lanky316

Wales were never in that second half, got a quick break try and almost managed to pinch a second but an absolutely amazing tackle kept him out on the line before Argentina looked fairly comfortable at the finish. Whoever wins tonight can almost book their hotel room for the final I think, that was such a scrappy game you'd expect either to win by a ridiculous score. To be fair, you'd anticipate similar between the winners of England/Fiji without something drastic happening. It's a shame those top couple of pools were so loaded.

They aren't really covers so I won't put them in here but if you like that sort of thing, Nanowar of Steels latest album "Dislike to False Metal" is well worth listening to. Basically an album of parody songs from various bands, for example there's "Sober" as an Alestorm tribute and their Sabaton one (which they actually got Joachim to do vocals for) "Pasadena 1994" which is about the most tragic defeat in Italian history are a couple of my favourites but there's plenty in there to smile at.

It was genuinely hilarious and very fitting. Felt like real dedication to the gimmick. Would have been nice if someone had thrown in a "watch out for jersey pulling" at a set piece but you couldn't have everything.

Be fair to their coverage, I enjoyed the "let's give you a camera view as if it was a computer game" decision, complete with commentary glitching and repeating "ZINCHENKO SHOOTS... Into the crowd" bit.

TJPW Wrestle Princess 4 results When I get the chance to sit down with TEW I'll go through and try and check on getting the roster up to date as well. I don't think it's too far out but it's been a while since I looked at it.

So buzzing for Portugal winning, they've been really entertaining to watch and as a little bonus they still managed to get the Australia get knocked out scenario!

This is great news, two teams with a long history in the game even if they've not been a big presence at the top of the pyramid so glad they might be finally seeing some positive after a shit few years.

One step at a time, they've finally started to actually make statements. It wasn't that long ago that wrong decisions were ignored and the only form of statement or response from the authorities was to fine anyone who said anything about it. That they're at least making statements saying "yes, that was a mistake" is a huge improvement from making bad excuses or ignoring it had happened.

Potentially positive news Southend United: National League club agree takeover by Australian-led consortium After all the grim feeling that it was finally over, it looks like a takeover of Southend is going to happen.

Especially after those two shocking putts in a row in the two last games that Europe are up in. Big shot from Lowry to try and make amends.

Yeah, it's been some decent golf, thankfully Europe didn't have much to do to win but it's been kept interesting. Some really good golf to finish it off.

In fairness to those photos, in the Tanganga incident there was a freak power cut that lasted about 3 minutes and just happened to miss a couple of potential Liverpool red cards. At least on the offside call they've done the right thing and apologised rather than making comical Fergie style excuses. The standard in general of officiating is poor and every week there seems to be something farcical happening. I was a big supporter of the idea of VAR, something that would level the playing field because fans - and players - knew the officiating pecking order. Patrick Viera in his book said something along the lines of how when they played teams like Spurs or Villa they knew they would be good for a couple of decisions or a soft penalty, when they went to Old Trafford they knew it would be different. VAR on paper is something that would stop that but subjective decisions are clearly still going to be unreliable but if there's a full on discussion around it maybe it would be different, who knows? Rather than it being as simple as "I'm told to look, they're telling me I'm wrong" which seems to be the case now. Were I a referee I'd love the option on a big call to say "okay, I'd like to see that challenge again, I think it's a yellow but I want to check on the contact", but that's not how it's used and it just leads to subjective debates. Even ignoring any VAR debates, the subjectivity and confusion just makes things worse. The fact that it feels like "by the letter of the law" has also got greyer and more contradictory. It's sort of reached the point where I rarely watch a game without thinking "yeah you never know" when watching a replay of something. In big Spurs games this season we can look at handball as an example, same player involved in incidents, opposite calls (ironically I thought there were more mitigating circumstances in the penalty that was given) and X (formerly known as Twitter) goes completely nuts over it. Refereeing is an unforgivable job, it's ridiculously hard and now that like politics football supporting seems to have becomes peoples lone identity the partisan nonsense would make it worse. Yesterday they were both red cards, the referee is being bombarded with abuse over those calls and no amount of trying to look at them objectively is going to happen. I don't know the solution, there won't be an easy answer because it's not something that'll ever be able to please everyone, you can't make everything in football a black and white yes/no decision and there will be inconsistencies. One thing I will say though is that yesterdays apology was a disgrace. Not a problem with them saying "we got it wrong. and apologise", it doesn't help the teams who were let down by officials to do it but apologising rather than closing ranks and being silent is a much better direction than some shockers of yesteryear. The timing however was bullshit. To come out and issue that statement before Klopp has spoken to the media and while feelings are running high over the game was basically PGMOL declaring open season on abuse to Simon Hooper. It shouldn't happen, but everyone knows it will do and throwing him under the bus like that near enough as soon as the whistle has gone is not going to help matters at all.

They can't put up an infinity symbol. So they simplified it with a criminally low figure instead to just end it all.

This front 9... the scoreboard is looking very blue this morning. Yes it's early and a couple of them are fairly close (even if it's at arms length) but another sweep here after yesterdays historical mauling would almost kill it. Of course, in order to make it even more memorable, Europe leading something like 10-2 after three sessions and losing would certainly be sensational!

After the Solheim Cup I wasn't going to get carried away by Europes start this morning but after the first day got to be happy with that. Already feels like the US need to win the sessions tomorrow as you don't want to be limiting Europe to something like 4 points in the singles.

Dropped slightly further than Southend but still a shit. I really hope that someone could save them and keep them going. One of those teams from growing up and discovering football that I had a strange affinity for (their colours being the same as Villa meant they shared a Subbuteo box so they got plenty of play time) so hope they can pull through all this. Having just read another team high up in the rugby pyramid going under and with these teams struggling it's a real shitter for sport.

I'm pretty sure it's a stat built around Barnet and "number of chances caused by playing on a hill".

Gutted about this, him on tv is something that's been a part of my whole life. From sitting as a kid with the family watching him in things like Great Escape, Colditz and Man From U.N.C.L.E right up to NCIS and his voice work on a couple of animated Batman films. A great career and I'm going to miss Duckys little tangents

That missed kick at the end could be big. I can see three teams with a similar record at the end of the group so every bonus point could be vital. Great result and makes the group very interesting!

Yeah that was an amazing insight into how the organisation was. Due to when they arrived, they'd missed some of the horror (I saw footage of Coheed and Cambrias (I think) gear being swept away during the storm alongside people having to cower under the stages, vendors being looted due to the evacuation and just a general nightmare. That was a natural event (even if some of the organisation didn't help matters) but with everything he said, while being from one mans experiences, it's not a surprise that the stories of strikes and eventually the authorities shutting the thing down have come out surrounding it. There's also this - admittedly long - video from the perspective of someone else. Who in fairness tried to keep it down to "this is what I saw, I want to avoid rumour control and will try to only talk about what I'd actually seen" fresh from the aftermath.

This Wales/Fiji game is coming down to some shambolic officiating. The referee has been dire and been making some decisions that make it hard to buy as being incompetence. As it stands, it looks like two big calls decides the result that he's done all he could to let Wales off. Fiji could have had two penalty tries, the referee has given nothing. Constant infringements on the line, no yellow cards. Wales limping over the line with a lot of help. Will be an amazing result if Fiji can get in despite all those obstacles.

It's a clever tactic, England aren't even "trying" to get over the line. Get into range and pop it over. Ford has his kicking boots on which is helping but in these conditions and a man down to keep chipping away whenever we get feasibly in range rather than getting into a grind has been great for us. Still a long 40 minutes to go but I was dreading this before kick off and have a bit of unexpected optimism.

The topic has been fairly dormant for a long time but I didn't really want to post randomly somewhere else and who knows, maybe there are other people still playing or with things to share or that they're doing with the game. Recently after picking this up again I've remembered just how good it was. I'm in that phase of just running through and simming stuff, including just getting into a new Fire Promoter game, I'm only in about month three after reminding myself the basics of it so at the moment it's largely the default roster with Tama Tonga and Kota Ibushi... I'm expecting my finances to take a hit but for the time being that'll do. I've also finally really started to play around with the creation options. I've had some decent luck with creating custom wrestlers and the logic seems reasonable in that I can leave them simming and have decent matches building up sensibly and doing things in a way that makes sense. I'm sure there's more I can do and I'll be tweaking over time but I'm getting to grips with some of the options and might start sharing some of my custom creations on the workshop with time. I'm still massively daunted by the create a move/item of clothing stuff. I'm sure it's not as complex as I'm fearing but I very much find myself looking at it... thinking of things to do then running away from it back to a comfort blanket element of the game but I'd like to try coming up with more elaborate ideas with time. Does anyone else still play or do anything much with this or has the game largely disappeared on the steam library gathering cyberdust?

https://www.tmz.com/2023/08/26/bob-barker-dead-dies-99-price-is-right-game-show-host/ I know he was on tv for years and did so much else but I will never stop howling with laughter at his appearance in Happy Gilmore.

While it's such a good book it's hard to define specific "highlights" but that piece is definitely one of them. Although I'd heard the music and liked some stuff I'd never really read or paid much attention to The Distillers "off record" so that was all relatively new to me. I didn't particularly do a lot of music reading aside from picking up Kerrang to plan what gigs I'd like to spend my early wages on and didn't really pay much attention to articles unless it was a band I was already really into. It meant my exposure was essentially the comments like Kerrang TV or brief blurbs talking about "Mrs Tim Armstrong" or "the band of the girlfriend of the Rancid frontman" which meant I had no interest, didn't care about a bit of industry nepotism as long as I liked whatever video came up on rotation that was all that mattered. After reading about what was going on though, I found a lot more respect for how she went through that shit and came through it with all her struggles and shared those same feelings of bemusement about how Armstrong came through it all pretty much unscathed. I suppose part of it is down to the time, in later times there'd have been a lot more noise and attention brought on it all and the limit of talk wouldn't boil down to "Brody talks bad about ex". I know I'm partly preaching to the choir here but that is such a good book and is essential reading whether you have interest in the bands or not.