Hugo Gordon

Hodgson's Wikipedia article genuinely includes the words "Hodgson has received criticism for not being Jonny Wilkinson", which, while a tad unfair, is also (a) true and (b) funny.

(Incidentally, I'd also forgotten how close run a thing Wales' Grand Slam was that year. We were 6 points ahead of you with 5 minutes to go, England were 3 points ahead of you with 10 to go!)

He was such an average player, and that was the second game in a row where he'd scored a charge-down try that led to England winning a game they'd played badly in (he did it to Scotland the week before).

Luckily against an England team that poor, Ireland MUST have beaten them that year.

Oh. Oh no.

The one that always gets me is the 2012 game, when Italy were 15-6 up after 47 minutes, and then Charlie Hodgson scored a charge-down and Italy missed two late penalties to win it. Sickener.

YouTube video by FOX Sports Shohei Ohtani vs. Mike Trout: Final At Bat in the USA vs. Japan 2023 WBC Championship

www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMfB...

That 2023 final ended with a duel between Shohei Ohtani and Mike Trout, former teammates and two of the world's best players, and it was such great theatre.

The World Baseball Classic is becoming such a good tournament. So many good teams in international baseball at the moment so there's a genuine aspect of unpredictability. Japan v USA in the decider of the 2023 edition was one of THE great games.

Can he at least swing the bat with both hands and make it look like he's trying

I should replay Bioshock

Anyway the best thing about Atlas Shrugged is that it led to the creation of Bioshock, one of my favourite games, which imagines what would actually happen if a bunch of Objectivists established their own society (spoiler: they all want to be in charge, hate each other and end up killing each other)

At one page a character gives a speech that goes on for over 50 pages.

Lots written about how controversial Atlas Shrugged is, not enough about how truly boring it is. 1,000 pages of badly written didactic tedium. Like getting cornered by a Young Tory.

That's plausible actually

Love* those scrum ads!

*May not be accurate

I don't think it's impossible we beat them by that much, they're in a bad place, but we haven't had a win of that margin against them in 24 years! Personally gone with +17 in my predictor league.

It's definitely more trolling effort than propaganda video, but the thing is that's still really weird, and regardless of the intent I think even otherwise conservative people will be wondering why the White House is sharing stuff like this.

Ireland v England being the early kickoff while Wales v Scotland got the late one was wild. But it's the Thursday/Friday ones I've found particularly frustrating.

Even if a government whose politics I broadly agreed with posted this, I would be like "huh, that's extremely weird and inappropriate, and suggests they're not taking a major conflict seriously."

American conservatism is in a strange and dark and brainrotted place at the moment but even allowing for that surely this kind of war-by-meme stuff is incomprehensible and weird to your average right-winger.

I know all this is down to White House comms being controlled by a bunch of terminally online irony-poisoned groypers who learned their trade on 4chan but surely - SURELY! - stuff like this goes down poorly even with your average MAGA type.

If I was in the same country I would!

Anyway, I think Ireland will win comfortably in the end but I can actually see it being a bit uncomfortable for a while, like last year's game was. We often look a bit shaky after making significant numbers of changes, and haven't actually played particularly well against Wales since the 2022 match.

Will miss the Ireland v Wales game today (unchangeable plans arranged before they'd announced the stupid fixture timings), and I think it might be the first time I've missed an Ireland 6N game since 2013 when I thankfully missed the Italy game due to being in a New Zealand hostel with no internet.

Not sure if you've ever played Control (from the same developers who made the Alan Wake games and the two series are steadily intertwining) but if not would highly recommend that as well.

Last of Us remains my favourite game of all time, Last of Us 2 definitely in my top 10 at the very least (though I did find the harrowing cruelty of it all a bit much by the end)

Alan Wake 2 is one of my favourite games of the last few years. Really spooky, really clever design. Maybe a bit self-indulgent but I loved it. Much more survival horror-y than the action horror of Alan Wake 1 - I personally prefer the change but I know some people didn't.

If you're doomscrolling, guess what? So far there are 51 kākāpō chicks hatched and thriving this season, the same number of birds as we had in TOTAL in the 90s! Only one chick has died and there are still fertile eggs waiting to hatch!

More settled team, at home, honestly think pack has been better, England looking all over the place. If it wasn't for the fact that they've never beaten England and that hoodoo can be hard to shake I'd actually be relatively confident.

Tottenham Hotspur (2026)

Sure, plenty are outspokenly conservative. I don't get a sense that Messi himself is particularly political (beyond a bit of Argentinian nationalism), and I think a lot of sportspeople (and people generally) don't pay much attention to politics. Either way, I think being a prop for Trump is bad!

Sportspeople often try to excuse stuff like this by saying sport should be apolitical but THIS is political! Giving him photo ops like this burnishes his credibility and tacitly endorses him!