JonM

Not me, but my wife has been exhibiting her oil paintings this weekend. She'll sometimes spend 25-30 hours per week in her studio, usually with several pieces on the go.

The Kangaroos: The Saga Of Rugby League's Great Tours by Ian Heads has one chapter per tour - it's pretty good. There's a film "The First Kangaroos" (with Dennis Waterman, Wayne Pearce and Andrew Ettingshausen among others ) that is vaguely based on events on the tour, unhistorically making Albert Goldthorpe out to be the villain of the piece.

It's been nice to see Halton Farnworth Hornets using him as a bit of a poster boy in recent times - come and play for your local team in Widnes as a little kid and you could be running out in front of 65 000 people in Australia 15 years later.

14 566.

2561 for Widnes v Oldham 1234 Doncaster v Sheffield 1754 Barrow v London and in League 1 Keighley v Goole 996

Widnes 10 Oldham 10 FT Attendance 2540 and something I think - will check.

Widnes 0 Oldham 4 HT. Oldham well on top in the first twenty minutes, with Widnes barely getting out of their own half. Widnes spent quite a lot of time on the Oldham line in the second part of the half, but really don't look like they can create a gap. Probably neither side's attacking fluency helped by the number of players on DR, although Widnes with several ex-Oldham players and Oldham with half a squad full of ex-Widnes players.

Sounds like a decent game at Batley - 3 consecutive tries for Batley have put them within sight of winning it. Batley 24 Hunslet 28 after it being 10-28 early in the second half.

Should be impressed that they can carry the ball and chain that high up into the stands. etc etc

Shouldn't be comparing ourselves to RU - it doesn't help attract fans at all.

The A$10 tickets were only for some specific seats, in the last few days. Regular price is A$49 in the lower tier - pretty similar to the UK.

Supporters of Oldham, Widnes, Bradford, Sheffield Eagles, Halifax, Newcastle Thunder, North Wales Crusaders etc etc might be a bit insulted by that statement. There's plenty of former SL teams in the lower leagues.

There's a few amateur and kids clubs in the region who'd be glad of your support - Gateshead, Yarm, Consett etc.

Barrow v London is being livestreamed, if anyone doesn't have a game to go to tomorrow.

Greece and Czechia are probably ahead of Netherlands in terms of clubs, playing numbers, non-reliance on Union. I'd imagine your $$$ go a great deal further in Ghana. Nigeria and Cameroon. Same with Jamaica (where there's been quite a few colleges taking part in competitions in the past couple of weeks). Depends on whether you're trying to build strong playing numbers or future professional clubs I suppose.

Why? What's stopping Salford from simply going bust, reforming and dropping down to a level where outgoings match income? Quite a few other clubs have done it. Salford plainly don't have enough fans to support a SL team and have massively overspent over quite a few years, but that doesn't mean the club can't be sustainable at an appropriate level. The city council own all of the important assets, after all.

Indeed. 4 of those 5 players have previously been out on loan to League 1 clubs and I think only one of them has played first team for Warrington, and that was some years ago. Widnes have 5 players injured from the Barrow game, by the looks of it. Oldham seem similarly patched up, with several loanees from Wigan to make up the numbers, again not players with recent first team appearances.

Nene McDonald vs a Widnes team that has been thrashed by Barrow and York in the last two weeks?

1. Will any individual player score more than two tries in the Wakefield v Castleford match? No 2. Will Saints finish the round above Wigan in the table? No 3. Will more than 40 points be scored in total in the Workington v Whitehaven match? No 4. Will any Rovers player be sin binned or sent off in the Hull derby? No 5. Will Halifax retain their 100% record after their match against Bradford? Yes Tie breaker - what will the attendance be at the NRL game between Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs and South Sydney Rabbitohs? 70 026 Nicely balanced set of questions!

Tickets still to sell for the Easter Warrington vs Leigh game on Saturday perhaps?

They're running shuttle buses from Liverpool 1 and other places, and also eventually opening a railway station. However a substantial proportion of the 50k attendees for an Everton game live in the city and can use the existing public transport - merseyrail/ underground etc. This test will be different in that there's no parking within a mile or two and unlike Wembley there's no expectation of large numbers of people arriving from elsewhere for a typical game. That said, the city council has a lot of experience organising big events and as long as the RFL and Everton are talking to the right people I would expect good travel arrangements to be in place.

That's very impressive. I remember they had over 50k for this game as a one of a decade or so back and it's been around 35K the last two seasons. What's changed this year - is it just that Canterbury are unbeaten and top of the table? Or something else?

The mere fact that I have just had an email telling me that Everton is sold out, and your only chance for tickets is the first test at Wembley is already a great selling point.

I wonder how much ABK Beer paid for the title sponsorship.