Neil Pferd

Actually Beamish in them glasses?

Actually Murphys in the glasses?

He's perfectly in focus to me, Steve. You might want to get down to your local optician sharpish!

You forgot the part where they're crawling with germs from contact with all those other children with germs in school / kindergarten...

Anyway, all of tThis is exactly why I bought a giant, heavy, water bottle that they couldn't hold at their lips long enough to extract liquid!

I have no idea what we've done to that teachers but I suspect it must have been really, really terrible 😞

Is she’s on the Seamus Kennedy version, I’ll be checking into a B&B…

#BabyPferd: "Our music teacher is teaching us an Irish song for St. Patrick's Day."

Me: "Oh great. Why don't you sing it?

#BabyPferd: "🎶Oh ro the rattlin' bog...🎶"

Readers: it's 25 minutes on and she's got up to the bird in the nest and if she knows about the egg in the bird I'm gonna lose it.

a cartoon of a woman pouring coffee into a mug . ALT: a cartoon of a woman pouring coffee into a mug .

Me, utterly hating every aspect of the construct of the “big” Belfast schools yet being thoroughly addicted to the late stages of the Ulster Schools Cup in which the three of them are near-permanent fixtures:

Didn't like the Ulster players' performance keeping chat about the Munstermen down, eh?

My congratulations to the happy couple! 😉

And don't worry, I'll be in England on Friday and probably offline for the most part, so only so much trouble I can get into. You'll have your peace!

Moi?!

Yep, and a lad who bought into it for a while, too, by the looks of things, so really hope the player we've seen this season is the "real" version!

I'd say a part is that Pienaar, and to some extent Cooney, arrived as fairly finished articles, while we've had the very non-linear development of a young guy in Doak but I think at times, his body language and attitude, both of which were poor and out of sync with efforts on the pitch, helped.

Ahhh, Nic, what could possibly go wrong? 🫥

a man in a suit and tie is looking at a cartoon of people holding hands in front of a rainbow and sun . ALT: a man in a suit and tie is looking at a cartoon of people holding hands in front of a rainbow and sun .

The Welsh lying low all week. Now we've got interprovincial love and harmony. This is turning out to be the most uneventful #IrelandWeek ever.

Delighted for Richie. Last season was awful. What he's done with his own team in place says everything. So many at Ulster having their best seasons in ages.

That said, I wasn't optimistic that there was something brewing at the end of last season (although Richie was not the focus of my ire).

Tom has always had talent but he looks, physically, athletically and performance, a totally different beast this season. Excited to see how he goes!

He'll get a meme when this starts translating into central contracts!

I'm intrigued to see how he goes at international level. He's had such a step up in performance this season. Speed and accuracy of distribution included. Some work ons for sure but if his Ulster form this season translates upwards, he won't look out of place I don't think.

Not to provincialise but last Six Nations, only 2 Ulster players made a 23. They got a total of 30 mins game time. There was no Ulster representation in 3 match day 23s. And fairly so. Such drastic change in a year is testament to the players and, more importantly, to Richie Murphy and his coaches.

(Sorry for any inadvertent implied tetchiness, here - certainly don't expect everyone to see all the nonsense I post on here - was also meant more along the "great minds" logic!)

A young Billy Corgan in The Simpsons. He's holding his hand out. The text reads, "Billy Corgan, rambling incoherently". Homer Simpson is back-on wearing goggles over his head. In the background is a backstage area with packing cases all over the place and a green curtain.

Homer Simpson in the same backstage areas. This time, Homer is front on and you can see Corgan from behind. Homer says, "Homer Simpson, smiling politely and backing away."

There are a few I can think of that are walkable from the city centre (Hannover, Wolfsburg, Bremen maybe) and, yeah, getting there and back is seldom a concern like it is, especially in England. You're unlikely to have the kinds of hour-long journeys you often need in London, for example.

I think it depends where. Most of the big cities tend to have stadiums a fair way out. Good 30-40 minutes on public transport from city centres. Few within walking distance. But the transport options, in my experience at least, are much better and much better organised, which still improves things.

The thing is that the lowest attendance for a rugby international at Croke Park was ~20k above the capacity of the Aviva (68,000 v Argentina, 2008, a year into the great recession). I get future projections and not going *too* big but I think the IRFU's at that time was massively pessimistic.

Getting to Twickenham is the most depressing journey. Especially being hemmed in on trains so tight to England rugby fans...

Big fan of city centre stadia. Stadia work best when they're part of the neighbourhood, IMO. But there was surely a halfway house between the Aviva and the Bertie Bowl.

I know and you're entirely correct and sensible to boot, but it's ruining my good time!

Oh, the decision to remain on that site given its size, location in a residential area and all the restrictions that imposed was absolutely crazy at the time. Looks increasingly more so over time.