The Silver Fern

@sparky said in Ashes 2025/6:

Given England's terrible batting form at the moment, Australia could pull someone out of club cricket to be one of their openers and still win the series 5-0.

Both teams have a mix of brilliant batsmen, a couple maybe past it or in terrible form and some who are a bit shit and you wonder how they made it in the first place.

Should make for an excellent series.

The 2nd clip...funny how in most, after a red card offence in today's game, most just keep playing, not stopping to point out the offence.

@NTA said in Wobblies 2025:

Lose? "Pommy bastards colluded to scuttle our chances!" 😠 🖕

or, should have cracked a window...

I don't know Wordpress but Grok gives a comprehensive answer on how best to go about doing it: https://grok.com/c/fd288606-2fb8-4e7b-b331-be3514116cbb (Edit - scroll down to your question, I forgot I included another question previously)

I'd think there would be someone in your Chess community who is handy with basic webdev and could knock it out.

Hodgman had been injured a lot this year.

Interesting to read that Liam Wright is also leaving Qld, and maybe Aust, and that seems down to only being offered a reduced RA contract.

The cheating Cantabs would have got away with it if wasn't for those meddling Journalists. Larry the Lamb has been unmasked.

Oct 27 Who was the speedster under the Larry the Lamb mask? Who was the speedster under the Larry the Lamb mask?

Canterbury’s Larry the Lamb stormed to victory in the mascot race during the half-time show at Saturday’s NPC final - but there was a good reason...

@Auckman

Yeah, theoretically.
Now they have to figure out how they are going to pay them.
Hopefully by someone else lol.
I'd say the debate in NZR pro rugby right now is about what the pay split up is going to be between Aupiki and the secondary SR comp.

Moving forward it will be interesting to see how the NRLW v BFs (7s and XVs) dynamic plays out.
It appears to be reasonably "complementary" at the mo.
I know male contracts have "other sports clauses," and rugby league is mentioned specifically.
Assuming there is nothing like that in the female contracts, or their contracts are all so short it has no effect.

@Tim said in Documentaries:

On this note, I've lived on and off in the same apartment building in China for about 5 years in total time. In that time I've about one week of complaints (ameliorated by putting a giant rubber mat under my desk chair). Recently I have had some psycho who just complains about everything. Might be a xenophobe, literally called the police on me because I was making too much noise by getting ice out of my freezer etc.

The other night, he put in about the 30th noise complaint when I was watching a movie in bed with headphones. It was time to do some heavy metal singing.

Danzig

Moterhead

Fuck that piece of shit

The thing is it’s hard to know when the idiot will do something REALLY stupid. My wife is convinced this clown is going to come through the front door and mow us down. Every once in a while I think she might be right. It’s such a drag knowing the dickhead is just over there.

@MN5 said in Pro Wrestling:

@Godder said in Pro Wrestling:

@MN5 said in Pro Wrestling:

@Godder said in Pro Wrestling:

@MN5 said in Pro Wrestling:

@Godder said in Pro Wrestling:

Wrestlemania 3 is one of the all time great wrestling PPVs/PLEs. Hogan vs big heel was a cliche by the end of his WWF run, but Hogan vs Andre was absolute box office. Did make it difficult to run Hogan vs big heel after that - once he slammed and pinned Andre, there wasn't a long list of plausible big heel challengers.

Yeah he feuded with Ted Dibiase and then had a big fall out with the Macho Man. He then feuded with Zeus whose main issue was he couldn’t actually wrestle.

There was also talk of him taking on Rick Rude but after he legitimately beat up the Ultimate Warrior backstage that was scrapped. The Warlord was an option but unfortunately the steroid scandal put paid to that. Who else was there ? Earthquake ? Big boss man ?

I lost track after he went to WCW.

Hogan had a good run against Earthquake after losing the title to Warrior at WM6 - did a stretcher job to go make a movie, and had the big return match at Summerslam 90.

After DiBiase and Andre, Hogan and Savage feuded with the Big Boss Man and Akeem (Twin Towers) with a classic Survivor Series match at Survivor Series 88 (obviously) and then some contact at Royal Rumble 89 in the Royal Rumble Match.

After the Megapowers exploded and Hogan beat Savage at WM5, Hogan had a steel cage match against Big Boss Man on Saturday Night's Main Event - that was the main event of the show, and also featured Zeus (Zeus clobbered Hogan before the match).

After Earthquake, Hogan had feuds with Sergeant Slaughter, Undertaker and Sid, among others.

There was meant to be a feud with Jake 'the Snake' Roberts but Jake was too popular and there was a concern that he would be cheered.

Hogan's last hurrah before going to WCW was beating Yokozuna at WM9 for the title in an impromptu challenge after Yoko beat Bret Hart for the title, and then Hogan losing it back to Yoko at King of the Ring (to a legdrop even).

Jake the Snake was an interesting one. Not huge, not athletic and never shouted in his promos. But he had "it" and was a genuine superstar.

I never got the whole Sergeant Slaughter thing, he never did it for me.

Undertaker was as overrated as Sid Vicious was underrated in my opinion. Vicious had the look, charisma, intimidating factor and physique to have been an all time great heel.

Speaking of which I had a listen to this, I loved the Powers of Pain back in the day and the Warlord sounds like about the nicest guy in the business.

A 640 lb ( about 290kg ) bench press is rather strong. In a world of exaggeration and make believe that is one that does seem possible. He was a tank.

Warlord just comes off as a great guy, and he and Barbarian got on really well with the Road Warriors as well.

Agree about Sarge, I just didn't get him as a 10 year old (long history as a patriotic champ, so the heel turn and Iraqi sympathiser angle was a bigger deal than it was to me as a kid), but goddammit if I didn't hate him (and Macho Man) for cheating Warrior out of the title at Royal Rumble 91.

Roberts was arguably the greatest promo guy ever. He got asked how he felt about the DDT being common now as just a move that hardly ever ends matches, and he said it was great because it made his DDT look better. "What do people say when someone kicks out of a DDT - wouldn't have kicked out of Jake's." Also had a great theme.

Yeah I agree with what you say about Roberts. For me he falls slightly short of the very best cos he didn’t have a ridiculous physique. ( same with Ted Dibiase ) he was excellent in the ring and some of his yarns are hilarious. ( if contradictory and untrue in some cases )

WWE missed a trick by not having an extended feud between the Powers of Pain and the Legion of Doom. Perhaps they thought it might get a bit confusing as they looked similar ?

What a quartet of absolute units those guys were. Hawk was 280lb of solid muscle and the smallest and weakest of the lot !

Again, the POP possibly suffered slightly by being as good on the mic as the LOD. Hawk especially was legendary at promos.

Loved LoD as a kid, especially Hawk's promos - seemed fitting that they were the final boss in Wrestlefest.

I suspect that since PoP vs Demolition had already happened at Survivor Series 88, WM5 and Survivor Series 89 (and various points between) and Demolition were still seen as the big drawcard, PoP had nowhere really left to go so were split up.

Then LoD arrived after WM6 (Apr 90) and got involved at Summerslam 90 just as Demolition were coming into their own issues so the timing just didn't quite work out. Ax had a health scare, Crush was added, things didn't go that well as Ax left after Survivor Series 90, and Demolition's last match in that run was at WM7.

Could have put PoP back together for a run at LoD, but the Nasty Boys, Steiners etc had arrived by then, so I think they just got consigned to the midcard as big heels for rising stars to go over before reaching the main events. Warlord had a great run of matches against Davey Boy Smith (British Bulldog) so it wasn't all bad.

Murray Kinsella and Bernard Jackman had a decent conversion about the NZ/IRE game on the 42.ie rugby podcast. Most of it's about Ireland (+ URC) which is a good listen by itself but they go over out the state of the NZ team and the coaching. It's interesting hearing a neutral perspective from the outside.

About the NZ rugby public:

"They're very hard to please - they're quite cynical and that's because they know so much about rugby." Ha!

I don't agree with it all (Robertson called 'very bright guy') but worth a download.

Faletau out, Cracknell in

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/articles/ceq071epljwo

@taniwharugby said in Golf:

Pretty cool news.

FB_IMG_1761251848336.jpg

Very cool.

The quality of some of those players will tear up these twos courses unless its super windy, or they really wind up the green speeds (which I suspect they will have to).

Watched quite a bit of the latest APAC in Dubai over the past week. It's a massive event.

@MajorRage said in Formula 1:

Decent race to watch with plenty of action if you take out the battle for victory which was non existent.

Russel losing his shit at his race engineer was intriguing. I'm not a large fan of Russel has he came across as a prize dick on Drive To Survive, but I've warmed to him a bit as he's been pretty good for Mercedes. Think every argument he made with this RE I totally agreed with him.

Verstappen nailed the strategy bang on for his start. He was never likely to challenge Norris but he would have had second without a fortunate safety car. He was remarkably sanguine about it (with the safety car sometimes you win, sometimes you lose).

No idea what happened to Lawson, it didn't get any coverage other than the front wing broke. He had a superb Q1, but then seems to shit the bed in Q2. Complaining of no grip, which made little sense given how far ahead he was of Hadjar in Q1.

Bearman, the man. Getting the Haas to 4th is a huge achievement. He ersiously belongs in F1.

As for Yuki ... hard to see where he'll get a drive in 2026. Had a good race last week so I thought he might have finally turned the corner ... but he was abysmal again today.

Apparently they sent him out with old tyres, but who knows? More often than not Q2 seems his limit right now.

He made a great start to the race, but Sainz swerved (apparently to avoid a snarl up ahead of him, did he lose control?) presumably on cold tyres, or worst case to push Liam way off the track, and collided with his front wing and damaged the car making it unable to continue

So spring storms hit Qld, but with particular vengeance. Always storms in Qld come the warmer months.

But coincides with the Bureau of Meteorology updating their user interface.

(Seems there were storms in Victoria too, but who cares, because Victoria.)

And basically the new interface is just ... fuzzy.

Back in the day, 2 days ago, you could click on individual radars and get quite distinct rainfall shadows and could zoom in and get a real idea of what is rolling in.

Now it's a fuzzy mess of combined images from multiple radars.

BOM are getting extreme amounts of shit, deservedly, because their new ui is complete crap.

Really we should have won that in a canter.

Tries rubbed out in the first half - the maul being called correctly only when the TMO jumps in - and a fair few brain farts when we had the ball in the red zone

Michael Blank played a few games for Waikato, and then a lot for King Country.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/culture/360866050/isla-fisher-says-shes-really-shocked-nicole-kidman-and-keith-urbans-split

To the minute and cutting edge as always.

@Grooter said in Otago 2025:

@Chris always good Info from you Chris cheers, makes me think Cam Millar might have a Welsh or Scottish granny lol

With a name like Cam(eron)? And Millar, a miller, a vocation with an association to Glasgow? No way!

How could anyone think that name is Scottish!

Cameron Millar - Screen Academy Scotland

Those names were pretty funny.
Seems relevant: