The Silver Fern

Fuck it. This is how I would have liked it to play out:

1. At end of series six all seven rulers would have met and decided to send their armies north to face the Night King. Tyrion convinces Cersei that they are the last of the Lannisters and it's the right thing to do. She reluctantly agrees that there's no point in having the crown when her children are dead.

2. Cersei then finds out she's pregnant so decides to hang on to the crown for her son. She also looks at a map of Westeros and correctly deduces that the North is massive and will be overrun and the only place to stop the army of the dead is the Neck. (Think Thermopylae with flaming peat bogs). She decides to cut the North loose (correctly figuring they will refuse to abandon their lands) and tells Jaime to fortify the Twins and prevent the other five armies marching north as they'll be needed to defend the Neck.

3. Night King really starts to fuck shit up in the north. Danaerys realises her advisers are idiots, have fucked it up and they are trapped. She flies south to convince Cersei to let reinforcements go north.

4. Cersei barricades population in Kings Landing and tells Dany that she's put wildfire all around the city and one spark from Drogon will create a Dresden fire storm. Cersei plays on Dany's mad daddy issues about burning the city and mocks Dany that the North is fucked and her army is about to be wiped out. Dany has moral quandary - destroy Kings Landing or everyone in the north dies. So she incinerates Cersei and in doing so the entire city goes up.

5. Dany then confronts Jamie who bends the knee. But he then explains again how strategically the North is already fucked and should be abandoned (he can call back to how he abandoned Casterly Rock to show he actually understands this). Dany realises Cersei was actually right after all and she should have listened to her. She then flies North and pulls her armies out.

6. Night King overruns the North but gets stuck at the Neck due to flaming peat bogs and flaming dragons. Meanwhile Bran (who I would have left in his cave) works out how to use his tree network and warg skills to provide real time communication allowing various raids to kill each of the white walkers. Each one killed takes out 10% or so of the army of the dead. Move the Hodor scene here - once the Night King works out who is coordinating the attacks he can assault the cave and Hodor can have a more meaningful end.

7. Night King gets desperate as his army is destroyed and decides himself to force through the Neck and is defeated (don't really care how or by who).

8. Cue big celebration at Winterfell to celebrate the victory (also J+D wedding perhaps?). Jon tells Sansa how she reminds him of Ned. Sansa comments that her mother taught her some lessons too. She then orders repeat of Red Wedding and Dany, Unsullied and Dothraki are all killed. Jon goes for Sansa. Arya sticks him with the pointy end. Sansa makes the point that Dany's decisions killed entire population of Kings Landing and the North so had it coming.

9. Sansa is Queen in North. She tells the other kingdoms all to fuck off and rebuilds the wall on her southern border (got to stop all the other kingdoms sending their rapers and murderers across the border...).

10. Final shot - iron throne is abandoned in the ruins of the Red Keep.

Ending was fine. A bit too neat as people have said above but at least wrapped everything up. I think the issue I (and many others) have with the last few series is that characters started to act to 'type' as noted above. The evil people were always evil. The good were always good etc. What was interesting about the earlier series was that the people who always acted 'good' tended to die and the people who were morally ambiguous but played the odds correctly tended to live.

Those ballista were just a bit OP. Semi automatic. Recoiless. Presumably rifled as those bolts flew dead straight. Must have been gimballed as weren’t affected by pitching of the boat. 100 percent accurate at picking out high altitude moving targets. No ranging shots needed. But that could have been because the bolts were unaffected by gravity so no ballistic trajectory to worry about.

Stealth tech included on the ships too.

I can see why they weren’t too worried by all those ballista on KL at the end though. They would have hit Doorne before they hit a target 50 feet away. While she’s waiting for Jon Snow to arrive, Cersei should start raining artillery down on Winterfell.

@akan004 but the umpires aren’t looking at the ball every delivery. Maybe the bowlers were ignorant (or wilfully so) but it’s suspicious.

And where did the sand paper come from if this plan was hatched on the fly? Nipped down to the hardware store in the lunch break?

@antipodean so that's why Hartley wasn't called up for Lions duty...

@Catogrande With the number of foreign players your union caps it wouldn't be rich for long.

@semper Yes, didn't explain myself very well. You can only declare for someone you qualify for.

But the transfer fee would apply to all players. So if Ireland want to naturalise a kiwi born and bred super rugby centre with no Irish heritage, he would need three years residency plus a transfer fee to the NZRU.

@Crucial I think you missed the bit about lower ranked nations paying less. And why shouldn't they pay something? The NZRU developed the player. Better than them being capped once by NZ and never being available again.

How about:

1. scrap the one country only rule
2. every player has to declare for a country at 18/20 (if they don't declare then they are deemed to declare for their birth nation)
3. three year stand down to switch country
4. new country has to pay old country a transfer fee. Transfer fee would depend on IRB ranking (with the top ranked teams paying a lot)

Basically make it a very expensive for tier one unions to recruit offshore.

OK, I can live with the preferential parking, the benefits and the roomy toilets (with their nice soft seat) but now I find out that the red button on the wall calls a hot nurse for a BJ? I am OUTRAGED.

I demand a button like that in all public conveniences.

And in my loo at home.

Just watched the pilot for Jean Claude van Johnson. I hope this gets picked up as a series.

The basic premise is JCVD playing himself who's spent the last twenty years intentionally being a shit actor in crap movies as a cover story for actually being a secret agent.

<blockquote class="ipsBlockquote" data-author="taniwharugby" data-cid="584329" data-time="1464680019">
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<p>was citing it as an option, saying could it be an option to immobilise a gorilla, obviously not an option while holding a toddler...that said, the voltage required to immediately immobilise an ape might be sufficient to kill it anyway, rendering my initial question pointless, which was just pondering as an alternative to needing to shoot it dead, not the answer to this situation.</p>
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<p>Jump in the cage wearing a hot lady gorilla suit? Just don't let Harambe catch you or things will get painful...</p>

<blockquote class="ipsBlockquote" data-author="TeWaio" data-cid="581123" data-time="1463760586">
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<p>I am the last person to big up the latest greatest hyped England player, but this guy is the real deal. I watched a few 6N games focussing just on him, and the only other player I have ever seen read a game so well is McCaw. Itoje just pops up everywhere in the right place. I think in a few years he'll be the best player in the world. </p>
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<p>I agree. Itoje looks exceptional . The Poms will no doubt screw him up though. Make him add another 20kg of unnecessary muscle and play 45 games a year until he's slow and broken.</p>

<p>Watched the BBC documentary last night and would make the following comments. I'm not going to address the reprehensible behavior of the police afterwards:</p>
<p>1) Clearly the 96 were not at fault</p>
<p>2) The ground was very poorly designed to act as a neutral venue. 44% of the supporters had to go through 28% of the turnstiles. And once through the turnstiles the only obvious entry point to the standing area was Gate C (which only led to the central pens) which was directly in front of the entering fans.</p>
<p>3)  Duckenfield was out of his depth and didn't know how to deal with the situation. He clearly froze and paralyzed an effective police response.</p>
<p>4) The crowd outside the gate were clearly angry and frustrated but the game should have been delayed to calm them down (wrong police decision). No evidence of unticketed supporters however.</p>
<p>5) When the outer gate was opened by the police the central pens were already overcrowded. The critical error by the police was not closing Gate C to the central pens sooner.</p>
<p>6) There had been no planning from or training for the police or emergency services on how to handle the situation which made it far worse. They clearly had no idea what to do.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>One more general comment which the doco did not address. Despite the above errors, looking at that footage it was an accident waiting to happen. With hindsight, it's hard to believe that anyone thought that having standing only pens behind the goal (without exits) was ever a good idea. All it needed was the right combination of ingredients (eg. an FA cup semi final and policing error). The interviewed fans said that being a bit crushed was normal. They even had crush barriers in place so they knew crushes could/did happen. Also, getting into those pens and being part of a swaying mass of people was part of being a fan. People were swapping their seated tickets to get into the standing area. Basically, if there had been a fire, bombing, shooting or anything else to induce panic, exactly the same thing would have happened. Mental. While police incompetence pulled the trigger, the lasse faire approach of Hillsborough and the FA to crowd safety was probably the major factor that caused this. </p>

Ngatai grabbed his legs low and then stood up. Only one way that tackle was going to end. Nothing to complain about. <br><br><br>
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<p>Because jumping looks cool.</p>
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<p>Also, so long as you're not taken out in the air, it hurts less than standing your ground and getting smashed in the tackle.</p>

<p>Bryn Evans?</p>
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<p>Maybe I wasn't paying enough attention, but the first time I registered Ben Smith and Toeava was during respective EOYT selections.</p>

<blockquote class="ipsBlockquote" data-author="antipodean" data-cid="567594" data-time="1459056867"><p>I'd suggest it's not. When travellers have a history that competes on a misery scale with millennia of genocide or intergenerational slavery it may be the same thing.</p></blockquote>
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I didn't say it was the same thing. I was raising more racially emotive terms to clarify the point that what he said was racist.<br><br>
As others have said you don't have to be a genocide/slavery victim to be racially abused. He should have just called him a fluffybunny.<br><br>
And in any event I think gypsies should rank fairly high on your 'misery scale'. They even tick your genocide box. Travellers aren't exactly living the high life either as far as I'm aware.

Travellers and gypsies are technically different although the terms have been misused enough that it gets confusing.<br><br>
Would people feel differently if the slur was Jew boy or Black Boy? How long did Suarez get for calling Evra "negro"? It's the same thing really and I'm not surprised that World Rugby don't want to see it condoned on the field.<br><br><br>
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<p>I'm surprised how much the press are loving Billy V. I was at the game on Saturday sitting behind the posts. From my angle, his go forward impact was not as apparent, but what was clear is that each time after he crashed it up, he then went and stood out on the wing or dropped to a second full back position to get his breath back. He didn't hit any rucks (that I noticed) and only tackled if an Irishman ran at him while he was standing at 2nd or 3rd receiver. Zero effort at cover defence, kick chasing or getting involved in any attacking movement. Every now and then he'd just stop and stand still during play to recover or retire out of the line and leave his teammates to it. I was shaking my head when he got MoTM.</p>
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<p>Have since seen the replay and admittedly, from side on, he is very effective at hitting the ball up. But England have to play with 7 forwards for everything else.</p>