David Shepherd

We tried it at the end of 2021 season. Never heard anything more, so I assume we didn't break it. IIRC, you got £1 off a pint if you were sporting a flat cap. Had a very thick head the day after.

Bless poor Mick, he just can't help making a plonker of himself.

Have the authorities missed a trick here? If they'd been a bit slower in their response, the problem of the listed status might have been solved......

NFL have been trying to get European franchises since the mid 80s. Aside from a couple of on the road event games (which are great days out), they've achieved the square root of sod all. I dread to think how much they've poured down the european drain.

Floodlights very impressive. North stand looks like it will be quite good. What's the plan for the rest of the new stand side? Read a lot about the pitch, maybe it needs time to mature. Didn't think it was a patch on Leigh's.

It was a friendly, score was irrelevant. But yes, Wakey won. Floodlights are very impressive. North Stand update looks like it'll fetch it into the 21st century. New main stand was rather underwhelming given the hype surrounding it.

Just seen it in the flesh. It’s only 2/3 the length of the field. Maybe 12 rows of seats. Someone is using Wakey’s fivers for bog roll if that’s costing £10m

Same here. From hotel and bar staff to Uber and bus drivers, no one had really heard of them. Not even the many (lots of them northern) ex-pats. I’ve no idea what marketing and community engagement TO do, but there’s clearly work to be done raising their profile. I don’t think just being in SL and expecting people to turn up is going to work.

There's no infrastructure or grass roots in Wales, Scotland etc. The idea that you plant women's RL in places where RL doesn't exist and expect it to be a success is right from the expansion fantasist's playbook. Women's teams are attached to existing clubs because that's where the RL interest and infrastructure is.

No one is forcing clubs to run a ladies team, it's just you won't get a Cat A grading if you don't. Seems fair enough to me.

Absolutely this. My daughter's girlfriend plays for Huddersfield. She absolutely loves the collision (and a bit of biff).

And they’ll need to play more than 11 games….

They’re just lulling us into false hope, like Leigh did last year. By May they’ll have 30 hairy backsided, fast as lightning brick lavatories

Have you seen the proposed junction layout? It's a right dog's breakfast. May not impact the mainline of the 62 thanks to the increase in stacking lanes, but travel through the junction between Ponte/Xscape/Cas looks to be much more difficult. Not sure the local residents will enjoy all that extra HGV activity either. I also see that the initial activity is to extract coal from the site. That would suggest they're a long way off building anything. It's unlikely to be a quick process, even if the Cult of St Greta allow them to strip mine greenbelt for some nasty, evil coal.

Axiom have been trying to develop that land for a good few years and aside from putting some new flags up about 4 years ago, they've achieved the square root of sod all. I'm not saying it will never happen, but I'd be amazed if they had started work in 5 years time, nevermind got to the stage where they'd be coughing up for the stadium improvements. Hopefully Cas can make some use of the £2m that WMDC have allocated to each of the three clubs and make some much needed improvements, independent of waiting for this development to happen. There are many hurdles for it to overcome, not least highway access and their plans for what is already an overloaded motorway junction look like they've been crayoned by a 4 year old.