Wiltshire Warrior Dragon

I have chanced upon a Dutch birdwatchers website which includes, up-to-date local, bird sighting reports from many locations in Europe and North America. Here is the link. [Trektellen.org] - Migration counts & captures UK sites with reports submitted include some from the Yorkshire coast, more specifically from the likes of Swinefleet, Hunmanby and Flamborough. Some of you may like to check what is turning up on your local patch, especially when the excitement of following Hull KR or Hull FC - for different reasons! - becomes too much.

One of my all time favourite SL tries was by the great Thomas Bosc doing two such kicks in one move - first over the main defensive line and then after he had regathered the ball, over the last defender. he regathered again and scored a try.

It is easy and valid to criticise The Times for its miserly coverage of our sport, so, credit where it is due, there is a good, full-page (in the paper edition) piece today by Owen Slot, who I think is their chief sports writer. It is on the background to Hull KR's resurgence, and in particular the roles of Messrs. Cudgell and Sewell, especially the former, who is dubbed 'Post Office crusader'. This reflects his central role in supporting wronged postmasters and mistresses in the PO IT scandal, something of which some RL fans might not be aware. Here is the link: Sport: News, transfers, comment and analysis | The Times and The Sunday Times A good read.

I just thought I'd come on here to say Today is National Poetry Day. So, why not relax with your favourite rhyme (always assuming you can spare the time). Or maybe a nice bit of age-old doggerel, Although it really means absolute b****r all!

Today is, apparently, the anniversary of the publication of Beatrix Potter's The Tale of Peter Rabbit in 1902. All first edition copies had been ordered before it arrived in the shops! The very first edition had been a private printing in 1901, and those too had all been snapped up.

They don't like it up 'em!

Aye, aye, jam lid....sorry, Jim Lad!

Thanks for all your work on this over the regular season, Fevnut, which I have greatly appreciated.

I think the sport has become rather obsessed with the alleged merits of lightning quick PTBs. I began watching the sport about sixty years ago. The PTBs were, as I recall, tidy and at an acceptable pace. Maybe they were a split-second slower than now, but so what? If I remember correctly, what happened was the player in possession was tackled by one or more opponents. The tacklers promptly regained their feet and at least one faced the tackled player, but without touching, holding the jersey of, or otherwise interfering with his tackled opponent. The tackler would stand where the tackle was made. The tackled player allowed his opponents to regain their feet. the tackled player did not seek to move forward, or sideways, from the point where the tackle took place. the tackled player placed the ball on the ground and heeled it backwards, or dropped it between his legs and heeled it backwards. and that was that - all quite neat and tidy really. There is one other point maybe worth making. What happened on the field of play, at the PTB, reflected what the laws said should happen. An infringement, such as moving off the mark (forwards or sideways), would result in a penalty - no 'if's and 'but's. I am very much with Dunbar on this. Let's just implement the laws - all the laws -relating to the PTB. There would be two or three weeks of lots of penalties and, no doubt, shrieks of horror put into words on this forum. As long as the RFL and its referees kept their collective nerve (which sadly they have signally failed to do this season re at least attempting to heel the ball back with the foot at the PTB), then each PTB would be much tidier, albeit at the expense of being about 0.5 seconds slower. I, for one, could live with that terrible loss of speed.

I went to an RSPB talk in a local village hall the other day. The subject was Franchises Lodge, a new(-ish) reserve, which the RSPB purchased in 2019. It is on the northern edge of the New Forest, about a couple of miles from the village where I live and a similar sort of distance from the one in which Shadow lives. The most intriguing facts and figures I came away with were all to do with subjects other than birds. First, the reserve was in poor condition when purchased primarily because of two factors - rhododendrons and fallow deer. Apparently, the total area of mature rhododendron bushes (which carry little benefit for other wildlife) in the reserve equates to 87 soccer pitches. The deer figure was even more staggering. The RSPB reserve and immediately surrounding lands were thought to be home to up to a thousand fallow deer (no wonder I see them pretty often!) The rhododendron bushes are being ripped out, with just a few smaller ones being left; the deer population is being drastically reduced by culling outside the breeding season. The other facts and figures that stick in my mind are to do with two other sorts of mammal. Pine martens are apparently spreading quite naturally throughout parts of England and they have made it to the New Forest where, in recent times and in various places in the forest, eighteen different females have been identified, captured on CCTV. An intriguing fact is that each pine marten's pale, creamy patch on their chest is unique in shape and size. So, identifying individual martens is a lot easier than for some other species. Some pine martens have been seen in Franchises Lodge. The other fact was said, as an aside really, about the spread of beavers. Apparently, a couple have been seen near Salisbury, which is new - and 'unauthorised' - territory for them.

Completely agree with you, Eddie. The idea of a play-off process that doesn't bring the end of a season for the losers of any game seems bizarre to me, unless you are a sport that can accommodate a play-off series in each round (as in baseball and North American ice hockey)

DJ and TOTP presenter, Pete Murray, is apparently still with us; he is 99 today.

I watched much, though not all (due to other calls on my time) of the Wakey game on The Sportsman. I was impressed by the commentator (sorry, not sure who he was) and Paul Rowley's ability to be sparing in his comments, and hence well worth hearing when he did say something. Lessons there for others?

Eighty years ago today, the great West Indies and Lancashire cricketer, Clive Lloyd, was born. Happy birthday, Sir Clive!

Thanks for the clarification.

I don't understand what you think has been brushed under the carpet, BB. The collective implication of what OF and I have quoted from two sources is that the incident was reviewed and the conclusion reached that, as in many - if not all - incidents, there was a guilty party and an innocent one. On this occasion they deemed Lewis guilty and Rouge innocent. You may feel it should be the other way round, or that both were guilty, but smacking a four-match ban on a player doesn't strike me as brushing the incident in question under the carpet.

This is what the Yorkshire Post is saying on its website: Catalans Dragons full-back Cesar Rouge has been cleared of wrongdoing following a biting allegation by Hull KR half-back Mikey Lewis. The incident was put on report during KR's resounding Magic Weekend win on Sunday but the Frenchman has been told he has no case to answer. "Opponent has put hand in player’s mouth and footage does not show player biting down on his opponent," read the match review panel notes.

Well spotted....aah, hang on...

The comments about Ben Lam on here sound as though they are based on the assumption that he will play in SL. Maybe he will get that call-up. However, the Dracs' website says that he will train with the Dracs, but get game time with St Esteve XIII Catalan in the top flight of French club competition, whose season begins in the autumn. He has been signed for a trial period, which runs until Christmas.

Just back from a bit of crepuscular birdwatching in the New Forest. I was hoping to hear and even maybe see a nightjar or two, and was at a known haunt of theirs, Hale Purlieu. No 'churring' to be heard and it may be a bit late in the season for that. However, I spotted one drifting through the trees near me, no doubt finding loads of moths. I then moved forward by about twenty yards, away from the bank of trees where the first nightjar had been, and hence more into the open. Within about five minutes, I must have been spotted, because another nightjar (or I suppose possibly the same one) came flying low past me, and then kept circling me; I am sure it must have been wondering what was this strange addition to the local landscape! As it flew round, it was making a very soft,quiet clucking sort of sound. Eventually, it went on its way, but was a great sight while it was giving me the once over and, let's face it, it's not every day that you get within about ten yards of a nightjar! Yesterday evening, I let the dog out to spend a penny on our lawn and, as ever, went out with her. She seemed exceptionally interested in the smells she was picking up down the side of the lawn. Then she stopped and bent forward. I shone the torch to see what was causing this and was delighted to see a hedgehog just in front of her. This is the first I have seen in our garden for a few years, though, given our dog's regular interest in the smells on the lawn, both last thing at night and first thing in the morning, perhaps we have more hedgehog visits than I have imagined.

Now then, HG, let's not have any of this foreign, lager rubbish. Get a decent pint or three of Teley's or Theakston's set up!

Yes, that's how I anticipate it happening, DD.

Its never too late, Eddie... Careers | Ordnance Survey

Maybe less well known, HG, is that this style of surname was once also used by some families in the far north of Britain. On my dad's side, my family is from Yell and Fetlar, two of the three most northerly inhabited islands in Shetland (and hence, GB): my dad was the first in his family not born in Shetland; he was Aberdeen born and raised. There is a strand of my family tree, which begins (ie we have no details of anybody older) in the 16th century with someone called Olaf Nicolson. We may deduce his father's Christian name was Nicol. The surname only starts to stay the same from one generation to another in the 19th century, which I think is surprisingly late, when it becomes 'Williamson'. I think this name practice probably first broke down in Shetland in the 18th century, when, for instance, women give up the practice of adding '-daughter' or '-dochter' to their father's name (whether women chose to do this or were forced to, I don't know) English is very male chauvanistic in expecting women to have names ending in '-son'. Not only does the Icelandic approach make a gender distinction, but so too does, for example, Gaelic. So, for instance, in English, Mary MacIntyre, but in the original Scots Gaelic, Mairi Nic an t-Saoir - 'Mary, daughter of the joiner.' Any brother she had would, of course, be Mac an t-Saoir. That gender distinction is still made in Gaelic names.

I speak English like a native - probably on account of being a native (well, native Scot) I speak French like a native - sadly, that is a British native! However, my 'O' level French, secured in 1965, enables me to translate - loosely and for the most part - pages on, for instance, the TOXIII and Treize Mondial websites. Of course, the Catalans Dragons' website is bilingual - French and English - just like all other SL teams' sites...oh no, hang on... In the early days of my love of GAA (ie c. 1963 -1970), I could tell you all 32 counties in Ireland, categorised by historic province and with their Irish names. Nowadays, I can still do almost all of this, but may have forgotten a few of the Irish names. I have a small vocabulary of Scots Gaelic and Dutch words, but, in each instance, it would be an exaggeration to say that I speak the language. My knowledge of Catalans is limited to three items. First, reading the new(ish)ly painted wording behind one of the sets of goalposts in Perpignan, I deduce that 'Sem Dracs' means 'we are Dragons'; the English and French clauses next to it are the clue! Second, I know that 'Els Segadors', the title of the Catalonian 'national' anthem means 'the reapers'. Third, I know that 'gos d'atura Catala' means 'Catalan sheepdog', not least of all because our pet dog is one!