JonM

Swinton v Dewsbury 894 Toulouse v Whitehaven 2 055 (lowest crowd for quite some time) Halifax v Sheffield E 1500

Swifts, swallows and house martins all now back here from their winter in Africa. One other set of migratory birds has been back since Feb/March though. The Yorkshire Dales National Park & British Trust for Ornithology have been running a project where they tagged curlews at Bolton Castle in Wensleydale and then have been tracking where they went for the winter. Seems about a third of them went to Ireland, one went to Lincolnshire and the rest left Yorkshire for the winter to catch some rays in the warmer climes of er Lancashire, Cumbria & Cheshire

Can't see an existing thread for this. A couple of games have already been played Vardar Skopje 12 Partizan 62 (in N. Macedonia) Arsenal Tivat 16 Red Star 44 (in Montenegro) Radnički Niš 24 Dorcol Tigers 28 (in Serbia) Partizan 80 Arsenal Tivat 20 (played in Mionica, in Western Serbia) Mad Squirrels Vrchlabi are playing Red Star Belgrade at home this weekend. They'll be bolstered by a few players from Slavia Hradec Králové and Krupka Dragons to try to even up the standard. It will be interesting to see how they get on - they've played Sroki Łódź (Poland) Skane Stags (Sweden) and Exeter Uni in the past couple of years and those have been reasonably matched games.

I'm in BC in June, must try to get along to one of these.

I wonder how much the presence or otherwise of Stade Toulousain in the Top 14 final in Marseille the night before will affect things.

If you meet someone from Lancashire or Cheshire (current versions as opposed to traditional versions) down south they are considerably more likely to say they're from the North West than to say Lancashire. And the rest will say Manchester or Liverpool. Outside of a few pockets that like to build their self-identity on contrast with more successful neighbours (Cornwall, Norfolk, Yorkshire) most people stopped identifying with counties decades ago.

Toulouse 40 Whitehaven 4 FT Is that really their first away game of the season?

Indeed. Certainly seemed to be more away fans for the Wire game. Perhaps hard to judge with the position of the TV cameras?

Leeds v Huddersfield 13 128 Wigan v Castleford 13 029 Sydney Roosters v Melbourne 17 714 St. George Illawarra v NZ Warriors 13 111 (in Wollongong) Parramatta v Dolphins 11 094

Past experience is that most of the first choice Lancashire squad will withdraw a day or two before the game due to groin strains or whatever, because no-one cares who wins. Scousers vs Woolybacks could be absolutely massive if we had a few more James Grahams though. Apart from the fact that hardly anyone in Lancashire is interested and it's never attracted much interest in the previous 120+ years, what is the claimed benefit of playing this game? Is it going to make money - doesn't sound like it? Is it going to raise the profile of RL in some way? Do soccer, rugby union or cricket have a representative level between the club game and internationals anywhere in the UK? Does this happen anywhere else in professional sport in Europe or North America. Or is purely an Australian thing that won't work anywhere else.

Yes. I'm assuming that in reality, Leigh will have other things in flight that increase their score.

Bradford in 4th place currently appears to put them 0.01 point above Leigh, if my maths is correct.

Yes, I'm absolutely sure if they were training full-time and had access to the range of stuff modern players do, every one of them would be a top player today. But the point is that things have moved on over forty years, and even at amateur level you'd expect players to be hitting the gym pretty seriously, games get videoed for later review and so on. No professional club has one bloke sat in the dugout who makes all the signings and who goes and shouts at the players at half-time. And that's the same in football, rugby union, cricket etc too. Even Doug Laughton who is being held up as the example here had a Widnes club committee which contained some ex-players (and coaches) - people like Harry Dawson, Vinty Karalius & Frank Myler. He also had a chairman who negotiated contracts with players and part-time specialist coaches e.g. Bill Hartley was sprint coach for Widnes before Maurice Lindsay persuaded him to move to Wigan.

Been looking at the coast to coast route this week and thinking Someone I know ran the coast to coast last weekend, as part of an organised race. She did it in just under 100 hours, the winner finished inside 48 hours. There was a 71 year old who completed the race last year, but I reckon I probably shouldn't wait that long. I did all 30 'mountains' in the Yorkshire Dales National Park last year. Haven't counted up the Wainwrights done in the Lakes, but I'd guess it's probably only 20 or so.

Also on the newspaper websites of Midi Libre, L’indépendant et La Dépêche du Midi, wonder if they're also geoblocked?