Caught a bus back with them back into town and they were amazing, broken english but were funny as hell, weeee ate rhhinuuuuuss! and aaaaa worrry worry, worry worry worry woory warr-aye-ing-tonne. class fans them catalans.

Oh and not forgeting " Gooooood byyyyyyyeee my friend"

Had a great weekend with the family, good banter with other species, nice food, got to watch hours of back to back SL rugby and got my fizzog in both League rags… bonus

Weren't you in the Irish Bar in Perpignan the other year, when the 'turn' was knocking out Beatles songs complete with faux scouse accent only to not speak a word of English afterwards ?

Them and Edinburgh plod were trying to spend most of the weekend trying to work out with faction of the Christian faith each respective team was from ...

[i"Hey Shuggie, ewes see those Warrington fans ? They're dead-set Greek orthadox I tell ye !"

"Divvnae talk pish Finlay, yon Wakefield fans, they're Methodist .... I will tell ye this !"[/i

You've just lost all credibility in your argument, right there.

So you go into a cafe and tell them that you don't want any of their products but could they bring you a cup of hot water, their cup, their cup that they've bought with their own money, their cup that they'll have to pay someone to wash afterwards, and you want them to fill it with hot water that they've had to pay for and they've had to pay for the electricity to heat it, and you want a person to bring it to you free so that you don't have to contribute to their wages either.

And you wonder why they want to charge you for it ?

Do you often go into restaurants with your own food and ask them to bring you a plate and some cutlery ?

Great weekend. Ate, drank and was merry, plus watched lots of rugby (some of it quite good). Only downside - the sun in Scotland doesn't actually seem to give off much/any heat...fecking frozen by game 3 on each day...loved the whole thing.

I agree with you that the average attendance is not bad considering its 200 miles away but that is not my point. My understanding is that the average per match was down about 2000 (15000 for all 7 matches compared with normal SL round) therefore this loss of revenue has to be equated with the promotional benefits of attracting 6000 locals to the event. My other point is that the majority of the total income for the weekend will have gone out of our game.

I fully agree with you that we should have given away 20,000 tickets to the Scots including all Scottish RU clubs. The same mistake was made in South Wales over the last 2 years where there was a more defined target with Celtic Crusaders entry into SL

But like I said its a good weekend away.

I need my brain refreshing here, but is the MM weekend an extra week of fixtures to the competition or is it a part of the original fixture format ?

I have a nagging thought that it was introduced as an extra round of games, in which case trying to compare the same fixtures to what they would have attracted if they had been played at the normal local grounds is actually irrelevant - as long as the weekend makes a profit then its a bonus all round and some free advertising.

I could be wrong though...

Stopping in Dunfermline is the future.

Had a fantastic night out there on Saturday despite some rather disappointing opening hours. I mean, closing at 2am. What's all that about?

I like Edinburgh but:

I've had the worst two hangovers of my life in Edinburgh. It's the only time I've actually thought I was going to die - not wished to die (I've wished to die many times with hangovers), but genuinely panicked that I was not going to make it to the next morning - and that was the night after I had been on the lash and I'd been in bed all day. That was when I was grown up and working for a living.
First time was at Uni when we had a "field" trip to several agricultural research stations during the Easter hols. We had a night in Leeds before getting the coach in the morining and the last thing I remember was downing half a pint of irish malt whiskey in one and someone breaking a wooden tray over my head (one of my "mates"icon_wink.gif. Luckily another of my mates always carried smelling salts as he fell asleep in bars and couldn't be woken up any other way. I then set the world continous vomiting record. We arrived several hours later at Leith Nautical college where we were bunking. The warden was a large jocular man who took the p1$$ out of me for looking shocking. I wiped the smile off his face by handing him the half full bin liner I was carrying and asking if he could get rid of it for me. It took a second or two before he realised what it was half full of and the look on his face still gives me a warm feeling.
I couldn't even sniff alcohol for the rest of the week and the one girl I pulled turned out to be the niece of legendary Scottish forward Jim Calder -so no funny buisness there.

Last time I was there was to watch Leeds lose to the Dulls in the CC. I can't say I have too many happy memories.