Posts by Yamis
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Oh yeah, and a mate has come through and scored me tickets after we had the same internet buying debacle that many others did this morning.
The scalping and trademe get me pretty pissed. The tickets state that you need written permission from the NRL to onsell them and can't do so for a profit ("premium"). If the trademe business boss says its a headache for them and he wishes they could ban them then why don't they simply have a requirement that people display the seat numbers. They can then be cancelled so people wouldn't bother selling and buying.
I wonder if they are giving the success fee to charity? muhahahaha
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Cheers for the token league coverage Hadyn. It was replayed on Prime at 9:30 on Sunday night.
Full respect to the Warriors for the win, but they'll get my unending respect when they win something, and when they start winning 60% plus of their games, including against top opposition. They're as consistent as the Black Caps, and as frustrating to follow.
Paul, the Warriors have the 4th best regular season record in the entire competition from the past 3 seasons.
Melbourne 58 wins, 14 losses
Manly 49 wins, 23 losses
Broncos 39 wins, 1 draw, 33 losses
Warriors 38 wins, 1 draw, 34 lossesEverybody else is either 50/50 or worse.
They've made the playoffs in 5 of the last 8 years and missed one year because the 4 points they were docked (2006) but on playing record they had the 8th best record that season.
This year they have beaten the Storm in 2 from 3, lost to the Sea Eagles twice, split the games v the Sharks, lost to the Roosters, beat the Broncos, beat the Raiders and lost to the Dragons.
Every team in this competition is inconsistent apart from the Storm and Sea Eagles as it is incredibly even. Its just the nature of the comp and something that will always exist, especially for a side crossing the ditch every other week.
The Dragons were playing fantastic footie in the last few months and hammered the Warriors a few weeks ago and they play two weak games and are gone. The Raiders were destroying teams, but get touched up by the Sharks and are gone. You could go on all day about sides that play great one week and meet their maker the next.
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Actually the Bolt one is probably a good example because it was an example of a person expressing themselves and it was interpreted in different ways. ie positively by most but negatively by the IOC chief.
I wonder how many fans saw some passion and expression today from Wade McKinnon... meanwhile the judiciary will probably see a 2 week ban :(
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Valerie did all those things in the pursuit of hurling a metal object further than anyone else and thereby winning a competition. Sport, not Art.
Beatrice, on the other hand, did something else - something that seemed quite disconnected with the purpose of her event and left sports reporters open-mouthed and saying WTF? Now that was Art.How about Usain Bolt with 20 metres to run in the 100m turning to the crowd and holding his arms out like a crazy arse aeroplane.
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Regarding the cursed question of how to define art, I always say that art is defined as "something that is designed or created to be exhibited for the viewing pleasure of others".
Like a well rehearsed backline move that befuddles the defence and results in a try under the sticks and the crowd on their feet.
While I don't really think sport is art most of the time there are occasions when it is pretty close to it. Some sides go out there to entertain.
Take basketball for example. There is generally no need for a player to do a reverse dunk, or any kind of dunk (most of the time). They are showing off their skills to entertain others.
Post touchdown celebrations are another good one...
I also thought the Argentinian goal v the Czech Republic in the last World Cup was a thing of greatly constructed beauty. They didn't know how it would end up but they were trying to create something special and succeeded.
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Oh, yeah, and may I say how absolutely thankful I am that this hasn't turned into a thread about rugby. I could barely care less about it, and I know I'm not alone. I wouldn't be surprised if the percentage of rugby-agnostic people on PAS was higher than in the general population, either.
Right, poll time.
Rugby fan?
Me, Yep.
Rugby League is better though.
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Like your idea on the insulation George. Our house could certainly do with a bit more (under the floor namely).
Well, we better invest in educating our kids in Asian languages then, as we're still terribly isolated by our linguistic shortcomings. We could probably turn that around in about 10 years if we worked hard.
Not so sure about that though. Having taught English in Korea for 4 years the progress being made there is insanely slow. They have been going hard at learning English for well over a decade and you would struggle like hell to find anybody in the street beyond a pretty appalling level of command of the language.
The government keeps trying to up the level of funding and teachers and rules and schemes etc etc. It would be costing them an enormous amount but at the coalface you'd hardly notice any improvement. Largely because they have too many students nowhere near enough teachers and oversized classrooms.
Language is a funny thing. Unless it is being learnt at a kindergarten level or total immersion at primary level it takes a monumental amount of effort to learn. I have kids at my school in Auck who have been at high school now for 2-3 years and still have extremely poor english and yet they are surrounded by it wall to wall. Then theres those who seem to have no natural ability at picking up a second language. Some kids and uni students I taught just get it and develop incredibly quickly while others seem to make no real progress whatsoever in years.
Peace out
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You don't get fit playing games. A rugby game, which is at most 80 minutes of exercise (and in reality, with stopages etc, only 30 - 40 minutes), takes up at least three days with no fitness work the day before, the game day, and then a recovery day. Most likely it takes a week out, as they wouldn't do fitness work in the week building up to a test.
If Lauaki had ten weeks of not much rugby, while on a contract requiring him to be a professional rugby player, required or not, it's not the ABs fault. Couple of hours exercise a day and he could do whatever he wanted every afternoon.
I'm talking about match fitness (although generally he looks unfit as well). I have seen Lauaki play for years and he looks in the worst shape I've ever seen. He scored a try v the ABs, the Wallabies and the Springboks in the space of 15 days in about 2003? when playing for the Pacific Island side. He was devastating. They have wrecked him by letting him turn into a giant tub with his pace and agility disappearing and his ball handling to boot.
You body gets conditioned to knocks, to the constant running up and down the field chasing aimless kicks where your lungs are bursting and then you have to make 3 tackles on your goalline and then chase another bloody kick down field. Teams can train for hours but they rarely leave the training field anywhere near as stuffed as when they will walk off a field in a big game. There's nothing that can prepare you for playing a game of rugby as.... playing a game of rugby.
The ABs trained their arses off last year (for months) and look where it got them. They played mediocre rubbish when they came back to the Super 14 and several weren't even getting picked to start and then the WC was what it was. The coaches have said themselves that they didn't give the players enough rugby and have learnt from their mistakes. Their exact words. And here they are doing it with a guy that needs a lot of rugby to stay fit. Every week that he is not playing for the ABs he should be playing NPC, or whatever else they can find for him and the same goes for all of them. They have started to do a bit of that but there is still a fair bit of cotton wool floating around.
Smith is another one. In and out of the side and misses 4 tackles in 19 minutes in the game, worse than Lauaki I might add ;)
I can't help but think we were better off under the old system where we would have a 3 or 4 home test season. Guys came into the side having played a lot, they played 3 weeks out of 4 and that was it until the end of year tour. Now we have about a 12 week international window in the middle of the year and very few of the players get to string matches together.
There's that plus the other 47 obvious problems.
Just as well I'm not interested in rugby.
teehee
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Can we pick a trio of loose forwards that do not all want to be N08's. Back rows are about balance and we have lost sight of that.
You've got that right. Even for the other games this season they were playing a left and right combination at the scrums rather than an open/blind combo.
What kind of wankery is that? They may as well say, when the ball is in our half I'm captain and when it's in their half you're captain. It makes about as much sense.
So'oialo committed a terrible sin v SA when he was playing blind side on a 10 metres defensive scrum. He actually bound properly and was staring at the ground, when the SA number 8 strolled past him and they got a virtually uncontested try. It's no wonder when he would be packing open side one minute, blind the next and then playing number 8 the week after.
Maybe if the poor buggars actually were told "you are a number 8, or you are a number 6" and got to play there week after week they would be a touch better. But it's all part of our rotation I guess. We don't just rotate teams we rotate positions as well. Soon we will have a spinning wheel and Carter will be locking the scrum and Tialata will be taking the goal kicks, with Wayne Smith coming on for Woodcock.
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Boy I've got to jump into this one.
Tom, I've never heard such a load since, well, probably listening to one of Deakers shows or something.
One dimensional players like Sivivatu? He's there to score tries and he made several breaks in the weekend and has scored 23 tries in 27 tests. Rokocoko has 43 tries in 48 tests. Maybe he isn't a great kicker like say John Kirwan muhahahahaha... who was incidentally regarded as one of the all time great AB wingers because of his try scoring ability (35 in 63), but shucks, our first five, second (preferably) and fullback are the only ones that need to be able to kick.
And if it's our big PI players that are getting through our system without basic skills needed for their position perhaps you could explain how a procession of European hookers and locks (with Mealamu the exception) have been DIAFUCKINGBOLICAL in something called the lineout for the best part of a DECADE?
We lost because we had a shit loose-forward combination, because our midfield defence was hopeless and because of our tactics (blame the coaches for this). Time after time we insist on running it inside our 22. Carter for all his brilliance does this way too much and he has to accept a lot of that blame. How many tries do we score from our own 22 from how many efforts? One in 20? One in 30? Carter can kick the ball 50 metres with total ease and therefore should do it all night from that position.
And Yeah Lauaki got smoked cos he's 10kgs over weight and not the sharpest knife in the drawer but that was THE MIDDLE of the park and there was nobody ten metres either side of him. He saw Elsom run to the right and you could tell that he gave up assuming somebody would actually be, y'know, like within 10 metres of him. Last time I looked there were 15 players in a rugby side. Where the fuck were the rest of them?
But I wonder why would somebody like Lauaki be over weight and looking underdone on the field?
perhaps it's because the Super 14 ended for the Chiefs at the end of the round robin. Lauaki gets the semi week off, the final week off, then as I recall there was an empty weekend? then he wasn't picked for the test v Ireland, played 32 minutes against England, 53 against England, 19 against South Africa, and 27 against them again before 31 against Aussie.
The guy cannot get near any kind of form in BS systems like the one brought about by the NZRU.
In TEN weeks in the middle of the rugby season he (a professional rugby player) has started in the grand total of ZERO games. He has managed to get 162 minutes of football in that time. That's barely two games.
I'm sorry but that is gross mismanagement of a guy who needs as much time on the field as he can get. He used to be a devastating runner and now he looks like a fat oaf with concrete blocks for hands.
Bloody nice individual try he scored against South Africa the weekend before though. Probably nobody cursing his name when he did that. ;)
Ah, well, wait to this weekend everyone. Remember when we beat England 64-22 and 40-10 in 1998, and then lost 5 in a row?
It ain't all doom and gloom either Tom. All time the ABs have a 74.02% win record and since we went professional it's 80%. The all time record has been dragged up a touch by our record in the last 15 or so years.
But who cares, the Warriors are going great guns!!!!!