[Bullseye]

Re: Toulouse match thread : Mon Feb 27, 2017 12:57 pm  

Doesn't count according to my History of Bradford Northern - Nigel Williams only counts appearances when they make it onto the pitch.

Re: Toulouse match thread : Mon Feb 27, 2017 2:23 pm  

Nigel Williams, that's a blast from the past. I remember him spending years gathering all the stats for his book

[Bullseye]

Re: Toulouse match thread : Mon Feb 27, 2017 2:59 pm  

His book is the best for any stats up to 1989. The fella must have spent years on it. It's a work of art. Is he still around?

Re: Toulouse match thread : Mon Feb 27, 2017 3:25 pm  

Smack him Jimmy wrote:

My thoughts too.
I would have liked to see Smith come on; or the bench slot given to a forward instead, but if 2V/Beattie run a different ship and we get a win then that's fine by me. I dont care if they have 4 cheerleaders on the bench if we get a win.

Like a lot of others I was shouting for the introduction of Lee Smith. We looked to be tiring, pressing the self destruct button whilst having an unused experienced head on the subs bench was a gamble which clearly came off. It was a brave (or clever) move by the coach. I think if we had lost, feelings on this thread might have been somewhat different. Still, the end justified the means and a wins a win.

[Bulliac]

Re: Toulouse match thread : Mon Feb 27, 2017 3:39 pm  

Bullseye wrote:

His book is the best for any stats up to 1989. The fella must have spent years on it. It's a work of art. Is he still around?

He was the official club historian, though I forget just when his name stopped being heard around.

Nigel always recorded sub appearances as separate to 1 -13 appearances too, which I'm not sure is something that modern historians would do, but of course, back in the 'old days' (not sure when it changed) subs were only allowed in the case of injury, so it was quite common for subs to never appear on the field.

Re: Toulouse match thread : Mon Feb 27, 2017 3:53 pm  

I used to work with him and he spent most of his break times while doing 12 hour shifts manually writing up all the stats. He used to live up Allerton way. He eventually left and published his book and I met him a couple of times after but have not seen or heard of him for quite a few years now.

Re: Toulouse match thread : Mon Feb 27, 2017 3:54 pm  

I'm going to assume he made his fortune and that I can completely abandon my current career plans.

Re: Toulouse match thread : Mon Feb 27, 2017 4:26 pm  

vbfg wrote:

I'm going to assume he made his fortune and that I can completely abandon my current career plans.

Erm, I probably wouldn't abandon everything straight away

Re: Toulouse match thread : Mon Feb 27, 2017 4:33 pm  

Too late. All in.

Re: Toulouse match thread : Mon Feb 27, 2017 5:36 pm  

HamsterChops wrote:

It would have done, except he was no doubt there in case of an injury in the backs or halves. No injury happened, so they didn't use him just for the sake of it.

Whilst I tend to agree with the idea of don't use a sub just because he's there, when the interchange could be better used to make sure the forwards don't get tired, I did think Smith could have been brought on in the backs on the right side considering we were starting to get hammered there in the second half. Thankfully it ended up not mattering.

Presumably if we had held onto the 28-6 lead for a bit longer he could have played the final 20 mins and then been in better shape to play a bigger part next week. It seemed to me like the sort of calculated risk that coaches have to take which this time didnt work out.