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    #76
    Didn't get gymnastics for a long time, which seemed to be based on using drugs to delay puberty.

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      #77
      So you got gymnastics once you stopped doing that?

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        #78
        Originally posted by The Awesome Berbaslug!!! View Post
        I think that it ultimately ran into the problems faced by 'professional' sports in Ireland. People were spending money on salaries that wasn't coming in through other means, which means that eventually the bubble pops. Something very similar happened to League of Ireland soccer during the boom. Unfortunately they pissed away all that money on paying the same players 3 times as much as before so nothing changed.

        Fun Times.
        The authorities also made the decision to reduce the number of permitted American players per team from two to one, which saw a drop in quality.

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          #79
          The basketball revolution had one benefit for Irish soccer, Floridian Ed Randolph settled in Bray after he retired and his son Darren went on to be Ireland's first choice keeper

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            #80
            I sort of get Pétanque as a family game or between mates in the summer but as a competitive sport it’s got to be up there with the most pointless of them. Yet, it could soon become an Olympic discipline along with other silly bowlsy dilettante's pastimes, if the "international boules family" gets their way, they're pushing for it.

            Fucking dangerous too, that thing really is designing for thugs. (Pastis and the old boules clearly don’t mix well, even pissing off local elephants enough to want to squash the damn pétanqueurs).

            Seine-et-Marne : l'éléphante tue un joueur de pétanque

            Underhand tactics by the hard men of pétanque

            Mondial à pétanque de Marseille : des Nordistes reçoivent des menaces de mort

            Les championnats de pétanque de l’Aisne annulés après une bagarre

            Carcassonne : la partie de pétanque dégénère en coup de couteau (4 mois ferme)

            Bègles: Une partie de pétanque dégénère et fait 3 blessés

            Landes : prison avec sursis après une partie de pétanque qui avait dégénéré

            Trèbes - Chaude bousculade au terrain de pétanque... et lancer de boule

            Aux Andelys, la soirée pétanque dégénère

            Dommartin : le concours de pétanque tourne au pugilat

            La partie de pétanque tourne au cauchemar

            Somme: Il lance une boule de pétanque sur son adversaire, la fédération le punit sévèrement

            Après la partie de pétanque, il blesse violemment son partenaire et finit devant la justice
            Last edited by Pérou Flaquettes; 10-04-2018, 12:30.

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              #81
              And here I’ve been cherishing memories of games played in Saint-Paul-de-Vence for decades . . .

              Not an Olympic sport, though.

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                #82
                oops, wrong thread.

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                  #83
                  I don't know about that Ursus. There's a lot to respect in some of those articles there. i've got to say I'm very impressed by some of those stories. It's a sport to be taken very seriously indeed.

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                    #84
                    Fingers crossed. I won four out of five hotel tournaments on holiday in Ibiza last summer. I could be on for late-flowering sporting stardom.

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                      #85
                      Originally posted by The Awesome Berbaslug!!! View Post
                      I don't know about that Ursus. There's a lot to respect in some of those articles there. i've got to say I'm very impressed by some of those stories. It's a sport to be taken very seriously indeed.
                      But maybe even more Pastis than respect.

                      The only impressive thing in pétanque is the ramasse-boules/cochonnet and the other gadgets you see at Decathlon and in specialised shops.

                      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4N4z...youtu.be&t=17s

                      And "La Fanny" is such a classy name too, I’m sure that brand would do well in the UK.

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                        #86
                        Originally posted by elguapo4 View Post
                        The basketball revolution had one benefit for Irish soccer, Floridian Ed Randolph settled in Bray after he retired and his son Darren went on to be Ireland's first choice keeper
                        That was lucky, he’s great. Pretty much won qualification single handed for how he played against Germany.

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                          #87
                          Originally posted by Lang Spoon View Post
                          Basketball seems to have been pretty big in Ireland (almost ice hockey in Scotland sized) in the late 80s/90s.
                          Ironically, Kerry teams have been relatively successful at the sport, winning Superleagues and National Cups, even while soccer clubs have never come near entry to the League of Ireland.

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                            #88
                            playing in the League of Ireland is something you choose to do, if you can afford it, not something you qualify for. The travel costs alone for a kerry team would be a nightmare.

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                              #89
                              Tralee Dynamoes did play in the A Championship for a few seasons, and I believe applied for a place in the First Division when the A Championship was disbanded. They weren't accepted and returned to the Kerry League.

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                                #90
                                At underage level, the Kerry League have been entering county teams in the FAI League, perhaps if they progress to u-19 level, a senior side would be considered at that stage.

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                                  #91
                                  Originally posted by Janik View Post
                                  The best player around currently is Steph Curry, who is possibly somewhere close to the Greatest of All Time. He is tall but not freakishly so, at 1m90 (6'3"). That is a size of many normal people. He has also revolutionised the game by making it much more about three point shots (the 3-ball) than working inside. I was on a Basketball forum a few days ago and someone was asking when the last time the no.1 draft pick was a Center, as the game has changed and teams are no longer built around that player as they were even in the very recent past. It turned out to be more recent than the questioner realised, in 2015 but it confirms the perception of altered value of players and a change in style of play is at least is out there.
                                  Anyone who doesn't think three-point shooting is both skillful and properly difficult to execute making a successful shot noteworthy hasn't watched much of it - at NBA level this means looping a ball of ~9.5 inches diameter through a ring less than double that size (18 inches), that is ~23+ feet away, 10 feet up in the air and orientated 90 degrees in the wrong direction (i.e. a horizontal target that players have to get the ball to drop through rather than a vertical ring that would just need to be hit).

                                  The shooting leader by percentage in the NBA current is hitting 65.2% of his shots, btw. And that is the very best. The best team, the Golden State Warriors, have made 50.4% of their shots. The worst, the Chicago Bulls, have hit 43.6%. Scoring runs where one team will get double figures worth of unanswered points are really not uncommon.

                                  I do understand the perception that they 'score every time', even if that perception somewhat false. It's the mirror image of the incorrect perception by non-fans that Football (soccer) games 'always end up 0-0'. And to be honest, one wouldn't expect a high degree of appreciation of Basketball on a Forum where we have all gathered explicitly as Football fans, seeing as they are polar opposites in that way.

                                  Personally I consider both flawed in their scoring. It's too easy in Basketball and too difficult in Football. It means that baskets are not events unless they are done at the business end or achieved with extra style, whereas Football it is too important and random, so that a patently inferior team can fluke results by a number of fortunate bounces rather than by unexpectedly playing at a higher standard than their norm. Getting the scoring balance right to reward skill but not sate the audience is probably one of the trickiest things someone writing the rules of a Sport faces.


                                  So, in summary, I wouldn't expect one set of extremists to 'get' a very different set.

                                  I don't like the high scoring aspect, but I think the way fouling and timeouts work in basketball are a bigger problem.

                                  Basketball games don't usually turn on individual scoring plays (except sometimes at the very end) - highlight-reel worthy or otherwise.* It's about runs of form and momentum where one team is playing better than the other and can expand a lead or chip into a deficit over the span of several minutes. The crowd energy can also play a roll in that so in can be very exciting or deflating depending on which team one is rooting for. How those runs add up or don't determine the outcome. (And that's how it's reported in the papers - "so and so when on a 12-3 run to start the second half, giving them the lead they'd never relinquish, etc." ESPN box scores have XY plots that neatly tracks each team's score and the expansion and contraction of the gaps between the two lines show the story of the whole game in a way that or any other metric cannot.)

                                  But all of that "flow" is frequently ruined by all the time-outs and the foul shots. Even if there is no better way to sanction fouls**, they still take way too damn long. And the number of timeouts and all the deliberate fouls at the end of tight games is completely out of control and ruins what would otherwise be a lot more exciting. It's not only boring for the fans, but makes the game way more about coaching and not enough about creativity. Gridiron has the same problem. It's all for TV advertisers.

                                  The same problems afflict lacrosse, though they keep messing with the rules to try to fix that and the college game has improved in recent years with fewer time outs, and forcing teams to play offense properly and not just bleed the clock. Hopefully they'll eventually just add a hard shot clock, like indoor lacrosse and the MLL have, so it's not just about who can win faceoffs and then stall. Each team has about 40 players and ten are on the field at a time, but too many games just come down to the two face-off specialists.

                                  The other major problem with basketball - much more in the NBA and women's game than the college men's game - is how predictable it is. In the NBA, it's usually easy to pick who the championship finalists will be. In hockey and baseball, even with seven game series, the variability of goaltending, pitching, and the low scores in general mean there can be surprises, but in the NBA, upsets are much more rare.

                                  The single-elimination format allows for more UMBC-type Cinderellas in college basketball, but there are an awful lot of games, especially early in the season, where the game is effectively over by half-time or just a bit later. (That's also why it's the sport that has had the most gambling scandals. It's so easy to shave points without anybody noticing).


                                  * Momentum ebbs and flows in football too, but most of those ebbs and flows don't lead to goals or any simple metric so it's hard to represent that statistically.

                                  ** Instead of free throws. I'd like to see fouls rewarded with a quick restart in which the fouled player gets the ball exactly where they were fouled and the defense has to back off a certain distance but other offensive players can come into that space for a shot. So if you're fouled under the basket, you just get a free lay-up and then move on. If you're fouled on the outside, you can get a free restart from that spot. Maybe fouls in the paint would only be rewarded with an "indirect shot" just to make it more sporting.

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                                    #92
                                    Cricket (unless you like TalkSport)

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                                      #93
                                      Eh?

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                                        #94
                                        Overseas England tests will be on TalkSport from now.

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                                          #95
                                          Yes, just seen that on Twitter and finally understood Mumpo's post. It's only next winter's tours (at least for now) though, yes?

                                          Totally depressing news though.
                                          Last edited by Ray de Galles; 18-04-2018, 14:39.

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