply better, Murray seven years ago could deal with Nadal, Federer and Djokovic when they themselves were at their peak.
I doubt Murray will be challenging for any Slams again, but he is one of our greatest sportsmen/women.
I had cause to look this up earlier, Fed won his first Slam in 2003, since then there have been around 65 GS tournaments, Fed has won 20, Nadal 20 and Djokovic 19, so 59 of them.
That must be unprecedented in any sport.
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Southern Hemisphere Rugby World Cup wins?
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Not a serious comment, by the way.
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“That must be unprecedented in any sport.”
Probably though the differences between sports are quite important in that. I guess Nicklaus and Watson were pretty dominant in golf majors at one point and that’s a sport that very much lends itself to getting more different winners. Steve Davis and Stephen Hendry dominated the snooker world championship for a long time, but it was one taking over from the other. Similarly but with a bit of overlap and at least a racquet sport I think there were two guys called Khan who won an awful lot of squash for about twenty years between them.
I find the Federer/Nadal/Djokovic thing beyond tedious and can’t understand why anyone’s still watching. Surprised Murray has continued with his comeback as it seemed to be obvious he wasn’t going to be able to compete with the big three, but he must like playing.
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For team sports (irrelevant really!) then as most football leagues are dominated by no more than three teams over many decades then there would be some obvious examples.
Those three tennis players are utterly remarkable of course, just time they moved on!
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Nadal’s record at Roland Garros is astonishing. He’s won 105, lost 3.
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I read the other day that the 400m hurdles record was broken, having stood for a very long time. Down to new shoes apparently. Anyway I assumed that Ed Moses must still have had it, but it turns out someone broke it just after he was done. I do remember that he won every race he ran for years on end and it seemed like the same guy was second in most of them so perhaps that counts!
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Murray’s mother has probably told him he’ll have to get a proper job if he stops playing.
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Carl Lewis had a really long unbeaten record in the long jump, but didn’t compete too many times in the event cos he was getting the big money in the sprints and being sanctimonious. And then Mike Powell beat him and got the world record in one leap.
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Joe Davis is the king, no? He was world champ for about a million years when you had to win 95 frames to win a snooker match and doubled up to win the billiards world title a few times.
Bit like Fred Perry in tennis and ping pong.
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Just looked up the billiards championship. This pair of sentences caught the eye:
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Bubka in pole-vaulting is another one.
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I’d always assumed that the ancient Italian count that the Hemingway character in A Farewell To Arms plays became billiards world champion in 1892 and still was.
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“I find the Federer/Nadal/Djokovic thing beyond tedious and can’t understand why anyone’s still watching”
Whilst I sort of understand that point of view, these guys are the best generation of tennis players that there has ever been, for fans of the sport they really never had it so good.
The likes of Sampras on super fast Wimbledon was awesome, but boring.
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Big Gove gossip going to break soon I think. My money – shagging The Cat.
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@Ticht – Just too much of a good thing, they’ve made their point. I don’t want to keep seeing the same players in finals over and again (or the same teams in team sports).
I can still watch Federer for a bit as the way he moves is so wonderful, never really been excited by the others so much. Obviously he’s mostly been losing to the other two for a long time, partly just as he’s older so I find that uninspiring too.
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It’s not about one single dominant figure, it’s about more than that.
Schumacher was untouchable and no one thought his record of championships could be beaten, now Hamilton has equalled the record and will probably beat it, if not this season then next, but it’s pretty obvious that both of them were in the best car at the time, so it’s not the same
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Ray Edmonds’ 3-1 win over Norman Dagley in the 1985 World Billiards Championship must have nearly killed the sport. People would have been disappointed the year before when Mark Wildman only scored 1,045 in beating Eddie Charlton given that you needed 9000 plus in the 70s, but really.
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@CMW, I like records being made, so I like to see them still at it, even if Joker is the only real contender now at the tail end, just as Fed was the main guy back in 2003.
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Enjoying reading up on billiards:
In 1879, a variant called the “champion’s game” or “limited-rail” was introduced with the specific intent of frustrating the rail nurse. The game employed diagonal lines at the table’s corners to regions where counts were restricted. Ultimately, however, despite its divergence from straight rail, the champion’s game simply expanded the dimensions of the balk space defined under the existing crotch prohibition which was not sufficient to stop nursing.
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“Artistic Billiards”
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cmw, that’s when they play one ball hitting the other two, or something, isn’t it?
I think I remember seeing something about it, basically you can go around the table non-stop, just hitting one ball off another against the rail, it could go on for months
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@Ticht – It (straight rail) is the basic old European one played on a table with no pockets where cannons are the only way of scoring points and there are no restrictions on them.
English billiards, which is the only one I was properly familiar with other than bar billiards, also gives points for cannons and I think they’re the main way of scoring, but you can also score by potting balls (ordinarily the red as if you pot your opponent’s white it stays off the table) and going in-off.
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Bagpipes, glorious Bagpipes!
https://fb.watch/6vLC4x84G6/
Hope this works! She looks like she’s done an all nighter (possibly had done) in the intro, but worth the wait!
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Let’s see what these All Black fellas are like then.
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First AB try in under 1min30. Looking foreboding for Tonga.
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4mins, second try. 12-0.
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It’s a slaughter, 3rd try in six minutes. 19-0
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What channel is this slaughter taking place on?
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@Chimpie – no idea if it’s on TV over here. I’m watching here: http://cricfree.live/watchfeeds/others/42801
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Dissapointed my nowtv pass doesn’t cover this. Boo.
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Kiwis absolutely pummeling Tonga. If it was a boxing match it would’ve been a 1st round KO. 76-0 with 25 minutes to go.
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Maybe not so dissapointed. Sounds a tad one sided
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Final score, 102-0. Would have been more, but Mo’unga missed a lot of kicks.
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just had a chat with this guy in Guildford, Bought a coffee off him and he saw my packet of tobacco without UK gov ads. Got chatting, and turns out he is a muso, took a trip to LA in March last year and had an interesting 3 months on the road in lockdown . Got fired at with rubber bullets at a BLM protest in LA too.
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Looks like the Wales match is one BBC2 Wales, not BBC1 as the lies said.
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If nobody sees Wales get hammered by Canada as a result, did it really happen?
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