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Siegfried of Siegfried and Roy has died. Roy died last year of Covid-19 complications.
How bout that, I had no idea the other one was already dead.
Never recovered after getting bitten by his tiger IIRC
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Longtime home run king Hank Aaron dies at 86
Hank Aaron, known for his sweet swing that carried him to 755 career home runs, which long stood as baseball's golden mark, has died. He was 86.
Hank Aaron was a major figure in American sports, was one of the black pioneers in a white dominated sport, and was the total home run MLB king until Barry Bonds eclipsed him
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@Donsteppa Dead set Harbour legend and innovative coach.
Liked this from the Herald's obit
It was a listing in the Herald that convinced Thorburn that rugby players north of the harbour bridge needed their own union. In 1977 the Herald published the names of trialists for the Auckland U17 rugby team. "There were 117 names and only three from the other side of the bridge,'' he told the newspaper in 2013. -
Did his best work as Super 12 commissioner making sure the best players outside the protected lists were drafted.
Loved some of his innovative tactics. Wasn't it The Great Wall of China tap move, and I seem to recall a 15 man lineout maul.
Was a long time correspondent to Radio Sport (with Telfer IIRC). I fondly remember his labelling of talk back callers The Flat Earth Society.
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Dustin Diamond, best known as Screech in Saved By The Bell, 44 from cancer.
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Dustin Diamond, best known as Screech in Saved By The Bell, 44 from cancer.
Wow. 3 weeks is quick.
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Dustin Diamond, best known as Screech in Saved By The Bell, 44 from cancer.
Wow. 3 weeks is quick.
Yeah, fuck... 44 years old, 3 weeks battle. That's a bit scary.
But, in a way, it sounds like a decent way to go. "Did not suffer" - so, enough time to quit the job, have a final road-trip, saying goodbye to everybody, and tick a few things off a true "bucket list".
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Dustin Diamond, best known as Screech in Saved By The Bell, 44 from cancer.
Wow, I only really watched that show for the girls in it but he was occasionally quite funny in his own right. RIP Screech.
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@dogmeat Pretty sure we had a discussion about putting Alan Sutherland in the All time Mako team.
I don't recall seeing that he passed away last year, but apparently he did. (Someone will probably discover that I posted about it at the time - but, that's not unusual).
Seems like he had a pretty good if somewhat chequered innings. Married a Miss South Africa.
As well as being one of the few NZ forwards to have scored 100 first class tries, he also set a record for the most points scored by a forward on a tour (1968 tour of Oz), which might still stand. He was a pretty decent goal kicker and did the goal kicking on that tour when Fergie McCormick didn't.
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@Chris-B Thanks - didn't realise he had died.
Remember him well: tough as teak. Great era for Marlborough rugby. Simple uncomplicated rugby. Pack of mongrels to win quick ball for a pacey set of backs like Brian Ford. I think they'd have been everyones second favourite team
Always remember the headline in the old 8 o'clock the day they took the Shield. MARLBOROUGH DO A SUNDERLAND!
Your team was nowhere near as big an upset as Leeds losing though. -
@dogmeat I'm presently wading through TP McLean's book of the 1968 AB Tour of Oz and the France tour of NZ (hence me googling Sutherland and discovering to my dismay that he'd died).
It's a bit disturbing how many of the players from that era have passed on - especially in the forwards and in the last 12 months. BJ, Sutherland, Jaz Muller, Sam Strahan - and not long before that Graham Williams, Fergi McCormick, Pinetree....
France lost their first game of that tour to Marlborough - McLean makes a big thing of France being beaten by Marlborough at Blenheim...again.
Battle of Blenheim
Battle of Blenheim fought on 2nd August 1704: The Duke of Marlborough’s spectacular defeat of the hitherto invincible French army of Louis XIV
p.s. As a displaced Nelson kid living in North Canterbury at the time, I didn't celebrate the Marlborough Shield win with anything like the fervour I would today! (At the time it was regarded by those in the know as a disaster).
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Captain Tom's full BBC Obituary: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-52726188
Obituary: Captain Sir Tom Moore, a hero who gave a nation hope
At times of crisis, a nation needs hope and heroes.
Sometimes, they're found in unlikely places - and when Britain first locked down against the coronavirus pandemic, it discovered Captain Sir Tom Moore.
In April 2020 the then 99-year-old war veteran accepted a little family challenge: to raise £1,000 for health service charities by walking 100 lengths of his garden before his 100th birthday at the end of that month.
"One small soul like me won't make much difference," he declared in his first TV interview.
He could not have been more wrong.
By the time he closed his fundraising page at midnight on his 100th birthday, Captain Sir Tom had raised more than £32m from more than one-and-a-half-million global donors.
But that was just the beginning - a knighthood, RAF flypast to mark him turning 100 and personal greetings from the Queen and prime minister soon followed.
And he even became the oldest person ever to score a number one single in the UK, when he and Michael Ball sang a cover of You'll Never Walk Alone.
Yorkshire grit
Captain Sir Tom was born in Keighley on 30 April 1920. His father, Wilson, came from a family of builders; his mother, Isabella, taught children at a local school.
It was a comfortable, middle-class background, but a decade later came the Wall Street Crash. It triggered a world-wide economic depression which hit Yorkshire mill towns hard.
A quarter of the British population struggled to feed themselves. Young Tom was surrounded by long lines at soup kitchens, and classmates suffering from rickets and tuberculosis.
Sir Tom Moore joined the Duke of Wellington's regiment in 1940
Bright enough to win a place at grammar school, he found he enjoyed working with his hands more than reading books.
"I was always a very practical boy," he recalled. "The sort of toys I liked would be a piece of wood, some nails and a hammer."
But his real passion was motorbikes. At the age of 12, Captain Sir Tom discovered one lying in a barn and bought it for half a crown. He proudly took it home, and lovingly did it up.
He left school to start an apprenticeship in civil engineering, but there was barely time to finish it before World War Two broke out.
Conscripted into the British army in June 1940, Captain Sir Tom joined the Duke of Wellington's regiment - an infantry battalion with historic links to the West Riding.
Too young to feel frightened
By his own admission, he was "too young to feel frightened". Indeed, for a practically-minded motorsport enthusiast barely out of his teens, the British army was a thrilling place.
Captain Sir Tom spent time in Cornwall, preparing to defend the coast from a German invasion, and learned how to drive tanks.
Selected for officer training, he became a second lieutenant on his 21st birthday, and - now part of the 146th Royal Armoured Corps - found himself posted to India.
With the Suez Canal closed, the sea journey took six perilous weeks. The convoy inched around the southern tip of Africa, at constant risk from German submarines.
The train ride across India took nearly as long, the burning heat made only slightly less unbearable by huge blocks of ice scattered among the troops.
Their final destination was Burma, where the British army and its Indian allies had been forced into a fighting retreat by a seemingly unstoppable Japanese advance.
Captain Sir Tom was joining the bruised and bloodied "forgotten army", which was suffering from disease and low morale. It was fighting in the world's least hospitable terrain, with impenetrable jungle, poisonous snakes, and hot lashing rain for six months of every year.
Much of the fighting was done hand-to-hand, with no quarter given on either side. Years later, Captain Sir Tom clearly recalled staring into the "whites of the eyes" of the opposing troops.
With his knowledge of motorbikes, Captain Sir Tom was asked to train dispatch riders. Radio transmissions could be intercepted, so this was the best means of getting information to and from the front line.
'Poisoned chalice'
It was dangerous work. Dispatch riders worked alone and at night. The roads that did exist were deeply rutted and thick with mud, and the risk of ambush was ever-present.
Captain Sir Tom loved the motorbikes, but described the job as a "poisoned chalice". Once the engine started, there was no stopping or going back.
"If it didn't go well," he said bluntly, "I was dead".
Slowly, the 14th army turned the tide in Britain's favour. Over the next two years, Captain Sir Tom's team helped cut Japanese supply lines along the Burmese coast.
One notable occasion was the battle for Ramree Island in 1945. More than 1,000 Japanese infantrymen were forced into a mangrove swamp infested by salt-water crocodiles. Only a handful emerged.
By this time, Captain Sir Tom had survived a nasty bout of dengue fever and been promoted to Captain. With the Japanese finally on the back foot, he returned to England to train recruits in the art of driving tanks.
On VE Day, there were "certain activities in the bar", but Captain Sir Tom's thoughts were with his mates still fighting in the Far East. "They didn't get a day off," he said.
He stayed in the army for another 15 years, as an instructor at the Armoured Fighting Vehicle School in Dorset. He loved the work, but was desperately unhappy at home.
In 1949, he married his first wife Billie.
Moore left military service in 1960, and took a job as a sales manager for a roofing company in his native Yorkshire. In 1967 his marriage to Billie ended after 18 years - they never had children.
'She looked terrific'
Now in his late 40s, Captain Sir Tom resigned himself to never finding love. Until, a few years later, he met Pamela.
She was 15 years younger and an office manager at the firm's headquarters in Gravesend. Romance blossomed, and Captain Sir Tom began to think of excuses to travel down to Kent.
"She looked terrific to me, like a model," he later told the Daily Mail. "The attraction became stronger and I eventually married her."
Captain Sir Tom raced his beloved Scott motorbikes around Yorkshire, winning various cups and medals. He and Pamela had two children - Lucy and Hannah.
In 1992, Captain Sir Tom retired at the age of 72. He was looking forward to retirement but life proved less than kind.
Pamela fell ill with dementia. Captain Sir Tom cared for his wife for two years, and then visited her care home every day until her death in 2006.
A remarkable journey
Not wanting to be alone, Captain Sir Tom moved into his daughter Hannah's home in the Bedfordshire village of Marston Moretaine.
There, his routine seldom wavered: waking early each morning to let the dogs out, followed by a daily jog on a running machine. He allowed himself a few luxuries, including a daily glass of wine in front of the television. Judge Judy was a favourite programme.
Captain Sir Tom was treated for skin cancer and a broken hip, and received "marvellous service" from the NHS. When the world locked down for the coronavirus pandemic, he saw a chance to give something back.
But a piece in Bedford Today about his sponsored walk mushroomed into a global media event. For millions trapped at home, Captain Sir Tom was a much-needed symbol of defiance, national unity and hope.
"Please remember," he said repeatedly, "tomorrow will be a good day." The money flooded in.
As Captain Sir Tom turned to complete his final lap, the total stood at more than £12m. It would eventually surpass £30m. An honour guard from his old regiment saluted an extraordinary achievement.
His cover of You'll Never Walk Alone, a duet with Michael Ball, raised even more - hitting the top of the charts in time for Captain Sir Tom's hundredth birthday and making him the oldest person ever to score a number one single in the UK.
On the day itself, a Spitfire wheeled in tribute over Marston Moretaine; a local school volunteered to display 160,000 birthday cards sent to a national treasure.
Captain Sir Tom - promoted to Colonel - did not set out to inspire millions. Like the young lieutenant in 1941, he was just trying to do his bit. The Queen knighted him at a special ceremony at Windsor Castle on 17 July 2020.
With stubbornness, courage and optimism, he was the right man at the right time.
He was Britain as it needed to see itself: selfless, patriotic and undefeated - and never taking a backward step.
RIP 2021
