JonM

Seems a bit harsh to ban a whole team because some of the opposition team's fans booed one of their players while taking a kick? Hard to tell what happened in the second clip, but it looks like some Myton parents went over the barrier onto the pitch and the home team parents ran over in response. Good to see both sets of players walking away from it. It's a National Cup semi-final BTW, so I'd expect a serious response to parents' behaviour.

Statement from the Prime Minister (who has also written him a letter). “Billy Boston is a true trailblazer who has contributed hugely to rugby league. It is a historic wrong that a sport which is the backbone of so many communities has waited so long to receive this honour. Boston is a legend of the game who overcame prejudice to represent Great Britain and opened the door to a more diverse game. He’s left a truly enduring legacy and the first knighthood in rugby league could not go to a more deserving player."

I think (not that I am paying a huge amount of attention to it anymore) that he can be chief panjandrum of whatever sub-committee he likes. He just can't be chair of the RFL. Also this is still an 'interim' board, yet to be ratified by the RFL council.

There were a couple of hundred in the section in front of me.

Exactly the same here. Although I am getting a bit fed up of nagging some people for an answer and might just buy a couple extra knowing that we can probably rope someone in on the day.

I'm assuming that we shouldn't read anything into one of the non-execs being a rugger chap who does lots of work on companies in administration...

Looks like the governance problem has been resolved by naming a fairly sensible looking board, but with big Nige named as Senior Executive Director rather than Chair. He is the chair of the Strategic Review Committee too.

Over 30 000 tickets sold for Wembley was the statement from RFL Commercial on May 2nd. I'd imagine some have been sold in the last 5-6 weeks, but I'm sure if it was over 40K we'd have heard about it... Lower tier holds 34k, middle tier is 16.5k. Probably makes sense to open up more of the upper tier at this point.

Tend to agree. The only 'problem' that it really causes is that you get some empty sections of seating in the lower tier for the main event.

Yes, speedway is a sport where 1000 is a good crowd, so selling out a stadium with 4-6K capacity (depending on how many temporary stands they have) isn't exactly a model to aspire to, particularly when they had five figure crowds at the millennium stadium in Cardiff for the last 20+ years for the grand prix.

There's a not too badly preserved Knights Templar chapel quite close to me. Quite an interesting organisation - Europe's biggest bank/ travel agents/ first multinational corporation, that also had a standing army and a religious purpose. They were exempt from local laws and taxes. You can see why popes and kings weren't too keen on them.

Johnny Vaughan's program also did a fair bit about Magic Weekend, last month - they called it rugby league's Glastonbury...

Etched in your blood you said, then can't even remember who was playing Both in black and white I suppose...

I thought so too - and particular credit to the Warrington fans for that. If we can get the England crowd to bring the same approach in October...

And yet we have people moaning about the performance of the halfbacks and the lack of attacking flair. Sneyd's conversion from the touchline coincided with the worst of it - just a brilliant kick.

I've been racking my brain trying to think when Fev ever played Widnes in a final and drawn a blank.

IIRC, they have been relegated twice in the past decade, and pretty much no effect on Catalans attendances.

Saw plenty of Wigan and Saints jerseys, both in the ground, and around London. People behind us were from Dewsbury, people to next to them were Union fans from the south west. People to the right were a bloke from Castleford meeting up with his son who lived in London, plus a bunch of his son's mates who hadn't been before. People in front were from Wigan. There were St. Helens fans in front of them. Most people don't turn up wearing jerseys. At least a third of the crowd each year is neutrals, probably higher than that.

That happened before, and then there was a load of argument/ teams being disqualified/ rules being changed restrospectively over how many Polynesians on short-term visas they had in the team.

I really think that was the correct way to play in the conditions though, and we did see players fail to deal with kicks on several occasions, and players slipping over when trying to change direction quickly. In the spells when the rain did let up, both teams did try to move the ball around more. The York v Featherstone game looks to have been played in a similar way.

Not quite lost a whole region yet. Vaulx-en-Velin is a club based in Lyon. Their women's team won the national division final a few weeks ago. Ste. Foy, another suburb of Lyon, had their u-15s and u-17s playing in the "challenge national" semi-finals yesterday (away against Lescure, home against Villeneuve respectively).

In the past you would've thought those kind of weather conditions would've really suited England against Australia, but I'm not sure that's true any more. Certainly not a day for offloads or fancy passing moves and lots of high kicks from both sides in the hope of getting a knock on.

I haven't scored over 50 points in a game, but still only have about half of the squad as legends currently and have only been promoted up to level 49 in the all-star league, so still some scope for improvement.

It is.

It really isn't. I've been to many, many events at Wembley and guesstimated 61K - and that's without the late arriving Fev/York fans. The half of the top tier that was open looked surprisingly full to me, which is always a sign of a decent attendance.