Futtocks

Manu didn't want to play against the Roosters, so joining another NRL club was out. There may have been SL clubs who could have made an even half competitive offer for him as a marquee player, but the richer ones already have their quota filled. That leaves the millionaires' toy clubs of French RU or the corporate cash of Japan. No other realistic options in Rugby of either code.

James Fisher-Harris to join the NZ Warriors. A 4-year deal, starting in 2025. This should plug the gap left by Addin Fonua-Blake, who leaves for Parra at the end of this season.

It's a safe earner. Plenty of RU players are boosting their pensions in Japan, especially when their home scene's looking more and more financially insecure every year.

Corporate owned RU sides (as most Japanese teams are) have many salarymen eager to show loyalty by attending company events. I wonder how many of those seats are filled by paying customers?

Two things today on Radio 4. 1. A programme about Dr Feelgood at 4pm. 2. A new series of Thanks a lot, Milton Jones! starts at 6:30pm.

Venues announced.

They have never liked it up 'em.

Talking of cult TV, I re-watched Children of the Stones fairly recently. Not quite as nightmare-inducing to the adult me as it was back then, but the village of Avebury looks fabulously ominous in it.

I remember finally getting my hands on a DVD box set of The Prisoner; a programme I'd only ever seen clips of, although I had actually visited Portmeirion by then. I loved it. I also remember my disappointment at the rushed and shoddy conclusion to the series when the TV company lost patience and told them to wind it up some way or other.

Thanks for the extra information. It's good to see it has plenty of alternative outlets in its home country.

There was a dislike from the Twickenham tendency of league tables. They saw the game as a series of one-offs, organised according to convenience, and they far preferred to play their own kind than a bunch of scary dockers/miners/mill-workers who'd enjoy giving the stockbrokers and coppers a bashing. Cricket had it's "gentlemen and players" snobbery, but at least they agreed to play alongside each other in meaningful competitions. The Calcutta Cup was donated with the intention that it be Rugby's equivalent of the FA Cup. Twickenham ignored the donors' wishes and it became just another Home/Five/Six Nations trinket, while Association Football got on with forming leagues and cup competitions, thus conquering the world.

It, like NATV, is a free live stream that you watch through their website.

Ebbw Vale and Merthyr Tydfil played in the 1907 Northern Union. Following on from that, there was a 6-team Welsh League that lasted for a couple of years. They were hit by hostility from rugby union, the usual class prejudice and the rapid rise of another "professional" code, Association Football. The latter came to dominate Wales as it did the other Home Nations. Naturally, they received little support from the Northern Union, setting the pattern of myopic self-harm that Rugby League has made a speciality. But the majority who were tempted never got as far as actually making the switch. They'd have been the clubs whose squads were made up of people from the old labouring class who were treated with contempt by the moneyed gatekeepers of the code. But there was still enough broad interest that, when the All Golds made their historic 1907-1908 tour, tests were played in Aberdare, London (Chelsea) and Cheltenham as well as the more obvious Leeds.

The people in pre-split Rugby who detested any kind of payment were the ones who didn't need it themselves. The taint of "trade" was bad enough when it came to opponents, but indulging in it themselves was out of the question. Their descendants were the people who prosecuted the life ban on any taint of Rugby League (professional or amateur), but of course never turned down any suspiciously generous boot money or creatively-calculated expenses that was on offer to them. The ones caught in between? Some wavered briefly, like a few Welsh and Midlands clubs, but the threats from Twickenham were backed up with real societal and business influence, plus the kind of spite you only get from people who know they're hypocrites. Plus, the waverers knew that the old regime was seriously moneyed, while the new breakaway code was not yet proven to be a going concern.

Yes, you'll need a VPN set to a French server if you want to watch the matches.

"Deadly" Derek Underwood: England and Kent great dies aged 78.

A new series of this excellent programme has started, with episode 3 on this afternoon at 3pm.

Maybe fans don't like the variety of finalists and winners that the Challenge Cup has brought us in the last decade or so. Maybe they preferred St Helens being GF winners again and again and again and again until Wigan had a turn in 2023.

Basically, they're doing what their opponents have usually done over the last few years when St Helens applied the relentless intensity and pressure.