JonM

I make it as follows: Group 1: Barrow are through Group 2: Winner of Keighley vs Bradford go through. If it's a draw, Bradford win the group and Keighley also through as best second place. Group 3: Wakefield go through by beating Newcastle (or a draw). York are also through as best 2nd place team unless someone else wins big. Group 4: Oldham go through if they draw or beat Rochdale. If Rochdale win by 76 points, they go through, otherwise it's Halifax. Group 5: Batley go through if they draw or beat Hunslet. If Hunslet beat them by 99 points, they go through, otherwise it's Featherstone. Group 6: Swinton are through. Group 7: Sheffield go through by beating Midlands (or a draw). If Midlands win 68 points or more, they go through, otherwise it's Doncaster. York are currently the most likely to go through as best second place. The only realistic result that puts them out is a Keighley/Bradford draw. Could change if there's an upset in one of the above groups, or if Whitehaven beat Workington T by 76, or Widnes beat North Wales by 80. Neither seems likely. Nobody is mathematically out of it yet, even Newcastle can go through if they can just beat Wakefield by around 170 points.

He's in his sixties and had a year off due to heart surgery, so I doubt he'll rack up 25 years at Widnes...

They'd gone bust, and he was one of the people who restarted the club, IIRC.

It varies, but I aim to keep it around 120/70. The second number (diastolic) has always been fine, but the systolic number was much worse before I started tracking it & working out what works for me. I think for those under 60 who have high blood pressure, there's something like half of cases where there is no obvious underlying medical cause. As JohnM points out, it needs to be kept under control. There's no symptoms until you get a heart attack or stroke or whatever. One of my GP friends has a little 'joke' that he uses with students, which is 'what is the most common presentation of a patient with heart problems' with the correct answer being that the patient is dead. I think that has changed recently (in the sense that it used to be the case that there would've been no prior indication), today we have a lot more screening.

That's one part of the job, yes. I'm sure we can all think of clubs that have had plenty of investment that hasn't produced success. There's clearly many other areas that someone has to run - the whole matchday operations in terms of getting games played - pitch, kit, ground safety, drugs testing etc, the spectator matchday experience, ticketing, marketing/promotional/ media stuff and that's before you think about player & coach contracts, running teams for women, disability, wheelchair and so on.

Probably Oldham fans are more familiar with the situation than me, but my understanding is that he put a certain amount of money from his accountancy business when he started there 25 years ago and then transitioned to it being his full-time job/ source of income. And the situation with the ground/ playing squad reflected the lack of anyone putting money into the club. Whereas Mike Ford and the new owners have been able to put significant amounts of new money in.

He was appointed by the board to run the club, as a full-time employee. There's been a fair bit of staff turnover, both playing and non-playing, since he joined. From the outside, it's hard to know whether he's done the right things or not, but he certainly seems to have a knack for making enemies, and I think it's probably correct to say that this season Widnes will be looking more to beat Dewsbury, Whitehaven, Swinton etc. and avoid relegation rather than vying with York, Batley, Halifax etc for one of the lower play-off spots. There are some great RL people on the Widnes board with pedigrees that would warm the hearts of expansionists on here. Roger Harrison has an MBE for services to schools RL; he was taking Widnes u-11s teams to play in London 40+ years ago. Rod Steele who used to post on here set up an amateur team in Colne and so on. But being a retired primary school headmaster presumably doesn't give access to huge amounts of money or much experience of running a professional sports club. I'm very reluctant to criticise the board at all though. They stepped up with their life savings to rescue the club - a thankless task to some extent - and I suspect I'm financially much better off than some of them.

Indeed - back playing in their home town at a proper stadium in Boundary Park. Squad that looks like it would be competitive in the Championship, not league 1, well known new owners generating a lot of excitement.

From my n=1 experiment, using home blood pressure monitor for 10+ years and taking part in a university study, salt doesn't have that big an effect (but oddly it seems to be the concentration that matters rather than absolute amount - plenty of salt in a meal with plenty of liquid is much better than small amount of salty stuff on its own. Sugar seems to makes more of a difference to me than salt. Stress only a short-term effect on BP for me, caffeine the same. Leafy greens, beetroot bring it down substantially, so I just eat those.

Can't see any figures for any of the 1895 Cup games. Oldham v London (Friendly) 1214

6978 Warrington vs Leigh Friendly

Siddal have amongst the best facilities of any ARL club, certainly better than some of the grounds that some professional clubs have used. Seems like a reasonable, pragmatic decision to me.

Individual clubs' social media.

Northern Rail Cup Keighley v Dewsbury 839 Oldham v Halifax 1521 North Wales v Swinton 520 Midlands v Doncaster 180 Hunslet v Featherstone 875 Workington T v Barrow 901 Friendlies Warrington Widnes 3399 Bradford v Leeds 3611 Huddersfield v London 814 Wakefield T v Wigan "over 4000"

Potentially two home games against amateur opposition for Cornwall.

Widnes v Wests last year was quite the love-in - pennants & the like exchanged beforehand (and still on display at Widnes), standing ovation for the Wests players and travelling support at the end, plus an impromptu haka in the stand. Would be great if they were to get the chance to play a SL club.

10 v 11 (or vice versa) might cause the BBC results page a few issues.

Huddersfield 50 London Broncos 16 this afternoon - three tries for Adam Swift on debut.

Do try to catch a clip of the Stokes run out - one of the greatest pieces of fielding you'll ever see. Edit - Like this one: https://www.tntsports.co.uk/cricket/india-v-england/2024/ravindra-jadeja-run-out-after-outrageous-fielding-by-ben-stokes-as-england-close-on-incredible-win-on-day-four-in-india_vid2075766/video.shtml

Tenuous RL connection. Stokes being the son of a former RL coach is well known, but who knew that Simon Hartley is the son of Bill Hartley, former sprint coach/ conditioner at Widnes and Wigan?

Very exciting last few overs. The look on Steve Smith's face

I was pretty impressed by the Warrington youngsters, some superb attacking play, lightning fast at times and presumably some combinations that have not played together too often. .Far from being the Widnes first choice team though, as a quick look at the squad numbers would tell you.

Warrington 46 Widnes 40 FT - entertaining game.

Warrington 34-16 up at half-time for Sam Burgess's first game as a coach.. Widnes tries off some soft errors at the start of the game, but Warrington dominant since then. They look very slick with the ball, which considering that there's probably only one first choice player, so presumably some untried combinations, is pretty impressive.

Warrington v Widnes is live on YouTube. Widnes 10-0 up after 7 minutes