It makes some people feel better if they watch a tough game like RL rather than a soft wimpy game like football, despite them ever playing either.

I was coming to the end of primary school in Italia '90. First time I got majorly in to football. My first memory of debates in sports tactics was "English 4-4-2" v the continental "sweeper system" and how excited everyone got when Robson switched England to the sweeper system mid tournament with Mark Wright playing there.

Remember collecting ring pulls from coke cans and you could send off to get one of them coca cola mini footballs, and schools all around the country were banning those balls! And making sure my Mum filled up the car with Esso so I could get Esso coins, although I only got three, two Barnes and Steve Bull. I wanted Lineker.

In games lessons everyone was doing stuff they'd seen in the world cup, Roger Milla jigging his booty in the corner flag, gobbing on peoples faces like Rijkaard did to Voeller or doing Klinsmann dives. In headers and volleys we used to set up that Platt goal against Belgium where he got that overhead volley.

Then after the football finished and school broke up it was on to cricket and Gooch got his 333 against India.

Great times as a kid getting in to sport.

but it got you to reply poor show or not

It's a forum, that's what it's all about. England have now been knocked out. You gonna start a separate thread about that now?

Spot on - If we are being honest, we would all take Wire being successful over England doing well in a World Cup, similar to how I'd sooner see success for Everton over England.

Compare it to Cricket and Rugby Union, where the international game is king - Any national failure and there is usually some sort of inquest at the highest level, which often involves a massive impact on the domestic game and where all efforts are made to rectify things for the national sides, whether its central contracts for the best players in Cricket or the signing of RL players in Union, which are usually financed by the RU authorities.

Can you imagine the reaction of English football clubs and their fans, if the FA's reaction to the latest failure was something drastic, such as cutting foreign quotas to, for example, four or five, or even more drastic like the FA taking 14 or 15 players off their clubs and putting them on central contracts, where the FA had total control over which games they are available for?

You only have to look at the reaction to the merger proposals of the mid 90's to see how RL fans feel about change and their loyalties towards their clubs.

your getting a grumpy sod in your old age..werent like that years ago according to my mrs

I'm getting old mate, complaining is my only output.

Moaning git

Oh the irony.



Anyone on your timeline RIP'd someone yet?

I'm one of the grumpiest people I know but not 'the' grumpiest :-p