I don't want to drag this horribly off-topic, but I've disagreed with Paul before on this matter and I have to do so again. I can agree with Emerton and people like Yorke. But the majority of players out there go out and give it their all. Nobody is worth the amount of money they get every week but that shouldn't cloud the issue that they try their best. Almost every high-level footballer in the world is overpaid. I see no difference between Nelsen and Neill. I don't think one tries harder than the other. The only difference is that one is the darling of the Blackburn End and the other has had to put up with some stick. It's very easy to avoid criticising the good ones.

This innings has swung around quite a bit. Great start from Australia, then pegged back, and now they're back on track for a big score. England can turn this around if they get twqo or more quick wickets. If they don't, they're going to be looking at having to score upwards of 5 and a half an over. They're capable, but you'd have to fancy the Aussies in that situation.

Well what do you reckon troll, whoops, Jim? 327043[/snapback] Give him some time to bite don, or he'll realise you've gone fishing.

Renewed this morning without a problem. Looking forward to more goals and home wins next season! Never had a real problem with the ticket office but the bloke in front of me had a bit of a dolt serving him. From what I gathered, he was sorting one out for his son and he gave the exact seat that he wanted to sit in. MAN: And I want to sit next to him. DOLT: So where do you want to sit? MAN: Well either side of him would be logical. Jesus wept.

Tremendous bowling from the Aussies. Finally a glimpse of the standard that England will have to beat to win back the Ashes.

I've no idea what he was booked for, but it had better have been worth it. Vonk too. 2-1 up at Cape Verde with five minutes left. Absolutely no need for it!

1) Theno.. - if he wanted to stand for election to a post, then he is welcome to as would be any member of the ISA. (there may have to be a mechanism around proposing and seconding etc dependant on numbers) 2) Those who dont reside in lancs.. - theres already a large number of people involved in the isa who have similar circumstances (Tris, Glenn, Scotty, Kiwiwannabe). Its difficult at present to involve foreign supporters in the setup meetings, but its certainly on the agenda how we gain that representation. Other than that we need to stress that this isnt a messageboard thing, its just that the people who thought it up happened to be members and its an easy place to discuss things whilst its in an embryonic state. 325445[/snapback] Cool. Can you not use real names when connected with BRISA then, rather than messageboard names? 325448[/snapback] The meetings are minuted with real names and everybody addresses each other by their proper name.

Decent enough point, but I'd also list Lance Kluesner (sp). I remember him destroying the Aussies in the best game of cricket of all time only for them to run Donald out in the last over. Until then, he'd pulled them back from certain defeat to within inches of victory.

Whilst I'm sure season ticket sales are going to go down again this year, I bumpred into SteB on Friday when we were buying the new away shirt and we'd both noticed how there was a bit of a queue at the TO for season tickets. The signing of a 'name' that means a lot to the casual fan could really do the trick at this moment in time.

Harmison currently tearing through the Aussie top order. 65-4 after 16 overs.

Quite an elementary error there, Smithy. Dictionary.com defines "your" as "The possessive form of you. 1. Used as a modifier before a noun: your boots; your accomplishments. 2. A person's; one's: The light switch is on your right. 3. Informal. Used with little or no sense of possession to indicate a type familiar to the listener: your basic three-story frame house." The same website defines "you're" as a "Contraction of you are." Clearly, the difference in meaning renders one of the words inappropriate for use in the context of your sentence. The major feature of the word "you're" is the apostrophe, used to join the 'you' and 'are'. It is certainly a simple mistake to make, but one that I find can happen all too often if care isn't taken. I like to think of the golden rules of using an apostrophe if I'm ever in doubt: The apostrophe has three uses: 1) to form possessives of nouns 2) to show the omission of letters 3) to indicate certain plurals of lowercase letters. Apostrophes are NOT used for possessive pronouns or for noun plurals, including acronyms. A website I stumbled across has images and information about National Punctuation Day. Here is one of the pictures: We could all learn a lesson from this. Good English provides this country with the backbone for a successful future. I hope you don't feel I'm picking on you personally, Smithy. You are certainly one of the better posters on the board in terms of both content and grammatical sense. Here are the odds for the winner of the 2005 baseball World Series, courtesy of Ladbrokes.com: New York Yankees 4/1 St Louis Cardinals 4/1 Boston Red Sox 6/1 San Diego Padres 10/1 Chicago White Sox 12/1 Atlanta Braves 14/1 Florida Marlins 14/1 LA Angels of Anaheim 14/1 Baltimore Orioles 16/1 Minnesota Twins 16/1 Philadelphia Phillies 20/1 Arizona Diamondbacks 33/1 Chicago Cubs 33/1 Los Angeles Dodgers 33/1 New York Mets 33/1 Texas Rangers 33/1 Washington Nationals 40/1 Toronto Blue Jays 66/1 San Francisco Giants 100/1 Seattle Mariners 150/1 Cleveland Indians 200/1 Houston Astros 200/1 Oakland Athletics 200/1 Pittsburgh Pirates 200/1 Detroit Tigers 300/1 Milwaukee Brewers 300/1 Cincinnati Reds 500/1 Colorado Rockies 5000/1 Kansas City Royals 5000/1 Tampa Bay Devil Rays 5000/1

Because Hayden and Gilchrist are just tappy-tappy players and it doesn't suit your style? There was a boundary yesterday where one of those two didn't hit the ball anything like cleanly and it still went for four, such was the power. None of the Aussies showed the sense to just play themselves in. 9 an over is very possible with two comfortable batsmen, even if they aren't sloggers.

I've certainly given up buying programmes for anything except big away games such as at Cardiff or Burnley. 20 programmes at £3 a pop is £60, which is an away match and a night out. This isn't even taking into consideration programmes not bought at away matches.

Some good points raised. I don't think it's a physical issue so much as it is an intensity issue. No, the women aren't as big or strong as the males but that's par for the course. But the pace of the womens game is radically different and a strong, hard tackle is a treat rather than something that Andy Todd and Ryan Nelsen feed off. There are other subtle differences. Corners are bizarre. Very few defenders command the box when the corner is coming across and the keepers never claimed balls that weren't in their six yard boxes when crosses were coming in. To deal with this, the penalty areas were totally packed and a short ball pulled back to the D could have been met by any player totally unmarked. I suspect this never happens though because nobody shoots with any real venom. In a Premier League game, this wouldn't be the case and we'd berate anybody who failed to cover this. I think the difference between the two which undermines them is that the women don't do anything that the men can't. Contrast this with womens tennis, a sport which is mar more equal between genders to the point where mixed doubles are allowed and similar TV audiences watch their respective finals. Yes, the women don't generally hit the ball as hard but they still posses weapons in their repetoire that would hurt men. For example, nobody in the world has a backhand as good as Justine Henin-Hardenne. The tennis matches aren't different social events so why are football matches? It was great to see so many people there making noises but I'm certain not many of them are having a ###### Sunday now purely because of the result. How many of the women with England flags knew the full names and clubs of the England squad before all the TV coverage? How many were there because they wanted to see women play the sport rather than because they were football fans? They were decent enough players (on the whole - Rachel Unitt was attrocious, and my Swedish friend cannot believe Larsson is an international), for example I thought Katie Chapman played the holding role very well. She used the ball decently and turned away from trouble when receiving the ball with her back to the opposition. How many people there even noticed how good that was? There was a lot of screaming when the ball was hoofed towards the penalty area but not a lot of applause for any good touches in the midfield. Womens football shouldn't be an orange because they are playing exactly the same sport. It isn't baseball vs cricket. It isn't even Rugby Union vs League. It's exactly the same. The physical capabilities are always going to differ but this doesn't affect the excitement of a womens tennis match or a womens 100m. With womens football, the sluggish nature of the play and lack of bite can make it hard to watch, and I would imagine even harder to attract genuine fans when it isn't even treated as the same sport by the people who defend it.

BBC are saying that Savage wishes to return to international football. He admits in the article that he doesn't want to cut short his international career because of his temper and an over-reaction, but may still be stubborn enough to wait for an apology from Toshack.

I didn't go today so I can't really comment on the atmosphere, but I've been to events that probably have had a similar atmosphere to the one Paul describes, and frankly I've been bored off my tits. The thing that makes football so great is the tension, the passion, the emotional attachment and intensity, the gut-wrenching swings of mood. Even the aggression. Take those away and yes, there may be more women and children in the ground, but football wouldn't be the same for me and thousands of others. I watched most of the match on TV and, while the crowd were clearly noisy and partisan towards England, were they really "into it"? Did they go home in a mood, almost unable to talk rationally for the next hour or so? Did the result spoil their whole weekend? I doubt it. If you don't like that sort of passion Paul then I suggest you're watching the wrong sport. There are plenty of other sports where the atmosphere is friendly, where opposition fans mix, where women and children attend in numbers. They're all boring compared to football. I'm not saying that over-aggressive fans is a good thing - of course it isn't. But without passion and aggression then football wouldn't be football and it wouldn't be the great game it is. Don't get me wrong, there's lots wrong with footy at the moment, but diluting the atmosphere into family-friendly, horn blowing love-ins isn't going to help. 322980[/snapback] I was considering posting a response to Paul along the same lines but you've just said it far better than I ever could.

Whilst it must have been thrilling for the players to play in front of a crowd that big and noisy, I felt so preoccupied thinking how few of those people would be there during the Rovers season. The standard was much better in an international match than the domestic ones, but sometimes the intensity was toned down and the passing was unpredictable to say the least. I thought Sweden had neat passes but little else. The players played hard but fair, but I don't agree with the whole "and they never go down with injuries either, unlike the girly men of the Premiership". There was somebody down every 3 minutes.

South Africa are 3 points clear of DR Congo and Ghana. They have to play them both at home, and Burkina Faso away. 7 points mathematically does it. 5 points means that they don't lose (crucial) and take points off the other two teams which means they can't be caught. 6 points means that they lose to one of the three. If they finish level on points then they will lose on account of their losing record to both Ghana and DR Congo.

It looks like they're going to be closely followed by Iran, who are beating Bahrain with only a few minutes to go. South Africa need 7 points from their last 3 games to qualify. 5 points will also do it. 6, however, will probably not be enough.

South Africa kick off in half an hour. Long shot, but does anybody have any idea how to get a radio link for the game? Tried the BBC World Service and google but nothing is coming up. Would really like some way to listen to this one rather than the agony of refreshing livescore.com.

Iriver looks mingin 320052[/snapback] I know what you mean. 320135[/snapback] Yup. These things are, after all, fashion. Sigh.

Are you calling yourself stupid there? 320505[/snapback] It's means i'm with somebody called stupid! take it you swing on the other side when it comes to womens football puff! 320508[/snapback] if its makes people puffs watching a bunch of women running round and jumping up for the ball i am guilty because i enjoy watching that and most men will agree with me i think 320511[/snapback] Actually quite a few people on here have agreed on here that there are very few merits to it at all. Still, England vs Sweden could change all of this.

I think they've messed up the offside law beyond comprehension. I don't see the problem with calling any player in an offside position up for a free kick, regardless of whether or not they were "intefering with play". The only footballers not intefering with play are the substitutes.

It really is superb. He's added his list of EPL teams now. We're listed as: Blackburn Pyros Northern prison side

Just read Angela Carter's "The Bloody Chamber". Short fairytale stories with a more feminist viewpoint. Very stylish and each one is a good way of killing half an hour.