The Welsh: What Are They Like?

Entertaining. Indefatigable. Bloody-minded, hard as nails (well, obviously there is an obstructed view).

When Mark Williams (pictured) won the World Snooker Championship in 2018, he stripped off for the ensuing press conference, as he had promised to do.

This year, he has promised to run naked down the M4 if he wins.

Given that he’s 51, perhaps he should borrow Andy Powell’s golf buggy instead.

But this is why Welsh rugby can and will rise above their current crisis, and hopefully with all four regions somehow surviving the mess. Welsh sides are currently Irish teams’ banana peels in the URC.

While full houses at Welsh stadia have been a rarity in recent years, Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau sung with full heart at the Millenium Stadium still manages to bring a bit of unexplained grit to the eyes of this non-Welsh person (well, full disclosure: I had a half-Welsh granny).

And, to add the icing to the cake, the Welsh don’t vote for Tories. Hopefully they won’t vote for the even more repulsive Reform in May either.

465 thoughts on “The Welsh: What Are They Like?”

  1. Borderboy's avatarBorderboy

    Saints score again! Conversion will get us over the 100 points!

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  2. thaumaturge's avatarthaumaturge

    It’s a yellow, but I think without review.

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  3. thaumaturge's avatarthaumaturge

    The mister getting excited about Cardiff’s BPT.

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  4. ClydeMillarWynant's avatarClydeMillarWynant

    @Deebee – Cardiff certainly don’t want any scrums. I’ve heard that this Mngomezulu chap might be better than Ioan Lloyd as well though Lloyd has been surprisingly good while I’ve been watching.

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  5. Bristol do have a BP try now. Only 80-26 with 20mins plus to play.

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  6. ClydeMillarWynant's avatarClydeMillarWynant

    One of the English language S4C commentators is getting worryingly confident about Cardiff’s chances in this game.

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  7. ClydeMillarWynant's avatarClydeMillarWynant

    Stormers have some good runners, Cardiff saved on their own line when the ref finds them a penalty.

    Belcher has been replaced which is disappointing as he’s my favourite Cardiff player.

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  8. thaumaturge's avatarthaumaturge

    You have to love a side that has a Belcher and a Bashem. It’s so Beano.

    And McIlroy scores in the corner!

    Liked by 1 person

  9. thaumaturge's avatarthaumaturge

    Aaargh, Doak bounces the very difficult touchline conversion off the posts. 19-21.

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  10. Heyward scores Bristol’s 5th try. 80-33 with 10mins left.

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  11. thaumaturge's avatarthaumaturge

    Oops, 17-21. I was overly optimistic.

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  12. thaumaturge's avatarthaumaturge

    Connacht beating Embra 26-0, apparently.

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  13. Moroni stupidly hangs onto Pollock after he clears him out of a ruck. Gets a yellow for being a moron.

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  14. Saints score again and this is now the highest aggregate score in a Prem match. 87-33.

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  15. thaumaturge's avatarthaumaturge

    BRILLIANT try Ulster to go ahead, unbelievably!

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  16. Hendy scores his 4th as the clock goes red and the final score is 94-33.

    Bristol miss the playoffs.

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  17. thaumaturge's avatarthaumaturge

    NOOOOO Glasgow score again!

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  18. thaumaturge's avatarthaumaturge

    Oh wait … they are looking at something!

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  19. thaumaturge's avatarthaumaturge

    Looking but not finding, despite a clear off-the-ball tackle.

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  20. ClydeMillarWynant's avatarClydeMillarWynant

    Great win for Cardiff even if the Stormers were not good. If Cardiff had a scrum they might be dangerous, but they don’t. Defended really well in the last twenty minutes or so and deserved the win.

    Very odd decision making from the Stormers towards the end when they turned down kicks at goal that would have got them within a score and given them a chance to win. They kicked one for the BP after the clock was dead in the end.

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  21. thaumaturge's avatarthaumaturge

    Aaargh, we were on the attack in the final minute, but fucked it up.

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  22. CMW, the Stormers defence is pathetic. My Nan coulda beaten them on the wide channels and she passed away in 1981. Reckon I’d only be a couple of yards behind her too!

    Cardiff were also superb at the breakdown – for me that (and the turnstile defence of the Stormers) was the difference. The only thing the Stormers had was a strong scrum. Bugger all else. Cardiff absolutely deserved winners. Superb performance tonight!

    Liked by 1 person

  23. thaumaturge's avatarthaumaturge

    Hmm. I may be cheering on Deebee’s Lions against Munster tomorrow.

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  24. thaumaturge's avatarthaumaturge

    On a completely unrelated topic, has anyone here ever found any AI tool useful?

    I have not. On the contrary, most of them seem to provide incorrect information.

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  25. LLMs can only ever be as good as the data they’ve (mostly illegally) ingested. Considering most stuff on the internet is complete bollocks, I don’t trust anything produced by them to be useful.

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  26. thaumaturge's avatarthaumaturge

    Yes, exactly.

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  27. thaumaturge's avatarthaumaturge

    I’ve had cause to use the WordPress AI problem reporter, which agreed that the problems I was reporting were probably due to an update, and then told me to report it myself through the forum. I could have skipped the intermediate step.

    I then complained about it using ‘apologize’ instead of ‘apologise’*, and also the cringeworthy greeting ‘howdy’, and it promised to take it into consideration. ;-) It’s politely useless.

    *This was after it told me that the good news was that the problem was only affecting signed-in users, and I told it that signed-in users were my main concern.

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  28. I may be cheering on Deebee’s Lions against Munster tomorrow.

    As you should.

    As for AI, it can be useful at a superficial level for getting summaries of things, but, as Refit says, they’re only as good as the information they have at hand. I find in my line of work that it’s largely outdated slop that it puts out, and delight in showing this to clients who moan about paying for proper research when “I could just use AI.”

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  29. Actually had a case last year when I was struggling to get data out of the Ethiopian government and the client snapped that he’d just Googled it and the AI engine gave him everything in one go. I had to point out gently that if he looked at the source material it was from 2006. Slightly out of date.

    On the other hand, I did get some fantastic results when I was trying to understand how much diesel the mines in Zambia could save by installing solar and battery storage. I’m embarrassed to admit I used Grok for that and it gave me a very good breakdown and analysis.

    Breakdown and analysis being exactly where the Stormers were soundly beaten last night.

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  30. tichtheid2's avatartichtheid2

    Well, the end of the season couldn’t come soon enough for Edinburgh, absolutely dreadful in pretty much all aspects. The only positive is in the performance of the 20 year olds, who have been our best players this season.

    I didn’t see last night’s game and I won’t go looking for it on Premier Sports, but I’ll watch the Ulster Glasgow game.

    Last night I was at our club’s players’ awards night. We had a guest presenter, a guy who has moved into the area and has sons playing in the club’s school age team. He was my favourite player when he was with Edinburgh and Scotland – WP Nel.

    What a great guy, I spent a fair amount of time bending his ear but he was the one who came up and shook hands and introduced himself, not just to me obviously, but to the three of us who were standing talking at the beginning of the evening.

    He’s an honest to goodness humble bloke who loved the stories of the old days, he reckoned we had the best of rugby in our time. I’m not wholly convinced of that but it was nice to meet him.

    It’s not always the wrong thing to meet your heroes.

    Liked by 5 people

  31. Borderboy's avatarBorderboy

    Reminds me of the Vern Cotter quote at a news conference.

    “Nel has a neck injury. That was news to us, didn’t know he had a neck”

    Liked by 4 people

  32. ClydeMillarWynant's avatarClydeMillarWynant

    Howdy!

    Liked by 1 person

  33. Howdy! Sharks finally playing decent rugby even if it’s a bottom third dead rubber.

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  34. ClydeMillarWynant's avatarClydeMillarWynant

    Howdy Deebs. And well done to your Lions for making the playoffs. I remember when they had a close game with the O’s (was it a draw maybe?) I wondered out loud if possibly neither side was any good, but they’ve done really well since then.

    Liked by 1 person

  35. Borderboy's avatarBorderboy

    Bathy looking like they want to match Saints’ score from last night. 31-0 up against Newcastle already.

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  36. thaumaturge's avatarthaumaturge

    You are bad, bad men.

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  37. Bloody hell, Bath’s replacement prop just outran all of Newcastle, from half way, to score in the corner. 62-12 with 5mins left.

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  38. The Prem only has 3 matches on a Saturday, how do they have overlapping times??

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  39. tichtheid2's avatartichtheid2

    Howdy.

    I’m quite looking forward to the Munster Lions game, if Deebs’ boys bring their home from with them they will be quite a handful.

    I looked up the elevation of Thomond park, at 16m it falls somewhat short of the 1753m where the Lions have their den.

    Liked by 1 person

  40. tichtheid2's avatartichtheid2

    So tonight’s match will determine the play offs – it’s great that it comes down to this.

    Glasgow as top seed will face one of Lions, Ulster or Munster.

    Leinster could will face one of Connacht, Lions or Munster

    Stormers will play Lions, Cardiff or Munster

    Bulls will play Cardiff, Lions or Munster

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  41. thaumaturge's avatarthaumaturge

    COME ON THE LIONS! (Sorry, Trisk!)

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  42. thaumaturge's avatarthaumaturge

    Oh dear, Munster have had to make three last-minute changes within the past hour. Crowley is out and Hanrahan in, for one.

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  43. tichtheid2's avatartichtheid2

    Munster came in to the maul way offside but on the other side from the ref

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  44. tichtheid2's avatartichtheid2

    … and they score from the massive clearing 50/22

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  45. thaumaturge's avatarthaumaturge

    Munster have just earned their second (overlapping) yellow for a deliberate knock-on.

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  46. tichtheid2's avatartichtheid2

    The Munster player had to change his bind to get his hands on the ball there – it’s the only way he could do it.

    I honestly don’t mind who wins this, but that is just wrong

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  47. thaumaturge's avatarthaumaturge

    Lions utterly failing to take advantage of having two more men on the pitch.

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  48. thaumaturge's avatarthaumaturge

    Munster get back to 14, turn down a kickable penalty for the corner, and score!

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  49. tichtheid2's avatartichtheid2

    Munster go back into the lead and it all comes from Lions kicking the ball away whilst two players up – it’s really poor from them.

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  50. thaumaturge's avatarthaumaturge

    17-14 at HT.

    Sorry, Deebs, it looks like we will just have to beat Montpellier on Friday and knock your Lions out. They have only themselves to blame.

    Like

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