[quote=“Bandage, post: 773143, member: 9”]Could all relevant posters please summarise their arguments with 4 final bullet points?
We can then, as a forum, have a vote to decide the winner.[/quote]
Splendid idea, TFK was built on polls 
The partitionist arguments from both croppy boy and Rocko here are bizarre.
Why you would exclude some of the population of Ireland from your calculations is a mystery.
Why you include some people from Ireland who won medals in your calculations but exclude others is a mystery.
This is a British Loins thread. There shall be no partition referred to, either a fictional partition within the island of Ireland itself, or a fictional partition within the Union. This is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
As I’ve already stated, we won 70 medals at our home Olympics.
Rocko’s demented angle is to take the medals off te calculations of the people who choose to represent Ireland in the Olympics, if we are only using the republic’s population. A boxer can choose to try and represent GB as well if he/she wants.
I think really it’s this simple. Take all the proddy cunts from the latest census (I’m guessing circa 750k) and then calculate our medals from that number.
[quote=“caoimhaoin, post: 773167, member: 273”]Rocko’s demented angle is to take the medals off te calculations of the people who choose to represent Ireland in the Olympics, if we are only using the republic’s population. A boxer can choose to try and represent GB as well if he/she wants.
I think really it’s this simple. Take all the proddy cunts from the latest census (I’m guessing circa 750k) and then calculate our medals from that number.[/quote]
I don’t think that’s really the case in practice Kev. At an overall level the OCI and Team GB ostensibly allow people to choose but participants need to come through their various respective sporting bodies. The IABA are a 32 county organisation so any boxer from the 6 counties would be represented by them and nominated for the Irish team because the IABA are only affiliated with the OCI.
Things are really hotting up in the “Pride”. Sophie Needham showed her devotion to the “Loins” by winning a competition to host two of the “Pride” this week. Here she is with her bestie Anna Locker and British players Jonathan Davies and Alex Cuthbert. It looks a gay old time.
You mistake me, I have no desire to pull together any stats. I was just pointing out the silliness of your original point, which you now seem to accept. Me producing any further figures will not make you any more or less wrong.
[quote=“myboyblue, post: 773170, member: 180”]Things are really hotting up in the “Pride”. Sophie Needham showed her devotion to the “Loins” by winning a competition to host two of the “Pride” this week. Here she is with her bestie Anna Locker and British players Jonathan Davies and Alex Cuthbert. It looks a gay old time.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BKVgN-fCAAERgvr.jpg:large[/quote]
Horse & Hound magazine on the table.*
*Not a table, more of a soft furnishing that fulfils most of the functions of a table, excluding the placement of tea, coffee or other beverages that have the potential to stain fabric.
Just like your argument has no real basis in “practice”.
[quote=“Sidney, post: 773173, member: 183”]Horse & Hound magazine on the table.*
*Not a table, more of a soft furnishing that fulfils most of the functions of a table, excluding the placement of tea, coffee or other beverages that have the potential to stain fabric.[/quote]
What breed dog is that? Never a British Bulldog, sadly an opportunity lost.
3 remotes and not one a SKY remote, they won’t like that 
Touché.
[quote=“myboyblue, post: 773182, member: 180”]What breed dog is that? Never a British Bulldog surely?
3 remotes and not one a SKY remote, they won’t like that :([/quote]
A real corporate faux-pas, that one.
That looks like one of these new stand-up silhouette dogs you can get from the joke shop, not an actual dog itself. Very life-like, isn’t it?
[quote=“Sidney, post: 773185, member: 183”]A real corporate faux-pas, that one.
That looks like one of these new stand-up silhouette dogs you can get from the joke shop, not an actual dog itself. Very life-like, isn’t it?[/quote]
Incredibly so, as much as the two boys who look like they’re having a jolly old time.
What a ridiculous positioning of a phone socket.
I wonder what that black, rectangular shape on Cuthbert’s left breast is?
Conspiracy theories abound in my head.
All is not as it seems in this photograph.
Where else but in the Loins could you get such poetry.
[SIZE=6]Don’t be fooled – these heavyweight Lions can still bewitch Australia[/SIZE]
Warren Gatland’s Lions pack will lay the foundations for success but the latent artistry in the backs has to be set free
[LIST]
[]Paul Rees
[]guardian.co.uk,Thursday 16 May 2013 07.19 EDT
[/LIST]
Jamie Roberts will hope to rekindle his successful Lions partnership with Brian O’Driscoll in Australia. Photograph: Stu Forster/Getty Images
The Lions’ decision to take only two fly-halves to Australia, not forgetting Hong Kong, was contentious and when the squad arrived in London on Monday to be kitted out and face the media, the head coach, Warren Gatland, played the role of David Cameron and was given a No10 going over.
He defended the decision to take two as well as the choice of Owen Farrell after the young England fly-half failed to inspire Saracens against Northampton in Sunday’s play-off having also struggled in the Heineken Cup semi-final against Toulon and England’s final match in the Six Nations against Wales in Cardiff.
His temperament has been questioned, but every player has growing pains. He offers a contrast to the more mercurial Jonathan Sexton and the doubt is less about a fly-half who played a leading role in England’s defeat of New Zealand last December as the lack of a third player with international experience in the position.
James Hook filled that role in South Africa four years ago, although he was not selected in the original squad. It was only a couple of years ago that the Wales, and Lions, head coach Gatland said that Hook was a player for whom a place in the starting line-up had to be found, whether at 10, 12, 13 or 15, but he is now very much dispensable.
“They [Wales] go for big players just to get over the gainline, that’s probably why in the last two years I haven’t figured in the plans,” said Hook this month. "I love playing for my country, but it’s really frustrating that obviously I don’t fit into the coach’s plans. I am not going to turn my back on international rugby: it means so much to me."
Hook is in the Barbarians squad for the opening match of the Lions tour in Hong Kong, but if another fly-half is called up by the Lions, it is most likely to be Jonny Wilkinson, who could not commit himself to the start of the trip with his club Toulon in the Top 14 play-offs.
The Lions flanker Justin Tipuric was asked this week what sort of chance he felt he had of starting the first Test given that he played in the same position as the squad’s captain, Sam Warburton. “It would depend on the gameplan,” he replied.
The series is being seen as the Roundheads against the Cavaliers, the adventure of the Wallabies pitted against the brute force of the Lions. “Where are the artists this time?” writes a Lions supporter in an open letter to the team’s chairman, Gerald Davies, on therugbysite.com this week. “What brief did your group give the coach when appointing him? My heart sank when I saw reports of a £100,000 bonus for Warren Gatland if the Lions won the series. No, was my first instinct. Award him a generous bonus if they play the sort of football people will speak of in awed tones 40 years from now.”
The point was that, aside of Brian O’Driscoll and Stuart Hogg, the Lions had overlooked players who had a finely tuned instinct to sense a gap. “The Cares and Laidlaws miss out to bigger blokes who offer ‘physicality’, bangers ahead of footballers at 12, and the lightest wing is 6’3” and 15 stone ‘on the hoof’. Red slabs of beef indeed. Whither a Gerald or a Shane, much less a Hook or a Wade. The great game has already passed from contact to collision, a frequently tedious amalgam of Union/League/American football. Big is beautiful. Power and pace."
The romantic view of the Lions is of Barry John jinking in and out of tackles, Gerald Davies sidestepping at pace, Mike Gibson beguiling defenders with his range of skills, O’Driscoll making a classic outside break, Matt Dawson selling the whole of South Africa an outrageous dummy, Phil Bennett making mugs of tacklers, Gareth Edwards accelerating into space and Andy Irvine counterattacking with elan.
The series victories in 1971, 1974, 1989 and 1997 were not, though, built on romance. While the victorious coach in New Zealand 42 years ago, Carwyn James, believed all backs should be skilled in the game’s rudiments, not least passing and handling, and raged against what he called crash-ball merchants, he was a pragmatist.
John so tormented Fergie McCormick in the first Test in 1971 with his tactical kicking that the full-back, pulled all over the pitch, never played in another Test. To James, forwards baked the cake: the backs added the flavour. And so it was in 1974.
Ian McGeechan, the architect of the successes in Australia in 1989 and South Africa eight years later, adopted a similar approach to James. When a running strategy against the Wallabies failed in the first Test, he changed the team and resorted to a direct approach that, while ugly to watch, worked. In 1997, the Lions defused the Springboks’ expected advantage up front, used Scott Gibbs to rule the gainline and the boot of Neil Jenkins to turn possession into points.
The Lions were more enterprising than South Africa in 2009, but lost the series. The failure was due in no small measure to a heavy penalty count against them in the first half of the opening Test in Durban and front row and midfield injuries in the second half of the second Test, but they were not slaves to a single plan and McGeechan, who converted Jamie Roberts into a 12, got more out of the centre than Wales have in the four years since.
Gatland was involved in the 2009 tour and is too resourceful a coach not to arm himself with the element of surprise. A measure of craft may have proved the difference in their last four, close defeats to the Wallabies where the essential difference between the sides has been Australia’s ability to create when the pressure is on them. The Lions should be smarter than Wales.
Australia have not in the past been afraid to dampen their instincts, never mind what David Campese says, such as when they conned England in the 1991 World Cup final at Twickenham and when they won the tournament again in 1999, they built their success on defence.
They could play it any which way. The Lions may seem obsessed by size, but they have latent artistry. The first Test will be a battle of the analysts, as it was in Durban. Which one will find the key to confound and do the unexpected?
[quote=“Sidney, post: 773189, member: 183”]I wonder what that black, rectangular shape on Cuthbert’s left breast is?
Conspiracy theories abound in my head.
All is not as it seems in this photograph.[/quote]
Surely a rape alarm? These young men are not for distracting in this vital lead up to the big test. These young ladies could not be held accountable for their actions being in such close quarters to such British Beef.
That is the gayest thing i have ever read. Put the weasel back in the lair ffs.
that debate reminds me of the time when the Patriots were playing the giants in the Superbowl, and someone on facebook went off on one saying how the Patriots chose their away kit of blue just so the Giants couldnt wear their blue strip. After a couple of people told him he was an idiot but he wouldnt digress, he succesfully deleted the comment after being advised privately he was totally wrong.
[SIZE=1]it was croppy_boy that time too. pity he cant delete this thread![/SIZE]
This British Beef is going to give the Aussies a serious case of CJD (Cuthbert, Jones and Davies).
[quote=“Gman, post: 773209, member: 112”]that debate reminds me of the time when the Patriots were playing the giants in the Superbowl, and someone on facebook went off on one saying how the Patriots chose their away kit of blue just so the Giants couldnt wear their blue strip. After a couple of people told him he was an idiot but he wouldnt digress, he succesfully deleted the comment after being advised privately he was totally wrong.
[SIZE=1]it was croppy_boy that time too. pity he cant delete this thread![/SIZE][/quote]
I do not believe that pointing something out on Facebook can be referred to an ‘being advised privately’ old buddy, old pal!