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2 hours ago, redjonn said:

yep, still haven't got all services back yet... I guess you where impacted too.

No, I'm on London, but my sister lives at the old family home, from where you can see Bilsdale Mast. She's got satellite TV, though.

Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

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2 hours ago, Dunbar said:

Here is my take on the situation.

Despite the fact that modern Rugby League players are in general fitter, more athletic and more skillful than ever before, I find myself drifting away from many games on tv and even forgetting some are on - particularly in the UK. 

So why is this?

Well, I think Rugby League today is too much like a pizza and a cold beer.

I love pizza and a cold beer.  But I couldn't eat a pizza with a cold beer every meal; not just because it would be unhealthy but because it would become too familiar, too monotonous, too boring in fact.

There is a real paradox about Rugby League.  When we talk about scrums on here the majority opinion is nearly always that scrums were boring, scrappy and served no purpose and got in the way of the 'good stuff'... the good stuff being the running, the tackling, the passing... all the things we say is best about Rugby League... the pizza and the cold beer.  The universal view was that the sport was better without scrums.

Well, I would argue that the scrums (and other parts of Rugby League that have been eroded) were the meals between the pizza and the cold beer.  I find watching the running, the passing and the tackling to be just as familiar, just as monotonous, yes, just as boring as I would eating the same meal 3 times a day for the rest of my life.

We have evolved Rugby League to be a sport of executing possession and all teams execute in much the same way and there is very little to interrupt this.  They should be best parts of Rugby League but because they are the only parts they become boring just as everything does if you see it all the time without variety, without exception.

An excellent assessment 

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2 hours ago, Dunbar said:

Here is my take on the situation.

Despite the fact that modern Rugby League players are in general fitter, more athletic and more skillful than ever before, I find myself drifting away from many games on tv and even forgetting some are on - particularly in the UK. 

So why is this?

Well, I think Rugby League today is too much like a pizza and a cold beer.

I love pizza and a cold beer. 

was the pizza free?

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9 hours ago, Man of Kent said:

There's also the issue of the same old Sky coverage, presenters and even try music that never seems to change as if it's Groundhog Day.

Time is right for a refresh, whatever that may be.

They have to change the try music, sounds really dated. The whole Sky presentation is a bit rubbish these days tbh. I still watch matches though 🙂

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1 hour ago, M j M said:

Used to happen very regularly (apparently) although this must have been its last gasp in a big game.

Oh ye of little faith. 

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43 minutes ago, Southerner said:

I love the sport more than ever. 

Agree, just because a bunch of SL idiots tried to cram a huge number of games into an insanely tight timescale during a pandemic and another bunch of NRL idiots tried to sabotage international RL, it doesnt mean it isn't still a great game. 

Let's see how a "normal" 2022 turns out with regular games and a WC to round it off goes before declaring RL dead, I suspect the game will be a lot healthier looking in 15 months.

In the meantime, having sat through the miserable entirety of Wigan's last 204 tryless minutes, I'm off to watch Crusaders v Rochdale tomorrow in an enthralling League 1 competition.

RL Forever! and Up the Cru!

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11 hours ago, Futtocks said:

Other factors of life have assumed more importance than they had back then (work, kids, rent/mortgage, a wider awareness of the world), plus your memory bank of experience is fuller so you don't find so many things as novel or extraordinary as you once did.

Can`t recall whom this is a quote of, but a presumably famous personage once said - "beyond a certain age, you seem to be having breakfast every half an hour".

Which I interpret as meaning that what happens between breakfasts no longer registers like it used to.

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I’m quite old nowadays but if I had the talent I would reminisce about how much better Rugby League was way back when by re-working Tony Capstick’s 1981 chart hit ‘Capstick Comes Home’.

Wouldn’t go down well in the super duper bright new expansionist era though.

 

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7 hours ago, unapologetic pedant said:

Can`t recall whom this is a quote of, but a presumably famous personage once said - "beyond a certain age, you seem to be having breakfast every half an hour".

Which I interpret as meaning that what happens between breakfasts no longer registers like it used to.

Yes I suppose so and (perhaps) that breakfast, is frequently the highlight of his otherwise uneventful days, but I think it also means our perception of time changes as we age and that it seems to flow faster.

It occurs to me that we (unconsciously) measure time by comparing periods, to our (already lived) lifespan.

As a four year old, a year is 25% (a very long time indeed) but as a 50 year old, its a mere 2% (hardly any time at all).

My days are now accelerating past me at an alarming rate.

We're only old once my friend, so make the most of it.  

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On 28/08/2021 at 16:28, fighting irish said:

Yes I suppose so and (perhaps) that breakfast, is frequently the highlight of his otherwise uneventful days,

Breakfast is sometimes the only meal where we are truly hungry, the gap being so much shorter between other meals.

My Grandmother used to enjoy breakfast so much that sometimes she had it before she even went to bed.🥴

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On 28/08/2021 at 16:28, fighting irish said:

but I think it also means our perception of time changes as we age and that it seems to flow faster.

It occurs to me that we (unconsciously) measure time by comparing periods, to our (already lived) lifespan.

As a four year old, a year is 25% (a very long time indeed) but as a 50 year old, its a mere 2% (hardly any time at all).

My days are now accelerating past me at an alarming rate.

That is certainly one theory my friend which attempts to explain why Christmases seem to come round so fast as we get older. 

I saw the same theory in an article (which I still have) in the Guardian about 30 years ago titled " Time is relative". It used the example of the mayfly, whos` whole lifespan occurs in one day, as an example of how to the mayfly itself that 24 hour period may well seem to it as long as our own 70 or 80 odd years, time is relative.

Myself Irish also put the faster and faster passing of the days down to not only what you describe, but I find as I have got older I have tended to look more at deadlines; things we want get done like paying off of mortgages or bills, or the kids getting through certain things so much more than we did when we are more carefree and younger. I seem to be rushing life on sometimes, I`m sure this doesn`t help with my perception of the pace of the passage of time.

It`s a little like the passage in that great poem by Robbie Burns you quoted the other day, a poem my sister and I have loved since we were children.

Still, thou art blest, compar'd wi' me!
The present only toucheth thee:
But Och! I backward cast my e'e,
On prospects drear!
An' forward, tho' I canna see,
I guess an' fear!

It`s as if as we get older we lose that ability to live in the moment.

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On 28/08/2021 at 09:11, unapologetic pedant said:

Can`t recall whom this is a quote of, but a presumably famous personage once said - "beyond a certain age, you seem to be having breakfast every half an hour".

Which I interpret as meaning that what happens between breakfasts no longer registers like it used to.

No, its called dementia. You are having breakfast every half hour.👴🧑‍🦳

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On 27/08/2021 at 09:23, Bearman said:

For the first time of watching RL on Sky for 30 years last night  I chose cricket instead of Hull v Cas.

I told myself I could watch the rugby on catch up. However, as I know the result I don't think I will bother.

Am I the only one that is so disillusioned with the game?

No your not mate. I support Oldham at the lower echelons of the game so it's not on TV. But I'm struggling to get into the habit of going to a game, even forgetting completely sometimes. But yes as a whole the game has gone downhill over the years, these new grounds have been built, too big for the clubs that Inhabit them so they're empty with zero atmosphere. I absolutely love the game but the powers that be need to do something rapido or we won't have a game left. From an Oldham perspective when we lost Watersheddings we effectively lost the club. 

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On 28/08/2021 at 07:28, fighting irish said:

It occurs to me that we (unconsciously) measure time by comparing periods, to our (already lived) lifespan.

As a four year old, a year is 25% (a very long time indeed) but as a 50 year old, its a mere 2% (hardly any time at all).

There is a parallel to these reflections on the perception of time with how we assimilate the content of 80 minutes of RL.

Reading this and related threads, the most common reason for disenchantment with the game on the field is too many basic carries and settlers (dummy-half runs or one-out hit-ups with no thought of promoting the ball out of the tackle). And it`s always been clear that the repetition of these is why the uninitiated see RL as essentially big blokes smashing into each other.

On the other side of the ledger, there`s Dunbar`s argument that a surfeit of "the good stuff" lacks context.

The objective of rule-makers should be to find the optimum ratio between highs and lows, florid and prosaic. It`s a subtle task, not one people exposed to a lifetime of "simple game" indoctrination are equal to.

When rule changes speed up the game and expand ball-in-play time, fans and non-fans are wont to notice the increase in basic carries more than any corresponding rise in creative plays. Even if the ratio between the two remains constant.

Our administrators didn`t anticipate an increase in basic carries from the move to a 10m offside line. And similarly they never calculate the implications of fatigue for attacking potential, only the effect on defences. When tired players are struggling to get back behind the ball, it can be tackle 4 or 5 before they have the shape or energy to deliver anything more elaborate than basic carries and settlers.

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