Wiltshire Warrior Dragon

I think Mourgue's progress has stalled a little in the last twelve months. I cannot think of a better move for him than the SL team coached by Willie Peters. Mourgue will also bring his highly reliable kicking ability. Inevitably, the big question might be how do he and his partner cope with living in a land with a foreign language and culture. We will see!

Half time just now in Avignon where the hosts and Pia are tied at 18 all. It's live on YouTube.

If I was in charge of an English SL club then I would be keen for the next Vegas SL clash to be my team nominally away to Catalans. That way, I could insist that the French club pay all my team's travel and accommodation expenses. Well, that's only fair...

Don't underestimate the speed with which this species is moving north through the UK. The first recorded breeding in this country was in 1996 in Dorset. The RSPB reckons that the UK now has between 660 and 740 breeding pairs. That's a massive increase in under 30 years. On a French holiday in about 1993, I saw one for the first time and was really excited. I still enjoy seeing them, as they are such strikingly beautiful birds, but there isn't the excitement of novelty or rarity any more. I see them all around this bit of South Wiltshire, even in Salisbury, including by canalised becks in the city centre. On the outskirts of Salisbury, at Britford Woods, they have joined herons, who have nested there for generations, possibly centuries, so that some of the treetops now boast egret nests too. They really are part of the UK bird landscape now. I suppose new ones need to find their own space in which to breed, so, logically enough, will head a bit further north to do so. Alternatively, I imagine some that have moved north - and to or towards the coast - for winter, will just decide not to bother heading south when spring comes. That's what I predict is happening where you are, ivans82.

Do Lancaster Brewery use the premises of either former brewer from that city, Yates & Jackson and Mitchells? Coincidentally, as I type this, within reach on my desk are four unopened bottles of beer - one of which is of Mitchell's Centenary Ale (1880-1980) and another is of Y & J's Nut Brown. For the record the other two are of Traquair House ale (c 45 years old) and of Hall & Woodhouse (Badger Beers) Bicentenary Ale 1777-1977.

I think you may find, ivans82, that West Cumbria is now home.

Ici ! Division Nationale 1 - Fédération Française de Rugby à XIII

A real dilemma for the armchair viewer! Do I watch the first half of this SL clash, or the second of the Pia -v- Lezignan clash across the Channel? Clearly the standard of play in SL will be superior, but any team that has Eloi Pelissier and Hakim Miloudi in its ranks, as does Pia, should always be worth watching, if only because you are always expecting the unexpected!

If you want a close match to watch, try TO v Widnes, currently 8-6 to TO and live on YouTube.

Thanks for starting a new 2025 thread on this, Phil. One of the great things about RL fans is their collective diversity. As if to prove that point, my next performance outing will be completely different from yours, Phil. I will be in the resident chamber choir singing choral evensong in Salisbury Cathedral on Tuesday, 18th February, at 5.30pm. The responses will be sung to a setting by Bernard Rose, the evening canticles are Sumsion in G and the anthem is by Maurice Bevan.

Plymouth Argyle - the Queen's Park of English soccer!

Stade Paul Barriere would be a good name for Les Dracs' ground in Perpignan. Always good to recognise a visionary for the international game; there are so few of them about!

Three summers ago we had a family holiday back on our old stamping ground of the Craven part of the Dales (Mrs WWD is Skipton born and raised and I worked there for many years) One evening, we met up with old friends from the 'other' Ingleton, where we used to live after leaving Craven; it's in lower Teesdale. We met at a pub on Leyburn market square and had an enjoyable meal and conversation. As Mrs WWD and I headed south, at dusk, to our holiday cottage near Skipton, we were amazed and delighted by the number of barn owls we saw in Upper Wharfedale; I think it was six in total. More recently, in fact two weeks ago, I was reminded that bird-watching can occur at any time. One evening, I was travelling to play in an away table tennis match in the Chalke Valley near Salisbury and a barn owl flew along the road in front of me. Two days later, I had the same experience when fetching my daughter home from Winchester to spend the weekend with us. Black grouse males meet in the spring for mating displays; the activity is called 'lekking'; maybe your black grouse will be taking part in one of those near where you saw it, Jon M. I was once lucky enough to be taken to one of those, soon after dawn, as I recall in Littondale. It was a great sight, with the females (greyhens) hanging around at the periphery of the 'lek' site, presumably to show, in due course, their appreciation of the 'winners' in the time honoured way of the animal kingdom!

Shetland's spectacular fire festival's climax event, the torchlit procession in Lerwick, is this coming Tuesday evening; it commences at 7.30pm and lasts about half an hour, as far as I know. There is a live stream link, which is this: UpHellyAa.com - Watch Up Helly Aa live! I think it's free, but am not certain of that.

It was a programme for pre-school children (eg in the early '50s, me!) The idea was that you sat with your mum and heard a story and had the chance to hear and then sing along with a song or two - 'traditional' nursery rhymes such as The Grand Old Duke of York and Three Blind Mice. Some would have been 'bowdlerised', such as Lavender Blue, Lavender Green, which I only heard in its 'original' textual form when I was much older and had developed an interest in 'early music' and heard the City Waits (excellent band) sing it.

75 years ago today, BBC Radio broadcast Listen with Mother for the first time. It ran until 1982. I remember it with affection!

The glorious unpredictability of sport, Gordon!

That's a great win for the Wolves!

Interestingly, the sub-article under the headline "Textile boss in game's fabric" points out that a rugby league professional has already been knighted. The man in question is Sir James William Bulmer - Billy Bulmer. By all accounts, he rose from modest circumstances, which included starting his working life in a joinery at the age of ten. However, he seems to have progressed well and in his early twenties, purchased the joinery business when his employer retired. He went on to own several mills and warehouses in the Halifax and Bradford area. His companies produced huge amounts of khaki cloth for the army in WWI. he also served on the Wool Textile Control Board and the Wool Statistical Committee. It was all that work which seems to have secured his knighthood which was for 'public services'. Nevertheless, he was also a professional RL player, winning two challenge cups with Halifax, and being picked for Yorkshire. He also played, for England, in the first ever international at Central Park, Wigan, in 1904 (England 3, Other Nationalities 9) However, as I say, no reference to his rugby in the knighthood citation, it would seem.

Owen Slot's article last Saturday clearly prompted a very warm conversation - possibly wholly by email - with Clive Sullivan's widow. The consequence is a very good piece about Clive on today's sports supplement back page of The Times. A rugby league feature in The Times two Saturdays running - who'd have thought it!

Peter Yarrow, of Peter, Paul and Mary. Lead vocalist on Puff the Magic Dragon, inter alia. Only Paul remains.

That's a brilliant story, EW. It's the sort of thing that should be featured by Sky or the BBC. Arguably, Wigan should 'invent' a policy of free season tickets for centenarians and give her a refund at a little ceremony, unless she would be uncomfortable with a moment in the spotlight.

Just caught the entertaining last half-hour of the Lezignan -v- Limoux cup tie. Yet again I was reminded that one of the pleasures of watching French rugby league is the PTB. Tacklers get off fairly promptly; tackled player stands up where he was tackled, without shimmying left, right or forwards; he plays the ball with the foot. This is so neat and quick that I would thoroughly recommend that it be encapsulated in the laws of the game. Oh, hang on...

'The Times newspaper' and 'good rugby league' coverage are not phrases that logically sit well together. I read that paper daily, but not for how it covers our great game. So - credit where it is due - there is an excellent and well researched piece by Owen Slot, their chief sports writer, on the back page of today's sports supplement. It is entitled "Rugby league is due its first knight - but Sir Kev must wait his turn." Slot chronicles the disappointment in Hull that Clive Sullivan was not thus honoured, quotes from Anthony Broxton's book "Hope and Glory - RL in Thatcher's Britain" and alludes to what Carolyn Hitt discovered in making her BBC documentary "The Rugby Codebreakers", namely that racial prejudice was a motivating factor for coloured, Welsh RU players like Sullivan and Billy Boston in moving north. Slot recognises the procedural technicality which might require Sinfield's elevation to a knighthood to be delayed by a year or two. He proposes that Boston be elevated accordingly. The piece ends thus: "Boston is 90. Let him arise as rugby league's first knight before it is too late." I commend the article to you.

Have you got a date and time arranged for your crawl, JohnM? Just asking for a friend!