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Very wisely, Mrs R from Afar limited my involvement in the logistics of our wedding day to a) turning up and b) choosing the names of the themed tables at the reception.
Naturally, I lowered the tone by insisting that they all be QPR related . Imagine how enthralled Great Uncle Bob and Great Auntie Nina from Helensburgh (it's in Scotland, near where my wife was born) were to be sitting at a table named after a mysterious "celebrity" called Paul Furlong .
It was worth risking the ire of the new in-laws, though, just to be able to assign one of my best mates and his wife to the Barry Silkman table: At the time, they were related to him by marriage and were impressed by the dedication.
Call me a pedant - and I resemble that remark - but I need to interject on two points:
- Re Scotland, absolutely, the dominance of Rangers and Celtic is spirit crushing for the locals who support other teams *but* the last SPL season was a belter, with the title going to the very last game, a straight shootout between Hearts and Celtic, with Rangers having also pushed them hard most of the campaign.
- Re Italian football, again, what you say is a very fair summation, but Atalanta did absolutely hammer Bayer Leverkusen in the 2024 Europa League final.
Kiss covered Argent guitarist Russ Ballard's "God gave rock and roll to you," dropping the reference to Cliff Richard (!). I can imagine them producing a very questionable reworking of this .
I saw it in France while doing my modern languages degree, I thought it was tremendous.
A few months later, by chance, I ended up living a few hundred metres from another massive and impressive tapestry, The Apocalypse Tapestry. It is displayed in the chateau at Angers, in the Loire Valley:
Now I wonder if while all this is going on the TV companies which have forked out astronomical sums on the broadcast rights have quietly instructed their lawyers.
The "product" which they invested in has been massively devalued by this scandal. We'll see.
"The only way to fix this whole mess is to bring in a wage cap like the US".
Or maximum player budget, e.g. you can spend up to - random figure - £100m per season. If you want to splurge £50m of that on one megastar, fine, but your total spend can't exceed the £100m. I seem to remember Serie A tried something like that.
Table tennis: I am totally addicted to playing it and watching it, if you hadn't already noticed .
Cricket: I used to play at a reasonably high level but my batting career peaked with my first ever ball: I hit it out of the ground! For balance, I should add that my spin bowling has been carted all over the place .
Cycling: Back in the day, I cycled up some of the big passes unsupported, so I love it when the Grand Tours go into the mountains.
I just finished "Climbers" by Peter Cossins. It provides a great insight into the history and psychology of cycling's great, err, climbers .
Who knew that the organisers of the Tour de France initially banned derailleur gears on the basis that they would metaphorically speaking level the playing field? In reality, they did the opposite.
One way of making batting practice more challenging!
I tried something like this when I was padded up and waiting to go in back in the 1990s, except that I stood behind the catching cradle and had teammates chuck a cricket ball at it .
Han Ying, table tennis player. A super defender who gets almost everything back, all the more impressive because in most premier tournaments, the next oldest player is still ten years her junior:
Derek Underwood: My cricketing hero when I was young.
Graeme Obree: Smashed cycling records using a bike he built himself using bearings from a washing machine, flat bars, a narrow bottom bracket, a single front fork and a unique riding position.
I agree with you and re. this bit - "if that means that clubs go bust because of their and their supporters over ambition then so be it" - there is a simple way to protect clubs.
You do what the Canadian government does with prospective mining companies, you require them to provide a bond - cleared funds - upfront. In the mining scenario, it is used to ensure that the land can be made good once extractive activities cease.
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. Imagine how enthralled Great Uncle Bob and Great Auntie Nina from Helensburgh (it's in Scotland, near where my wife was born) were to be sitting at a table named after a mysterious "celebrity" called Paul Furlong 
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