I have been having fun on Twitter. This started when the world's favourite outrage generator got clogged up with 'discussion' about the Denny Solomona case. For those who don't know and who did not read my blog Denny Pain this is the one about the New Zealand born Samoan who got fed up of scoring bags full of tries for Castleford Tigers and so decided he would go and play rugby union for Sale Sharks instead. Only Castleford did not release him from the last two years of his contract. Despite this, Sale Sharks not only named him in their European Cup squad but also had the temerity to allow him to take the field in an actual competitive game last week.
So anyway I am now blocked by Sale Sharks on Twitter, as from what I can gather are almost all rugby league fans who have a problem with Solomona's disregard for our game. My own offence was to tweet the following in response to Josh Charnley's tweet welcoming Solomona to the turgid borefest that it rugby union;
"As long as he never comes back to RL".
Charnley and Solomona himself were included in this tweet but only Sale Sharks decided it was controversial enough to warrant a blocking. Later that day Twitter was chock full of tweets from those I follow who had suffered a similar fate from the club that can do no wrong. Now their Director Of Rugby Steve Diamond is claiming that Solomona was sacked by Castleford, whereas previously he along with Solomona and his Mr 15% Andy Clarke tried to work it up us by announcing that Solomona had 'retired' from rugby league. Amusingly, having blocked half of the rugby league world for daring to question their morality, Sale Sharks then cosied up to Wigan Warriors for a desperately important training session which neither side could apparently do without whatever the PR implications. Yes, the same Wigan Warriors who are undeniably a rugby league club. So Sale Sharks get on famously with rugby league, so long as you don't mean people who pay to support rugby league, or clubs who refuse to roll over and have their belly tickled whenever some cash-rich union wankers come along to steal their best players with insulting ruses about retirement. The betrayal by Wigan is sickening, but no less than you would expect from that classless organisation.
On a lighter note I also used Twitter to ask Victoria Coren-Mitchell to come to a rugby league game. She hasn't responded yet but the same goes for around 2386 previous occasions when I have tweeted her either in relation to her fiendishly difficult TV quiz Only Connect or to her column in the Independent. The reason for my latest communication with old VCM was her continued insistence on mocking rugby league during Only Connect.
Now, you don't have to be Hercule Poirot to know that I have a lot of time for Victoria. Not that I would need that much time. But anyway I do, but I still wasn't having any of this typically BBC 'isn't rugby league obscure and odd' mentality that we have to put up with every time that utter thunderprick Mark Chapman disgraces our screens. His loathesome feigned interest in our game makes me yearn for the return of Steve Ryder. Which is a bit like harking back to the days of medieval torture instead of modern day techniques like waterboarding but really anything is better than the Wigan and Man United-loving Chapman who knows about as much about rugby league as Victoria Coren-Mitchell. John Lennon was killed by a man called Mark Chapman, you know? I'm just saying. There are parallels between faux-enthusiastic sports presenters and murderous Beatle stalkers.
On which subject (again) it wasn't that she came out and openly said anything negative about rugby league. She wasn't overtly rude about it in the way that John Inverdale likes to be. In fairness Inverdale likes to be overtly rude about everything from female tennis players to five-time Olympic gold medallists, but there is nothing in this world he hates more than rugby league. It was only that for two weeks in a row VCM brazenly used sarcasm to imply that there isn't any reason on Earth why anyone should be able to answer a question on Only Connect about rugby league. As if it was beneath the high brow intellect of the fucking nerds among the Policy Wonks and the Bastard Beekeepers.
So I invited her to a Saints game. Ok so Saints may not be the best place to take someone if you want to prove to them how entertaining and exciting rugby league is but if I had a religion it would be against that religion to pay to watch any team that isn't Saints or playing against Saints. Unless it's an international side but that won't be happening in this country again for a while and besides, international rugby league is treated with the kind of disdain normally reserved for a 2am tweet by Katie Hopkins. Even people who like rugby league get irate about international rugby league, such is the sorry state it finds itself in. So it was Saints or nothing and as it turned out, and rather predictably, it was nothing. Clearly, VCM was too frightened to take up my offer not because of the obvious peril she would be in were she anywhere near me but because she didn't want to be proved wrong about rugby league. Before you know it she would have been addicted to watching LMS take three steps to his right before meekly taking the tackle and/or giving a penalty away, or to the compelling sight of Jon Wilkin talking himself into another 10 yard retreat to compound the decapitating clothes-line he has dished out five seconds earlier.
Don't think Emma would have been that keen on giving her seat up anyway......
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