Rugby

[excoriator]

I feel very sorry for the poor fellow - an international player of this horrible game - who can remember nothing of the games he played due to the brain damage he sustained playing it. I cannot really say I am in the least surprised. Being brought up in a Grammar school in South Wales required sustained effort to avoid being drafted into the multiple teams, and it is with some pride that I can boast at having done so, although it cost me years of detention (which I grew to quite enjoy as I always took a book to read)

By the time we reached sixth form the games master - a decent enough chap - got chatting to me asked my why I hated this 'healthy' game so much I was able to point out a number of members of the first team with broken bones, teeth kicked out, broken noses etc. My cousin was one, who damaged his neck, breaking a bone in it. In later life it earned him an NHS wheelchair. I also mentioned older members of my village team who were described as 'punch drunk', confused, rambling, unable to remember anything etc.

He dismissed it all as part of the game, pointing to one individual who had ten 'O' levels so it hadn't damaged his brain. I replied I had 12, and it hadn't damaged mine either plus I had my teeth! He laughed and said we'll never agree and we parted friends. He's dead now I imagiene. I likd him despite our differences.

I wonder what he'd think of the developments these days. In fact I think he probably knew how dangerous the game was, but I suspect he loved it so much that it simply didn't matter to him, or indeed to most other fans of the game.

[skylark]

he sight of the poor man predicted to be living in a care home within the next few years was sobering.
Fears for American Football players have been around for years but brain damage there is easier to understand; they pad themselves up to act as human battering rams.

I once asked a friend who had worked for a long time in South Africa why the country had so few black international rugby players. Her theory was that young men who work mainly in manual jobs don't tend to choose rugby as a sport because they simply can't afford to get injured.

[excoriator]

Soccer has problems too due to heading the ball. This has been known about for years. A popular Liverpool phrase to describe an idiot is "He's a right head-the-ball!"

A clear reference to the damage this practice does to people.

[aqua]

Exco, can l respectfully ask what sort of blow to the head you sustained that gave you the barmy notion of doing 12 O levels?

Presumably, you had another blow later to reverse the barminess?

[jonjel]

Dec 10, 2020 7:29:36 GMT skylark said:

he sight of the poor man predicted to be living in a care home within the next few years was sobering.
Fears for American Football players have been around for years but brain damage there is easier to understand; they pad themselves up to act as human battering rams.

I once asked a friend who had worked for a long time in South Africa why the country had so few black international rugby players. Her theory was that young men who work mainly in manual jobs don't tend to choose rugby as a sport because they simply can't afford to get injured.

Actually that is very interesting Larkers. Those of you who know me know I have been a keen rugby supporter all my life. I also played as a younger me, but not being foolish I payed on the wing where all you had to do was run away, but that is another story.

I once did the best part of 2 years working in Hull, where League was the game. And with a fellow engineer we went and watched league games. It used to be Hull Kingston Rovers and I cant remember the other, but essentially the millers v the dock workers. And I commented that the game was far less brutal than Rugby Union. And was told that the reason was, you respected the fact the other player had to go to work on Monday morning.

I think one has to accept that ALL contact sport caries a degree of risk. How you mitigate that is a bit of a problem. Cricketers have been badly injured and killed on the field, people riding horses, cyclists, just about any physical sport caries some degree of risk.

[excoriator]

Dec 10, 2020 19:41:36 GMT aqua said:

Exco, can l respectfully ask what sort of blow to the head you sustained that gave you the barmy notion of doing 12 O levels?

Presumably, you had another blow later to reverse the barminess?

I had no choice. We all did 10. I did music - a way of escaping the horrible gym in my school - as well. The physics teacher surprised us all in the lower 6ths by announcing one day that instead of a lesson he had entered us all into a 'Mechanics" O-level exam. "Don't worry" he added with a cheery laugh, "It's dead easy. You'll all pass it and you'll get another o-level without having to revise." He was right. We were not sure whether to be pleased or annoyed with him at springing it on us.

I knocked myself unconscious at the age of about 10 falling out of a tree, waking up in the ambulance. In following years my father could be heard muttering darkly about the long term effects of this on the various daft things I got up to as a teenager, but I think it was more a way of commenting on my stupidity than anything else. The only other blow that I can think of was recently when I bashed my eye into uselessness. That broke a few bones around the orbit so I guess a fair shock to the brain must have occurred. I haven't detected any effects of this and don't think it did any harm. Mrs E. supports this, sort of, by saying it hasn't caused any improvement! We can all make what we like of this I suppose.

[aubrey]

I meant to show you this, Exco:

[excoriator]

I don't believe the supercomputer bit at all. It was in 1959 or so in a summer job I was offered a halfpenny an hour more to go work nights to assist an engineer solving elliptic filter problems on a machine I'd never heard of called a computer. The only one in Wales occupying a rather large room in Cardiff University.

In 1956 I doubt whether there were many computers in the world.

But I suppose it depends on what you'd call a supercomputer at the time. I guess they were all 'super' really.

I suspect that the pringles are roughly shaped and packaged warm and a bit flexible whereupon they conform to each others shape in teh tube.

[aubrey]

They have to be that shape beforehand though, else they'd just go to a sludge (the story about Wolfe is well-known, by the way; he says it could have been done by anyone in the same position as he was).

[excoriator]

Well I magine they're roughly shaped whilst warm and slightly flexible.

A circular plane pringle would be easily shaped into the desired shape by a die or even a press with two pins on the upper jaw at N and S and another two on the bottom jaw at E and W.

In teh tube, they would conform to each's shape quite closely whilst warm and then harden as they cooled.

Also I suspect that if the periphery of the plane Pringle be made to contract, compared to the rest of the crisp, they'd adopt this shape naturally. I seem to recall a friend who was keen on photography having circular white reflector with a metal ring in a hem around the outside adopting the shape of a Pringle if you didn't get the rim clicked into place.

I never tried it, but I would not be too surprised to find it tasted better than \ Pringle either.