What's incredible is that for so many years major milestones - bar possibly appearances - were few and far between. Once the existing players had retired who had been playing before I started watching in 81, there was virtually nothing to report on the record front for years. A testimony to how stable the side has been for a long time now.

tvoc, are you doing the OPTA threads this year?

And as for milestones, this team/squad must have the record for most records; there seems to be a new one every week.

For the upcoming milestone, I think they should make the pillar in the middle of the South Stand into a big Blue Peter style totaliser. Every time Sir Kev gets more points, someone should paint on another bit until he hits the target. I don't think the man himself would approve though. He's far too modest.

Danny McGuire also played a international match for the northern union in which he scored 2 tries. www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2007/oc ... ague.sport

Danny McGuire also played a international match for the northern union in which he scored 2 tries. www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2007/oc ... ague.sport

No, unfortunately some things have had to give way. This season I simply have to devote my spare time to catching up on last season. I was gently persuaded to carry on last year but the backlog elsewhere has grown and grown. The alternative is to just let some archiving go and I'm not yet prepared to do that.

So sorry but there will be no Opta threads from me and no voluntary monitoring of the prediction comp - although with Foxy's involvement that wouldn't have been neccessary anyway albeit a coincidence.

I will still score the Southstander Regular Round League table at season end though -

Thanks for that. I'll pass the information back up the chain for clarification.

(Tricky things official statistics, knowing what counts and what doesn't and not something I would know enough about to comment on. Possibly explains why I concentrate on Leeds 1st grade)

tvoc, if you have a spreadsheet format that you can e-mail me I'll do my very best to update the weekly OPTA stats from the Engage Superleague site since i presume that is the source you previously.
I may miss an odd week due to holidays but will see if one of my lads will do it to cover those weeks.

Ian Kirke will not thank you for this

I've not set anything up for this season but if you provide an e-mail address via the private message function I can send you the two spreadsheets I used last season for this specific task.

They were created using 'Excel 97' but I imagine will still open with newer versions but be warned it'll take some effort to adapt them for this season - which is partly why I haven't done so myself.

I don't know whether they will prove to be more a help or a hindrance overall but you're welcome to have a look. They worked for me but obviously I designed and knew my way around them which probably helped.

Already have to make 1 correction from last week (although using Excel means I have methods for double checking scores - sadly I mistook Rhinos for Rovers for one person). I did think about asking everyone to post their predictions using a search friendly method so I could just copy and paste it but I fear that probably wouldn't happen.

I'd make the request. As long as the instructions are clear I think posters will tend to oblige if it's not too arduous.

I did something similar (on a small scale) with the Southstander Regular Round Finishing Table thread and it was almost universally adopted, which will be a big help come the season end.

I immediately noticed a new variation with your comp which needed a double take to clarify. I won't name drop who started the trend but he'd be the last person I'd have thought would welcome the confusion.

Do it. If people can't follow a format then their entry doesn't count.

If you set out the fixtures and ask people to copy, paste and amend it shouldn't be too hard.

Not quite sure what you are talking about.

What I basically do is copy and paste the prediction into the spreadsheet (avoids mistyping numbers) so if all I had to paste was a team name (or a 3 letter code - like the Twitter hashtage the RFL are trying to encourage) and a number then it cuts down on the width of the columns in the spreadsheet and means I don't have to edit it.

An entry that might look something like this:

ST HELENS to beat Salford City Reds by 12
CATALAN DRAGONS to beat Hull FC by 16
LEEDS RHINOS to beat Wigan Warriors by 18
HUDDERSFIELD GIANTS to beat Widnes Vikings by 16
BRADFORD BULLS to beat Castleford Tigers by 12
HULL KR to beat Wakefield Wildcats by 10
WARRINGTON WOLVES to beat London Broncos by 30

The convention has always been to read off the last bit (winning team by how many) but if you did in this instance you would be 100% wrong.

An unneccesary distraction IMO.

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I'd try showing posters what you want format wise on next week's thread and see what kind of response you get.