The new English Premiership season kicks off tonight with Bristol v Saracens. No doubt I speak for all of humanity when I say that I hope that home advantage bears up.
We also have some forrin matches, far away, between minor sides, and some Women’s World Cup matches.
Onna telly this week
Friday 17th September
Bristol v Saracens
19:45
BT Sport 1
Saturday 18th September
Australia v South Africa
08:05
Sky Sports Arena
Argentina v New Zealand
11:05
Sky Sports Arena
Castres v Bordeaux
14:00
Premier Sports 2
Leicester v Exeter
15:00
BT Sport 1
Montpellier v Toulouse
16:00
Premier Sports 2
Clermont v La Rochelle
20:05
Premier Sports 1
Sunday 19th September
Italy v Ireland (women’s WC)
14:00
Facebook / YouTube
Newcastle v Harlequins
15:00
BT Sport 1
Spain v Scotland (women’s WC)
17:00
BBC iPlayer/ Alba
Toulon v Stade Français
20:05
Premier Sports 2
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184 thoughts on “The Return of the League of *cough* Gentlemen”
If it was just about the money we know that the Irish, Sarries and French clubs would have done this year’s ago. And poached loads of potential Boks to stuff their extended squads with,whilst the Welsh signed all the rejects nobody else wanted and the Scots moved Hadrian’s Wall ever southward to hoover up Newcastle’s talent pool. Such that it is.
#Justice4Wiese screwed over by the citing commission sitting 24 hours later than usual and precluding him from selection. Of course the Boks could have waited 24 hours before announcing their side to get whipped by the Kiwis.
15 Willie le Roux, 14 Sbu Nkosi, 13 Lukhanyo Am, 12 Damian de Allende, 11 Makazole Mapimpi, 10 Handre Pollard, 9 Faf de Klerk, 8 Duane Vermeulen, 7 Kwagga Smith, 6 Siya Kolisi (captain), 5 Lood de Jager, 4 Eben Etzebeth, 3 Frans Malherbe, 2 Bongi Mbonambi, 1 Trevor Nyakane
Substitutes: 16 Malcolm Marx, 17 Steven Kitshoff, 18 Vincent Koch, 19 Franco Mostert, 20 Marco van Staden, 21 Herschel Jantjies, 22 Elton Jantjies, 23 Frans Steyn
“My Dad is a smart man. I love talking to him about rugby but he’s also a smart businessman and I talk to him about that too. He always said to me about not just putting all of my eggs in one basket”
2 internet points to anyone who knows where the mystery dad was earlier today?
Pollard to leave Montpellier at the end of the season.
At last his boss saw the light. For a man supposed to make 1.2 M € a year, he’s brought very little to his club. Reminds me of Sexton with Racing. Won’t feel sorry for the stupid sugar daddies who cajoled them though. They’ve got to make a living and all that.
Flair, I can only assume that Pollard (apart form being injured a lot in France) didn’t fit the Montpellier style. Playing for the Bulls he was superb and in general, he’s been excellent for the Boks, despite his horror show the last two weeks.
Deebs, yes. One of Posh Dublin’s most favoured sons – the father that is.
Pollard constantly gets this stuff from some people. Even at Western Province Craven Week selection in 2011 and 2012 there were people saying that he wasn’t as good as Tim Swiel and then J-L du Plessis. He was usually very good for the Bulls when I saw him, just really solid, but not a flash player like Jantjies, for instance. He also had a year out after fucking up his arm in Japan so I didn’t see him in 2016 (?) and then left the year after.
The injuries haven’t helped at Montpellier – 15 games in 2 years isn’t a good return on their money. As they’ve signed Paolo G, they have good stocks for this year at least.
What he should never be forgiven for is that Vodacom ad.
Being interviewed by the police over dipping into the Bank of Ireland’s honeypot
I’d imagine (unless there’s job title inflation) that it was a fairly senior role and that it was well remunerated with bonuses etc, so 600k looks like small potatoes – couple of years salary ???
Although, whole thing reminds of an old school colleague who got sent down (7 yrs IIRC) about 10 yrs ago for an elaborate mortgage fraud (about 20M GBP). he was a senior partner in one of the big name law firms in London.
A good friend of mine who’s worked in banking 40+ years reckoned it was fairly obvious what was being tried once anyone started digging.
Knowing (if a long time ago) guy who was organising it – as he was always confident he was the cleverest person in the room… I can only assume he thought he’d get away with it*.
We walked past what I now know is his house a few weeks back. Big old pad.
There were some worried faces outside the school gates of D4 after Kin started on RTE last week and those faces were even more worried after this news broke. It’s all a bit Ross O’Carroll-Kelly’s dad come to life.
They capture the D4 types very well – but I wonder if that stereotype is recognised beyond Ireland?? (the in-joke here is that the lead character’s initials ROCK imply a well-known fee-paying school in south Dublin – although he isn’t an alumnus of that institution but of the like-named Castlerock)
Nah, in England most people would be surprised that posh people exist in Ireland. We are all familiar with what some people in England think Irish people are like…
SBT, they’re funny but as novels they can be tiresome as the character is so obnoxious.
Paul Howard, the writer, does a column a week and turns those into a book a year so there’s a vast number of pages of his life now, something like 5,000 pages.
They do an audio of the columns on soundcloud that are ok as an introduction. There was a good one recently about his triplets joining a mini rugby section and which bubble they should be in for practice that sort of mirrored our experience of the process, plus it had a brilliant joke about posh schools.
– Too little investment in new electricity generation capacity means the plant margin is too low. Coupled with privatisation of utilities removing incentives to invest.
– Too much investment in gas and wind, coupled with a) very low wind conditions and b) a surge in demand globally for gas
– Phasing out of coal
– No investment in nuclear
Problems with the grid have been predicted for years
Thanks folks, I genuinely thought this was a developing country problem. Whilst I believe that in South Africa privatising everything is the only way to ensure decent services and prices in the face of an utterly corrupt elite, my experience of the UK (and Europe more broadly) is that when you have utilities that have service as their key deliverable, everybody wins.
My key experience of UK utilities has been the rail services; public when I first started visiting, privatised shortly thereafter. The prices rocketed and service slid over a period of a decade. Lots of investors got rich though, so I suppose we should be grateful. Cough.
Just to qualify: we used to have well run utilities, relatively speaking, until the Zuma crowd absolutely destroyed the lot. I’d still prefer state control of basic services, as essentials from state to citizen using taxes judiciously, but we simply don’t have any controls here. In the UK you should be able to and I’d support if not re-nationalising public services, then certainly far greater control of them. #savetheNHS
While we expect zero carbon sources like wind to dominate electricity supplies in the future, we also expect to have a diverse generation mix – including wind, solar, storage, nuclear and interconnectors.
That means, like today, we’ll never be reliant on one power source to keep our margins intact and continue securely supplying electricity.
But we are reliant on one power source (gas) to make up the gap when it’s not windy or sunny. I’m no longer surprised when big companies like NG talk such bollox in public.
In a world gone mad, there is always something that makes you smile, even in a wry way. A company here has just announced they’re building a 70MW solar power plant to help reduce the carbon footprint of a local mining operation. All good so far! Except that the mine in question, Grootgeluk, produces 26Mtpa of coal, the bulk of which goes to two coal-fired power stations.
I was thinking more of ones they used to have next to the cotton mills back home. When they stopped supplying town gas the suicide rate plummeted as people couldn’t poison themselves by sticking their head in the oven, according to my dad anyway.
It’s a strange thing but for a song written about industrial northern England – ‘Dirty Old Town’ has incredible resonance here.
Now, that said, Dublin is much more like an big English/Scottish industrial city in feel – like Manchester, Liverpool or Glasgow than other national capitals
As you know the Irish folk tradition loves nicking other songs and taking them as their own.:
– When You Were Sweet Sixteen (19th century American vaudeville song)
– The Band Played Waltzing Matilda (song written by a Scotsman who moved to Australia)
– Leaving of Liverpool
Ovally Balls 
You think? Given the personality, seems like a bare statement of fact to me.
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‘England centres debate anyone ?’
Wot no tindall?
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This rugby twelves business looks like a ghastly load of poop.
Why? Why? Why?
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Well, money obviously. Sounds like a horrible idea though. So much for reducing player load and fixture congestion eh.
Format sounds pish too.
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Twelve sounds worse than whatever is really shit in a not controversial way. Bojo? Coal-fired power? Springbok handling?
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If it was just about the money we know that the Irish, Sarries and French clubs would have done this year’s ago. And poached loads of potential Boks to stuff their extended squads with,whilst the Welsh signed all the rejects nobody else wanted and the Scots moved Hadrian’s Wall ever southward to hoover up Newcastle’s talent pool. Such that it is.
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#Justice4Wiese screwed over by the citing commission sitting 24 hours later than usual and precluding him from selection. Of course the Boks could have waited 24 hours before announcing their side to get whipped by the Kiwis.
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And it would have helped if he hadn’t tried to take Samu’s head off at the ruck.
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A month ago, this side would have been feared.
Springboks
15 Willie le Roux, 14 Sbu Nkosi, 13 Lukhanyo Am, 12 Damian de Allende, 11 Makazole Mapimpi, 10 Handre Pollard, 9 Faf de Klerk, 8 Duane Vermeulen, 7 Kwagga Smith, 6 Siya Kolisi (captain), 5 Lood de Jager, 4 Eben Etzebeth, 3 Frans Malherbe, 2 Bongi Mbonambi, 1 Trevor Nyakane
Substitutes: 16 Malcolm Marx, 17 Steven Kitshoff, 18 Vincent Koch, 19 Franco Mostert, 20 Marco van Staden, 21 Herschel Jantjies, 22 Elton Jantjies, 23 Frans Steyn
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….even now, everyone is hiding
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Is it cos Madonna? I went to school with her cousin, you know. He favoured skin-tight red-and-black leopard-print legging-type things. Gruesome.
Wasn’t a bad person though.
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“My Dad is a smart man. I love talking to him about rugby but he’s also a smart businessman and I talk to him about that too. He always said to me about not just putting all of my eggs in one basket”
2 internet points to anyone who knows where the mystery dad was earlier today?
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Having a sneaky morning boozing session round yours after the morning school run ?
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It’d’ve been better for him. We’d’ve vogued to some classic Madge.
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Pollard to leave Montpellier at the end of the season.
At last his boss saw the light. For a man supposed to make 1.2 M € a year, he’s brought very little to his club. Reminds me of Sexton with Racing. Won’t feel sorry for the stupid sugar daddies who cajoled them though. They’ve got to make a living and all that.
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2 internet points to anyone who knows where the mystery dad was earlier today?
Being interviewed by the police over dipping into the Bank of Ireland’s honeypot?
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Flair, I can only assume that Pollard (apart form being injured a lot in France) didn’t fit the Montpellier style. Playing for the Bulls he was superb and in general, he’s been excellent for the Boks, despite his horror show the last two weeks.
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@tomp
That sounds like the kind of thing Mike Ford wishes George would say, but never does.
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Deebs, yes. One of Posh Dublin’s most favoured sons – the father that is.
Pollard constantly gets this stuff from some people. Even at Western Province Craven Week selection in 2011 and 2012 there were people saying that he wasn’t as good as Tim Swiel and then J-L du Plessis. He was usually very good for the Bulls when I saw him, just really solid, but not a flash player like Jantjies, for instance. He also had a year out after fucking up his arm in Japan so I didn’t see him in 2016 (?) and then left the year after.
The injuries haven’t helped at Montpellier – 15 games in 2 years isn’t a good return on their money. As they’ve signed Paolo G, they have good stocks for this year at least.
What he should never be forgiven for is that Vodacom ad.
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I’d imagine (unless there’s job title inflation) that it was a fairly senior role and that it was well remunerated with bonuses etc, so 600k looks like small potatoes – couple of years salary ???
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Although, whole thing reminds of an old school colleague who got sent down (7 yrs IIRC) about 10 yrs ago for an elaborate mortgage fraud (about 20M GBP). he was a senior partner in one of the big name law firms in London.
A good friend of mine who’s worked in banking 40+ years reckoned it was fairly obvious what was being tried once anyone started digging.
Knowing (if a long time ago) guy who was organising it – as he was always confident he was the cleverest person in the room… I can only assume he thought he’d get away with it*.
*I’m not aware if there were any “meddling kids”
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We walked past what I now know is his house a few weeks back. Big old pad.
There were some worried faces outside the school gates of D4 after Kin started on RTE last week and those faces were even more worried after this news broke. It’s all a bit Ross O’Carroll-Kelly’s dad come to life.
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Had to look Ross up. Are the books any good ?
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They capture the D4 types very well – but I wonder if that stereotype is recognised beyond Ireland?? (the in-joke here is that the lead character’s initials ROCK imply a well-known fee-paying school in south Dublin – although he isn’t an alumnus of that institution but of the like-named Castlerock)
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@trisk
Nah, in England most people would be surprised that posh people exist in Ireland. We are all familiar with what some people in England think Irish people are like…
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@OT
well, that was my assumption too….
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SBT, they’re funny but as novels they can be tiresome as the character is so obnoxious.
Paul Howard, the writer, does a column a week and turns those into a book a year so there’s a vast number of pages of his life now, something like 5,000 pages.
They do an audio of the columns on soundcloud that are ok as an introduction. There was a good one recently about his triplets joining a mini rugby section and which bubble they should be in for practice that sort of mirrored our experience of the process, plus it had a brilliant joke about posh schools.
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Evening all, been reading that the UK is facing a gas crisis with a bunch of suppliers failing. What’s behind this? Really have no idea.
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Try this for a short-ish answer.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-58090533
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Nationalise the energy industry. Problem sorted. Might as well have back the water and all the reservoirs and forests that went with em too.
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@deebee
– Too little investment in new electricity generation capacity means the plant margin is too low. Coupled with privatisation of utilities removing incentives to invest.
– Too much investment in gas and wind, coupled with a) very low wind conditions and b) a surge in demand globally for gas
– Phasing out of coal
– No investment in nuclear
Problems with the grid have been predicted for years
LikeLiked by 2 people
Thanks folks, I genuinely thought this was a developing country problem. Whilst I believe that in South Africa privatising everything is the only way to ensure decent services and prices in the face of an utterly corrupt elite, my experience of the UK (and Europe more broadly) is that when you have utilities that have service as their key deliverable, everybody wins.
My key experience of UK utilities has been the rail services; public when I first started visiting, privatised shortly thereafter. The prices rocketed and service slid over a period of a decade. Lots of investors got rich though, so I suppose we should be grateful. Cough.
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Just to qualify: we used to have well run utilities, relatively speaking, until the Zuma crowd absolutely destroyed the lot. I’d still prefer state control of basic services, as essentials from state to citizen using taxes judiciously, but we simply don’t have any controls here. In the UK you should be able to and I’d support if not re-nationalising public services, then certainly far greater control of them. #savetheNHS
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https://www.nationalgrideso.com/electricity-explained/how-do-we-balance-grid/what-are-margins
But we are reliant on one power source (gas) to make up the gap when it’s not windy or sunny. I’m no longer surprised when big companies like NG talk such bollox in public.
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OT – also the Tories destroying the gas storage capacity, meaning there are no reserves to speak of.
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I do miss a nice, rusty gasometer ‘dominating’ the landscape
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@slade
Oh for the days when we had coal mines in the town centre :-)
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In a world gone mad, there is always something that makes you smile, even in a wry way. A company here has just announced they’re building a 70MW solar power plant to help reduce the carbon footprint of a local mining operation. All good so far! Except that the mine in question, Grootgeluk, produces 26Mtpa of coal, the bulk of which goes to two coal-fired power stations.
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aka Odsall Stadium?
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@slade
That certainly counts!
I was thinking more of ones they used to have next to the cotton mills back home. When they stopped supplying town gas the suicide rate plummeted as people couldn’t poison themselves by sticking their head in the oven, according to my dad anyway.
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I met my love by the gas works wall
Dreamed a dream by the old canal
I kissed my girl by the factory wall
Dirty old town
Dirty old town
Ewan MacColl was a controversial figure, but he could conjure up an image alright.
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Coal gasification – now there was a properly filthy method of gas production.
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Lionz bitching has started
‘British and Irish Lions: Warren Gatland’s selections not based on form, says Iain Henderson’
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Sladey, if you’ve got some spare cash to invest in the Dublin property market, you can live here:
https://www.daft.ie/for-rent/the-alliance-the-gasworks-barrow-street-dublin-4/2315171
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that’s terrific!
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Very handy for the lovely fish and chips from Presto.
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@Ticht
It’s a strange thing but for a song written about industrial northern England – ‘Dirty Old Town’ has incredible resonance here.
Now, that said, Dublin is much more like an big English/Scottish industrial city in feel – like Manchester, Liverpool or Glasgow than other national capitals
LikeLike
@trisk
As you know the Irish folk tradition loves nicking other songs and taking them as their own.:
– When You Were Sweet Sixteen (19th century American vaudeville song)
– The Band Played Waltzing Matilda (song written by a Scotsman who moved to Australia)
– Leaving of Liverpool
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Well, this is worth a play.
Also, love the gasworks apartments.
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There is also a truly dreadful version by Steve Earle, which surprises me, so lets have Galway Girl.
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