HawkMan

Interesting; the man the papers are talking about is Eddie Howe, yet no one here thinks he'll get it or wants him. Also no one apart from me wants Pochettino or thinks he'll get it, however he has links with one of the FA bods from his Tottenham days and stated previously he'd like the job.

So football fans are followers of Satan ? Bit harsh Harry, we Satanists don't stoop that low.

Okay I'll alter the poll to include him !!

Assuming Southgate is going, and every pundit seems to think he will, who should be the next failure..I mean outstanding candidate to take us to glory.

And the 23/24 football season finally ends, other sports can now get the oxygen of coverage until the next football season starts in.....er three weeks time. August 4th Scottish Premier, August 11th EFL and August 18th EPL. Those with Premier Sports the new season started on Saturday with the Scottish League Cup. I watched Queen of the South vs Aberdeen. Next year it's Women's Euros as the Lionesses defend the title and FIFA's mad Men's club world cup. Its all year round, it's not sustainable, what the answer is I've no idea.

Why do we need to go behind to start playing aggressively? Southgate is why. Credit to him for getting to two finals, but at this level we need a more of a creative risk taking coach. It just occurred to me that Graham Potter has recently turned down a number of job opportunities, he might be an early shout for the next coach. My personal choice would be Pochettino, he has a great record for developing young talent and not being afraid to use young players in big games. Chelsea have made a mistake IMO by sacking him.

This video started off so simply, but it went over my head about halfway through, and it only lasts 5 minutes.

Sure you'll be watching the final then ? There's a poll on AOB on the subject if you care to add your vote.

I think Saints might nick this, close game, low scoring.

Is this a bit too much ? https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/cley8lpy526o

Plenty of alternatives on Sunday Evening; Sky; Motor Racing GT Race 2 ATP Final tennis Rugby Union SA v Ireland TNT Sports; MLB Royals v Red Sox and Blue Jays v Diamondbacks Major League Cricket USA Eurosport; Climbing World Cup Motor racing World Endurance Championship Channel 4 Movie: Titanic Sky Arts Johnny Cash documentary

Interested to see what fellow forum members attitude to the Euros final is.

I'm not comparing it to the Olympics in terms of size, but attitude of London, its people and its municipal leaders to wanting to host an international event. Sadiq Khan the mayor will be all over it, bigging it up. If it was marketed as a quaint northern sport having their jamboree in London, then Londoners will ignore it. But presented as a chance to host a WC ,having fans of 12 teams criss crossing the city and putting London in the spotlight, it'll sell to locals. As for the Heartland fans, all RL fans can come to London, not just CC finalists, and take in a few games, make a weekend away of it. Logistically it'll present no problems at all, the Qatar WC was all hosted within a 30 mile radius more or less, and that's for the global phenomenon of football, London can easily handle a RLWC.

Idea for 2026 RLWC. This will never happen I know, but I really think this would work. Firstly, get the Aussies to drop out of hosting it in 2026, which shouldn't be difficult because they really couldn't give a monkeys about it anyway. Secondly approach the new Keir Starmer government to get financial backing, which as a new govt keen to impress they might well cooperate. The proposal is hold it in London, NOT ENGLAND, but LONDON ONLY. As a Londoner myself I remember the way the city got behind the 2012 Olympics. It was incredible, people went to see sports they'd never dream of seeing, Handball, Basketball, rowing etc. Even today there's a legacy, events in the Olympic Park are still getting good attendances for minority sports. If its marketed properly as, RUGBY LEAGUE WORLD CUP LONDON 2026. Attendances should be good, we have the stadiums, we Londoners love to hold world events. We also have communities from every RL playing country , actually we have communities from probably every country in the world truly. The format would be 12 teams in 3 groups of 4, top two and best two third place into QFs. That's only a third eliminated from group phase, same though as current Euros, and its worked there. England games and final at Wembley, other stadiums used, some hosting just a couple of games as not to intefere with soccer season, Tottenham, Arsenal Chelsea, West Ham, QPR, Fulham, C.Palace, Brentford, Barnet Charlton, Millwall, Orient, depending on size of expected attendance. Legacy ; incalculable value for Broncos, definite increase in fan base, after Londoners get a month of TGG and seek out more when the show is over. And what of Heartland fans? Sorry, the Heartlands hosted a WC and it wasn't exactly a success, that chance is gone. But RLWC London 2026, marketed as another big world event like 2012 could get the city behind it big time.

I asked this on the Australian RL forum but haven't got an answer so I'll ask it here. Why are 2pts awarded for a bye in the NRL ? Don't all teams get the same amount of byes and play the same number of games? So those points are not really needed.

As you say you don't watch much soccer. Take it from me, handball controversies are the dominant topic in soccer at most pro levels. With scoring at a premium in soccer games are being decided with the awarding of penalty kicks for ridiculous handball offences. Was it hand to ball or ball to hand? Accidental or deliberate ? In an unnatural position or not ? Australia's own Ange Postegoclu getting worked up about it.

You obviously don't watch soccer, particularly the current Euros, the handball rule has caused many a game to be decided by a farcical decision. It urgently needs a rethink.

Saturday 5pm England v Switzerland BBC1 or Hull KR v Catalans on Sky? What to watch, or will channel hopping be going on? Apparently RFL were asked about the HKR game and said flight times meant it couldn't be switched.

Question- why are points awarded for a bye? Seems odd, presumably every team will end up with equal byes, so you don't really need those points.

Spain...wow...it's just like watching England.

Not quite up there with the excitement at France v England at Stade Ernest- Wallon , but they're trying bless 'em.

I must say something here, as a born and bred Londoner, PL is not a ball ache to get to, nor is anywhere in London if you're a Londoner and really want to get to a particular place. London has 600 bus routes and also 600 YES 600 railway stations. It is a completely integrated transport system. Any RL fan desperate to see RL in London would not be put off by Plough Lane. The attendances there are ###### because there's not that many fans. Very sad but true. Now if the Broncos or indeed England were to play at a big stadium, Emirates or Tottenham, the lure of the stadium would entice more obviously, but Plough Lane isn't a problem. FYI 334 Railway stations ie Network Rail or Overground and 270 Underground Stations = 604

Doomwatch " In The Dark" in depth Just rewatched this episode, very good. Patrick Troughton as a diseased ex Naval Officer suffering from Myelitis and Wilson's disease, with the help of his medical genius son in law has cheated death by hooking himself to a life support machine as his body wastes away, leaving him a head only with the potential of immortality. Doomwatch get involved when investigating a drowned swimmer who had mustard gas in his lungs, and trace it to a wartime sunken vessel that had a cargo of the gas that has now leaked into the Irish Sea. Troughton's McArthur was the Officer in charge, and on tracing him they discover his condition as a head wired to a machine on a remote Scottish island. Review by Archivetvmusings below. A swimmer dies off the Scottish coast. Quist doesn’t consider this to be much of a mystery – after all, people have been known to drown before. But he begins to show a little interest when Ridge reveals that the man died of mustard gas poisoning. Some twenty five years earlier, a ship commanded by Lionel McArthur (Patrick Troughton) sank nearby. Since it carried mustard gas it therefore seems likely that somehow this deadly cargo has started to pollute the area. Although McArthur is an old friend of Quist, he elects instead to send Ridge along to investigate. But Ridge finds McArthur to be a very elusive man and even when he tracks him down he finds his answers to be rather vague. Eventually the truth is revealed – the man posing as the public face of Lionel McArthur is actually his cousin, Alan. The real Lionel McArthur exists in a vegetative state – kept alive by machines. But he doesn’t regard this in a negative way, for him it’s a positive triumph. His body became diseased, so he replaced it with machines ….. Although In The Dark has a striking pre-credits sequence showing the hapless swimmer’s death (and following the credits there’s another memorable shot of the man’s dead face in the water, overlaid with the story title) this part of the story is little more than a MacGuffin – designed to get the Doomwatch team interacting with McArthur. It’s not the first time this sort of plot device has been used, but it still feels a little clumsy. But no matter. Once we get past the first twenty minutes the story proper can begin. Immobile in a hospital bad, with only his head visible, Patrick Troughton still manages to dominate the screen. It’s interesting that given the subject matter of the story you might have expected it to be scripted by Kit Pedler and Gerry Davis, rather than John Gould. McArthur is basically a Cyberman – his body fell ill, so he cheated death by replacing it. The only part of him that remains human is his head, and he has plans to do something with that as well. He tells a horrified Quist that he wishes to remove emotions – “anger, fear, love, hate” – in order to make him function more efficiently. Anybody familiar with the first Cyberman story, The Tenth Planet, will instantly see the parallel. The question of what existence actually means is at the heart of the story. Both Ridge and Quist regard McArthur’s half life as no real life at all. Quist asks McArthur some probing questions. “We have no bodies, no needs, no desires. What’s the purpose of existing at all?” McArthur responds he wishes “to become pure. To achieve that state that all the mystics have tried to achieve in their little futile, frustrated ways. I may not look it to you Quist, but I am perfect. I am perfect man, because I am only brain.” Alethea Charlton, as McArthur’s daughter Flora, has a small, but telling role. She loves her father dearly, but implores Quist to try and persuade him to turn off the machines. Unlike him, she’s realised that he’s now barely human and that although he’s gained a version of immortality it’s been achieved at a terrible cost. Her husband, Andrew Seaton (Simon Lack) doesn’t share her concerns. Somewhat coincidentally he’s in charge of McArthur’s treatment, telling Fay that “we virtually abolished death for him” and clearly regarding this to be a positive thing. As for the Doomwatch team, Geoff and Bradley once more get the short end of the stick with just a few lines apiece. It’s clear again that Quist, Ridge and Fay are the main characters and Gould’s script is tailored to all three of them. Quist faces a moral dilemma – McArthur is a leading scientist and an old friend, so he feels an obligation to stay and do what he can to help. Ridge has a wonderful monologue directed at Quist. “You absorb all life into your own, did you know that? Everything that ever happens becomes a part of you. When you’re pre-occupied sometimes, I watch you walking. You don’t walk down ordinary, mundane streets, jostled by ordinary, mundane people. You pace the streets of a deserted village, or you tread the shattered planks of a seaside pier.” Fay now occupies the same place in the narrative that Toby did during series one – acting as something of a buffer between Quist and Ridge. The conclusion of the story doesn’t come as a surprise, Quist points out the horror of loneliness when McArthur will finally lose all bodily awareness and be a mind forever in the dark, and McArthur agrees the experiment has achieved much and should end with the machine being turned off. but it’s still a powerful conclusion to a tale that poses difficult questions about how technology and medical care should co-exist.

In depth review of Doomwatch episode By The Pricking Of My Thumbs. Full Doomwatch guide on page 1 of this thread. Review by Archivetvmusings, plus highlighted additions by me. In my thread "Doomwatch ranked Worst to Best" this episode ranked high at number 3, It's definitely worthy of its high ranking for a serious tale of scientific knowledge being used wrongly. Dr Who fans will recognise Olaf Pooley playing here a very Stahlmann type role. Patsy Burns, Nursie in Blackadder 2 appears as does Bernard Hepton of Secret Army fame, and Sally Thomsett who was the blonde one in Man About The House. In a school classroom three students spike another boy's chemistry experiment by replacing one liquid with another, when the student returns to the lab the three miscreants watch at a safe distance as the victim gets showered with glass from an exploding beaker, suffering burns. Professor Ensor (Olaf Pooley) has been granted time and space at Doomwatch to conduct experiments into the extra Y chromosome, much to Quist’s (Doomwatch head) disdain, who doesn’t believe a word of it. “Only yesterday I was reading an article by a colleague of yours, Ensor, in The Lancet. Once again he cast grave and honest doubt on the theory that the extra Y chromosome predisposes one to criminal behaviour.” Ensor has been conducting tests at a local school, asking the pupils to fill out questionnaires, as well as taking blood samples (hence the pun in the episode’s title). This is an early indication that Ensor’s methods are suspect in the extreme – Fay of Doomwatch has been assigned to work with him and she’s under the impression that the samples they’re studying have been taken from criminals (totally unaware that later samples have come from the school). ( Ensor and Fay at Doomwatch HQ) If this is an example of the casual way he treats his scientific research, then worse is to come. The school’s headmaster, Botting (Colin Jeavons) has a problem – a boy was badly injured in the chemistry lab after three other pupils (MacPherson, Jenkins and Franklin) tampered with his experiment. Botting is convinced that one of them must be the ringleader, but which one? He discusses the matter with Ensor and, after learning that Stephen Franklin (Barry Stokes) is taller than normal for a boy of his age (he’s seventeen), the Professor decides he must be guilty. Carriers of the extra Y chromosome are known to be taller than average, Stephen is taller than average, QED. (Stephen Franklin) It’s an astonishingly thin amount of evidence, but Botting is convinced and expels Stephen, which leaves us unsure as to who’s the most culpable – Botting or Ensor. It’s plain that Botting lacks judgement, as whilst he’s portrayed as a progressive headmaster – keen to encourage his pupils to express themselves – he’s blinded by Ensor’s apparent scientific credibility (allowing the true culprits, MacPherson and Jenkins to get off scot free). Ensor’s reasons for picking Stephen seem very vague. Apart from his height, the other major factor seems to be that he was adopted. Bad blood ….. ( Headmaster Botting) It is revealed that Stephen was once in an institute for young offenders, that is where his would be parents got him out of for adoption. Ensor did some of his earlier research there, so that is how he finds out that Stephen is XYY. Dr Ridge sends Geoff Hardcastle (John Nolan) to the Franklin's to interview them and discovers Stephen has run away, taking a short wave radio with him. The assumption is that he's gone to Gatwick Airport as his hobby is watching planes land and take off whilst listening to the aircraft communications. Stephen’s sister returning from school tells her parents and Hardcastle that her year at school 13 - 15 ,middle years, are taking part in Ensor’s experiments by having their thumbs pricked for blood. So only now Ensor is moving up the age groups, so how did Ensor know Stephen was XYY? Hardcastle phones Quist and reveals Stephen’s institute background, and Quist realises that Ensor’s knowledge came from there. ( Hardcastle) Quist obviously furious as Ensor lied to Doomwatch about where he was getting blood from, he said it was from prisoners only. And Ensor has used Stephen’s chromosome peculiarity to get him expelled. (Mr and Mrs Franklin) Stephen’s father, Oscar (Bernard Hepton), is appalled by the way his son’s been treated and after he gets nowhere with Botting he heads off to speak to Quist. They know each other, but Quist can barely tolerate the man. Oscar is a freelance journalist, working in the science field, and Quist has a poor opinion of his skills as a writer. The always watchable Hepton gives a fine performance. Oscar is full of bluff and bluster, but he’s a fundamentally decent man who obviously cares for his son, which makes the way Quist treats him even harder to take. He’s curt and dismissive and it’s only after Oscar leaves, and Ridge piques Quist’s interest with information about Ensor’s school experiments, that he begins to get interested. In an ironic twist , Oscar back in the 60's wrote about XYY peculiarities and suggested that it could lead to personality abnormalities. So Quist reasons that Oscar has in effect been hoisted by his own petard. Botting a headmaster suckered into believing this pseudo scientific claptrap has used this , with Ensor’s advice, to expel his son. The boy injured in the classroom prank does recover and the other two boys get as punishment and essay to do only, the subject is Behaviour and Heridity. When Stephen tells his father that, Oscar Franklin goes ape crazy, Botting the head is implying Stephen has bad blood. No wonder Stephen becomes disturbed and while his father is giving Botting a rollicking in the school office, Stephen has ransacked his father's office, upstairs in the house, and found his previous articles on XYY chromosomes and the conclusion he reached about personality abnormalities. Stephen runs off to Gatwick to kill himself. Stephen attempts to kill himself in a rather unexpected way (by walking onto the runway at Gatwick). He’s obviously in a confused state as before this he was heading for a plane which was flying to Jersey. Geoff Hardcastle pops up again briefly to talk the boy down and luckily he comes away unscathed. Everything’s built up for the big confrontation between Quist and Ensor. It’s been stated on several occasions that Quist can’t stand him and also has little respect for him as a scientist. Ensor attempts to defend his knowledge, but Quist simply steamrollers on. “Your knowledge that condemns a child unheard, that drives him to risk death on an airport runway at night. You say yourself that there could be 45,000 males with the extra Y chromosome, yet your sample was only 100, taken from prisoners, so where are the others Ensor? Could it be they are leading normal lives? Your views of the damage the extra Y does twisted by the origin of your samples. Can we say with certainty that XY is normal and XYY abnormal " It’s possibly not as powerful a diatribe as it could have been (it’s interesting that Quist seemed more angry at Oscar than he does at Ensor) but it’s still a nicely played scene by John Paul. Sally Thomsett playing a pony tailed 13 year old just before Man About The House, tbh she didn't really look 13. After a couple of indifferent episodes, By The Pricking of My Thumbs gets Doomwatch back on track. Bernard Hepton and Olaf Pooley are both excellent, although Ensor isn’t as central to the plot as you might expect. In many ways he’s more of a catalyst for the drama that’s triggered once he makes his disastrous prognosis. Patsy Byrne, Sally Thomsett and Colin Jeavons are more familiar faces who help to enliven the story. Byrne is good value as Stephen’s mother whilst a young Thomsett is his (slightly irritating) younger sister.