stevegrant

It's the third Thursday in March, so the 19th this year. If I remember rightly, we weren't in the relegation zone until the final week or two of the season, and until mid-March we didn't really look in that much trouble.

Bruce Grobbelaar, Niall Quinn, Britt Ekland

Here endeth cricket in ****stan for the forseeable future. What a mess

I should point out that relegation doesn't automatically equal administration. The amount of revenue available in League One isn't much different to the revenue available in the Championship. You just don't get shown on TV as much - given we've only been shown 6 times this season, that's not a massive shortfall to make up. Clearly there would probably be a drop in attendances if prices weren't reduced in line with the drop in standard, but it doesn't necessarily mean we're definitely destined for administration.

Don't forget the likelihood of people just not getting out of bed on a Sunday morning are probably much higher with a pub team than a "normal" Sunday league team. Good luck with it, to be honest. I'm thoroughly fed up with it after two thirds of a season, and almost certainly won't be doing it again next season. I'll leave it to someone else to waste their own time.

Before we joined the league, I had 15 people who would "definitely" play regularly as well as a handful of people who would be able to play "occasionally". First game of the season, we had a bare 11. Second game, we had to drag someone's mate out of bed from round the corner to play right-back so we had a bare 11. Despite having about 35 players signed on (and will be signing more this week), we've probably played with less than 11 players more often than with a full team. Application and funds, not a problem. Players wasn't a problem until some just decided they weren't going to even bother giving me the courtesy of a response to texts, emails, phone calls each week to say "I can't/don't want to play". You've also missed off: chasing people's availability liaising with opposition teams trying to get a ref as it's about a 1 in 10 chance in the lower divisions of being appointed one by the league phoning results in contacting every player at 8.30 on a Sunday morning when the game's been called off

It's an almighty pain in the arse. The two Southampton Sunday leagues are: Southampton & District (formerly Commercial Houses League): http://www.sd-sfl.co.uk City of Southampton: http://www.cssfl.org.uk

The only one that would vaguely pass as "unattractive" would be the Derby game, but that's mostly because it's an evening game. I guess Palace could be an option, depending on whether you view them as "attractive" opposition. Burnley would have been had it not been the last home game of the season. Of course, also, by that time, it's the end of the season so it would be a bit of a bizarre message to send: "this is what you're missing out on this season - oh, hang on, there aren't any more games!"

I've had money on Bournemouth drawing their last two games. On Friday night, they missed a second-half penalty and lost 1-0 at Chesterfield. Tonight, they scored in the 90th minute to win 1-0 at Dagenham.

Two terrible teams on tonight's evidence. What a fantastic job Redknapp's done since he went there

Johnson was pretty bloody stupid to try to control the ball in the way he did, though, knowing there was a pretty good chance it would look like handball even if it wasn't.

Johnson was pretty bloody stupid to try to control the ball in the way he did, though, knowing there was a pretty good chance it would look like handball even if it wasn't.

Sounds like the sort of thing that happened for a while on my old Metro years ago. It had been doing it for ages, I left it thinking it would go away and a few months later, the head gasket blew

Another thing Giles Clarke has to answer for... if I remember rightly, he was chairman/CEO at Glamorgan before getting the ECB job. Not all that surprising that an at-the-time-unbuilt Sofia Gardens got the Ashes test ahead of the Rose Bowl and Old Trafford, really.

Something like that, but bear in mind that a few only want to play a half.

Good work.

Squad so far, off the top of my head: Andy Mintram Chris Knight Chris Summers Kev Thornton (yes, really :shock: ) Rob Healey Scott Griffin Jouls Ganley Ben Rankin Steve Grant Also, Rob reckons Damon and Luke (don't think I know him) will be there, as well as a few other RVT players who might only play a half. You'll notice one slight problem in that list. Summers is the only potential keeper...

Agreed, although we'd all be absolutely bricking it now...

Private Eye apparently uncovered it a year ago, before the contract was signed. The suggestion is that there was more than enough doubt in a lot of peoples' minds to back away from Stanford. I heard Bransgrove talking to Aggers on TMS yesterday during the lunch break in Antigua and his argument was along the lines of "I just thought there was something a bit iffy about him". A bit of a strange line to take by Bransgrove, who's opinions are normally very well thought out and considered. He did allude to a complete non-shock as far as the ECB chairman's role is concerned, in that it's a bit of an old boys' club. Whether any of us have any time for Lord Marland, according to Bransgrove there were 5 county chairmen who point blank refused to even meet with Marland to discuss his plans. They'd already nailed their colours to the mast and nothing was going to prevent them voting for Clarke. Whether Marland would be a better option, I don't know, but Clarke gambled on the future of English cricket by whoring it to a bit of an attention seeker, and has clearly lost.

The very simple reason for that policy is because anyone can register as many Hotmail email addresses as they like, which means there's no "incentive" to follow the simple and reasonable rules that are put in place to ensure everyone's enjoyment of the forum as they could quite happily just get themselves banned and then re-register again straight away. It would also get around the 3-post limit for unpaid users. Given that the paid subscriptions is the way we have chosen to ensure the forum is self-sufficient, it really wasn't a difficult decision to make. Also, the vast majority of people have access to a work, uni/college or ISP e-mail address, so it's really not that much of a restriction, to be honest.

Wishful thinking. The population of India will ensure it remains more important to them than Test cricket.

Bloody hell http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7895505.stm Unsurprisingly, the ECB have rather quickly "suspended negotiations" with Stanford in response... Giles Clarke sounded like he was physically shaking when interviewed on TMS!

You should be able to change it in your user control panel. However, you won't be able to change it to an address that is banned, e.g. Hotmail, Yahoo, GMail, etc. Another work e-mail should be fine.

What's the bet?

Different player - it was Michael McIndoe in the home game, Bradley Orr today. Scott Minto on Soccer Saturday reckoned it was a terrible effort, but Davis has still got to guess the right way...