stevegrant

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/cricket/counties/hampshire/7606267.stm

Likewise. I'm only a few miles from the Oval and it's been grey and grim all day.

15-man squad for the Stanford Super Series and India ODI series: Pietersen © Anderson Bell Bopara Broad Collingwood Cook Flintoff Harmison Patel Prior (wk) Shah Swann Sidebottom Wright I really can't understand the inclusion of Cook or Sidebottom. Neither of them are effective ODI or Twenty20 players, IMO. Considering Dimi (and probably a few other players I can't think of off the top of my head) has international experience and a proven reputation in those two forms of the game, it's bizarre that those two have been selected. Central contracts produced only one real surprise, and that is that Michael Vaughan HAS been awarded a central contract for the next 12 months. Stuart Broad is added to last year's list. The ECB has also implemented a 12-month "increment" contract for seven of the fringe players, and if they match certain criteria in their occasional appearances they'll also be upgraded to full central contracts. Those seven are Matt Prior, Tim Ambrose, Ravi Bopara, Samit Patel, Owais Shah, Graeme Swann and Luke Wright.

http://www.motors.co.uk

We are working on something along those lines, but it will be tied in with the main site

Yep, and some sort of song praising the BBC, apparently.

Yes, that's a good point. We obviously failed to copy across the RSS feeds from the old forum. I'll try to get those sorted in the next couple of days.

Yep. According to the Telegraph, Setanta are demanding £1m from any British broadcaster who wants to show highlights of the game. This comes after they blew £5m on buying the live rights to this one match. No wonder they've got financial problems!

Sports Centre, 6pm kick-off. Provisional squad: Aaron Austen Sev Roberts Lee Chamberlain Ian Austen Ben Rule Nick Illingsworth Rich Barnes Mike Florit Stu Holloway Andy McGeown Chris Knight Scott Griffin Dan Kerins Steve Grant I've not heard anything from Dan Ridout or Keiron, so presuming they're not going to be there at this stage. I won't be there until half-time due to work, so Scott will be picking the team. Please be there for 5.15pm, or as soon as you possibly can if you can't get there that early.

Went there last time, expecting more of the same (i.e. rubbish performance, defeat and trouble with local police/hit squad), hence not going this time around!

He'd have fitted right in with their defence. Back on topic, we might have a look at the forum banner in a few weeks' time. Baj and I are currently working on getting the main site launched.

Beattie wanted to leave at the first sign of money. Claus and Pahars wanted to stay because they wouldn't have a cat in hell's chance of getting the same money anywhere else. They're all the same.

Bridge isn't even playing Premier League football at the moment. If he'd left Chelsea and gone elsewhere, he'd have been first choice left-back for his new club and in with a much better shout of getting a game for England. Instead, he chose to sign a new 4-year contract on about £50k a week.

That one's probably unworkable in reality. While those times may be the busiest periods (although the article states that 4-5 is the quietest period), they wouldn't be able to employ ticket office staff for two hour slots three times during a day.

We play more qualifiers nowadays. 14 in the last qualifying campaign, so they have to do Saturday/Wednesday double-headers, it's the only way to fit them in around the domestic leagues. Oh, and the England team has generally always been rubbish, it's only the media hype that makes people believe we're any good.

I'd have thought we'll mostly play for a draw, perhaps looking to nick one on the break. For that reason, I expect Walcott to retain his place on the right. Heskey will come in in place of Defoe as he's a good outlet to have when we're on the back foot (which will be most of the time, I suspect). Wes Brown has much better positional play than Glen Johnson, so he'll probably come in at right back. Lampard and Rooney, while clearly deserving of a place on the bench, won't be dropped. James Brown - Ferdinand - Terry - A Cole Walcott - Barry - Lumpoflard - J Cole Rooney - Heskey As for the idea of putting Robert Green in goal, remember what happened the last time we dropped the first choice keeper in favour of a promising younger player before a game against Croatia?

http://www.saintsfc.co.uk/news/?page_id=10558 Basically, the opening hours are changing for a 4-week trial period from 9-5 to 8-4 as between 4 and 5pm is the quietest time of the day for them and they believe it'll be more convenient for people to go there before work rather than try to leave early or go during a lunch break. It starts on Monday 15th September and will run until Friday 10th October, with a decision made near the end of that period to determine whether it will become a permanent arrangement.

To answer a few points that have been raised: Firstly, no disagreement that the forum has been quieter. Whether you term that a good or a bad thing is down to interpretation really. On one hand, there's less content overall, but on the other a lot of the complete and utter crap has also gone. On the main board, which in truth is the only part of the forum I really care about, the actual quality of the content has improved a lot, in my opinion. I certainly wouldn't say that more posts equals a better forum, which is what has been inferred above. The amount of posts has tailed off quite a bit in the last week or so, but that's always happened around international breaks. The number of "active" users has dropped, as has been mentioned. However, I believe a large amount of that is due to the main board not requiring a login to view anymore, as was the case on the old server. The avatar size restriction is purely from a "how does the forum look when people are viewing it" perspective. We initially allowed much bigger avatars, but found that they looked absolutely ridiculous and appeared to "dominate" the page so much that the actual content was often hard to pick out. We may look into allowing slightly bigger avatars again in the future, but they won't be an awful lot bigger for this reason. We may be able to get away with bigger avatars if I can redesign the skin layouts slightly so that all the user data appears down the left with the content to the right. As for the main site, it's taking (a lot) longer than Baj and I were expecting, mainly due to time, unfortunately, and I apologise for the delay and for the upset it's clearly caused many people . I've done a fair amount on it in the past week on my daily commute while Baj has been on holiday, but outside of that, I don't really get much time to work on it. Difficult to put a timescale on a launch, but I'd be disappointed if it wasn't up and running within a couple of weeks.

Nugent?! :lol:

Folded. Some people started taking it far too seriously, which just ****ed everyone off. Team selection "issues" as well. If you were a manager's favourite, you'd start every week regardless of how **** you were playing and how well other players were playing.

I'd rather Notts won it than Sussex, and they play each other next Sunday in what will probably be a title decider.

Am I the only one that, remembering how we played last time we played Andorra, actually thought we played alright last night? Last time we looked as if we didn't know what to do when we got the ball, but this time we passed the ball fine, Walcott did pretty well out wide in the first half particularly.

To be fair, Macedonia really are not the bunch of no-hoper part-timers the press and fans like to make out. In two attempts on HOME soil, England have failed to beat them. I know that doesn't say an awful lot right now, but England are ranked 15th in the world (somehow), so while people thought the result the first time Macedonia played here (at SMS) was a fluke, they proved otherwise when they got a draw at Old Trafford as well. Better teams than Scotland will go to Skopje and fail to win.

I cannot believe anyone would pay £15 to watch that. To be honest, I'd rather watch someone fight JOHN Prescott

I cannot believe anyone would pay £15 to watch that. To be honest, I'd rather watch someone fight JOHN Prescott