Jaggy Snake

Do people really think this crap is deep and meaningful?

The structure is pretty much as expected. It will lead to some imbalance in fixtures, and subsequent moaning, but that is inevitable with any set up using conferences. Does anyone know if either the Kings or Cheetahs have many internationals in their sides? I’m assuming they don’t have a huge amount just now, though that could change if some South Africans are looking for an easier path into European leagues. Though the Rugby Championship will be running from August each year, the South Africans look like they'll have advantages over the Six Nations period and having extra rest during European weeks. I wouldn't be surprised to see them added to the European cups at some point, odd as that might be. Will have to wait to see how the fixtures fall to get a better idea.

http://www.pro12rugby.com/2017/08/01/statement-expansion-guinness-pro14-championship/

I liked Twin Atlantic initially but stopped listening to them when you could actually see the lead singer turning into a p***k on stage over the course of a few months (he was actually okay at the very beginning). The standout moment was when they were on the fourth stage at Download back in 2009, when they had only just released their first mini-album and had essentially no fan base in England. Sam started moaning about how few people had turned up to see them (I’d say there was easily under 50 people when they started their set) ignoring the fact that they were clashing with both Whitesnake and Papa Roach. At the end of the set, the singer threw his guitar down and stormed off stage, something TA never did. The guitarist and bassist looked at each other uncomfortably and very gently, dropped their guitars onto the stage and shuffled off to try and make it look less out of place.

To be fair, I'm not saying they've done it well but the league is only trying to react to other events going on. Obviously there was already talk of South African teams joining but that would originally have been planned a year or two in advance. Only the two teams getting kicked out Super Rugby meant it all had to be done last minute. The league didn't have much choice as the two clubs had players under contract and could hardly sit about for 12 months with no income and join the following year. Add in the Italians messing about with Zebre, again something they could have organised during the previous season, and an issue I'm sure the Celtic league were worried about. Yes, their communication has been poor but they can't really announce anything until things are official. Any losses clubs make will be more than made up for by the extra money coming in for now and in future seasons they'll have time to organise the fixtures etc well in advance.

Equally you could say that the upset is because the change is to the title character. Which has not happened before. Also, a lot of the furore is from people who don't actually watch the show as the Doctor changing sexes makes headlines that Missy never did.

The difference is the Doctor is the main character the whole show revolves around. Even if you disagreed with the Master changing sexes it wasn't going to impact most episodes as it's a much smaller role.

A reasonable return but one more goal for Dundee would have meant another two hundred. Also lost about £40 with some stupid bets.

Going by the BBC article, today’s board meeting is to agree to invite the South African sides into the Pro 12 – with no mention of representatives from those clubs being at the meeting. You would assume (or at least hope) most of the work has already been done and they would confirm the proposed league structure they are inviting clubs to join but you may not get full details today and I certainly wouldn’t expect fixtures for a while yet.

I think the main problem is there doesn’t seem to be a reason within the program to change to a woman. A female Doctor, at this point, is all about the real world with headline news and people (who usually wouldn’t pay attention to Doctor Who) discussing the issue. Until the first few episodes with Jodie Whittaker are broadcast people won’t know whether there will be a reason within the storyline for the change (I assume there will be at least some reasoning given) or they’ve just changed it “because they can”. I think most fans of the show would agree it needed refreshing in some way, I just remain sceptical that this was the best way of doing it until I see otherwise.

Forget whether Doctor Who is an alien or not, he is a character that has been on TV for over 50 years and has been portrayed by twelve different men. It doesn’t make someone a misogynist just because they disagree with the decision to cast a woman in the role.

Not overly happy either with a female Doctor or the particular choice of Whittaker, though that's mostly not liking her character in Broadchurch. I'll stay open-minded and watch it anyway but I hope they come up with a reason the Doctor has changed sexes, as opposed to just saying "Ach, it can happen".

New season, same old story. Fucking Thistle!

It's a prerequisite for being a Clyde fan...

Gutted Green Day is cancelled. Was going with a big group of people and would have been fun. Thankfully I was only travelling from EK and I've seen them before. Really feel for people who were coming from further away. Day in the pub ahead.

Results are in. http://www.scottishsupporters.net/results-of-supporter-led-consultation-on-colt-team-proposals/ Key points: 1071 replies 74.4% are against Colt teams being allowed into the league 64.3% would not watch their team against a colt side 69.8% do not believe it would improve elite young players Poor wording of their question about how high up the leagues colt clubs could go means the response to that question was meaningless. Results have been forwarded to the SPFL who have agreed to look at them. Most important comment in the article: Fans representing all 42 SPFL member clubs filled in the survey with the most fans from one single club being Clyde’s who made up 18.9% of the 1,069 respondents to this question #bigclub

I preferred to go with Rangers to lose tonight at 50/1.

I agree it was very frustrating watching the lax way we seemed to approach and play the game. Fiji have a slight tendency to lose interest in games once they’re a couple of scores behind so why we didn’t go for the points more often instead of the corner I’ve no idea. I was also disappointed with how poorly we handled Nakarawa. There are times when he will always get an offload away you can do nothing about but with Townsend in charge, and plenty of Glasgow players involved, we should have been better prepared than anyone to deal with him. It certainly felt the players were already in holiday mode while Fiji were being extra aggressive. The worst of which saw Tonks, covering at a ruck, virtually running backwards to avoid the hit from a Fijian player who was going to clear him out. On the other hand, bearing in mind I didn’t see their win against Italy, it was the best performance by Fiji I have seen in a long time. I thought Volavola at fly-half was fantastic. Not only was he kicking their points with ease, he made some excellent clearing/positional kicks, avoiding Fiji’s habit of overplaying with the ball inside their own half. They’re still far too indisciplined and were probably a little lucky the referee just seemed to get bored giving penalties against them after half time but they look a far more well-balanced side than in recent times.

I thought it was great but it definitely would have been better without knowing both the Cybermen and John Simm were going to be in it before. I accept things like that will always be leaked online but there's no need for them to be in the trailers.

Yadra! Hope this game is worth getting up for.

You've mentioned a few times we should be trying to get a third senior side again but we're still a long, long way from being able to justify that. While Glasgow, until this season anyway, have been improving regularly over the last few years Edinburgh have been underperforming for far too long. Since the Pro12 expanded to 12 teams in 2010 Edinburgh’s finishing positions have been 8, 11, 10, 8, 8, 9, 9. Given in the last 2 years, at the very least, finishing above the Italian teams should be pretty much a given (though Edinburgh have finished behind Treviso twice previously) 8th and 9th place finishes should still be considered extremely disappointing. If it wasn’t for a couple of good runs in the European Challenge Cup there really would have been no positives from them for the last few years. You obviously can’t put all their failures down to a lack of Scottish talent, and you’d hope Richard Cockerill coming in will improve them, but we need to get Edinburgh performing before looking elsewhere. It would be great to have three teams to share the Six Nations burden and give more young players opportunities but you have to be realistic, if we can’t get two senior sides performing well at the same time, adding another will only make things worse.

And the bookies had Scotland at 5/1 just to win that game £££

Yassss!