iffleyox

which is very difficult in England if you're not from Lancashire, Yorkshire, Cumbria, or London.* *yes, also Newcastle, Birmingham (this year) etc, but you know what I mean

AIUI the stadium as planned is basically now dead, and what is going to be built is a smaller thing just for Truro City. Pirates are stuck at the Mennaye now for the foreseeable. Might as well change their name back to Penzance/Newlyn…

to be fair, I was following it on twitter, and depending on which team you were backing sounded like he was generally decent except for the (again depending on which team you were backing) occasional lapse. Not sure you can ask for more than that in reality. Still. Up the Trin.

...

No one in their right mind, at a fans forum, is going to read out the disaster recovery plan. It's bad enough when you're talking about a datacentre, but when the main ongoing cost is wages that would be a presentational, morale, and probably legal nightmare. You're never going to get anything other than the most anodyne 'we're not expecting that'.

free of charge, depending on where you are in the ground. I think it's because of a misunderstanding when they built the ground and the directors said they'd like Trinity to be a team people would look up to....

as someone who started out like you, a neutral, and has been to many of the grounds before ending up a Trin fan, I cannot say to you strongly enough that you need to pick a big game (maybe v Leeds) at Cas and get yourself down to Wheldon Road. When it's full and Cas are on song, it's hands down the best atmosphere in the sport.

Sorry yes I know the finding has been cut, I meant everyone going PT as a response was supposition/likely to happen but hadn’t yet.

there's a slight inversion effect going on though because level 2 clubs have (more or less) grown dependent on the central funding, such that some of them are on or near the skids without it. Level 3 hasn't had any funding to speak of for years, so is more used to raising its own cash. At the moment, in so far as anything it happening at all in terms of the effects of the funding issues at level 2, there is some indication of players either going abroad or from level 2 to level 3....

no - that's supposition/likely to happen, but it hasn't happened yet. As a direction of travel I wouldn't totally disagree, but I make it 8/12 clubs full time at the moment off the top of my head. The only ones that I'm actually sure aren't full time are Bedford, Richmond and Caldy*. I suspect London Scottish aren't either, but I don't know. Incidentally, I think you can add Doncaster in as certs to stay FT, given that this very morning they've put in planning permission for two new stands to take their seated capacity north of 10,000 and meet premiership minimum standards. *and of those three at least two of them have got hybrid models with some full time players and some PT.

the issue there is that there are full time* players in tier three of English RU earning a SL squad player's salary and getting their summers off while still dreaming of making it... at level 2, full time is the rule rather than the exception. It's not just junior development, it's (as always) the availability or not of blunt, ready cash. *not a vast number obviously, and not superstar wages.

yes, but I'd still expect them to want to go round all the teams over the season - it fits with C4's remit much more than chasing ratings. Obviously I appreciate that they've got to have one eye on ratings (I'm not that naive), but the point of them is not to be overtly commercial, it's why the entire channel exists. It's not C4's job to start demanding 'we want Wigan v Saints' or whatever - that's literally what highest bidder rights auctions are for. To that extent I think the inconsistent ratings are going to be baked into their coverage -whether for good or ill.

Ish - I love Worcestershire, but do I love Worcestershire enough these days to drop everything and get to the maybe two matches that I could actually physically attend in the red ball? Regular weekend county cricket hasn't been done for over 20 years, so the 'one man and his dog watch it' shouldn't be any surprise - they've even been through the absolute nadir period of scheduling the championship matches Monday-Thursday, which really did feel like trying to kill it. Thankfully I waas a student at the time, so it didn't hurt me as much as it could have.

some of that's desperation though - at 41 I'd lower the average age of a county championship spectator dramatically if they were more interested in actually scheduling matches over weekends where I actually stood a chance of being able to watch them. as it is I tend to watch more T20 and one day than I otherwise would, simply because that's what's on on a Friday night or over the weekend. Neither is actually my preferred format though FWIW.

Oh I know, but it was the irony that just jumped out at me. FWIW there's a fair bit of crossover between the Beaufort Hunt and Gloucester season tickets, they just tend not to be in the Shed.