Doesn’t stop boxing.

no one cares about working class lads knocking seven shades out of each other

upper middle class boys getting hurt is a different matter

Absolutely. 100%

I used to love the game and played to a decent level. The problem has been the changes to substitutes.
When I was playing, you were only allowed to make one sub Now you can make 8 tactitcal subs. As a result, players are bigger and more powerfull as they only have to play 40-50 minutes in some cases.
These monsters aren't physically capable of playing a full 80.
You're right to mention Lomu as, if he was a player today, he wouldn't be classed as a freak. He'd be the norm.
England's record try scorer is Rory Underwood. He would've even have a cap in todays game.

In 1990, England and Scotland played on the last week of the 5 nations, both going for the grandslam. Both teams had 6 players on the bench and only used one sub each. It was an epic game.

It is almost as if a switch to professionalism has changed things in the past 30 years

Rugby League is still as good as ever

Imagine taking Bellingham and not Henderson off

Two weeks off for that. 68% possession shared between the defenders and Rice/Henderson. We played the whole game in front of Ukraine.

Henderson has gone to the retirement league, how is it that he still gets to play international football? And instead of playing Maddison centrally he gets put on the left.

Fairly hilarious incident at Halifax, corner comes in, some sort of foul, ref goes to indicate something and inadvertently pokes a player in the eye, player naturally flails around and catches ref with an arm, red card

Is there another international team with worse nepotism than England?

This is arguably worse than that french astrology manager.

Yeah, just dumb management. A team like Ukraine are always going to bunker, so just play Maddison in front of Bellingham and Rice with fast players who can beat a man and create space either side of Kane, it's not rocket science.

Indeed. Or if you have to pick Henderson because he has compromising pictures of you, then put one of your plethora of talented wide players on the left.

Speaking of Rugby

Are Fiji the greatest ****ing team ever or what

I really wish Fiji+Tonga+Samoa would combine ala the Windies in Cricket for more than a few tests every now and then.

That said, I’m pretty pumped that I’ll be at the RSA/Romania match and quite possibly the Georgia/Portugal match. I’m hoping France take it down this year!

Anyone know who is the team manager if 'asdf' in our Community Experience Shield?

If while reading this you realized its you please shoot me a DM

Slabhead, you twat.
Why on earth didn’t Southgate bring on Tomori??

Oh well the little bit of Scotland hope after LOL Maguire was nice.

Bellingham is just incredible though. He's going to go down as England's best ever player. A painful joy to watch tonight for me.

Bellingham is just ridiculously good.
Could end up being Englands best ever

Shame we are being managed by an average Middlesbrough manager or we might actually win/have won something.

Good to see us using these friendlies to blood exciting young talent like Harry Maguire.

Thought this was harsh on Poch for a moment until I realised who was being referred to

Is Pogba's downfall one of the worst in history? Discuss.

The real tragedy is that he got done for 'roids with that massive Saudi pension so tantalisingly close.

No but Man United letting him go for free only to buy him back for €100M (back when 100M was huge) to only let him go for free again will never stop being funny

I don't know if his intense box to box physicality #1 distance covered style of play translates to the desert though, so he might have lucked out

Sancho will try to leave ManU in January. What a shitshow.