Whitey Grandad

I booked all mine through http://www.newzealandsky.co.uk/ but I don't know if they are the cheapest. We had a 13-night self drive on South Island and 2 nights on North. Not long enough of course.Waikiki was great fun, can thoroughly recommend it.

Hi SIP, how's it going down under and a bit to the right? This came a bit too close to comfort for me earlier this year. The operation I had has a 1.6% mortality rate and whilst waiting for it my main thought was that I had a lot of unfinished business left and had not had time to enjoy the benefit of my lifetime's efforts. It's easy enough to say that you should work less and play more but the problem is getting the balance right. I now look at life differently.

Because the Antarctic snow had increased? Aren't the onland icesheets also thicker?

We did Air New Zealand last February. Heathrow - Hong Kong - Sydney - Christchurch - Auckland - Honolulu - Los Angeles - Heathrow. 30 nights away from home, 31 night trip. My accountant lives in Dunedin and I have a big customer in Sydney so we went business class. The Air NZ website will let you plan your own schedule but after about 4 flights it gives up so I had to download all the daily schedules and work out the dates myself. There are specialist websites: http://www.roundtheworldflights.com/ amongst others. It was a childhood dream of mine to go round the world.

According to the modern interpretation he was not interfering with an opponent or gaining and advantage. (He looks onside to me )

What, even if he's right? I certainly didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition.

Well that brings me on to my next point... What can we do to improve our wayward finishing? Hitting the post and bar is probably a good sign because it means we're getting closer to hitting the target. At least the shots are not flying into the crowd.

What is certainty? Is anything 100%? The politician in me would say that it doesn't matter what I think. The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on... and all that stuff. He was off.

I will say that it is a pleasure to be debating such trivial matters after a very satisfying 2-0 win for a change.

There was a time.

Stick me down on the touch line and I'll tell you. Jay's right leg is certainly nearer the goal, and probably his chest as well. Take away the defender's right arm and look again.

Gerrard quoted the officialas saying 'I think so'. That seems pretty definite to me. I can't find that guidance in the current documents, which do change regularly, to be fair.

That's very true. I also think that all professional footballers would benefit from going on a refereeing course and taking charge of a few games so that they could get a better understanding of what's involved. I expect that if you had 100 different linesmen in that particular situation some of them might very well have allowed play to continue, but it certainly wasn't the worst offside decision I've seen in the last few weeks.

From that image it looks like a correct decision to me.

It would appear not.

I'm sure that advice still applies but isn't that an old document? If he wasn't sure he wouldn't have raised his flag.

This may come as a surprise to some but many professional footballers and tv pundits do not know the laws of the game. The first game of the season after the toss-up ruling was changed Tony Adams won the toss and insisted that he wanted the kick-off.

I'm sure that if he was unsure about whether he was 100% sure he surely would not have flagged. That picture shows him offside (ignore any arms) and the linesman is in the perfect position.

Let's be charitable and say that he was taking his time to think about it. Fonte's leg was locked straight and his studs were showing maybe. I don't know of any ref who takes account of the rolling around, but it's always possible.

'From the replay'. There is nothing about benefit of the doubt in any of the Laws of the Game.

It looked a good strong tackle to me form my excellent position 50 yards away in the Kingsland. Then on MOTD2 from a lower angle you could see that the follow-through caught Tiote on the ankle. Booking? Perhaps.

No need for technology on these ones. They were both in the referee's quarter of the pitch. Definitely Atkinson's decision for the second. I saw Adam asking the linesman why and he then pointed to the referee. It looked pretty definite to me that he was passing the buck.

I think it goes back further than that. When I first heard about the ruling it was said that it was to prevent the possibility of crowd trouble. Nobody said anything about embarrassing the referee.

Impossible to tell from the replay.

Nor without doubt onside. If Jay's nose is one inch nearer to the goal then he is offside. There is no mention of 'benefit of doubt' anywhere that I can find. But as I said above, technology has no place in football. My comment was in reply to 'being at the ground trumping replays'. If you want a decision then have an independent body train and appoint an official to run up and down the line with a flag. I still maintain that the replays do not show him to be onside.