JonM

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.

Great game in pretty poor conditions. Obviously as a Widnes fan, I am not too upset to see Warrington lose in such a cruel way, but that was a real killer after being so dominant in the second half. The union fans say behind me are pretty amazed by the atmosphere - wire fans in particular were making some serious amounts of noise.

Absolute robbery:-)

Yeah. It's the swirling wind and strength of the rain rather than the roof to be fair. It was properly bad when Sneyd took the conversion. Not raining at all now.

You'd think Wembley could have been built with a functional roof. The BBC team are about 10 metres to my left, getting drenched in their seats. The production crew all have ponchos on but the presenters obviously can't.

If the weather radar is to be believed, could be some interesting weather in the second half.

That is a seriously good goal kick in these conditions.

Most of them have now I guess. It's torrential rain at times and people have moved out of the front rows of seats to stay dry

I would guess over 60k. The top tier looks surprisingly full. Corners where the Fev and York fans will be are the only empty areas in the bottom tier. Cracking atmosphere too.

Rain has stopped.

Several thousand from Featherstone I would say. Seen maybe a hundred or so in York colours but I guess much more likely to be arriving by train. Great atmosphere outside the stadium, as always.

Watford gap services absolutely rammed with RL fans, seems to be hundreds from Featherstone.

I meant to say thank you for this. Never played games on my phone before, and haven't played other games for a decade or more, but I've really enjoyed this. The actual gameplay is pretty good - timing the pass to put a player through a gap, running at angles and all that.