leicsmac

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj50qjy9g7ro Interesting counterpoint to the hypothesis that social media can be critical come election time.

You're right, it's about what's best for British tennis. And he delivered and practically no one else has.

It's a little annoying because the crowd have shown they can make some noise, they just don't engage far too often.

Yep. If I were Murray I would be seething at the LTA and whoever else tbh because he's done everything he could to establish a legacy and everyone else is fvcking it up. Crowd nice enough to recognise how good Sun was, she seems pretty shocked with it all.

So it appears. Sun has been better all the way through tbh, just more consistent. We could end up with a good long time where there's precious little British presence in week 2 singles at Wimbledon. Which would be a shame given Murray has done so much to inspire the generation following him.

The crowd need to get more involved here.

For fvcks sake.

Pretty much the same way England have done the Euros. Just be ahead at the critical times.

Proper smash and grab job there for the set. Now needs to take that momentum into the decider.

Raducanu just about hanging on here.

Not to those who still have an axe to grind against the Murrays for whatever reason.

And there was me thinking things like the Earth being an oblate spheroid and when a coin is flipped, it lands heads, tails or edge were facts. Sorry for being obtuse here, but this is just a fair working hypothesis and people are doing far too much stating that as fact and not qualifying their remarks because they have their own dislike of Southgate. As per yesterday, the difference is important - it's the difference between "I think this" and "I think this and you should do because it's a fact", which isn't really on. (For what it's worth, I think we can do much better in terms of management than him, but some of the criticism here and elsewhere lacks even the faintest piece of factual rationality, so balance is needed.)

You'd think the Swiss would have similar intel on England takers, too. Not that it did them any good.

I think we should have taken Portugal both times we played them with the quality we had on offer tbh (and without a bent ref we certainly would have in 2004). People can make the points about luck as much as they like, the counterpoints remain as strong in return, but it's interesting to hear the discussion.

WC2006 wasn't a bad run tbf. Also (again) we lionise Robson for a 1-0 win against Egypt, a 1-1 draw against Ireland and two extra time wins against Belgium and Cameroon.

.... because some Internet trolls decided to make it political three years ago. Can't blame Daggers for that. On topic, the penalties were utterly emphatic.

... have you ever noticed that England/GB only have significant sporting success under a Labour government? (This may or may not be true)

Well, Raducanu stands alone, so pretty much.

I think that's reasonably obvious tbh - they need a reason to disparage current and past Labour governments and considering the faults of the last 14 years, stuff like that is pretty much all they have to go on. As a bonus, throw in the "they're all the same" false analogy moniker as similar.

This is entirely possible. And, let's be absolutely certain on this, more radical politics will lead nowhere good and will go there fast.

This England team confuses me at times. Can get within a point of NZ in their own backyard but nearly fell apart against Samoa in the World Cup.

It would indeed be nice if people qualified their subjective opinion as exactly that rather than spouting it in the manner of objective fact (one is saying what you think, the other has an air of telling other people how they should think, dangerous business outside of scientific fact) but here we are as football fans, I guess. Personally, I'll take the functional over the aesthetic any time so how a team win a tournament means much, much less to me than the fact that they won it.

Solid substantial competence, without flash, should be the bywords for this government. Enough reality TV con artists promising short term gain that either isn't delivered or comes at the expense of any kind of long-term empathy. Good start. Foreign policy is an area not being talked about much here that may be critical: Starmer has to negotiate a plethora of stupidly nationalist governments (especially if another arises in November) to try to help guide some kind of global consensus on issues that really need addressing.

Starmer should look to model himself on Attlee. If he even turns out to be half an Attlee, then he will have succeeded.

With respect, I think the discussion between me and Benguin above ended on an agreement that there are different types of Christianity and the type that would plump for Reform would not necessarily be the "true" one. But I'm no theologian.