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[Paris]

Paris or Rome around Valentines Day 

http://www.rbs6nations.com/en/matchcentre/match-centre_fixtures-results.php

Great idea .

This poll should only have 2 teams listed . I mean who the hell voted for Dublin or Mayo . For the record I think Kerry are the team of the decade. More consistent, more wins , simple choice really .

So here's the big one! As voted for by you, by hundreds of emails, here is the Planet Rugby XV of 2009 - replete with bench.

15 Rob Kearney - Leaving aside a peculiar performance against the Scarlets in the Heineken Cup right at year's end where he trebled this year's spilled high ball count, Kearney has been fantastic. A siege gun boot has helped him through ELV issues, while once given the licence and freedom to roam and attack on the Lions tour he showed just what he can do. High point of the year was that try in the Lions' second Test.

14 Tommy Bowe - It's not often you become a folk hero and have songs made and sung about you. But such was Bowe's form on the Lions tour (on and off the field), that he became the focal point of much of the affection of the touring hordes. All together now: Tommy...Tommy Bo-oooowwwwe!'

13 BOD - It is a vast injustice that, in the year when he sealed his 100th cap for his country by sailing through a gap for a last-minute equalising try and led the Lions once again to victory with every sinew, Brian O'Driscoll missed out on the IRB Player of the Year award. But some scant consolation may come from the fact that he is the captain of this year's team...

12 Jamie Roberts - One of those who skipped the 'Newbies' list and made it straight into the senior XV, Roberts deservedly took the Lion of the Tour' gong for his destructive running power in the middle of the park.

11 Bryan Habana - This one was a close one, with Sitiveni Sivivatu less than 20 votes behind. But - and once again, probably courtesy of the Lions tour and his team's success - Habana clinched it on account of his ability to be a little more reliable at the back.

10 Matt Giteau - While Australia have floundered, Giteau's sparkling form - with on glaring exception - never let up. At times early in the year, it occasionally seemed like Giteau taking on the entire opposition. But once Australia did gel in that final game against Wales, we saw just how devastating Giteau's maverick talents can be.

9 Fourie du Preez - Our Player of the Year (when there's no sentimentality taken into account anyway), Du Preez is a shining example of how to execute a game-plan down to it's final crossed 't', as well as adding to it along the way.

8 Jamie Heaslip - An old school rumbler of a number eight who eschews video analysis and dieting for a heck of a lot of hard yards and work, Heaslip had a fantastic year.

7 Heinrich Brüssow - Pushed up from the 'Newbies' list after Schalk Burger's moments of injury/idiocy* and thrust into the limelights of a Lions tour, Brüssow is now South Africa's top openside in his own right. There can be no greater compliment than this fact: Brüssow so eclipsed Richie McCaw this year that the Kiwi did not get enough votes to even feature on the bench!

* - delete as applicable

6 Rocky Elsom - How many people can say they won a continental championship, headed to the other side of the world and became captain of a top eight country, all within a year? Rocky Elsom can...

5 Victor Matfield - The vote for second-row was a close-run thing between all the people vying for a spot to partner a man who is surely now deeply ensconced in South African rugby folklore.

4 Bakkies Botha - That race to partner Victor Matfield mentioned above? Bakkies won it by eight votes, the tightest call of the entire team.

3 Martin Castrogiovanni - Italy and Leicester's cornerstone had a comparatively quiet year, but his was the performance that helped dismantle an All Black scrum in Milan in November.

2 Bismarck du Plessis - Light years ahead of all others in this position, Du Plessis had hooker after hooker come his way and leave with tails between legs. And a couple of tighthead props for that matter. And we've not yetmentioned his line-out throwing.

1 Gethin Jenkins - The world's most athletic prop, with the ability to play either side of the scrum if need be. Could you ask for any more? Indicative of Jenkins' success was the number of South Africans who gave him the nod ahead of their very own 'Beast'.

The Bench - These were the players in their respective positions who garnered the second-highest number of votes - but for Smit, Robinson and Parisse, it was also a case of tallying up the total votes from the two positions people had voted them in for, which allowed us scope to factor in a degree of versatility to our pine-riders.

16 John Smit
17 Benn Robinson
18 Paul O'Connell
19 Sergio Parisse
20 Will Genia
21 Morne Steyn
22 Sitiveni Sivivatu

http://www.planetrugby.com/story/0,25883,16016_5813357,00.html

4 Irish starters. Great year

RIP

I dont know about the rest but the bottom one is suppose to be a fake

don't know but the same could be said about this one?



& bigfoot nessie & few more

No it the same couldn't be said of this one .

What if every second thread on this board wasn't soccer releated!

An outragous idea or what ! And before someone says it I know if I don't like it I shouldn't read it .

where's your messiah now

Did santa steal yer manners?

Thats an atrocious comment.

Well I'm sure God or the Easter Bunny will strike me down.

The Catholic Church in Ireland has many questions to answer but this is hardly the thread for that.

If you consider how many families would have had the biggest days of their lives in that Cathedral, some for generations, surely a bit of sympathy and respect wouldn't go amiss. Or is that too much to ask?

Exactly, it means an awful lot to people because of the memories they had in it and shouldn't be used as an excuse for point scoring against the Church....

Why not ? People had memories of NAZI Germany. Should be go easy on NAZI Germany so?

Because there is always an idiot who will introduce Nazi Germany into every argument no matter how stupid it makes him look.

Does Soviet Russia or  Iran suit you better? Why should we go easy on just because "memories they had in it"

Do you understand that the people who were Christened, received Communion, were Confirmed, married and had their family funerals there were not necessarily pedophile priests?

Do you understand that these people are living in modern day palaces across the world and yet the victims are still waiting for compensation but when it's asked if this place will be rebuilt as expensive vanity project or a cheaper more realistic project. We are told we not allow talk about it because people have  good memories in the place.

The Catholic Church in Ireland has many questions to answer but this is hardly the thread for that.

If you consider how many families would have had the biggest days of their lives in that Cathedral, some for generations, surely a bit of sympathy and respect wouldn't go amiss. Or is that too much to ask?

Exactly, it means an awful lot to people because of the memories they had in it and shouldn't be used as an excuse for point scoring against the Church....

Why not ? People had memories of NAZI Germany. Should be go easy on NAZI Germany so?

Because there is always an idiot who will introduce Nazi Germany into every argument no matter how stupid it makes him look.

Does Soviet Russia or  Iran suit you better? Why should we go easy on just because "memories they had in it"

Is there any way to add SP2 to a dodgy copy of Windows XP Pro with SP1 installed.

Get a new key and get a key changer. A simple torrent search will get you both

[GAA fans are not English soccer hooligans.]

Tradition apart, the Hill provides a more affordable alternative for people who might find the prices associated with stand tickets for big games prohibitive. For that reason, as well as the tradition, I think it should be retained.

I agree for that reason above the tradition, you can always make a new tradition.

It should be retained in its current guise in my view. GAA fans are not English soccer hooligans.

eh? That has nothing to do with it. The all seaters came into soccer because of the Hillsborough disaster, caused by the policing and stewarting of the match not hooligans. Sure Hill 16 survived the Dubs of the 70s and the Gardai baton charges at them.

A Policing and stewarding culture of overreaction and treating soccer fans as animals caused by the Hooligans who supported the game at the time . Also by fencing installed to directly  too counter Hooligans

[they finished the job]

I was watching a program on TV last night about Liam Mulvihill and I think Croke Park would look a hell of a lot better if they finished the job and made it into an all seater stadium. It looks unfinished at the minute, like its three quarters complete. I know there is a lot of history associated with the hill, but we need to look forward not back.

Arrg major gear grinder . The stadium is finished , we didn't run out of funds or not get planning . The stadium is finished!

After playing Modern Warfare virtually every night since its release, the most recent round of "sploitz" punctured the ritual in a way that dual shotguns or even people using Javelins as melee weapons could not. With Duallies or Jav Glitchers, it's easy to think of those opponents in terms of enemy type. The Javelin altered a player's profile sufficiently that you knew what you were getting into with those guys - it was like playing Serious Sam, or something to that effect, only without the customary ululations. You had to interdict them at incredible range, which added an interesting (if sometimes frustrating) precondition.

Obviously, if you're fighting six guys who all blow up in a thermonuclear fashion, that's not going to be a great round. And those f**king shotguns might as well be wands. We discussed that already. But neither of these things ever punctured the ritual.

These new hacks do violence to the experience at a more primal level. Rounds which never end, and place the full eighteen players on the game's smallest map, in glitched private matches that suck players in against their will.  There is also a class of global effects running around, and your box "catches" them, like a sickness - they persist until you quit to the OS. The Unlimited Ammo thing falls into this class, as does some kind of Speed Force thing we saw last night, which seems to accelerate the game clock so that everything is batshit.

Weapon glitches (and frankly, weapon design choices which are indistinguishable from glitches) are things we can mitigate by play, and play is why we are online to begin with, so it is not utterly at odds with our purpose. This other stuff is different, because they gnaw at a place below the game proper, something fundamental, until you don't know what "game" you might be playing in any given round.  That's not a situation I will willingly put myself in, and since every time I log on someone has discovered a new way to ruin it, I'm done. The routine has been so sundered that even if a patch does drop, I have no faith that it won't simply be the preamble to some new, more sinister devilry.

There was a full five day lag between patches on the Playstation 3 and the Xbox 360; certainly, there's more to test on the 360, but that's no comfort to the millions of people whose purchases have been warped into something unrecognizable. Microsoft's sloth on this matter approaches disinterestm if not out-and-out neglect.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/

100% agree with this.

À la carte catholic or maybe he's only ever read the 10 you really shouldn't do that's