All Blacks v The Oaks

In the Pool C match in Toulouse that every one had come to see, the already qualified for the next stage, All Blacks, could have taken the opportunity for a rest. But the Romanian Oaks put up good resistance, but weren't good enough to hold back the might of the tournament favourites! The 85-8 score was a fair reflection of the difference in class - New Zealand set out their store right from the beginning - returning the kick off from behind their try line to score down the other end! Having said that Romania did put a try on the score board - and held the score to less than three figures.

Rugby World Cup 2007- Portugal v Romania

	Doesn't seem like well over a year ago I bought tickets to the only two Rugby World Cup 2007 matches in Toulouse that I could get tickets for - as a warm up for the rout I expect the All Blacks v Romania to be this was an entertaining match. Great seats - well plastic "cushions" on concrete - on a walk way exactly on the try line - it felt like you could have reached out and touched the players.
From RWC 2007

Match 30 - Portugal's last chance to salvage something from the tournament - 108-13 to the All Blacks was no disgrace - crossing the try line something England failed to do against the Springboks! It was like a home match for Portugal - with lots of atmosphere. But that didn't stop the superior fitness of the Romanians eventually leading to their 10-14 victory. Roll on the All Blacks v Romania - for the half the Black's are playing towards us we should see lots of action in the Romania 22 and for the other half we'll have a good view of the conversions....

Trains don't terminate - Journeys do!

One of my pet hates - that I have to put up with every evening as I travel home - "this train terminates at the next station" - if it does, that explains the funding problems with public transport. It must be expensive replacing all those terminated trains! It is the journey that terminates - not the train! Maybe I should start a facebook campaign to get the British transport system to change their announcements. Another one that really gets me is when a automated announcements apologies for the lateness of a train and the inconvenience it is causing. When an automated system used the "royal we", it really devalues the sentiment of the message. More appropriate would be the "operators of this service" - the computer generating the message really could not careless! In fact a caring automated announcement system would be rather worrying. I supposed it reflects the way a human on the tannoy was replaced with a computer as a cost saving measure and a lack of thought to how it should change the script being followed!

Police at Twickenham

From Police - 2007

Rather hard getting decent pictures in a situation a full SLR would find hard to cope with when the policy is "no professional cameras" - define professional - my point an click had to do... But a few came out! Twickenham is a great stadium now it is finish, and once all the seats where full the sound was OK, but lots of echo from the empty stadium for the warm up bands! Having now experienced stadium concerts from tiered seats to the side, standing on the pitch and sitting on the pitch - I'd always choose tiered seating - sound was good in the middle, but it was hard to see much! Sitting, and then standing, in a fixed position on the pitch just doesn't work unless you are right at the front - unless you are as large/tall as the person one of the group had the miss fortune to be behind!

Andy Summers, Sting and Stewart Copeland on large screens so those further back than the front rows could see them....