David Kelly

I remember reading about that a while back. Looks mental.

Really liking this.

I got round to watching the first part of the Frankie Boyle world cup program last night as the second ep was showing. Really enjoyed it, I'll probably stick the second part on tonight.

New Jurassic Park film. Didn't have anything massively wrong with it but I didn't really enjoy it much. It started pretty well on the island with the volcano erupting, but it lost a lot when it moved away from there.

Probably should have had some sandpaper of our own yesterday. Absolutely pitiful getting beat off Scotland.

I can't imagine most of us would be much different in the same position like. The minute I'm outside Newcastle I'm on the drink. If I was doing what he was I'd most likely be a massive alcoholic.

Big fan of his shows. It seemed he'd been big into drugs in his earlier days (weren't we all) so I wonder if he'd continued problems with them. RIP

Just finished watching this and like Renton I had no memory of these goings on at all. I thought the lawyer bloke was the most weird one of all of them. Not so much when you saw footage of him in his red suits, but in the interviews the smile and far away look in his eyes properly freaked me out. Sheela was mint I thought. I could see how people would follow her. When she smiled there was something that completely changed about her and I could see how people could fall for that. Plus she looked canny with her kit off. I couldn't understand why they were so obsessed with bogwog (sorry I know it's wrong but I can't be the only one). From what they showed he did nothing to inspire such devotion.

We'd be more likely to end up with a bukakke.

Oh aye I don't doubt that something like that would have happened. I was just speaking from a purely financial sense based on what was spent and recouped.

It strikes me (I've not checked the facts to back this up) that Villa have gambled a lot more than we did. Yes we spent but we recouped a lot. I don't think they sold anyone of significance (I don't think they had anyone) so I think we wouldn't have been as badly off as they appear to be. But no doubt we would have started struggling.

All been poo poo'd already. I've been told that Rafa had record deal lined up for us but they've failed to push it through and he's not at all happy about it. Apparently he's been meeting with Penfold this morning to discuss it. I know the source that this comes from works for the club but I've no idea how much he would ever hear about such things so I make no claim about how true it is.

Saw 2001 at the gate last night. It's an amazing experience to see it at the cinema even if I've still no idea what the ending is all about.

The joy of Buttler is when we are in a position like we were yesterday morning and he can switch gears. But it was great to see that over the two tests he can play how the situation dictates. Really good starts for Bess and Curran too. Curran will need to up his speed going forward if he wants to be a test bowler though. Away from home he's not going to be able to trouble top batsmen with that pace.

Bowling has been a lot better so far today.

Greame Smith said the other day that T20 internationals should be done away with too. I suppose if you kept the world cup, you could argue that T20 teams don't need so much time together as the longer formats do (not so much need to work on tactics etc) so it wouldn't be a problem that the teams didn't play together before hand. Especially as a lot of them would play together in ODI's.

Yeah I wouldn't like to see the 50 over competition done away with, especially at a time we're it's helped us get up to being ranked no 1 in the world. But it does seem that it's a bit too big. I wouldn't want to see it drop down to a straight knockout as then you'd have players (potentially England players) playing just one game of 50 over cricket a season. But maybe it should be reduced to just a few group games then into the knockout. Then you'd have more of an opportunity to play four day games around it. Meaning that you wouldn't have the situation than Jennings is in now.

In terms of early deals your most likely right. In terms of money being spent, not all years have been the same so who knows.

Stick this thread straight into the gold section.

You under estimate the level of Penfold's incompetence. We signed Atsu early last year and unfortunately it didn't herald the start of a load of quick signings. Hopefully this year it will be different.

How could it possibly be ironic to them? They think irony is a bit like goldy and bronzey but made of iron.

Aye it's a joke really. I've no idea how they plan to fit the new 100 ball format in too (my understanding is that this isn't a replacement for the bash). Surely they need to look at the 50 over competition. Either reduce the number of games so that County Championship games can be played alongside it, or spread it out over a longer period. The national team aren't going to play much cricket in the conditions that we play so much of our four day game in.

There doesn't seem to be too many English batsmen around these days that are averaging 40+ in red ball cricket at the moment. I think there's only about 10 who have an average higher than 40 this season (including Cook, Jennings, Bairstow and Vince) in division 1. Given that most have played less than 5 games, one decent score can obviously skew what their average is. We've spent the winter talking about the lack of bowling options and years having problems with finding a partner for Cook at the top of the order, but there appears at the moment to be a larger problem with lack of English players coming through accross the board. I think we have some very talented players to build the team around, but in red ball cricket at least, it's looking like there's not much depth where we can fill out the team/squad. When you look at India and Australia, there are players coming through who might never make it at test level, but at least have very good records in the their national championships. I'm not sure we have that at the moment.

I enjoyed Solo. It's not a story that really needed telling (Rogue one had much more going for it on that score) and it feels the most slight of any of the Star Wars films, but it was great fun from start to finish. The guy playing the lead was good (as were Warrelson and Newton) but Chewie and Lando were the real stars for me. Very little sign of the force but really it delivered most of what I want from a Star Wars film.

Shame it went so quickly to shit on Sunday. I had a great day out for the Durham Worcester game at Gosforth on Friday. The rain actually helped Durham get the win and it coincided with the point where we managed to blag our way into the corporate bit for for some free food and drink. Which was nice.