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JonM

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Posts posted by JonM

  1. On 09/11/2021 at 08:50, gingerjon said:

    The UK Sport funding being cut essentially meant that that kind of recruitment had to stop (I believe) as there was no ability to do it. The funding is back now so there is an active programme of seeking out players (rather like Ireland cricket and others do).

    My youngest son was at an athletics event at Lee Valley (coaching for long/triple/high jump & pole vault) when he was in his mid-teens - not too long after the 2012 Olympics. The GB handball coaching staff were there too and basically told the assembled athletes that if they took up handball, they had a decent shot of playing for their country at some level, as there just weren't that many people playing.

    I always use korfball as my measuring stick for minority sports; there's definitely more korfball players than handball players in Britain.

  2. 15 hours ago, iffleyox said:

    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...

    An hour most of the time, but summer holiday weekends can be a 100 mile queue from Plymouth back to the A303 turn off.

    I lived in the area when 30K+ people would travel to Twickenham for the county final if Cornwall made the final. Definitely an untapped market currently.

    • Like 1
  3. On 24/10/2021 at 23:54, voteronniegibbs said:

    Rolls Royce provided the AVRO Shackletons with their Griffon engines. Shackletons were described as 10,000 loose rivets flying in close formation.

    We did the airbus factory tour on a trip to Toulouse a few years back, looking at the A380. Lots of explanations about how clever all the technology was, how the wings were specially shaped, carbon fibre this and that. The different parts of the planes come from different parts of Europe - this bit comes from Preston, this bit from Spain, this bit from Germany and so on. Anyway, end of the tour, the man said - yeah, as long as each piece is within a few cm of spec, the pieces all pretty much fit together and we just put tens of thousands of rivets in everywhere to hold it together.

    • Haha 1
  4. On 08/10/2021 at 20:14, Moomintroll said:

    It's the fifth edition of the world's northernmost Parkrun here in Oulu (Finland) this weekend. I've been alternating running with volunteering on a weekly basis so far. 

    Nice. Had a few business trips to Oulu, lovely place in winter when the city is covered in white and the sea is frozen. It's the only place outside of Britain where I've seen people passed out on the street mid-afternoon through drinking homebrew though. I bet that is a beautiful course.

    • Like 1
  5. 5 hours ago, tim2 said:

    Ferry Meadows parkrun in Peterborough yesterday. Lovely course round a couple of lakes, very flat. 450+ runners so congestion at the start slowed me a bit but I ran my second fastest parkrun at 22.31

    I did the inaugural there, back when that was a thing, have not been back since. 

    It's a good time.

  6. 42 minutes ago, The Hallucinating Goose said:

    On the thread about the Billy Boston stand, someone said Wigan should probably look at getting an 18,000 or so stadium themselves and I think this should maybe be the case for Hull and Huddersfield as well. We'd probably be alright with 15,000 and Huddersfield 10,000.

    You're looking at £20-30 million to do that. Hard to see any of those clubs being able to make a good business case to borrow that kind of money. 

  7. 23 hours ago, tim2 said:

    Phoenix parkrun (in Runcorn, not Arizona) today and a 12th place finish in 23.57 - a decent time considering it has a cheeky hill that you do 3 times. Nice bacon sarnie in the cafe afterwards. Chatted to a young lad who plays for "Bears" rugby league - not sure which Bears mind you. He was in his full kit as he had volunteered (for his DoE) and then was off to play in a semi-final. 

    On the site of my old secondary school - I must've done cross country there, but haven't been back since the place was demolished and the park was created.  That'll be West Bank Bears in Widnes presumably, although the old Runcorn ARLFC had its pitch and clubhouse near there back in the eighties. I dread to think what caused you to be in Runcorn on a Saturday morning 🙂

    • Haha 1
  8. 9 hours ago, tim2 said:

    I reckon that COVID vaccination was some kind of Bill Gates nanobot experiment because my times and WAVA score have just been unbelievable since parkrun restarted. I broke 70% WAVA having been below 60% before lockdown and failing to run 5K at all back in September. Or, it could be all the training I've done. I ran one of my top 10 10K times in training on Wednesday - normally I need race conditions for really fast times so a 10K race is beckoning. 

    If only 🙂

    I'm about 2 minutes (24 mins rather than 22 ) slower than pre-lockdown. I don't think my training has changed much over the last 18 months, other than no parkruns and no races. I suspect the lack of race pace explains a bit of the slowdown and the extra few pounds being carried along explains the rest. My highest parkrun WAVA is 66%. 

    Best get a 10K race in quick, before whatever it is wears off.

  9. 16 hours ago, Damien said:

    Talk about clutching at straws. Even the NRL or any representative never mentioned part time state leagues. This was all about 16 NRL clubs and their pre season trial games. Stop trying to change the facts to suit your opinion.

    Aren't the Hunters owned by the PNG RL anyway? The players are the employees of the PNG RL and have nothing to do with the NRL. There is no player welfare nonsense that the NRL can use.

    There was a statement from the PNG RL authorities (which I can't find a link to) outlining their revised plans after Jon Dutton announced dedicated charter flights in the run-up to the Aussies pulling out. Their PNG-based players were going to have to quarantine to be allowed into Australia, in order to catch the flights, and obviously again when they returned to Australia and potentially they would need to be away from home for some months, and this might cause some disruption to the end of the domestic season. Seemed pretty clear that the PNGRL was putting the world cup ahead of everything else.

    • Like 7
  10. 11 minutes ago, Toby Chopra said:

    All true. But a lot of people already feel that about this year. 

    There's a lot of bravado on here about how we can just carry on without Australia and NZ, largely because we don't want to feel bullied by them. I get that, I feel it too. 

    But outside regular RL circles the 2021 tournament is dead already. 

    No good outcomes left, the NRL has seen to that, just looking for the least bad ones now. 

    Yes, we're not party to what has been said to the organisers by the government re their funding, by the BBC re their broadcast contract, or by the various football clubs who've who have signed stadium rental contracts. So we have to trust Jon Dutton & the organising team to make the best decision and try to minimise the financial damage the NRL have caused here.

    • Like 3
  11. 8 minutes ago, Toby Chopra said:

    Only the RLWC final would actually clash with FifaWC games. An issue, but not an insurmountable one. 

    Ok, that's not so bad. It's still going to ensure that the tournament is largely free of media coverage outside of the BBC. 

    Ticket sales are going to be hit really hard, no matter what. The audience for this kind of event is people who aren't necessarily specifically RL fans. I just can't see people going for tickets for an event that has no guarantee of taking place and which can be killed off with 4 minutes notice.

    • Like 3
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