[sizeSaturday's events[/size


12.30-13.0014.0014.00tercer temps[/i' at the end of the Super League game.

15.3016.3018.00castellers[/i' (traditional Catalan human towers) and choirs who will perform the Catalan national anthem, '[iels Segadors[/i'. The flame of Canigó will then arrive at the stadium.

19.0020.45tercer temps[/i' in front of the stadium.

Walters out. With his squad selection I'd rather the squad was picked by Goulding.

Andy Wilson from Guardian here, just chuckled at that gag about Briers and Bird in the preview, hoping to get a bit of space in Saturday paper on the Barcelona thing, spoke to Christophe Levy and Remy on Monday but wondered if any posters to this site nearer the scene and could provide any first-hand info of what sort of profile game has had, etc - yes, i know we should be there ourselves, but recession-hit newspaper budgets don't stretch to paris and barca on consecutive weekends.

CAtalancs, over to you...

Full page ad in Catalonia's leading sports paper last weekend.
Game to be covereed live on 33 (read BBC2) with highlights/full game of Catalonia-Czech Republic on afterwards.
Reports this week on sports section of TV3 news.
English language newspaper, Catalonia Today had an 8-page pull-out in their latest weekend supplement.
Full day of events announced on Catalan Rugby League website (posted earlier).

much obliged. spoke to adrian morley this morning, he not been to barcelona since he was a kid and very upbeat about the atmosphere. out of interest, which of the dragons players would it be accurate to describe as catalan? guessing it's people from perpignan and around (guisset, bosc) as opposed to guys like ferriol from lezignan or fakir who i think has north african background?

You'd have to do a bit of research as to find out where they were born, but the guys with Catalan surnames are:

Thomas Bosc (Bosc=Forest)
David Ferriol
Julien Touxagas
Florian Quintilla
Rémi Casty
David Guasch
Mathias Pala (Pala=Shovel)
Vincent Pagès (Pagès=Farmer)

Don't know who out of that eight will actually be involved though.

Guisset from Perpignan? I thought he picked up league as an expat living in Oz, at least he always gets labelled as an ozzy.

Yup, the big two will be "world-class" Ferriol and "the man pulling the strings" Bosc.

No, Jerome signed for Canberra as a teenager after impressing as a youngster in france (he went on to make 4 appearances in the NRL and learnt his english out there hence the accent). I actually have a programme from a GB v Aus match at Old Trafford some years ago in which GB academy played France and Jerome is listed on the teamsheet - incidently Warrington's Lee Briers lined up in the GB team in the same game.

Raining at the moment, but hopefully it will get it all out of the way for tomorrow.

This is rubbish, you can tell Catalans are a good team receiving next to no coaching input.

and your reasoning for that is.....

Walters has come in with his new ideas and its taken the players longer than expected to settle into his ways etc etc. the dragons beat leeds last time out so you can't say that there is no coaching input.

Sometimes these things just happen, you also should take into account that the majority of the dragons team played last week, where as how many of the warrington players played in the international.

You sometimes just have one of those days at the office, how many would expect greeny to drop the ball whilst running with it after taking so many high balls with ease?

Better team except for one or two inexplicable journeymen signings. Said rubbish players get first-team time for no good reason. Better team doing less well.
Results are poor
Squad selection is poor
Do the math

what makes you justify a good reason?