iffleyox

You say ‘then girlfriend’…. Now wife?

On your last sentence (and don’t worry this isn’t an appeal to have John Inverdale presenting) JD is a double edged sword. On the negative side it can look a bit patronising to the already in the bag that there’s a cross code angle. On the positive, in the real world, a large number of people (my wife and some friends included) only give RL a try on TV originally *because* he’s a familiar face/voice they recognise from 6 Nations coverage - sort of ‘if you like that you might like this’ Now it’s completely coherent to want to argue for RL to break free of that and strike out for its own place, but I do think that in the England that many of us actually live in a credible dual code presenter isn’t a bad thing per se.

in fairness, that would have been the first test, where they suddenly had the rights with IIRC about 48hrs notice on a 'take the Indian feed or don't broadcast it basis'. it was because of Covid that they had it in the first place. The subsequent matches where they had more presenters and back office lined up were very different.

They're going to broadcast it on the side of lorries?

If I was picking a terrestrial UK channel to put RL on, it would be C4.

all depends on the production company really - Sunset+Vine revolutionised cricket on C4 but that was really smashing up probably over 30 years of the same way of doing things, and arguably you've got more scope with cricket - given the breaks in play, length of matches, etc. Not sure what can be done (but then again I don't work in this field so why would I?) to change an 80 minute match. That's not knocking it by the way, I think it's great news.

although I would pay Channel 4 to watch that...

It's a nice thought, but they've got their own

Viva our new overlords.

I don’t care but I vote we get Vauxhall as sponsors, we could call it ‘Conference Vauxhall’ or something

There's a fun game you can play (genuinely, it's quite shocking how accurate you can get it) where you can date 1960 to about 1980 photos of Britain by looking at what people are wearing, thinking about when that would be fashionable in London, then adding a couple of years for every 100 miles or so north. I've never lived in London. It goes a bit wrong from the early 80s, when you look at the strike pickets, etc, but until about 1982 in say Seaham or Hartlepool it was about 1976. The internet, fast fashion and all the rest of it has made everything much more uniform than it used to be.

Er, all those people (or their families) absolutely can sue their employers for negligence. The only slight exception (and even there it’s just more difficult) is the status of service personnel as Crown servants rather than employees for the purposes of certain legislation. Sports players definitely don’t need to worry about that!

you've also got the issue, and I know at 18 they're legally responsible for their own decisions, that what you think is a good idea and you're happy to do at 18-24 you might be regretting by 30 - job, smoking, drugs, choice of girlfriend, whatever. You might regret choosing to be a chartered accountant, but you can get out of that at any time and it doesn't pop up 4 decades down the line and give you dementia. An approach to do nothing is basically turning to the players in later life and saying 'well, you played silly games, so here's your silly prize' which I'm not sure cuts it any more.

I'm on record on here multiple times for saying it's the best atmosphere in SL when it's full and rocking, but I think you've just won the internet for today with that understatement!

Fair - I thought that was long gone

I think the bold is a stretch - firstly Clifton Lane is many things, but it's not a 'stadium'; and secondly one of the many things it is is a cricket pitch whose outfield covers part of the rugby pitch. Dual code in Rotherham would mean pooling funds to either move to a new facility, or evict the cricket club.

don't disagree - after years of living in both Devon and Cornwall when we visit now I generally want to be on the road from Northants by 0500 in the winter, and 0400 in the summer months. The trick (such as it is) is to make sure you're south of the Avonmouth bridge on the M5 before the peak of morning rush hour in Bristol - if you get caught out there, you're set up to fail everywhere further south. One tip from RU - teams playing Pirates generally come down the day before and leave the day after.

Yes, the story is more that Redruth get one in fourteen of the inhabitants of the town to watch their matches (very few away fans).

I've driven it literally thousands of times...

to be strictly fair it's motorway for another hour south of Bristol - to Exeter, then it depends where you're going as to how long you can stay on the Devon Expressway...

from my time watching Oxford, I'd have said to not get tonked every week you need 7 if not 8 of your starting thirteen to be established league 1 players who know what they're doing, and everyone else to be a fast learner. Ideally I'd want a whole squad from the heartlands in year 1, because the one thing that Oxford did right in its first season was compete and win matches, which meant the curious locals came back to the next match. The Oxford board knew what it was about. Getting smashed every week from day 1 is a daft idea.

RU is a funny one though - that's one of the best attendances in the Championship at 1700... Premiership rugby is worth another 5-6k. But I agree - and said earlier in this thread, sport in Cornwall is hyper local - rugby, rowing and wrestling, village v village. Tbh the bit that I agreed with in the launch release was that they genuinely have found the place most like the M62 in the rest of England*, but my take from that, unlike theirs, is that's precisely why it won't work. The real Cornwall is a bit more Wycliffe than Doc Martin.

Hmm, not convinced by Bristol. Neither of the football clubs is very good but it's a bit like Manchester or Liverpool in that everyone supports one or the other. The RU club's owned by a billionaire, and with the Bristol Combination, it's the only one of the old list A clubs that could recruit a top flight team without having to leave the confines of the county borough - ridiculous number of RU sides for a relatively small city. Then there's county cricket. Bristol looks good on paper but in reality would take a lot of work because it's a mature sports market. I would have been looking at any of Portsmouth, Reading, Norwich, Stoke, Derby - appreciate it's all pins in maps but I wouldn't start with Bristol or Cornwall.

Up to a point - the early/mid nineties football was so popular that you could get over 3,000 in the non-league for the top sides (and I don't mean ex league ones either - your Wokings, Stevenages, Yeovils, Kidderminsters could nudge 4k if they were playing each other), but conference - level 5 - attendances have fallen right back. Lots of infrastructure got funded in the lower football leagues that they wouldn't be able to afford now.

I'd agree (for the same reason) - Coventry is a bit of an anomaly in that it always feels to me (as a W Midlander) that it's East Mids, though it's probably actually West. No one in Birmingham or the Black Country would routinely go there though, whereas there's a bit more mixing between Birmingham and the Black Country. If you're in the West Midlands though Leicester/Nottingham/Derby/Northampton are just places on a map. But, as you say, they probably know what they're doing. If it was me, I'd have been tempted to go all out on the East Midlands *or* the West Midlands,