She is great for the sport. She is no RL encyclopaedia but what does it matter, she presents professionally and leaves it to the rest to talk the rugby. As far as I am concerned she is one of the main faces of sport in our country, if people are channel hopping and see her they are more likely to tune in. The fact that she talks about RL on her twitter does the sport a world of good too.

BTW, did anyone catch her radio four doccumentary a few months back on the 1895 schism? Fantastic.

Serious question: did James Roby play today...there was somebody on the pitch wearing his shirt but it seemed to be a second rater who had no impact in the game what so ever. I can only imagine Saints brought in a cheap imitation of the world beater?

Roby went well for the first 10 minutes when the Wigan defence was a bit slow around the ptb and the Saints Props were making inroads. After the first Wigan try the Saints go forward went! Laffranchi and Perry just seemed to completely give up at this point. Lance Hohaia was unbelievably slow and predictable at stand-off, and any defence that can't catch Brett Finch must be slow.

Two things:

1. Claire Balding seems like a nice lady and has an obvious soft spot for the game, though despite it being no fault of her own there's no denying she can sound cringeworthy at times.

2. James Roby is not an average hooker, one of the best in the world in fact.

If Roby's average most of the other 9's shouldn't even be taking the field. If you haven't seen him change a game you can't watch anything but your side. Of course though if he wore the cherry and white he would be the best in the world.

At the risk of going over old ground, it's not Ms Balding who's an embarrassment, it's Ray French, whose coverage does the game no favours at all.

Here's just three Frenchisms (of many) that spring to mind from yesterday:-

Calling Chris Hill "Scott" Hill.
Calling Paul Wood "Tyrone McCarthy" ( how anyone can be mistaken for Tyrone is beyond me).
Calling Simon Grix "Micky Higham"

Claire's fine in my book, it's this old duffer that needs to be put out to grass.

Sad to see the criticism of Clare Balding by the OP.

It's also sad that this season could potentially be her last fronting the BBC's Rugby League Coverage, with it now the most well known secrety in horse racing that Channel 4 are going to pay megabucks to have her front their coverage.

Hope she can somehow negotiate to be able to still do the RL coverage.

I thought Ray French had retired and was surprised to hear him on the commentary!

Millward, Noble and Jiffy all good value though as is Clare Balding. Not sure where the criticism is coming from!

The CURRENT Earl of Derby was the one that confirmed his FAMILY gave their name to two sporting events. The first being the horse race, the second being Wigan v Saints.

I hardly think he would make it up just for a laugh

I thought that also - wasn't there a big build-up to one of Cup Final wins with it supposed to be French's last as commentator?

AS A PSYCHIATRIC NURSE I CAN CONFIRM ODEM IS NOT MENTALLY ILL-
JUST A SAD W@{NKER!