honestly united

Not sure if the Racing team (6 changes in the forwards) is them dropping the best players and giving the reserves a run, or dropping the reserves and bringing the first team back in!! Far to good a squad, but that's what you have to compete with in europe

Tickets booked for Sunday, really looking forward to it as the trailers look epic

As a normal episode that would have been good, but as a mid season finale was a bit of a let down. I like negan as he some really funny one liners, the scene at the diner table when he was acting the put upon wife when the husband hasnt come back from the pub was gold. Also its hard to see what Rick is getting up set about. Coral just shot up his compound, but he has brought him back safely, then while waiting on Rick he has stopped a rebellion against him, someone shot at him, so has retaliated, and taken the bullet maker as obviously this would be an asset. As people have said you could have got to this point in 2 or 3 episodes, not 10 or whatever we have sat through.

Gatlands squad is just going to be big ball carriers who can crash it up the middle

Im in 2 minds over the lions, on one hand it would be much better if Townsend had a full squad of players to pick from for this Quadrangular tournie in Aus, but I always remember the interviews from the old Scottish players, who went on Lions tours. Basically you had the media bigging up the english and welsh players so the Scots and Irish always felt inferior, until they went on the Lions tours and realised that they were just as good as anyone else, and the next 5 nations the Scots always did really well as they knew not to fear the English and Welsh so having 7 or 8 players on the tour may be a good thing and would also require blooding a few new players on the scottish summer tour. But its Gatland picking the team so we will have slim pickings. Even if we were to win the 6 Nations I still dont think we would have many players in the squad as our best players dont suit how Gatland wants to play.

I can see grey missing out with lawes itoje kruis Jones all probably picked in front of him. I would think Hogg and nel would be definiyes and Seymour as an outside chance. Still long way to go with European and six nations to go but think it will ne mainly English and welsh players

You never want to see any club go under, but its another case of clubs paying out wages for players when they dont have the income to cover it. There are quite a few in the Championship that are close to the edge now that it is suppose to be fully professional

Decent effort by the 7's lads in winning the plate, beating Aus in the final, only lost to SA who won the cup and England in the Quarters by 3 points

There is also Ironfist and Defenders on Netflex next year. Defenders includes Jessica Jones and Daredevil which is why there next series has been pushed back to 2018

Thanks for the heads up on TPO, will look to switch to someone else. Had been planning on getting a sim for the Mrs' but will look elsewhere i think

Yeah the whole argument on the BP's was down to you could do the grand slam and not win the championship. Given bonus points for winning all games seemed like a no brainer to me years ago, glad the blazers have finally managed to get their heads round it.

I've not seen any issues with the apps as of yet, been re-booting to update APN settings without a problem. Question though, with 32Gb why do you have apps on an external SD card? Overall im thoroughly impressed with the UMI Super, i've upgraded from a Samsung S4 and the difference is huge. I've gone from having to charge every night, plus top up during the day, to charging every other day, charge is so much quicker as well. Not seen any issues what so ever with Android, and quite refreshing to have next to no bloat ware on it. Speed seems good, but not really tried too much to date on it. Installed Kodi and ran perfectly over wifi. Loads of storage space, and has picked up 3G & 4G with no issue on O2, although I have just swapped over to TPO who use 3 (£6.99 for 2gb of data and unlimited phone and text was too good to not to have) and have not had 4G as of yet, but I think this is an issue with the network rather than the phone

Should definitely be throwing people off for trying to touch up someone else's knee. That way the bloke and his carpet might get a seat instead off having to sit on the floor.

Out of the teams in the top 20 at the moment, potentially Russia could miss out if the finish as Europe 2 (Europe 2 was previously straight into world cup) would have to play off against Oceania 3 (Fiji / Samoa / Tonga) then go into the play offs In Europe you have Spain / Germany missing out having beaten a team that qualified from the last world cup. As has been said, Asia will only have Japan as a direct qualifier and any other team will have to finish top of the Asian 5 nations then win playoffs to qualify. I know everyone fells sorry for the PI's as they get such a rough deal, but there are other countries and markets that we can be growing the game in - China have just had Ali pump $100m into a rugby program, Brazil have beaten the US recently, Germany and Spain are on the up, Russia has potential given the results for Eisney in the challenge cup, Madacasgar get 50,000 turning up to games their. There is always the talk of the closed shop of the 6N etc, but the qualifying for the World Cup reeks of keeping the status quo and making it harder for anyone else to qualify.

I beleive there are 2 tiers of wins / loses so you get more points for a big win, dependant on the opposition. If i remember right the points difference between the teams in the rankings should reflect the points difference in the game, and if you win by more you get more points in the co-efficent.

I think it is exceedingly unfair to be honest. For the last world cup Georgia and Japan had to qualify and took up spots as Europe 1 and Asia 1. Samoa and Tonga qualified as finishing 3rd in their group in 2011. basically Europe and Asia are being punished for Georgia and Japan's success in gaining a 3rd place finish ahead of PI teams. Given Georgia have beaten all 3 of the PI's in the last 6 months would suggest the PI's not qualifying is not bad luck but deserved. I can see the logic in wanting the best teams at the world cup, but surely for the first world cup in asia, you would want at least one other asian team involved other than Japan? And granted there will already be 8 European teams involved but they are all the same as last time. Granted another 2 teams get a shot at the repechage but when you have had both Germany and Spain beating Uruguay in the last few weeks, and Russia and Portugal being past participants there is a real depth now in europe that should be encouraged on world stage to truely help grow the game.

My take is that RL are trying to get ahead of union in North America and are hoping that by giving them the world cup that will do it for them. To be fair Union should have got in first the world cup, however the US now have their own Pro league in Union (currently only 6 teams in US but growing to 8 i think next year, and the offer is still on the table to Canada to add teams) and are looking to tie in wit the Southern Kings in Super Rugby. For league I think its either boom or bust, they have to get the right size stadia or it could be a disaster and cost them a fortune, and look dreadfull on TV with thousands of empty seats, or it could tap in to a huge new market

Watched the last 25 minutes of Georgia vs Samoa and the defence from Georgia was immense, they battered Samoa. However if Scotland get any ball they will run rings round the Georgian backs. Georgia are still a couple of years away from being a top team as although they were winning every time they got the ball back in their own half they just end booted it as far down the pitch as they could. To be fair was very reminiscent of the old Scotland

This weeks Scotland team - Bradbury is straight out of left field, didn't even realise he was in the squad.

My UmiSuper is with Yodel so hopefully delivered today, cant wait to try it out tonight!

Im surprised he has never had more game time. He has looked ok on the limit times I've seen him play (or more accurately big and quick) but I would have put him on a par with Lee Jones at least. Has he just been away with the 7's or has he been stuck playing club rugby?

The re-caps have been quite lengthy, I am assuming they are trying to reduce matches as a way of reducing the costs by having less wrestlers at each taping. Although I think since Billy Corigan came in the production values (I wouldnt quite say improved) but definately changed and the whole show is a much better watch. To be fair its just focusing on 5 or 6 storylines that are intertwined with what seems to be a much reduced roster, Im just hoping they can get a new TV deal in the UK / dont get shut down.

Will be interesting to see the team this week against Argentina, which is really a must win if we want to make the to 8 in the rankings. (I would have taken 2 wins and a close game vs Australia before we started the AI's) I would assume we will have Strauss in at 8, if Wilson isn't fit, unless he brings de preez straight into the team. Only other change I can see is Seymour in for Visser, not sure why Seymour didn't play last week, just heard personal reasons. On the Australian game we just didn't get our hands on the ball during that last 10 minutes, and it seemed to be numerous things, kicks either down their throats, not long enough, giving away silly penalties, or being to conservative in defence and not going for turnovers. Even at the try if Visser is watching the tackle rather than the big Australian overlap, isn't of running back to cover he had the chance to stop Kuridrani stretching over. To be fair it would be hard to say he has done the wrong thing, but its the small things that have done us.

Balls

Need to get it down in Australia s half 6 points and 25 minutes to go is to long if they are camped in our half