JonM

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

I don't think it's entirely out of the question that he succeeds Trump. He has been friends with Trump for most of his life, is a major Trump fundraiser and his wife was in Trump's cabinet (the political one, not locked up in his cupboard). Trump is in the WWE hall of fame.

Yes, and of course, it reflects the changing media landscape - live TV shows on BBC/ITV get a fraction of the audience of the past, the newspaper industry is dying fairly rapidly and so there is much less opportunity for sports stars, actors, comedians etc to get some kind of national profile. It does mean that are many more niches to occupy - Youtubers who amass millions of views who most people will never have heard of, and so on. Perhaps, SL taking control of its own destiny through streaming rather than being paid via a monopoly broadcaster is the model of the near future, and at that point the game's marketing is about finding new audiences for subscriptions, and part of that is or should be making players and coaches into public figures.

Yes, I'd kind of skipped over that part - completely disagree with that, we're clearly far stronger in most important respects now. That quote, though, was in the context of a question about national visibility/ profile, where I think that is indeed true. And of course, that's the part that the sub-editor has used for the headline, as you'd expect. Random people could name rugby league players back then, and not just in the north. That's not true today, probably Richie Myler is the only RL player with any kind of public profile.

Spot on that Guardian interview, agree with all of that.

Reading the science reports, it seems like one advantage is that you can much more easily detect who currently has it - a blood test is much easier/cheaper than PET scans or lumbar punctures, which means that it should be possible to do mass screening. And it seems likely that starting the current treatments we do have much earlier will be much more effective than waiting for the actual symptoms to show up - once the damage to the brain is done, it is probably irreversible, but treatments to effectively prevent/ delay rather than cure can be used.

There are numerous lifestyle changes that affect your risk. Both cardiovascular fitness and strength, diet, sleep all show strong epidemiological correlation with delaying the onset of it. Of course, all of those things have an impact on cancer, heart disease etc. too so you don't need an Alzheimers test to tell you to do something. HRT for menopausal women, particularly those with the APOE e4 gene variant that has markedly higher risk for Alzheimers, is another thing that would likely be recommended.

St. Helens 18 Swinton 28 this afternoon, quite a young Saints team.

I'm in Wensleydale, just along a bit from Hawes towards Leyburn. Hopefully the lambs are safely tucked up somewhere warm tonight. Quite a lot of snow round here today and more in Cumbria, and obviously the safety rules kick in, with people being held at Dufton to form groups to go over Cross Fell with people not being allowed to continue solo. Looks like some people being held at other checkpoints too. Amazing stuff though.

I don't know. It does seem plausible that England's international calendar for the year would be announced in an exclusive interview with Wigan Today. That's how other sports operate, after all.

Lol. Come back in August.

I've been dot watching too - probably the strongest field ever. Shame John Kelly had to drop out so early. I did 25k on the tops yesterday, absolutely beautiful in the sun. Dusting of snow and the frozen ground made for much better conditions underfoot than previously. First lambs of the year too, which I was not expecting.

Widnes 22 Whitehaven 22 for Jack Owens Testimonial. 12 points in the last couple of minutes for Widnes to make it a draw. Haven looked significantly sharper and faster and really ought to have held on for the win.

That link seems to be quoting viewership for a game in March which beat the figures for the previous year's final, not the final itself? Oddly enough, I can't find any press release for the 2023 premiership final, which leads me to think that the figures weren't that great. The following has figures for 2022 though. https://premiershiprugby.com/content/premiership-rugby-breaks-tv-audience-records-at-the-end-of-an-unforgettable-season

Yes, I had Lachlan Lam in the list (which is how I counted to 16), but somehow typed over it or something.

Isn't Stanley Gene on the coaching staff at Hull? Quite a long list - 16, not including some of those listed above and one or two other recent changes, Liam Horne (Castleford Tigers) Edwin Ipape (Leigh Leopards) Nene Macdonald (Salford Red Devils) Rhyse Martin (Leeds Rhinos) Sylvester Namo (Castleford Tigers) Nixon Putt (Castleford Tigers) Emmanuel Waine (London Broncos) Roderick Tai (Warrington) Keven Appo (Bradford Bulls) Jason Tali (Doncaster) Watson Boas (Doncaster) McKenzie Yei (Featherstone Rovers) Wellington Albert (Featherstone Rovers) Edene Gebbie (Whitehaven) Dion Aiye (Whitehaven)

It's specifically the rhotic 'R' that they have round Blackburn that they're talking about, isn't it? That used to be more common in North and East Lancs. Lancashire doesn't have just one accent, even today, it's probably one of the more diverse parts of the country in terms of accent.

Yes, it's been a real eye-opener/ reminder of the power of a tv drama. The basic facts have been in the public domain for over 15 years, there's been extensive newspaper and tv coverage, MPs from both parties campaigning on the issue since 2007/2008 and a proper ongoing public enquiry. But a fictionalised TV account with a famous actor is what it finally took to get the public engaged and the government to act.

Ice Hockey has for many years.

Interesting about the Boxing Day games. I obviously didn't do a very good job of searching the tv schedules! I guess I would always have been at an actual game on Boxing day. So, first live BBC coverage of league fixtures in ~50 years then.

Will TV viewership scores be affected by the recent TV developments? FTA on BBC seems likely to get an order of magnitude higher ratings than anything on Sky.