Quote: Adeybull "Oh he has now.
Not putting the boot in, just calling it how I (and obviously more than one other) saw it.
It WAS pretty obvious from the body language of the four excellent panel members I thought, as well as ones I could see in the audience, that the feeling was he was out of order.'"
Quote: Adeybull "It's about time "Sadler" replied to his critics, I think.
At the risk of repeating myself from last night, what I tried to do was to point out some of the great books that have been written about Rugby League that incorporate important elements that go beyond Rugby League into social history.
I referred to John Haynes' book on the All Golds (All Blacks to All Golds), Eddie Waring's on the 1946 'Indomitables' tour, Ces Mountford's book on being a member of an ethnic minority playing Rugby League in the 50s (Born on the Wrong Side), Ian Roberts' book on coming out as a gay man while he was a leading Rugby League player (Ian Roberts - Finding Out), Mike Rylance's book on French Rugby League (The Forbidden Game), and Ikram Butt's autobiography about a young Muslim growing up in Britain and opting to play professional sport (Tries and Prejudice).
If you read any of those books you will discover a lot more than mere Rugby League content, as I tried to point out last night.
Unfortunately I didn't realise that the event would close down at 8.30pm. I had assumed it would go on until 9.30pm at least. So I did speak for too long in the context of how short the event was.
So apologies to anyone who thought I hogged the session after Phil, the two Tonies and Dave had done their bit.
But Rugby League has a great literature, in my view, and if I am doing myself "no favours" by advocating it, particularly at a literature festival, then, what the heck, I'll just have to go without doing myself any favours.
I hope that we will be able to see more events like last night, and next time I'll check on how long they are going to last before opening my gob!'"
Sounds like Martyn had a decent point that could have been expressed in around sixty seconds, but there you go.
