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seiin-translations · 4 years ago

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2.43 S1 Chapter 3.4 - The Dog’s View and the Giraffe’s View

4. CHILD OF VOLLEYBALL

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In the week before the ballgame tournament, practice for the tournament took priority over after school club activities. On Monday after school, it was the first day of team practice for Team F.

“I’m not the manager for the boys’ volleyball team. I’m just here to help out.”

“It’s totally fine! We have twenty-four people and only one manager currently. How many does boys’ volleyball have? Huh, eight? So little. One per twenty-four people and one per eight, don’t you think that’s a weird ratio? We’re going to need three managers, you know? That’s why, please be our manager.”

“Look…you haven’t listened what I said at all, have you. I don’t know how you think that logic is going to convince me.”

When he went to the gym, he immediately came across a scene of a row of four muscular boys were sitting on their heels and making supplications to one girl. The girl they were supplicating to was the second-year Suemori, who came as a helper from the girls’ volleyball team.

For today’s practice, it was arranged that the two teams would each use one half of the court. The teams were Oda’s Team F and Team B, which had the corps from the aforementioned rugby team. The rugby team was the third great power among the boys’ sports clubs in the school after the soccer and baseball teams, but because rugby wasn’t included in the events of the school’s ballgame tournament, they appeared to have discovered their raison d’etre in the ballgame tournament by dispatching members to each event and having them run wild. As if to tout their club, all four of them were wearing those characteristic horizontally-striped shirts, and the pattern made their upper bodies look even squarer and burlier. I’m pretty sure the temperature in the gym went up one or two degrees because of those four… Though it was already the season of high humidity, it really was sweltering in there.

“This isn’t the time for scouting. Scram.”

Oda raised his voice and cut in front of Suemori.

“Suemori is our important charge from girls’ volleyball. If anything happens to her while she’s with us, I’ll get throttled by them. If you wanna poach her, talk it over with the girls’ volleyball captain.”

“Aaah? What’s your problem?”

One person among the four talked back in a boorish voice. His height approached Aoki’s when he stood, and unlike Aoki, he had a width and thickness, so his weight was completely different. He felt a feeling of oppression like he was being crushed just from standing in front of him.

This man was a second-year from the rugby club, Okuma.

“This ain’t the place for a first-year runt to show up. Get outta here.”

The moment he said that, his temple started convulsing, but it would never end if he flared up at every single thing.

“I’m the captain for boys’ volleyball, Oda from 3-F. I’m in charge today.”

“Heh? A third-year? You serious?”

Okuma’s eyes widened, and he confirmed with Suemori over Oda’s head instead of with Oda himself. Standing in a position to protect Suemori, she was taller than him. Oda’s existence was no obstacle for Okuma.

When they were convinced that he was really an upperclassman, Okuma and the other three changed their attitude more or less, and they followed his orders without disturbing the progress. First, the two teams took the time for a joint orientation. There were three to five students from each grade per team. There would be no more than twenty-five people in two teams. Three times the usual number of eyes during regular club practice watched him and listened to him seriously. He was a little nervous and cleared his throat several times.

He didn’t see Haijima there. He wondered if the positions were assigned just for the sake of adjusting the numbers. If that was the case, then excepting Suemori who was a girl, Oda was the only one who had volleyball experience between these two teams.

In the volleyball division of the ballgame tournament, all six teams would be divided into two groups of three teams, and after a round-robin competition within the group, the first-place team in each group would play the deciding round. The group league had a total of six games, and adding the deciding round, that would make a total of seven games. The regular rule was to get twenty-five points first, but they eased that so that it was now a three-set match where the team that got fifteen points first won. Although, if they were to pull off seven games without a hitch, it was going to be a dizzying day for them on the management side.

“I’m sure we’ve all did it before in gym, so you’re alright with the basics, right? The rotations might feel complicated, but well, don’t take fouls down to the smallest detail, just three people in the front row and three in the back, and make sure to serve in the right order. Once you got it, you’ll be divided into teams to practice. I’m in Team F, and Suemori’s in B, so take a look. If there’s anything, call us immediately.”

“Hey, Captain!” Okuma raised his hand when he was about to tell them to split up.

“I’m not your captain, but…what?”

“It’s boring to practice separately. B and F should play a game. I think that’ll help us learn the flow of the game better.”

“A sudden game?”

Is he the type who loves playing games but hates practice? Oda didn’t like people who neglected basic practice. He frowned and said, “You can play games on the day of the tournament. Why do I have to teach your team our plays?”

“You don’t mind showing just a little, do you? Don’t tell me you’re gonna lose to a bunch of rookies like us? You can jump about two meters, right Captain? If you can’t do that much, then we’d be able to knock you down without jumping.”

I thought he’d become obedient, but he was thinking about things like that…I’m not going to be taken in by such a cheap provocation. I should just ignore it and move to practice as planned. He was thinking that, but he couldn’t help but feel a boiling feeling at the pit of his stomach. No, Aoki’s not here today, so I have to be the one to keep calm.

“Senpai, let’s do it. Why don’t we just do one set?”

Right when he was working hard to restrain himself, he was unexpectedly spurred on. He turned around in surprise and Suemori was standing firm with an expression that was even more indignant than Oda’s.

“Suemori-san, you sure are brave. I want you to be our manager more and more.”

Suemori gave a sharp glare at a grinning Okuma before whispering into Oda’s ear. “Oda-senpai, aren’t you angry? I can’t stand it. Making fun of volleyball…Let’s break his nose.”

“No, even if you say that…”

“If you don’t have confidence in yourself, then I’ll join.”

Suemori started taking off her jersey on the spot, so he immediately stopped her with “Wait. It’s better for me to play than you.”

His voice was a grade lower, becoming insecure. Suemori’s face immediately reddened and she looked down, saying “No…sorry.” I might have said it too harshly. But, more than being made fun of by an amateur like Okuma, my pride was hurt by the fact that I was even looked down on by someone from girls’ volleyball.

He did have confidence. He wasn’t about to be beaten by an amateur who was just huge. He honestly even agreed with the idea of knocking him down a peg. However, it would be a problem if a girl was put in and got injured. Although Okuma was an amateur at volleyball, he was an athlete who did ball sports, and there was an insurmountable wall between men and women in the power of the ball.

But, it was true that there wasn’t even anyone who could set by themselves. If there was just one more person with experience in Team F…

…We do.

The figure entered the corner of his field of vision as though it was timed. They were standing at the entrance to the gym with a suspicious face, perhaps feeling that there was something off—Haijima.

“Suemori…can you go get Kanno?”

“Huh?”

A dispirited Suemori raised her head and blinked.

⋆﹥━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━﹤⋆

The reason he called Kanno was trivial, he just wanted him to be the referee. Suemori was in charge of displaying the points. It would only be one set where the first to get fifteen points won. If he considered this a sideshow, then this would be a good amount of time to devote to it.

He looked at Haijima, who was doing some light stretching in front of the net. Anyways, it was a piece of good luck that he was able to pull him up to the court before he could say anything…he might have to thank Okuma for that.

There were many people present in their gym jerseys, but Haijima’s equipment gave him a different vibe from the amateurs. He wore long underpants that reached his ankles beneath black shorts, short socks, and volleyball shoes that looked worn in. That Mizuno was the same model as Kuroba’s. And the taping that was tightly wrapped around the fingers of both his hands gave off an aura of something different.

When he thought that he had a different impression of his face than when he saw him in the school building, it was due to the presence of his glasses.

I see, so he switches to contacts when he’s playing.

When he was in his school uniform and wearing his glasses, he had the impression of a moody, literary-type of boy, but now suddenly he seemed like an athlete. There were also sports glasses, but sports glasses for volleyball inevitably took the shape of goggles due to the nature of the sport, and perhaps because it narrowed the field of vision and honestly didn’t look good, but Oda had never seen a high schooler use them.

Unfortunately, he hadn’t had much good will towards Haijima after the April incident. It wasn’t that he hated him, but he was completely in the category of people he didn’t like dealing with. It was creepy that he couldn’t read what he was thinking about at all, even now. A simply neutral expression with no enthusiasm or nervousness. I wonder what kind of play would actually be created by standing on the same court as this guy. Oda was the one who was made considerably more nervous.

However, on the other hand, he also felt excitement. ——He was looking forward to it.

“Then, the person doing the serve receive should try to return it to Haijima as much as possible. That’s our setter, Haijima.”

The other four people on the court are have some experience from gym class. He decided to try using them all first while alternating them.

“Haijima, are you fine with being the setter? Are you up for it? You haven’t done it for a while.”

Haijima, who was relaxing his shoulders, gave him a sideways glance and looked offended.

“What’s your highest jump reach height?”

He was suddenly asked a straight-to-the-point question. Without asking about the circumstances that led to this match, without saying a word of greeting like “Sorry I’m late” or “I’ll be in your care,” that was the first thing out of his mouth after he came here.

“For spikes, these days it’s 315.”

“You can jump for someone of your height.”

Haijima said and narrowed his eyes. It was a completely disparaging tone, but wait, was I praised just now? I feel like asking someone to interpret for me.

The height he could reach after doing a run-up and jumping was the highest point for a spike jump. In Oda’s case, his finger height (the height he could reach with his hand while standing) was 215 centimeters, so his spike jump was up to one meter. The two meters Okuma instigated with was of course an impossible figure—the height for a male high school volleyball player would be from around 70 to 90 centimeters. He thought that one meter was a figure to be considerably proud of.

From the start, Team B had three rugby team members in the three front row positions. He wasn’t sure if they were thinking up their own strategy where they were going to knock down the first of their attacks with a block and kill their momentum.

Kanno, who found himself in the role of chief referee, blew the whistle, and the game started with Team B’s serve. Since the server was an amateur, it was a simple underhand serve. However, because their receivers were also amateurs, it was difficult for them to cleanly return it to the setter, and the ball was greatly repelled.

Oda was about to jump out to cover for them, but…

…What!?

Haijima was already underneath the ball. So fast!? He didn’t just move fast. His reading of the ball’s course was fast as well. While in an overhand stance, his eyes swiftly scanned the entire court and he signalled Oda with his eyes for a moment. Oda, who had unintentionally stopped in his tracks, quickly rushed to the front of the net. A set was released from Haijima’s fingers with much faster timing that he expected. He was sure he didn’t make such a fast set when he saw him at the prefecturals. It was a confident set from a distance where normally a safe four set would be the only way to go.

So fast—no, rather than fast, what’s with that trajectory!?

He managed to reach up in the midair and hit it with his hand. He didn’t exactly hit the ball squarely, but the three blockers that marked Oda didn’t keep up with him at all.

The ball fell to Team B’s court over the head of the blocker who only jumped halfway. Oda himself felt like he was bewitched, and he landed with the pit of his stomach feeling somewhat weightless.

The view was wonderful. He could see the opposing court, which was usually always blocked by a wall, well. It wasn’t every day he got the chance to spike over the head of a tall blocker, so he had completely forgotten—was going over a block this exhilarating? He felt ticklish on the inside. He felt good…

With a backwards glance at the astonished opposing team, Oda ran up to Haijima.

“Oi, what’s with that set?”

Even so, it was a complaint that came out of his mouth first. He had just barely kept up, but it wouldn’t be strange if he had struck and missed.

“I can’t hit anything if you just set it without warning.”

“That one just now was lower than 315. As expected, I’m rusty from not playing for a while. My perception is dull.”

Haijima said, tilting his head to the side as though he wasn’t satisfied. He was going to make me hit it at three-one-five because I said that was the highest point I could jump? Is he a demon?

“It’s the same with the height, but it’s more a problem of timing. There’s no way I can hit the ball at that tempo if I don’t have anything to match.”

The basic set was called an open set, and the attacker must time the ball as it rose high and fell in a parabolic path and hit it. A spike that is hit at the slowest timing was called a third tempo.

Even so, Haijima’s set was a set that made the attacker hit the ball at the peak of the parabola. As a result, the trajectory towards the hitting point was short, in other words, “fast.” From the point of view of an attacker, it looked like it was flying “directly” at them. The attacker was pulling off the transcendental thing of smashing in the top of the set at the moment they swung at the highest point, but there were many demands on the attacker’s part as well. What kind of nerve did this guy have to set something like that to someone he’s matching with for the first time?

Haijima looked away from Oda, who was snapping at him, and looked as though he had lost interest in something.

“Kuroba can hit it.”

I see, I couldn’t see that high-speed setting at the middle school prefecturals because Kuroba wasn’t there?—His competitiveness was slowly rearing its head. Do you expect me to keep quiet when I’m told that me, a third-year, can’t hit what a first-year can? I know he can evade high blocks at that speed. If he could make that hitting position and speed into a thing…

“…It’s fine. Don’t change what you’re doing. I’ll match you with all I got next time.”

Haijima blinked, and then let out a short breath and squinted his eyes. …He laughed? Maybe?

“Senpai, it’s your team’s serve. You’ll be taking a delay penalty.”

Kanno called out to him in a mild voice. The rotation turned once, and then it was Haijima’s serve.

“You don’t need to match me. I’ll be the one matching you. You seem like you still have a lot more in you, so could you please give a little more? You can go up to about 320, right?”

Calmly leaving that extremely brazen and shameless statement, Haijima turned on his heel and walked to the service zone.

⋆﹥━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━﹤⋆

His initial goal of breaking Okuma’s competitive spirit was blown out of his mind. He wanted to get Haijima to acknowledge him. That was all he could think about starting from midway through the match. He was so absorbed in it that he even forgot that this was practice for the ballgame tournament and was very ashamed to find out later that Kanno and Suemori were supporting the first-timers from off the court. It was a bad habit of his to lose sight of his surroundings when he got passionate. He had his hands full with what was before his eyes.

“Haijima, next time you get a chance, send it to the center.”

In the final stage of the set, the back row demanded a back row attack from Haijima. He was thinking of that high-speed center back Kuroba tried to show on his first day joining the club. If Kuroba could do it, then he wanted to do it himself as well.

“Oi, ref! Ain’t that what they call a delay? They’re just whispering to each other over there. That’s a foul, a foul!”

Okuma raised his voice from the other side of the net. He seemed to be pretty irritated with getting fouls many times when blocking. It was Haijima who incorporated the ingenious technique of playing right at the edge of the net to tempt his opponent into reaching over the net or touching it. He truly was a frightening first-year.

The B-team’s court got the serve, and Okuma jumped to spike it with a beast-like roar. However, Haijima moved in front of it with nimble steps and blocked it. Oi oi…Oda grumbled in his mind. Is he fully ready to end the game with block points? I just said that I wanted to do a back-row attack. Read the room.

Okuma was taller, but Haijima stopped the course with the precise way he moved his arms. It was a form he wanted to use as a model for first-years who were bad at blocking.

Oh…I’m looking at someone who has received the favor of volleyball up close right now… He was given every sense from the god of volleyball…

Thump. A different sound from the sound of a ball being hit was heard. From Oda’s position, it was a blind spot, so he couldn’t immediately grasp what had happened.

Rather than landing on the floor, Haijima dropped. Kanno immediately blew the foul whistle.

“Haijima!”

He rushed over to him in fright. Haijima was pressing his hand near his right eye, squatting and gritting his teeth. Was it his eye? His forehead? Kanno and Suemori also ran over, and the court was in disorder for a short while.

“Hey, what the hell were you doing? This isn’t rugby!”

He barked across the net, blood rushing to his head. Okuma made excuses with a slightly frightened look on his face.

“It, it wasn’t on purpose, captain. I only hit him by accident.”

“Don’t lie to me. If anything happens to our members, I’ll make you…”

“Senpai. I think he’s probably telling the truth. It wasn’t intentional. Please calm down. I was watching.”

He was clenching his fists and half-rising to his feet, but Kanno held down his shoulders. Admonished calmly by his kouhai, he reluctantly got back down while clenching his teeth.

“I’m fine…My contact just slipped.”

Haijima slowly got up. His voice was somewhat hoarse, but his articulation was clear. Oda was relieved that it didn’t seem serious.

“I’m removing myself from the game. Ow…”

After Haijima staggered out of the gym while pressing his hand against his right eye, the atmosphere immediately became like the closing of a performance. The decision was that Team B committed a foul, and Team F won 15-10, but they didn’t really care about winning or losing anymore.

The turmoil from the trouble caused everyone to lose concentration, so they decided to call off the rest of practice today. Oda’s concentration was more scattered than anyone else’s. He was in a position where he had to have more composure, but the role of captain was something that he was unequal to from the start. I don’t have the qualities to lead a team, I’m just selfish, I just…wanted to be a hitter. I just like getting to a place as high as possible above people and making them surrender.

The pleasure of being in a duo with Haijima still lingered. It was a feeling like a slight numbness that spread from the core of his body to his right fingertips.

I want him—A small but concentrated amount of fuel was thrown down onto his feelings of tiredness after losing in the prefectural tournament.

Practice was cut early and they dispersed, with Okuma and the rest of the rugby corps also leaving. When he was looking at the court thinking that it suddenly cooled down when those guys were gone, he saw Haijima standing before the net, staring fixedly up at it for some reason.

“Are you feeling okay? If you still feel like something’s off, go get it checked out. If you don’t know the hospitals around here, I’ll go with you.”

“I’m pretty familiar with it.”

“You don’t see rough play like that in volleyball a lot, do you?”

“No, I mean outside.”

“…?” Oh, he means outside the court? Hey, you need complete your sentences over here to have the conversation connect well.

In his case, no matter how you think about, the way he speaks is causing trouble. It’s no wonder Aoki went off at me about inviting him—he got him to lay a hand, I mean, foot on him.

“This is 2.43, eh.”

“Hmm? Oh, yeah it is, how did you notice? I told them to put it up at 2.4 since we’re not doing club practice today… I guess we’d been playing at 2.43 all day.”

At the ballgame tournament, the boys would be playing with the net at 2.40 meters. The same height as the official matches within the prefecture. When it came to tournaments that were above prefecture-level like regional and national tournaments, they were treated the same as general boy’s volleyball at 2.43 meters.

“Do you usually practice at 2.43?”

“Yeah, it’ll be at this height for Spring Inter-High, anyways.”

Haijima gave him a sideways glance, looking slightly shocked.

Following Inter-High in the summer and Nationals in the fall, the tournament that filled in the last piece of the three major national volleyball competitions was “Spring Inter-High Volleyball”. This tournament, which was held in a particularly spectacular manner among the three major competitions, was a grand stage that could be compared to Koshien for high schoolers who played volleyball (as for Oda, he didn’t want to use this metaphor. Even if you didn’t use baseball as a reference, Spring Inter-High was still Spring Inter-High). It used to be held in March but has now been moved to January, so third-years could participate as well, making it the last tournament that all three school years to face together.

Even at Spring Inter-High, the net was 2.40 meters at the prefectural qualifiers, but 2.43 meters at the main national competition in Tokyo.

“Is it funny? A tiny team like us talking about Spring Inter-High. That might be so, but I don’t think I said anything embarrassing.”

Even if people would think he was conceited, Oda was serious. If Haijima joined their current members, it wouldn’t be a pipe dream in the least. It was a realistic goal.

Haijima’s eyes returned to the net again.

“…I think that kind of thing is okay.”

He muttered. He stretched one hand and touched the top tape of the net. 2.43 meters was, if one were to give an easy-to-understand example, about the height of the ceiling in a house. For the 163 centimeters Oda, it wasn’t a place he could reach just by stretching himself. He envied his ease with which he could put his fingers on it and, it might sound strange, to fix his eyes upon it.

“Is this…the height for Spring Inter-High?”

Oh, he smiled… His face was purely radiant, a complete change from the previous arrogance and impudence, and he was shocked to see that he could make an expression like that. It was by no means a frank and open smile. Like a strong light covered by a thin curtain and gently diffusing through it…it overlapped with Kuroba’s face when he looked up at the same thing with sparkling eyes on the first day of practice in April, even though the vectors were completely different.

His feeling that Haijima would be hard to deal with had, before he knew it, faded through the match.

“Hey, you know, I had a great time playing with you today. You had a little fun too, didn’t you?”

“Oda-san has good reflexes.”

Unused to hearing himself be called “Oda-san,” he felt itchy. What’s more, he was using standard Japanese, so it was like he was being addressed from the TV. But, it’s nice, being called that by him.

“What you don’t have in height, you make up for with being athletic. You have power too. Stretching your body in midair, I like that.”

Even though he lambasted him two months ago, he easily reversed that and acknowledged him. Is he arrogant or honest…what a weird guy.

Just as I thought, rather than trying to do something with words, it might be better to invite him to the court first. What the hell, I feel kinda happy when I’m acknowledged by him… Pride filled his chest. He was able to believe that he hadn’t been continuing to do something meaningless.

“Will you join us, Haijima? It’ll be boring if you wanna do it by yourself. You chose volleyball for the ballgame tournament too, right?” There was no doubt that he continued to practice even though he wasn’t a part of the club. There was no way a guy who had a gap period since last summer could move like that.

He expected him to nod, but Haijima dropped his gaze to the court at his feet with a sullen look on his face. His childish action of poking at the ground with the toe of his shoe made Oda feel impatient and irritated. There was also envy. Why the hell is a guy who, unlike me, can just go on with volleyball without thinking about anything, hesitating here?

“I’m sure you’ll change your mind, Oda-san. I’m not very well liked. As long as I’m a setter…”

——“Why are you clinging to that position?”

It suddenly occurred to Oda that those words that were spat at him before might not have been contempt towards him.

Is it possible that it’s something Haijima himself has been thinking about…? Even the personification of volleyball sense who seems like he was chosen by the god of volleyball thinks that way?

“Hmm? Why are you guys hiding?”

Suemori’s voice echoed in the quiet gym.

Suemori and Kanno, who had spread out a piece of construction paper in a corner of the gym and working hard on creating a records chart, looked up and turned their heads to the doorway. The two heads that were peeking in from the shadow of the iron door shook with a start.

“Did you guys come to help clean up? If that’s the case, hurry up.”

Suemori briskly stood up, and Kanno followed quietly. Though the two timidly showed themselves, they stopped at the door like they had trouble getting in. It was Kuroba and Nagato. The air Haijima wore around him instantly stiffened. Were they all from the same middle school volleyball team?

“Senpai, is it true that Haijima is joining the club?”

It was Nagato who asked that. His face was unwelcoming without even having to say it aloud. He pulled on Kuroba’s elbow as if to tell him to say something as well, but he looked away with an ambiguous look on his face.

“I’d like to have him join. I’m in the middle of persuading him, though. If there’s something bothering you, speak up.”

Oda didn’t really hide his ill humor, and he raised his voice to highlight his captain’s dignity. One of Oda’s biggest aggravations was the behaviour of trying to get rid of people in a roundabout way.

“I’m not joining, so don’t worry.”

However, Haijima himself interjected from the side. His tone, which had begun to soften, had returned to being curt again. “I don’t think I’m obligated to join in the cleanup,” he rudely excused himself and turned towards the metal door without bowing. It was towards the other metal door, clearly avoiding Kuroba and Nagato. Oda wanted to tear off his head, as just when he thought he closed the distance a little, he was back to square one.

“I understand Nagato’s point of view. What about you, Kuroba?”

“Huh?”

Kuroba jumped and took on a posture of caution.

“I…I…”

He awkwardly peeking sideways at Haijima, and then cast his eyes down, looking a little bit like he was about to cry. Even though he was so big, he sometimes made expressions like those of an elementary school student, much less a middle school student. Haijima, who had stopped for a moment, started walking again. It was at a quicker pace than before.

After that gangly body disappeared behind the metal doors, Nagato opened his mouth as though he couldn’t bear to wait for that.

“Oda-senpai doesn’t know anything. If Haijima joins, then Yuni really won’t participate in any official games. In a way, we lost that other time because of Haijima…”

“Ryo, stop it. I told you that has nothing to do with it.”

With his face bright red, Kuroba stopped Nagato. However, his voice was weak and it didn’t sound like he was seriously denying it.

Making his voice stern, Oda asked them a question.

“What do you mean?”

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#2.43: Seiin Koukou Danshi Volley-bu #2.43 book 1 #2.43 translation #2.43: seiin high school boys volleyball club #2.43

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haventacluewhatimdoing · 4 years ago

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Right. So I am an avid reader of high school au fics of any fandom, and since my current obsession is Sherlock that's what I'm spending most of my time doing.

And I've read quite a few fics where John plays rugby, which is entirely apt.

BUT as a rugby follower, I can't help but notice that some writers don't seem to know much about rugby. Which is cool, no need to massively research every single thing you write about. But sometimes it simply doesn't make sense. So I thought I'd make a reference post for anyone wanting to write about rugby.

1. There is no goalie

I've seen this a few times where someone is in goal. This is simply not a thing in rugby. The goalposts are in the shape of an H, and the aim is to kick it above the horizontal bar, so it would simply be impossible to have one.

2. There are two types of rugby

There is rugby league and rugby union, and although they are similar, there are some differences. I have sometimes seen people mix the two, so I want to clear something. In the original stories (The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire) it says John played rugby union, so that is what I am focusing on in this post. Basically from here on in when you see the word 'rugby' I am talking about rugby union.

3. There are only 23 players in a game of rugby union

Sometimes I see people writing "x is number 28" and that simply does not exist. In rugby union you have 15 players on a pitch at one time (for each team), and 8 substitutions.

4. People aim for tries, not goals

Of course, goals do exist in rugby, but a try scores more. I'll explain basic scoring below. (These are rugby union scoring rules)

A try is worth 5 points. This is when a player grounds the ball over the try line (this is a white line in line with the goalpost). The team then gets a chance to kick the ball through the goalpost. If this is achieved, an extra 2 points is added. This is called a conversion or converted try.

A drop goal is worth 3 points. This is simply kicking the ball through the opponent's goalposts. This is not usually done as people go for tries instead.

A penalty kick is worth 3 points. There's some intricate stuff here, but the basic idea is if the other team commits a foul, the team gets a 'free kick' to try and score some points.

So although 'goals' are possible, they are not very common.

5. Other bits of basic play

A scrum is where the forwards of each team join together to try and gain the ball. Basically there's a lot of shoving involved.

Players with the ball can only pass it sideways or backwards. The defending team tries to tackle them to the floor, where they have to release the ball. It keeps going until a penalty occurs or one team scores a try.

A lineout is where the ball is thrown in from the sidelines. Often somebody gets lifted up into the air to catch it, and sometimes from both teams in order to try and get the ball.

As you have probably gathered, rugby is a contact sport. That means people get hurt. Injuries are common. Leg injuries occur a lot, and sometimes people can even gain a concussion from playing. This may be a good plot point when writing a fic.

6. Players and positions

Players don't wear protective gear on the whole. They wear mouthgards of course, because frankly it's a pretty dangerous sport, and some forwards choose to wear a scrum cap (see below). But no helmets, shinpads, etc.

The forwards are players 1-8, and the backs are players 9-15.

The kicker on a team can be anyone, but it is usually 10 or 12.

On the whole the heavier, taller, powerful players are the forwards. The smaller, faster players are usually the backs, especially at 11 and 14. These two numbers score most of the tries.

It is rare that forwards score tries, but it does happen when there's basically a massive pile of people by the try line and it is pure chance that they have the ball. Backs are more likely to score tries, although not number 15 as they are the player that hangs back in case the ball gets booted to the other end of the pitch. As mentioned above, 11 and 14 are the fast, nimble players as they score the most tries.

Personally, I would place John at 2. This is usually played by one of the smallest people on the pitch (I know I'm contradicting myself, but the paragraph above is generalised), and they are extremely powerful as they control the scrum. They also throw the ball into the pitch in a line out. They are arguably the most important forward player, so need a lot of confidence and nerves of steel, which suits John perfectly.

There's loads of intricate rules and other things, but I think I've covered the basics here. For a good description of what each player does, the link below is very handy.

7. Quick note on English schools and rugby

Not entirely related but this does also crop up - I see people writing about rugby matches as if the whole school turns out in a massive pitch with bleachers and the like (what you always see with American football in high school movies). That doesn't really happen in England. Of course, the rugby team would normally be very popular throughout school, but those huge matches you see in films? They don't really happen. It's more like two schools play against each other, not even always on school grounds but a local facility, and parents and mates come to watch.

Also, rugby is MUCH bigger in Wales than in England. It's still popular, of course, but the teams are sometimes local clubs rather than school teams. Of course, if you want to make it a school team go ahead, that's probably what I would do too as it makes the plot a whole lot easier!

I think I've covered all the basics here. Any questions feel free to drop an ask or message me, I'm happy to help! Also let me know if I've forgotten anything crucial, as I wouldn't put it past me.

#johnlock #bbc sherlock #sherlock #john watson #rugby union #writing #how do i tag help

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snowflake-of-destruction · 4 years ago

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Rikuroku time @twileighplants

1. How do much do I ship it?: Never heard of it/ Notp / Dislike / used to ship /

maybe/ ship it / aww / otp / IS IT CANON YET?

2. What non sexual activities do they like to do together?

Let's struuuuuggle, or, in a different world, it's still sports, playing and watching. The problem with playing is that casual leagues/groups tend to be things like baseball or frisbee, which fulfill the need for competition but aren't contact enough. They both have a little bit of bloodlust. People of The North where I assume you don't need to travel to even find an indoor ice rink: Are there amateur/casual hockey leagues for adults as well as kids? Because, if so, hockey for them. They watch anything, but get more into things like mixed martial arts and boxing. They will watch football even though they are both proponents of rugby being "better" in a lot of ways (even if they are in a country where rugby isn't played).

Riku teaches Roxas to surf and Roxas teaches Riku to skateboard. This could fall under sports, but it deserves separate space.

They also sit side by side and read, then smack the other to get their attention and tell them random facts or quote lines to each other at seemingly random times. There's also a lot of "You'll like page 104" if they are the first to read the book in question or yelling about plot points if they are the second and not worried about spoilers.

3. Who does chores around the house?

They both do, but Riku is, for once, the one more patient with mess. Roxas has learned a lot of the art of the laze, but some days he still goes crazy if there's not an immediate task to complete and so will do every small one and create more when he runs out.

4. Who’s the better cook?

Riku. Roxas would subsist on desserts, snacks, and specifically Cheetos brand mac and cheese with chunks of Velveeta and Cheese-its for crunch thrown in to make it "fancier" if allowed.

5. Who’s the funniest drunk?

Roxas. Roxas is also the one that proclaimed this. Loudly. Challenging any other drunk to be funnier than he is.

6. Do they have kids?

No, but they take being made godfathers very seriously.

7. Do they have any traditions?

Turning the favorite books from the year into paper chains/wreaths/centerpieces for the holiday season. Or should it be least favorite? Upside of using least favorite: they don't need to buy extra copies. Downside: they have to sometimes put up with people reading quotes on the decoration and asking if they are special to them.

8. What do they fight about?

Everything. Fighting is recreational. It's habit and affection. It keeps the arguing skills sharp. It's foreplay a lot of the time. Even when one is actually angry, the other is usually able to recognize and diffuse, especially since a lot of the time they are angry at something or someone not in the room and just need to vent. Real fights are rare. When they do happen, I'm going to go with Riku's protectiveness of loved ones when it comes at his own expense and any comparison to Sora being Roxas triggers. Riku triggers vary. You really never know.

9. What would they do if they found their paring tag on tumblr? (If they have one)

Argue about that too. Debate whose "fault" it is that people got the idea to ship them

10. Who cried at the end of Marley and me?

Neither. They don't cry at fiction. That's what they both claim at least and they'll never betray each other's secrets.

11. Who always wins at Mario kart?

Riku but Roxas always wins Smash Brothers

12. One thing I like about this ship?

It reminds me of a friend who named Riku and Roxas as their favorite ship during our one conversation about Kingdom Hearts and cues me to text her now.

13. One thing I don’t like about the ship?

That they will always have between them that Riku would trade Roxas for Sora or did once. I mean sometimes that's what makes it interesting, but it's still the first "problem" that came to mind.

14. The song I would say fits them?

Still don't have an answer.

15. Another headcanon about the paring? (Free space)

They keep their relationship a secret for the longest time because they are trying to manipulate a betting pool the others made

#rikuroku #riku #roxas

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thesffcorner · 6 years ago

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The Foxhole Court

You know that feeling, when you’re watching your favorite team play their rival, and they are neck in neck, and you’re on the edge of your seat, biting your nails? That’s what it feels like reading this book. The Foxhole Court is the first book in the All for the Gametrilogy written by Nora Sakavic. It follows Neil Josten, who has spent the last 8 years of his life running. When he gets scouted and forcibly recruited for the Foxes, Palmetto State’s Division I exy team, exy being the only thing he truly wants in life, he has to make a decision: stay and put up with his hostile, and dangerous teammates, or keep running and lose the only thing he’s even cared about. I don’t remember the last time I’ve had such strong, conflicting emotions about a book. This book made me angry, it made me emotional, it kept me on edge, and I loved it and hated it in equal measure. I have so much to say, so buckle up: this is going to be a long one.

Let’s start with the basics, namely: The Plot: Most of the major issues this book has, revolve around the plot. In theory, it’s rather simple: Neil is a new player on a team of underdogs and losers, with the additional adage that the Foxes are literary a type of halfway house for troubled teens. Everyone on the team seems to come from some kind of difficult background: runaways, abusive households, drug abuse, or criminal records. There is a rival school, King’s Row, which is the reigning champion, and their disgraced former champion comes to the Foxes, to help them improve enough to where they could potentially win the championship. The positive to this type of tournament arc, is that it naturally lends itself to some great character building and tension, and Sakavic takes advantage of both. The tension in this book is top notch; every major thing has excellent build up an payoff, from Neil joining the team, to him meeting the rest of the team, to their season starting, and the highlight, which is their season opener. I was invested in what happened, I wanted to know what opponents the Foxes would have, and just the tension during their season opener alone was worth the asking price for this novel. I also have to commend the pacing; this is possibly one of the best paced books I’ve ever read. Sakavic knows exactly how much time to spend on and off the court, and in between set pieces, to make the tension and intrigue last. There is tension and unease in every part of this novel, even slower lulls in between practice and matches. It’s possibly one of the best executed tournament arcs I’ve read, and we are only at the start of the season. The craft that Sakavic has over the structure and characters of this novel is truly to be commended, especially for debut author. However, there are problems, and the most obvious is: Exy: The absolute most infuriating and stupid thing about this book, is the sport it revolves around. I have so many problems with this, I don’t even know where to start. First off, exy is just intrinsically, a dumb sport. It’s basically lacrosse mixed with rugby, as if lacrosse needed to be even more violent. I remember reading somewhere online that the author invented exy because she didn’t want to learn the rules of existing sports, and she wanted the sport’s creation to be tied to crime, which… crime is present in every sport everywhere on earth. You don’t need to invent a sport for it. Second, she didn’t really invent a new sport, she just took lacrosse and tweaked some of the rules and way of play, so it has more checking. So why not just… use lacrosse? It’s already one of the most popular college sports in the US, and the pro leagues in lacrosse are already so insular. Why go through the trouble of inventing a whole new set of rules, and then having to seamlessly explain those rules, when you can just… use the rules of lacrosse? It’s not to say you can’t invent a new sport, or exy is badly made sport, just that the way it’s written on the page is so similar to the way lacrosse, that I just don’t understand the need to make it a new thing. To make matters more confusing, since we are firmly set in present day, and Sakavis has set this plot in the world of collegiate sports, we are constrained by the actual modern day rules and regulations of the NCAA, and as someone who has first hand experience with the NCAA, this drove me mad. Yes, the game is well written, and the match is exciting, but it’s very existence was such a hard pill for me to swallow, that all the positives failed short, when I couldn’t buy into the premise. In-universe, exy was invented in Japan, by two people, the main one being Coach Moriyama, a legend in the sport. How am I supposed to buy, that in the span of about 30 years, exy goes from an experiment, to a street sport, to local leagues, to a professional league, to a world league, to a college NCAA, Division I sport, and an Olympic sport? This would NEVER happen in the real world! Karate still isn’t an Olympic sport! Yes, new sports get invented, (just take a look at quidditch), and some of these sports become popular enough to have professional or semi-professional leagues. But they don’t become Olympic or NCAA sports, and certainly not in the span of a generation! Moreover, this is a co-ed sport. Let me repeat that. Exy is a FULL-CONTACT, CO-ED sport. Again, quidditch is also a full-contact, co-ed sport, but it’s also a not a D1 competitive sport. There are no professional or collegiate league in the real world that would allow for a full-contact co-ed sport, it’s just too dangerous. Can you imagine being a girl and having a 250 pound, six foot athlete do a bodycheck to you at the speed at which lacrosse or rugby players move? This wouldn’t be such a problem, if Sakavic hadn’t written in the real life NCAA, an organization so mired in controversy over its rules and regulations, and so worried about being sued, that the chance of this happening is ludicrous. I played for the NCAA; I was Division 3, but I still had to go through all the same tests, rules and guidelines. Sure, non-contact co-ed sports like mixed doubles tennis, mixed relays in swimming and athletics exist, but that’s about it; I was reading the match line up and I could not for a second suspend my disbelief. The other issue, is that there’s a really easy way around this, that would even make more in-universe sense if Sakavic wanted it to. Just make exy semi-professional/professional private league! Kind of like quidditch already is. You could still set it in college, and it being a cover for shady crime-related activities would make a lot more sense, when there’s not already a real world organization like the NCAA to govern it. Why would the Moriyamas want the NCAA involved anyway? It would be much easier and more profitable for them to run their private league where they’d have a tighter grip on all the players, coaches and teams, and then all this is significantly less insane. The Conference Switch: This is a specific plot point that drove me mad. For anyone who doesn’t know, the NCAA controls the collegiate sports in the US. The way it’s set up, is with various Conferences, most of which are region based; I played for the Skyline D3 conference, fox example. It is possible for a school to switch Conferences, but again, it’s based on region, and it’s not a swift process. West Virginia and North Carolina being in the same district? Fine. Kings Row doing a massive switch, where it switches from being undefeated in a higher tier Conference, to dropping to a weaker Conference in a matter of weeks, without any protest from any of the other schools? Bullshit. I don’t buy it for a second. Again, this could have easily been solved by just NOT USING THE NCAA AS THE SETTING FOR YOUR FAKE SPORT. Characters: Before you all yell at me, I think the characters are excellent. They are what sold this book to me, seeing as the sport itself just made me angry. I already said that Sakavic’s grip on her characters is excellent; she excels at crafting these really complex people, with lots of internal and external conflict that feels motivated and understandable, even though none of them are likable characters. However, even taking this into account, a lot of the decisions the characters make, seem completely unreasonable given their goals and the stakes involved, and it made me at various points yell in disbelief. The Foxes have 10 players, but I mostly want to focus on Andrew’s squad, or the team’s main group. It consists of Andrew, the goalie, his twin brother Aaron, their cousin Nicky, and Kevin Day, the former King’s Row player, and now this team’s star striker. Neil, our protagonist comes into conflict with this group the most, and the person I want to start with is Andrew himself. Andrew: Andrew is the most interesting character in the book, and my favorite. He’s also the worst. Let’s start with his backstory. Nicky, being Andrew’s cousin and also the only openly gay character in this book, gets attacked at a bar. Andrew beats up the attackers so severely, that he is facing jail time for a violent crime. In order to avoid that and continue playing exy, the court mandates that he is under constant sedation for 3 years. There’s… so much to unpack here. First off, even if I could believe that the court would be willing to switch out prison for medication, the likelihood of it being outpatient care is ludicrous. The way Andrew’s condition is described, seems to imply that he’s given antidepressants therapy to suppress his psychopathic tendencies, which a) is largely ineffective and b) would require more than just weekly meetings with the college psychiatrist. He would have to see a parole officer, a social worker, get a tag, or at least have some type of constant supervision, which he at no point has. Most importantly, there is no way he would be allowed to continue to play a violent, full-contact sport for the college’s D1 team! Andrew isn’t a superstar quarterback with Kardashian as his lawyer; he’s been in foster care for years, and he’s a college student who could grievously injure someone even under constant sedation! I refuse to believe, that the NCAA, the same NCAA which makes you sit through needless mandatory lectures on concussions, would ever allow a person like Andrew anywhere near the court! To make matters worse, the fact that Coach Wymack knows what Andrew’s condition is, and lets him play UNMEDICATED, is beyond irresponsible and crosses the line into outright negligent! Even sedated Andrew is violent; at various points in the book he: slams a racket into Neil, punches people when they touch him, pulls a knife on Nicky, shows no sympathy or remorse for his actions, and he does most of this, while medicated. No coach would EVER allow Andrew to play unmedicated (let alone be on the team, even if he was a master player) if he cared even a little about his players, and let me remind you, Coach Wymack is presented as a tough but caring, positive adult! Outside of this, there are other issues with Andrew. His violence is understandable, but it doesn’t excuse the horrible shit he does to the other characters, and he never faces any consequences. It’s heavily implied he bullied the former striker sub into attempting suicide; his little ‘weekend party’ leaves a teammate under psychiatric care for weeks; he forcibly drugs and assaults Neil into revealing things to him, and kidnaps him and isolates him from the rest of the team. And Coach Wymack knows all this, and looks the other way! There’s also a lot of weird subtext with lots of the characters, but again, Andrew is the most overt example. There’s a lot of talk of Nicky and Kevin belonging to him, he owns Kevin, he wants to own Neil. Kevin to asks Neil to give himself to Kevin, Coach Wymack owns Neil and Kevin… it’s just a really strange thing to focus on, because… it’s just sports. With Andrew, his ownership is never contradicted, never stopped; he is left completely unchecked, and unhinged, and the destruction he does on his path, in any other book would make him an outright villain. While I don’t like that Neil constantly refers to him as “a psychotic midget”, at least half of that statement is entirely correct; Andrew is psychotic, and he gets away with things villains in other books don’t. Neil: I don’t want you to think that I was only annoyed by Andrew; Neil makes more than his fair share of bad decisions and enables a lot of Andrew’s behavior. First though, I have to say that Neil is an excellent character. He is one of the most spirited, distinct and proactive protagonists I’ve read from. Very often authors will say that a character is ‘observant’ or ‘smart’, but often these end up being informed traits. Neil is a survivor, and truly observant and clever; he immediately sees through Andrew’s deception at the airport, he immediately realizes when someone breaks into his room and guesses who, he knows how to read people, who to win over and who to avoid. He acts like someone who has had his life would; there’s so much attention to detail with him, from the clothes he wears, to his haircut, to the way he acts around adult men. I really liked the half-lie he tells Andrew to placate him, and how proactive he was. He doesn’t wait for things; he makes a plan and executes it. He is the only one to stand up to Andrew, he even stands up to Riko on national television. That whole talk show scene was utterly ridiculous, but I enjoyed that Neil didn’t back down, even though he had both the chance and every reason to do so. He’s a contradiction that makes sense; who he is as a person actively clashes with who he has to pretend to be in order to survive, and that was very well presented. He still does some dumb shit, though. I know that Neil has to stay on the team; otherwise we wouldn’t have a book. But his decision to stay makes no sense given his backstory. He may want exy, but he literary can’t have it, if he wants to survive. Picking a fight with Riko Moriyama on national television makes no sense; it’s actively making surviving harder for him, to put himself in the limelight. Trusting Andrew with his life is a dubious decision at best; why does everyone think Andrew can protect them? He’s still a LITERAL child. Even if he had a black belt in 4 fighting styles, he’s still just one person. Also if Andrew put me through anything remotely like what he does to Neil, trusting him would be the last thing I do, sexual tension and exy be damned. Some Scattered Thoughts: I really loved the chapter where Neil and Kevin go through the inner court at the start of their season opener. The way the atmosphere and the court is described was so well done, it reminded me of being at live matches. It was such a well done part. I also loved the scene we get between Matt, Seth and Neil; I thought this simple humanizing moment for Seth was exactly what we needed, considering what happens later, and it was just a really good scene. I related to a lot to Seth’s conflicting jealousy and hatred for Kevin and his love for the game and knowledge that Kevin is just that good as a player. Unpopular opinion, but in that brief moment I found him a more interesting character than Kevin in all of this book. Kevin was kind of a dull presence. His genuine panic at seeing Riko and his reticence to tell Andrew about the Conference change were fine, but there’s just not enough personality for me to grasp on and care. He’s almost like a mcguffin that everyone wants/wants to possess, but he has no real character. He’s dedicated to the game, cruel to his teammates, twice as hard on himself, a prodigy, but these are things that have to do with exy. Outside of that, I don’t know who Kevin Day is, and if this book is going where I think it’s going, then he’s not the romance I’m rooting for. Also I have never heard of D1 athletes staying in college for 5 years. I don’t think that was an accurate thing, but given everything else that’s wrong with the exy plot, it’s a minor minor pet peeve in comparison. Conclusion: I think it’s pretty clear I’m conflicted on this book. There is lots of good here, but there is so, so much bad. If you can swallow the premise, and you are not as well versed in the American collegiate sports scene as I am, I feel like you will like this book a lot more. I heard it described as a CW drama in book form, and that’s exactly what it is; needless to say, I will be reading the rest of the series.

goodreads

#foxhole court #foxhole court review #moni talks #book review

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tsaritsa · 7 years ago

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against the run of play

hi @yanumii i was ur secret santa this year!!!! u asked for fic, a modern au, and royai: so i went a bit crazy and wrote a 7k multimedia fic extravaganza. i hope u enjoy it, and that u have a safe holiday period into 2k18!!!

you can also read on ao3

“Riza Hawkeye,” she lifted her glass in greeting.

He inclined his head in return and took the chair next to her. “Roy Mustang. What brings you to a charity gig this evening?”

(In which Roy Mustang is a national rugby hero and falls in love with neurotrauma specialist Riza Hawkeye as soon as he lays eyes on her).

He’s been seen out and about in Briggs with internationally-ranked ice-skater Olivier Armstrong, 36.

But rugby royalty Roy Mustang, 28, stepped out solo for his trip to East City last week, and tried to go incognito as he arrived at Bardowick-Lyles station late Thursday afternoon.

The captain of the Drakes cut a casual look with oversized black shades as he tried to dodge the prying eyes of the afternoon commuters.

Braving the cold in a black winter coat with pearl buttons, Mustang kept it cosy in a light blue jumper and worn black jeans.

He matched his elegant coat with midnight Tom Ford boots, emblazoned with a bold red strap over the foot.

He stylishly pulled the look together with a tan messenger bag with statement buckle to give off a touch of glamour.

The sighting comes after a report from the Central Star that the rugby superstar is getting serious with ice-skater Olivier Armstrong, who has just come back from the competition circuit in Drachma. Though there have been no photos of the two together, several sources have reported on their dates.

Olivier attended his last home game in East City last November. And Mustang headed to Briggs with her where they were both spotted enjoying the sights at Lake Yastreb, well-known in the region for its picturesque views and opportunities to skate on the lake itself.

'Roy and Olivier are definitely dating,' a source tells Central Star. 'They’ve gotten to know each other really well and are very comfortable from one another.

'Olivier sends Roy music to get his opinion on what she should choreograph her pieces to. It’s more than just a fling.' 'They’ve been dating since early autumn and spend most nights hanging out at his holiday home in northern Central and laying low,' another source told the Central Star.

'His friends already love her and see how happy she makes him,' it was claimed.

The Drakes face off against Creta this Saturday at the Eastern ‘Cake Tin’ Stadium, in which punters are expecting the professional debut of newly-signed scrum-half, Edward Elric.

Roy Mustang is supposedly single!

While it was previously reported the Rugby Union star was ‘casually dating’ the pretty figure skater Olivier Armstrong, he says he's not worrying about his love life for now (though he did not outright deny that he and Olivier have been seeing!)

He told The Bell:

"It's not that I'm not pursuing love in some sense, but I'm just focusing on the team right now. We have some really exciting games coming up against the new Creta lineup and training has been non-stop. The spare time that I do have, I want it to be fun and casual and light and easy-going."

Well, there's nothing wrong with fun and casual!

Anyway, Roy isn't worrying about being in a serious relationship at the moment, but maybe some time in the future:

"I'm sure there will come a time when I'm ready to make a more serious commitment and be in a relationship like that – one where I can really focus my time on someone else – but I'm thrilled to be able to keep things simple at the moment."

And for now he's focusing on his fellow teammate (and self-proclaimed best friend) Maes Hughes' happiness in his engagement to Gracia Barker:

"I was really excited and anxious to hear from Maes on the day that I knew he was going to pop the question. When I finally did, it was just the best. I think they’ve found their other half in each other and it's wonderful to see them so happy. It's rare in a lot of cases and when you see it happen it brings you an overwhelming sense of joy."

Aww!

Roy can live vicariously through them AND still enjoy the single life!

Riza huffed as she adjusted the dress she wore, cursing under her breath as she shot a pained smile towards her grandfather across the dance floor. She understood that the job her grandfather had – as the leader of their country – was important, but he made it very hard for her to appreciate his role when he forced her to attend these soirées as his informal date. You’ll meet plenty of men this way, he had cajoled her, eyes twinkling.

Of course, it didn’t matter to Führer George Grumman the III that his only grandchild had no current plans to meet a man and settle down – she was having plenty of fun focusing on her job as a doctor in a small borough just an hour out of Central City. It was challenging work, as well as rewarding, and it frustrated Riza to no end that her grandfather refused to see her as she was, rather than as someone she could potentially become.

She would, however, give him credit for the dress she was trying to wrestle with discreetly as she could manage. Despite the awkward way she felt it sat on her body, she would admit that she looked damn good in it. It was one of the more scandalous-worthy dresses on show tonight – she had been approached by an up-and-coming designer who knew her through a co-worker that worked on the surgery side of head trauma (she thought it was funny how small the world could be at times) – and the designer had arrived last week with this hip-hugging, gossamer affair. Truthfully, the dress actually stopped at the top of her thighs: the rest was a delicate gauze embellished with floral appliqués that accented the long length of her thighs and calves. It was a bold choice that Riza knew had some of the high society girls fuming – technically she hadn’t broken the dress code, but she knew she was walking on a very thin line between looking chic and modern and looking downright scandalous.

Whatever. If she had to be dragged to be paraded around on her grandfather’s arm, at least she could look stunning while doing it.

Tonight was a charity event – these were par for the course for her. The causes were almost always something she could easily support, and the press tended to be minimal (and generally only the legitimate forms of press would even turn up to these sorts of events).

Unfortunately for Riza, this particular charity event was something she was struggling to find an ounce of support for. It didn’t help that their supporters and partners had hadn’t really given much thought to the security of the whole event. Gate crashers kept seeming to wriggle their way in, and the few men on duty had their hands full trying to ensure than nobody was unduly accosted.

It was just her luck that the entire Drakes team had been invited to attend, and with them, every person with a smartphone and a nametag saying, ‘Hello I’m an invasive journalist’ had turned up to report (intrusively investigate, a little voice in the back of her head whispered).

The main speeches that had practically bordered on self-congratulation had already been done (thank god), and the dinner had been alright (the only saving grace). The mingling afterwards was what she didn’t enjoy, but it was barely ten o’clock yet and she had promised her grandfather that she would stay until at least half past. This event had been sponsored by the national rugby board, celebrating the commencement of a new initiative that would see coaches and equipment being deployed to the poorer regions of the country. If her grandfather was considered the head of this nation, rugby was undoubtedly the heart. And the lungs. And the kidneys. And any other vital organ in the body. Amestris without rugby was…well, a country of little international standing and an awful lot of sheep per capita.

It was in their blood, or so the saying went. Everyone either played or watched the national sport. There was never any discussion about disliking rugby: naturally, that never factored into the equation at all. Riza could remember playing it as a young child – even the other sports made available at her school all paled in comparison to the funding and exposure that rugby got.

Her grandfather knew she wasn’t the biggest fan of rugby – being a neurotrauma specialist meant she often dealt with people suffering from concussions and other injuries that were common in the sport: so spending an evening with the people who actively ignored any warnings she and her colleagues put out about the inherent dangers of such an oft-contact sport was just peachy.

Also, Roy Mustang was here. Riza didn’t have anything against the man personally; she was just sick of seeing his name and face plastered across her newspapers, social media feed, christ – even her bread wasn’t safe from his smarmy expression, endorsing her use of wholegrains and encouraging her to learn more at playrugby.co.am

The overexposure of such a man was to be expected, she supposed. He was the captain of the Drakes – the national rugby team, and played in the local league for the East Eagles. Alongside Hughes, Armstrong (the male one, his older sister did figure-skating and was reputed to be as cold as the ice she worked on) and the up-and-coming Elric Brothers, the national team was formidable, to say the least – and that was only the names that she could remember off the top of her head. The Drakes were currently ranked number one in the world, and for good reason. She’d give him this, Mustang was talented – after years of embarrassing defeats and almost-wins against Creta (their arch rivals), Mustang had swanned onto the scene and essentially rebuilt the team from the ground up. The drinking and bashing tabloids went away, the team practically became good at rugby overnight, and the country’s morale was at an all-time high.

Mustang had given the country something to be proud of, and that in turn made the country better for it.

She spied him across the room, talking with her grandfather and other men in suits. George was a big fan of the rugby, and Riza knew her grandfather would certainly be enjoying himself tonight, surrounded by plenty of players to natter off to. She remembered that he used to play when he was haler and heartier: tonight would probably be the highlight of his social engagement calendar for this season.

It was rather funny to watch the man try to extract himself from what looked to be a very one-sided conversation with her grandfather – Riza was well-versed in various modes of escape from him once he got into an animated discussion, but in this case Mustang seemed to be at her grandfather’s mercy. Eventually another team member had wandered over and she saw him quickly duck his way out, skirting the edges of the ballroom.

“I see you’ve met the ‘real’ Führer,” she called out to him as he passed her table. He turned back to look at her, confused.

She smiled kindly at him and his face lit up in understanding. “You saw that, then?”

“It’s been fun watching everyone realise what they’ve gotten themselves into. You did remarkably well.”

She poured herself another flute of sparkling wine and raised her eyebrows at her companion.

“Riza Hawkeye,” she lifted her glass in greeting.

He inclined his head in return and took the chair next to her. “Roy Mustang. What brings you to a charity gig this evening?”

“I’m here as my grandfather’s date,” she replied. It was the truth, after all. But with men like Mustang, she relied on their own fame and notoriety to eclipse hers. There had been no spark of recognition at her first name (which usually gave it away). It was refreshing to be a simple civilian, talking to another, slightly more (okay, extremely well-known) civilian. Besides, she was interested in seeing how he was off the field, and out of the press scrum after every game. He had always presented himself as polite and engaged – but here, amongst his peers, Riza would have an opportunity to see the real man.

“That’s very kind of you,” he said politely, fiddling with the stem of his glass. “Is he involved with the board?”

“Not quite,” she hedged, ducking her head. “To be honest he’s not a very important person in the scheme of it all, not here certainly. Not like you, however.” A teasing smile pulled at her lips. “You’re the man of the hour.”

Roy sighed, shifting in his chair to see her properly. “It’s a good venture.”

“I never said it wasn’t,” Riza said coolly. “But you don’t look like you’re having fun, despite all the attention.”

Roy folded his arms over his chest and Riza tried to ignore how his dress shirt pulled in all the right places. “You don’t sound like you’re having much fun either.”

“Why would I? Your board never listens to me: being stuck in a room with them is not my idea of a good Thursday night.”

He paused, frowning. “What do you mean about the board?”

Perhaps it was the all the wine she had drunk throughout the night (well, something needed to get her through their inane speeches); perhaps it was the fact that she would be able to give Mustang the slip in just under ten minutes; perhaps Riza had the slim hope that maybe he would listen to her, even if nobody else would.

The words spilled out of her before she could think to what impact they might have. “I’m a neurotrauma specialist. I’ve written entire books on how a blow to the head affects your cognitive function later on in life. Your board seems to think their players are immune to those effects.”

His eyes bugged a little out of his head and Riza allowed herself a small smirk. It wasn’t an attack on him directly – hell, he would probably be one of the worst-off players considering how long he’d been playing for the Drakes now – but there was something perversely fun about educating the star of rugby about its inherent failings and dangers.

“I mean-” he was struggling for words here, moving forward in his seat. “I’d heard the rumours but – surely they would listen, at the very least?”

Riza shrugged, finishing off her glass. “You tell me. Every paper I send them – internationally peer-reviewed, mind you – is quickly ignored. They don’t want the proof that the current form of the game is slowly killing their star players.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Maybe you’ll have more luck with them than I do. I mean the game no disrespect, but with how it’s embedded into our day-today-lives-” she waved an arm around for emphasis. “It’s not just retired players and people with over twenty concussions. I’m getting children in now because they’ve have a hard knock and it’s screwed them up. There’s absolutely no focus on safety, just on how manly it is. And a gala like this? It’s only going to exacerbate the problem.”

He had grown quiet, looking at something over her shoulder with apprehension.

“I heard from your grandfather that you had come along with him tonight, but I never imagined you would be so rude as to spread lies when you’re here as our guest,” an oily voice said from behind her.

“Chairman Raven,” Roy said carefully, moving out of his chair and shaking the older man’s hand.

Riza stood up to, and made a point of extending her hand towards the man as well. His cologne was overpowering as he gripped her hand with more force than necessary, she could feel it settling onto her skin like the sardines her grandfather liked to eat for lunch. Everything about him screamed money and power.

“It’s hardly a lie, I’m afraid,” she replied coolly, enjoying how his gaze hardened. “I have nearly eight years’ worth of data now. Every year you ignore me I just add to my statistics some more.”

“Chairman, I think it might be worth looking into this,” Roy said earnestly, and Riza felt a rush of affection for him as he stood next to her, their shoulders barely brushing. “I saw Basque only just last week and he had been telling me-”

“A conversation for another time, I think,” Raven said pointedly, still looking at Riza with barely contained distaste. “You’ll have to forgive Mr. Mustang: he sees a pretty face and simply loses all common sense.”

Riza felt the smile freeze on her face. Roy had grown very still next to her, and she willed for him to say something – anything. The silence stretched on, and Raven’s lewd smile grew.

“I think we should give Mr. Mustang more credit than that,” she said eventually, tasting bile on her tongue. “At least he doesn’t judge at first glance.”

“Because there’s so much to judge the granddaughter of the Führer on, isn’t there?” Raven inclined his head at the two of them. “It was nice talking to you again, Miss Hawkeye.”

“Doctor Hawkeye,” she ground out.

Raven laughed loudly. “Of course, silly me. Doctor Hawkeye.”

Roy turned on her as soon as the older man was out of earshot; Riza let go of a breath she didn’t realise she was still holding onto.

“You’re George’s granddaughter?”

“Yes,” she said distractedly, checking her watch for the time. “My grandmother doesn’t have the patience for these sorts of things, so I come along instead.”

“His granddaughter-”

“I need a drink,” she said tiredly, finally looking up at him. His mouth was gaping open inelegantly and she smiled softly, placing her fingers on his underside of his chin to close his mouth gently. “Would you care to join me? I find Chairman Raven robs me of all energy.” Her fingers lingered on his jaw for a moment, savouring the heat of his skin against her own.

He stared at her, confused, before nodding and offering her his arm. “I know a good bar a few blocks from here,” he said lightly.

“You read my mind, Mr Mustang. Lead the way.”

She woke with a start, and immediately wished she hadn’t moved so quickly. The room swam; her vision swam; her head swam.

Riza had the worst hangover in living memory. Her legs were wrapped awkwardly around a sheet and she struggled for a few moments before flopping back onto the bed, breathing deeply and trying her best not to hurl onto the ground.

How much did I drink last night? Her head was throbbing painfully now, and she realised with growing dread that she didn’t recognise where she was.

She also wasn’t wearing anything.

FuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckityfuckfuckFUCK.

Another wave of nausea passed over her and she rolled onto her side, blearily opening her eyes to figure out exactly where she had ended up. The room was familiar – maybe one of the hotels in the CBD? The room was pretty basic in its setup, but the furniture spoke of moderate wealth. Riza sat up slowly, not caring how the bedsheet fell and pooled around her hips. She could spy her dress crumpled up on the floor, and her shoes kicked off on the sofa.

How in the fuck am I going to get out of this?

She heard movements to her left, and watched with horror as Roy Mustang’s head emerged from beneath the other half of the bedsheet, like the birth of the world’s most hungover butterfly. He blinked slowly up at her, his mouth opening and shutting.

“Where did your dress go?” he asked, puzzled. Riza shrieked, quickly grabbing the sheet back up.

“God, not so loud I beg you-”

“What the fuck happened last night-”

“Did we-?”

“I think we-”

“Christ, I would never mean to take advantage of you like that, I’m so sorry-”

She held up a hand and took a deep breath. “We were both obviously drunk – it’s – it’s not ideal. But it’s alright, it – this shit happens.” She gripped the bedsheet tightly against her chest.

He curled around a pillow and looked at her with an expression she couldn’t be bothered to figure out. “I’m glad it was you,” he said honestly, wincing at how tactless he sounded. “I mean – you know, people throwing themselves at you for your fame?”

“Yeah…” she nodded her head uncertainly. “I-”

“ROY!” A voice boomed from outside, the two of them tensed, and looked at each other warily.

“Fuck, it’s Maes,” he whispered harshly, running a hand through his hair – if it was his bedhead before, Riza didn’t know what to call whatever the mess was now on top of his head. He pushed himself off the bed and puttered around the bed; Riza found it hard to tear her eyes away from his body. Yes, she knew he was fit but – it was different seeing it in the flesh.

“You won’t want to wear that out,” he said, gesturing to her dress on the floor while shimmying on his boxer shorts. “I think I have some spare clothes you can borrow.”

“It’ll be fine-”

“Dressed to the nines?” He laughed and shook his head. “We’ve got press with us at the moment – they might be sport-focused, but I’ll wager they’ll be quicker to pick up on who you are than I was.”

She bit her lip: he had a point, despite her apprehension. Of course the media would be here – it was a bloody miracle that Roy had taken them to a little bar off a side street where nobody seemed to care who they were.

The knocking on the door was becoming more insistent. “ROY WAKE THE FUCK UP YOU LAZY SON OF A-”

“I’M COMING, MAES!” He yelled back, throwing her a wrinkled t-shirt and shorts; she quickly put them on. They were a loose fit, but it would have to do, at least until she could hail an uber to take her home. He ducked into the bathroom, she could hear the taps running at full tilt.

She was just bending down to pick up her wallet when the door suddenly flew open and Maes walked in, looking harried and ready to draw blood.

“Roy, I swear on my grave you are gonna get it-”

He stopped as he saw Riza crouching by the side of the bed.

“Oh shit, Roy. What have you done?”

Roy walked out the bathroom, scrubbing at his face with a washcloth. His shoulders slumped as he saw his best friend, and he walked over to where Riza was standing, frozen like a deer in the headlights. “Look, I’ll-”

“It’s fine,” she whispered lowly, very aware of how this must look to the deputy captain: here was the Führer’s granddaughter dressed in his best friend’s clothing and looking thoroughly shagged. “I’ll go, and you can – can deal with whatever is going on-”

“Riza-”

She placed her free palm against his chest and breathed in deeply. “It’s fine-”

He dipped his head and kissed her chastely on the mouth, a little part of her melted at the fact that despite his being needed elsewhere, he was still here, with her. His fingers curled against the side of her face and she tried her best not to see too much into this: he was just being a gentleman and –

“Roy this can’t wait-”

He ripped his lips from hers and breathed deeply, resting his forehead against her own.

“I swear-”

She nodded, trying her best not to let her emotions get the better of her. “Maybe we’ll – later.”

“Later,” he breathed, kissing her forehead lightly before picking up her shoes and handing them to her. “Take the stairwell, it’ll lead you to the back entrance and away from the main road.”

Maes was quiet as he watched her gather her purse and slip out of the room. “You didn’t answer your phone,” he explained, handing his own over. The local news site was loaded, and Roy sucked in a breath as he read the headline.

BREAKING: ZOLF J. KIMBLEE FOUND GUILTY OF DOPING DRAKES ON BEHALF OF DRACHMAN BEARS. MORE TO FOLLOW.

“Christ,” Roy muttered, skimming the article before handing the phone back to Maes, quickly putting on his team jacket. “Of course it was Kimblee.”

Maes shrugged. “We all knew something was coming. What I’m more interested in is-”

“Absolutely not.” His voice brokered no argument and Maes deflated a little. “It’s not – we’ve got more important things to worry about right now.”

“Is she just a one-off or-?”

Roy rubbed his eyes roughly, sighing. “For fucks sake, you know me better than that. Later mate, when I’m not hungover.”

Maes slung his arm around Roy’s shoulders, and coaxed him down the hall towards the elevator. “I’ll hold you to that. Anyway, Kimblee was found with the drugs in his room, and his phone’s been confiscated by the police. All you need to do is look solemn and refuse to answer any questions.”

“That should be easy.”

UNKNOWN NUMBER, 5:28pm when did u manage to put ur number into my phone

elizabeth, 5:31pm Sorry, who is this?

UNKNOWN NUMBER, 5:32pm man this is embarrassing UNKNOWN NUMBER, 5:32pm it’s roy UNKNOWN NUMBER, 5:32pm y’know UNKNOWN NUMBER, 5:33pm the dude u marked to hell and back UNKNOWN NUMBER, 5:33pm i had to fend off so many questions from maes about u

elizabeth, 5:34pm Oh shit elizabeth, 5:36pm Thank you for sending back my dress. I owe you

concussion boy, 5:37pm go out to lunch with me tomorrow and i’ll call it even

elizabeth, 5:39pm They said you were slick on the field

concussion boy, 5:40pm meet u at the café on the corner of elm and lyles? 12ish?

elizabeth, 5:44pm I’ve got a meeting at 1pm back at the hospital so it’ll have to be a short lunch

Looks like Roy Mustang scores on AND off the field!

On Saturday, the Drakes star was snapped out and about with the gorgeous First Granddaughter Riza Hawkeye, and it seems like these two had quite a ball on their lunch date!

The precious pair hit up Il Pomadoro in the Carlston borough of Western Central, and they were totally getting their flirt on after the meal!

The accomplished neurosurgeon and the captain of the Drakes were caught on camera smiling and laughing, and Riza even tried to grab for something in the athlete's hands!

And close sources say this isn't just a hit-it-and-quit-it date! Insiders say that these two are, in fact, dating, but it's still very new, which is why they're trying to keep it on the down-low.

For example, when the sports star was asked about being spotted on the outing later that week, he responded by saying:

"I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about."

Playing coy, Mr. Mustang?!

We appreciate the effort, but those snaps are pretty telling!

[Images courtesy of Lily Marrell.]

Things are heating up between Roy Mustang and Riza Hawkeye in the cold winter weather… literally!

On Tuesday night, the blonde beauty and the charismatic captain were spotted hanging out together once again! The stars were caught on camera at a Starbucks near Mount Kahma, about five hours north of New Optain.

Since the cosy ski resort is probably one of the few places in the Eastern District that actually gets cold, the precious pair was most likely trying to get their body heat rising… with some coffee! LOL get your mind out of the gutter!

The romance rumours surrounding these two have been in a flurry ever since the pair were spotted talking at a charity ball sponsored by the National Rugby Union. Miss Hawkeye, a talented neurotrauma specialist at Central General had apparently charmed the Drakes Captain with not just her enviable fashion sense, but her brain as well. Sources say that Roy was smitten with her from the very beginning, while Riza took a little time to warm up to the fly-half.

Do you think the relationship between this dynamic duo is more than platonic? Or are Roy and Riza just friends? This girl hopes that Roy Mustang isn’t off the bachelor market just yet!

[Image courtesy of Lorne Yoki.]

It’s heartbreak on top of heartbreak for Olivier Armstrong, 36, and Roy Mustang, 28, and sources claim to The Daily Star that Roy has betrayed Olivier by seeing another woman for the past five months. ‘Roy finally admitted to Olivier that he had fallen in love with another woman! They had to hide their feelings, but they’ve been seeing each other on the sly whenever they could over the last five months,’ an insider reveals. ‘Their friendship turned into something more as time went on.’ OMG!

So who is this alleged mystery woman? None other than the granddaughter of the Führer, Riza Hawkeye. ‘She’s a neurotrauma specialist, and often attends charity events as a date to her grandfather,’ the source adds. Sounds like they run in the same circles. ‘As such, they had crossed paths at numerous events, both in Amestris and abroad, for some time,’ the insider reveals. ‘She’s classically beautiful and was educated in Creta, as well as here at Central U — and the attraction between her and Roy was immediate!’ Whoa, sounds pretty serious.

Miss Hawkeye has been described as somewhat of a gold-digger in certain circles – she was largely left out of the public eye as George Grumman soared to power in the election of ’19, and the insider reveals that there’s talk amongst those closest to the rugby star that she’s after a ring to solidify her social standing amongst the WAG’s of the Drakes. ‘She grew up in a very poor household until her grandfather took her under his wing, so she’s very hungry for any kind of power. We honestly can’t see what he sees in her.’

Of course, Roy had to eventually tell Olivier about his secret love. ‘Roy finally came clean to Olivier about his new woman just a few days before her Grand Prix competition at North City,’ the insider says, referring to that dramatic and shocking exit by Olivier in the semi-finals. ‘At first Olivier was stunned — and certainly blindsided — by Roy’s confession. But then she got furious. It wasn’t pretty,’ the source shares. We can only imagine. Olivier is considered one of the strongest skaters in the world – she must have truly been heartbroken to be affected like this.

Perhaps Riza will see her true influence now – not as a doctor saving lives, but as one ruining them too.

concussion boy, 2:31pm i know u saw the daily star article. rebecca dm’ed me. concussion boy, 2:31pm u can’t just keep ignoring me concussion boy, 2:32pm we need to talk about this

elizabeth, 2:26pm there’s nothing to talk about

concussion boy, 2:27pm i’ll make sure i get a concussion next match unless we talk concussion boy, 2:27pm u know i will concussion boy, 2:28pm and then u will have to treat me and be a professional while i ogle u concussion boy, 2:29pm har har

“You never thought to tell me it was a PR relationship?”

“It didn’t seem – I mean, if you had met Olivier-”

Riza let out a shriek of frustration. “But I haven’t, Roy. I don’t move in the same circles as you! Was it her? Did she tell them to write this?”

Roy held up his hands in defeat. “No, she wouldn’t. She doesn’t get revenge that way. I just – I know our lives have been busy! Between you, and getting the team through this fucking doping scandal-”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Because I’m such a hassle, aren’t I? You know that’s not what I meant. It’s not like I’m deciding to date the next guy I meet in the bakery – you’re Roy Mustang! Every man, woman and unborn child knows who you are. It was foolish to think that we’d be able to keep it quiet for any length of time, you’ve always got media after you-”

Roy snorted, shaking his head. “And you’re the Führer’s granddaughter, who is known in the public eye-”

“Because he asks me!” She wrung her hands, trying her best not to get upset. “He always gives me the option to say no! You never asked me if this is what I wanted, you just took me out on a date and hoped like mad the press wouldn’t catch wind-”

“Didn’t stop you from fucking me in the hotel.”

She stood there, mouth open and gaping like a fish. “That’s not – you can’t just – we-”

He laughed humourlessly, a pale imitation of a smile on his face. “Right. I see how it is. You’re allowed to hang that over my head for as much as you care to do, but as soon as I try to make a point you won’t even fucking listen. Are you sure that it’s me who’s has the multiple head injuries?” It was an a needlessly cruel jab and part of Roy regretted it the moment it left his mouth. His idea of a ‘mild press day’ was probably far beyond whatever she had experienced – but still –

She sat down on the sofa, her head in her hands. Her shoulders were trembling. “Don’t,” she said forcefully when he went to sit next to her, her arm flung out in a final stand.

There was an ugly silence as Roy stood there, hand hovering in the space where her own was being held. She swallowed what sounded like a sob before she raised her head and tucked her arms against her body, blinking her watery eyes.

“Never use my job against me again,” she said coldly, before shifting on the sofa, inclining her head slightly. He sat down, and she sighed, resting her head against his shoulder.

“You’re used to the press,” her hand found his and she laced her fingers with his tightly. “You’re used to how they write about you, how they-”

“But-”

“Please let me finish, Roy.” Her voice was firm, but tired. “You have an entire team of people who coach you in how to deal with the media; that same team protects you from the worst of it. I don’t have that luxury. Being the granddaughter of the Führer means that people are aware of me, yes – but I’m no more than a line in an article; perhaps included in a single society photo with my grandfather because he wants one of the two of us. No more than that.” She paused, and shifted against him.

“I have complete strangers approaching me at my work. Making up fake head injuries so I’ll see them – taking up a spot that could be used by somebody who actually needs the medical attention. The girlfriend of Roy Mustang.” Riza laughed bitterly. “It’s like I’m in zoo or something. Back when people saw me for who my grandfather was, not for my own achievements. I worked hard to get to where I am today – to be reduced in such a way, it’s–”

She sighed heavily. “This is the reality I’m living with. Please understand that.”

Roy nodded slowly, squeezing her hand lightly. “I didn’t consider,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry I put you in that position.”

She lifted their joined hands and kissed his knuckles delicately. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you when it happened. I just…I thought I could deal with it. They’re only articles.”

“And you’re just a person,” Roy soothed. “A brilliant, smart, and kind person-” she laughed shakily, “-but a person nonetheless. I’ll see what I can do about the tabloids. They weren’t this harsh on Gracia.”

dickhead bf, 09:28am sorry to inform u but i’m breaking up with u dickhead bf, 09:29am i know this will be hard for u dickhead bf, 09:29am i'll send some flowers so the world knows i’m a gentleman

ice monster, 09:40am fuck off ice monster, 09:40am i’ve seen the articles. is she staying for longer than 2 months?

dickhead bf, 09:48am har bloody har. she just doesn’t want any press cooking up a story we all know to be fake dickhead bf, 09:50am they haven’t been kind to her

ice monster, 09:52am cry me a river mustang. she knows what’s she’s getting into right? fuhrer’s grandkid and all that ice monster, 09:54am seriously tho, congrats. didn't think there was anybody who could deal with ur arse 24/7. wish her luck from me

dickhead bf, 09:55am you’d probably like her. doesn't put up with any of my shit and makes me ring my mum once a week

ice monster, 09:56am real wife material there ice monster, 10:11am oh ffs DO NOT propose to her yet otherwise i’ll get stuck with ur press cycle again. ur meant to make me look GOOD

dickhead bf, 10:28am i know. say hi to jon for me

Olivier Armstrong may have a new man her life!

On Monday, it was reported by The Standard that the renowned figure skater has been spending time with Jonathon Buccaneer for the last few weeks. AH-Mazing!

However, the 32-year-old's family have declined to comment on her possibly changed #RelationshipStatus. Well, that's not a no!

According to the paper, the twosome went on a romantic getaway together to Beaumont, Western District where they supposedly went on scenic hikes into the mountains and basked in the sunshine. Too cute!

Still, we have to wonder, who exactly is this mystery beau?? Ch-ch-check out these five fast facts on Olivier’s (possible) new squeeze!

Mr. Buccaneer has an automail arm: Apparently, he has a variety of different get-ups for different jobs. It’s unknown how he lost it, and no sources close to the man have offered up any hints. We can’t imagine how he lost it, what with working in the military and all…

He has NOTHING to do with professional sports: Surprisingly, Olivier is dating a normal guy who works at as a military analyst for the Briggs outpost for the military. Mind blown!

Olivier’s rumoured BF is SUPER smart: The 35-year-old is said to have gone to not one, but TWO ranked universities. Yep, Jon went to the University of Amestris for his undergraduate education and also attended Briggs Military Academy. Remember, the blonde beauty graduated from Central U herself!

This possible boyfriend is ALSO a fan of nature: Reportedly, his now private Instagram account showed a series of pics of Jon being in the great outdoors, hiking, and camping in the Northern Ranges. Colour us impressed!

Jon may be exactly what Olivier needs to finally move on from her supposed ex: the athlete was said to be heartbroken following the news that rugby player Roy Mustang had given her the slip and moved onto the granddaughter of the Führer, Riza Hawkeye.

Maybe now Olivier feels ready to be happy with someone new. Is that someone Jon?

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Rebecca asked worriedly, glancing around the now deserted gangway of the stadium: the cheers were muffled, but still echoed hollowly against the cool concrete. “Like follow your heart and all that shit but it’s not gonna be a decision you can just turn your back on-”

“I know ‘Becca,” Riza replied quietly, toying with the shirt in her hands: the deep blue fabric slid easily over her fingers, the flecks of silver embroidery glinted back at her merrily. “But…I’ve got to meet him halfway, don’t I?”

Rebecca snorted. “This is more than halfway. Halfway is following his actual twitter handle instead of the spoof one – you do know it’s a spoof right? It’s important to me that you know it’s a spoof account-” Riza didn’t respond, watching one of the nearby television screens with interest as the Drakes began to run out onto the field.

Rebecca’s cheeks puffed out as she waved a hand in front of her friend’s dazed face. “This is like…eighty-five percent from you and only fifteen from him. He’s playing a game anyway – he’s not gonna see you until the second half at least with where we’re sitting!”

“That’s the point, ‘Becca. I do not want to be blamed for his fucking up of a conversion.”

Rebecca sighed dramatically, rolling her eyes. “It’s Drachma, Riza. They’re not gonna lose.”

“And I am not going to take any chances,” Riza replied primly, quickly putting on the shirt over the top of her singlet. It was a little baggy, but the fact that she was even able to have one – she’d have to think of something to give to Hughes to say thank you; the man was surprisingly cunning and determined. She never stood a chance of getting out of this anyway. She smoothed down the fabric and spun on her foot. “How does it look?”

“Like the cheesiest gesture since that nineteen-page spread of Hughes’ kid.” She fixed her friend with a hard stare. “You have thought about this? Like I’m not trying to jump the gun or anything here but if you guys get married or have a kid-”

“Yes, I have,” she answered irritably. “We’ve talked about how we move forward. I know the press is never going to go away but…it would be nice to give them something positive to spin. This entire week has just been about how I broke Olivier’s heart by stealing Roy away and-” she bit her lip and smiled weakly at her friend. “I need to show that I’m serious about this too.”

“This is the best way?”

“Hughes reckons it is. The press seems to like him, I’ve got no reason to suspect he’d prank his best friend quite so publicly.”

“Alrighty,” Rebecca said with an air of finality, gesturing to gate 28. “Are you ready to face the music?”

Riza nodded. “Let’s go.”

It’s official! And in the sweetest way imaginable.

The Drakes may have had their best win against the Drachman Bears yet (74-6), but nobody is going to be talking about that (not even about the Drachman doping scandal), not after Roy Mustang’s reaction to seeing his now-confirmed girlfriend Riza Hawkeye wearing his rugby number to the game last night.

It wasn’t until after the final whistle had blown that Roy had noticed her, sitting in the front row alongside friends, insiders say. As they were congratulating their opponents, running back Maes Hughes had quickly caught up to his friend on the field, motioning to where the Führer’s granddaughter was watching. Obviously someone had been paying attention to more than just the game!

Roy was meant to be making his way over to be interviewed post-game – as Captain, it’s his job to represent the team immediately in the aftermath. Not last night though!

Instead, he made his way over to where Riza was sitting and jumped the billboard boundaries with ease, motioning at the nearest security guard to open the gate to where the seating was. Riza was quickly pushed out of her seat by an alleged friend and all but fell into her beau’s arms onto the pitch proper, smiling widely from ear to ear before Roy kissed her soundly on the mouth.

If the cheers from the stadium crowd were anything to go by, Central City appears to back this couple too!

A love story like this comes once in a lifetime – let’s hope it goes the distance!

[Watch the video 1:32m]

fin

the spoof account is a reference to holy musical b@man – “someone already took the twitter name ‘roymustang’ and all they do is tweet about how dumb i am.”

three guesses to who owns that account (and no, it’s not hughes)

#royai #roy mustang #riza hawkeye #fullmetal alchemist #fmasecretsanta2017 #fma fanfiction #my fanfic #this fic got wildly out of control but i do hope u enjoy it!!!!

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tkmedia · 3 years ago

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The secret ingredient in Harlequins' title-winning transformation

4:33am, 11 July 2021 It sounds like something madcap from a science fiction movie, gum shields with state-of-the-art microchips in them relaying a whole heap of real-time data measurements about head and body collisions in matches and training, but it isn’t. Instead, Harlequins’ use of the groundbreaking PROTECHTPro system was seen as crucial in their incredible transformation from January doldrums to stunning June Gallagher Premiership champions.ADVERTISEMENTHarlequins aren’t the sole rugby users of this potentially game-changing gum shield designed by Swansea-based Sports & Wellbeing Analytics. Premiership rivals Gloucester and Leicester are also Protecht advocates as are Ospreys, the professional club that sits right on the doorstep of this sports industry disruptor. They are mid to lower table clubs where the creation of databases that can be used to decide when players should rest are yet to have the same title-winning crescendo gloriously celebrated at Twickenham a fortnight.Mike Lancaster, the head of medical services at Harlequins, and veteran scrum-half Danny Care have each spoken enthusiastically to their club’s in-house media about the invaluable data mined from the smart gum shield, but what have the champions of England done to make them so successful compared to other pioneers of this microchipped technology?

RugbyPass Fanzone on whether the Lions tour will be cancelledRichard Lancaster, who was once viewed as one of the sharpest upcoming coaches in the Welsh system when Scott Johnson was Ospreys boss, is these days head of business development and marketing at SWA and he knows well from his days in a tracksuit how tough it can be to radically change things in teams that are losing more than they are winning.That was the situation at Harlequins over the winter before the sudden exit of Paul Gustard created the perfect storm, encouraging the backroom staff to change tack and see where it might take them. “When you are losing it takes a very brave person to say well actually we are not going to do that today, we are going to do something different, we are going to give you the day off or whatever that may be,” said SWA’s Lancaster to RugbyPass.So much going on in Rugby at the moment in regard to head knocks and concussions. Fascinating to learn more about this and how this can be monitored and training adapted to help with player welfare. Have a look below @PROTECHTPro @Harlequins @mikephys https://t.co/z7QfRkOuuP— Danny Care (@dannycare) April 2, 2021“With Paul leaving when he did – and he is a fantastic coach – but when he left what it did was create a platform for the management at Harlequins, so Mike Lancaster had more of an opportunity to suggest this change and drive it. They were genuinely collaborative leaders there whereas Paul Gustard was the man. Take him away and everyone has got as much of a say in this as anyone else. That handed Mike the conditions, I suppose, to really drive this, to give it a go and be brave. There were other factors as well. There was no relegation, they were on a shot to nothing really because Paul was the accountable person and he was the one who was moved on.ADVERTISEMENT“The other guys there now at Harlequins had the opportunity to have a shot to nothing, so Mike believed in what we were doing (with the collected data), he drove it and took it probably a bit further than he probably would have been allowed to under a head of rugby.”What resulted at Harlequins due to data gleaned from the smart gum shield was that more and more players were wearing white bibs at training, the indicator for their teammates that they were not to take any contact in that session. The monitoring ultimately led to overall contacts dropping 90 per cent and coincided with a day less being spent a week on the training pitch which helped to ensure an attention-grabbing drop in the injury rate.“What we have done with Harlequins, Mike Lancaster said they had reduced contact in training by around 90 per cent but they managed to maintain match intensity. If you watched the semi-final, as it progressed Bristol fell further and further away and it was the fitness and freshness of Harlequins that carried them through. Same story against Exeter.“Quins understood where redundant contacts might happen. It could be in a game of touch, the players are travelling high velocity and if they brush against each other that is a contact. Is that the objective of what they are trying to achieve? No. Is it required? No. So they just moved stuff like that out of their training programme and in their training contact. They train at match intensity but it’s for a purpose.ADVERTISEMENT“Off the back of that at the time of the season where you historically have players out longest with season-ending injuries, they saw their injury rates being the lowest they have been for a number of years, so player availability was higher. As you know if player availability is high then you are more likely to be successful.“Rugby is a brutal sport because you are just on the treadmill. There is no breaks in it…. but Protecht allows you to find that sweet spot between making sure that they are prepared enough and proficient in technique and they can be effective in what they need to be effective in but not loading them up so much that they are likely to breakdown.”Sports & Wellbeing Analytics was founded by a small group of investors in 2016, not to make a quick buck to come up with an innovation that could genuinely aid rugby’s long-term safety. It’s taken a while to get to here from there but having now had their methods tried and tested successfully at professional level, the hope is to eventually make this product available to the grassroots at a price equivalent to the cost of a good pair of boots.

“Why the company was set up is we want the sport to be around in 20 or 30 or 50 years. Our original investors are rugby people,” continued Lancaster, who retired from playing in his early 20s with a knee injury and has since coached at Mumbles, Swansea Uni, Ospreys age-grade and Swansea.“What they wanted to do was take cutting edge science and technology and apply it to problems, and the biggest problem at the time in rugby was player welfare and concussion. They hoped to collect data around head impacts and understand the cause of concussion and that is where the journey started.“They found very quickly there was nothing on the market that was accurate and reliable. There were neck patches that the Saracens guys had worn, headbands and a few other things out there. GPS can understand what happens in contact as well but the biggest challenge of that is reliability.“There is so much independent movement that you are not actually measuring what is happening to the head and the skull and so we found the only way to do that was couple something to the skull. The next-best thing was to couple a mouthguard to the individual and from there we have seen what is happening to the head.“We went through a huge validation process, firstly at Swansea University and latterly with Stanford University that have confirmed what we say is happening in contact is actually happening. This genuinely is something that helps make the game safer and we’re hoping these mouth guards can provide reassurance to parents, to players that just isn’t there at the moment.Really pleased to be working with @Harlequins and supporting their safe return to play following the COVID lockdown #playerwelfare https://t.co/81fqCE9kz5— PROTECHT (@PROTECHTPro) June 25, 2020“We suspect a lot of the issues lower down the grassroots, because you haven’t got 120kgs professional athletes running into each other and creating a big collision, the more dangerous ones are poor technique and timing, things like that. When you understand where the biggest risk of head injury and suggest different ways of training or different techniques, it can generally be safer at that level.“It is such an ambiguous concept. The way elite professional clubs would have reported contact would be they might say a player hit 20 rucks in a game, but no two rucks are the same. You might be flying in from ten metres to one ruck and be just running up and touching another ruck but they would be put in the same bucket and that doesn’t tell the story of what is happening.“So that is the journey we took. We started to quantify the contact demands, the number of contacts they were making and the intensity of those contacts with Ospreys and then very quickly we shifted into Harlequins, Gloucester, Leicester. We have done some work with Bristol Bears ladies, more recently Harlequins ladies, some work with Salford and Toronto rugby league and are about to kick off with St Helens.“We are also looking at some boxing stuff, have done Premiership League football pilots and where we are able to provide real value is by not only showing what is happening to a player but also giving coaches and athletes a way to better manage that in training.“We know 95 per cent of what happens in a match are your typical things you train for and it’s the five per cent incidents which are the accidents, a knee to a head, someone gets their tackle technique incorrect. Those are things you don’t train for and what we want to make sure is this other five per cent of incidents are seen.”How are we ensuring the safety of our players?We have teamed up with @PROTECHTPro and @OPROMouthguards to monitor player collisions in real time. #COYQ @MJHudsonCorp pic.twitter.com/Ndxtlaks9D— Harlequins Women ? (@HarlequinsWomen) May 26, 2021Has Lancaster a telling example? “One of the worst we have seen is a player carried into contact, it was really innocuous. A No8 carrying into a tackle and went down quite easily and the ball was played away. Nothing happened but we saw a huge impact in that data so we looked at it frame by frame and what actually happened is one of his own teammates arrived and kneed him square in the head when he was in that ruck.“Nobody saw it whereas our technology will pick that up and rely it to the medics to ensure things don’t go unseen because in incidents like that you do want to help, to take the decision away from the player. It has got to be the experts because the player will always want to play on.”The smart mouthguard idea isn’t only confined to the UK. World Rugby are currently involved in a University of Otago study regarding head impacts, but the governing body knows what SWA are up in connection with OPRO, the mouth guard manufacturers they partnered with in 2019.“We have talked to World Rugby on the journey. First of all we have to seek their approval for this to be used in competition. They said this is an area where they can shed light and they are very supportive. All the conversations we have are hugely positive. I haven’t had a conversation where someone where someone said, ‘Look, this isn’t of interest to us’.“It is our ambition that this should be rolled right across the English Premiership and into other leagues as well internationally but it is also on our roadmap that this will eventually get into the grassroots in sport as well, providing that reassurance for parents, teachers and coaches about what is happening.”ICYMI @PROTECHTPro featured on last nights @BBCTheOneShow with @Phil_Vickery talking to players from @gloucesterrugby and @BristolBearsW about how the technology is helping to make the game saferYou can watch the segment here ?? https://t.co/o8BRpWTl8z— PROTECHT (@PROTECHTPro) March 26, 2021For Lancaster, who left a head of sport and corporate engagement role at Swansea University for SWA, that would be a development to savour. “I’m incredibly lucky. I didn’t play at the very highest level, had to retire at a very early age, but I owe my livelihood to rugby. I was very lucky because I coached with the likes of Steve Tandy at Bridgend, the likes of Mike Ruddock and guys at the Ospreys.“I don’t think I was ever going to be good enough to go to the very highest level. It’s such a thankless job, coaching, so I just felt that joining SWA, I feel like I can make far more impact for the sport. I feel like we genuinely can make the game safer, we genuinely can transform rugby and take it to the next level.“I genuinely believe this is something that is going to help change the game in a good way and hopefully helps secure the future of the game at well. It’s sad that we see numbers declining in rugby at the moment. A lot of that would be down to safety concerns from parents and this is something that can definitely help secure the future.“I played in the same generation as Alix Popham. His story is tragic. I’m still in contact with Alix. He says he wishes this technology had been around in his day as it might have helped in some way. Danny Care said a similar thing, he wants this to be around for his kids. That is the big difference that this can make.”We are delighted to be teaming up with the @premierleague to support their efforts to better understand, monitor and manage head impacts within football https://t.co/SUYA3mPdCn— PROTECHT (@PROTECHTPro) March 26, 2021

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newstfionline · 4 years ago

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Tuesday, November 17, 2020

SpaceX’s ‘Resilience’ Lifts 4 Astronauts Into New Era of Spaceflight (NYT) It’s not yet the same as hopping on commuter flight from New York to Washington or renting a car from Avis, but Sunday’s launch of four astronauts to the International Space Station in a capsule built by SpaceX was a momentous step toward making space travel commonplace and mundane. In the future, instead of relying on spacecraft built by NASA or other governments, NASA astronauts and anyone else with enough money can by a ticket on a commercial rocket. NASA designated Sunday night’s launch as the first operational flight of the Crew Dragon spacecraft built and operated by SpaceX, the rocket company started by Elon Musk. The four astronauts aboard—three from NASA, one from JAXA, the Japanese space agency—left Earth from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. A Crew Dragon took two astronauts—Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley—to the space station in May, but that was a test flight to shake out remaining glitches in the systems.

The Hot New Covid Tech Is Wearable and Constantly Tracks You (NYT) In Rochester, Mich., Oakland University is preparing to hand out wearable devices to students that log skin temperature once a minute—or more than 1,400 times per day—in the hopes of pinpointing early signs of the coronavirus. In Plano, Texas, employees at the headquarters of Rent-A-Center recently started wearing proximity detectors that log their close contacts with one another and can be used to alert them to possible virus exposure. And in Knoxville, students on the University of Tennessee football team tuck proximity trackers under their shoulder pads during games—allowing the team’s medical director to trace which players may have spent more than 15 minutes near a teammate or an opposing player. The powerful new surveillance systems, wearable devices that continuously monitor users, are the latest high-tech gadgets to emerge in the battle to hinder the coronavirus. Some sports leagues, factories and nursing homes have already deployed them. Resorts are rushing to adopt them. A few schools are preparing to try them. And the conference industry is eyeing them as a potential tool to help reopen convention centers. Civil rights and privacy experts warn that the spread of such wearable continuous-monitoring devices could lead to new forms of surveillance that outlast the pandemic—ushering into the real world the same kind of extensive tracking that companies like Facebook and Google have instituted online. They also caution that some wearable sensors could enable employers, colleges or law enforcement agencies to reconstruct people’s locations or social networks, chilling their ability to meet and speak freely.

2 states announce new virus restrictions as US cases hit 11M (AP) Michigan and Washington on Sunday joined several other states in announcing renewed efforts to combat the coronavirus as more than 11 million cases of COVID-19 have now been reported in the United States—with the most recent million coming in less than a week—and as many Americans prepare to observe a Thanksgiving holiday marked by the pandemic. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s administration ordered high schools and colleges to stop in-person classes, closed restaurants to indoor dining and suspended organized sports—including the football playoffs—in an attempt to curb the state’s spiking case numbers. The order also restricts indoor and outdoor residential gatherings, closes some entertainment facilities and bans gyms from hosting group exercise classes. The directives from Michigan come on the same day that Washington Gov. Jay Inslee announced the state would enforce new restrictions on businesses and social gatherings for the next month as it, too, continued to combat a rising number of cases.

After Trump, will the presidency recede a bit for Americans? (AP) Calvin Coolidge, known by some as “Silent Cal” during his time in the White House, used his autobiography to live up to his nickname. “The words of a president,” he wrote in 1929 after leaving office, “have an enormous weight and ought not to be used indiscriminately.” The world is very different now. Communication is instantaneous. Americans—even a president—are often measured by the quantity and volume of what is now called their “content.” Since he took office in 2017 (and for many years before that), Donald Trump has been a different kind of president when it comes to communication—a more-is-better kind of guy. You can adore Trump or despise him. But from late-night tweet storms to oft-repeated untruths to provocative statements about everything from the kneeling of pro football players to canned beans to buying Greenland, there’s one thing it has been almost impossible to do with the president of the United States these past four years: ignore him. “No one can get away from it. It’s never happened before. I’ve always cared about the president, but it’s never been like this,” says Syd Straw, an entertainer and artist who lives in the Vermont woods. “Even people who like him feel that way, I think.” Now, as another administration prepares to take the reins of American power, have the Trump years forever changed the place that the presidency occupies in American life and Americans’ lives? Has Calvin Coolidge’s statement become woefully outdated in the era of the ever-present presidency, or is it an idea whose time has returned, as voiced by a sign on the fence at Lafayette Square near the White House last week: “Enough!”

Hurricane Iota roars onto Nicaragua as 2nd blow in 2 weeks (AP) In a one-two punch, Hurricane Iota roared ashore as a dangerous Category 4 storm along almost exactly the same stretch of Nicaragua’s Caribbean coast that was devastated by an equally powerful Hurricane Eta 13 days earlier. Iota had intensified into an extremely dangerous Category 5 storm during the day Monday, but the U.S. National Hurricane Center said it weakened slightly as it neared the coast late Monday and made landfall with maximum sustained winds of 155 mph (250 kph). It hit the coast about 30 miles (45 kilometers) south of the Nicaraguan city of Puerto Cabezas, also known as Bilwi. Iota came ashore just 15 miles (25 kilometers) south of where Hurricane Eta made landfall Nov. 3, also as a Category 4 storm. Eta’s torrential rains saturated the soil in the region, leaving it prone to new deadly landslides and floods, forecasters warned.

Crisis-hit Peru elects centrist lawmaker as third president in a week (AP) Peru’s Congress on Monday elected legislator Francisco Sagasti as Peru’s interim president in an attempt to defuse a sharp political crisis in the Andean nation after angry protests and the departure of two presidents in the past week. Sagasti, 76, from the centrist Morado Party, won enough votes to head the unicameral Congress, which means he would constitutionally assume the presidency of the country ahead of national elections called for April. The move makes Sagasti Peru’s third president in a week, after interim leader Manuel Merino resigned on Sunday, five days after being sworn in following the ousting of centrist Martin Vizcarra. Sagasti, a former World Bank official and engineer, faces a formidable challenge to bring stability to the world’s no. 2 copper producer, which was already hard hit by COVID-19 and heading for its worst economic contraction in a century.

Brexit Negotiations Are Running Out Of Time (Foreign Policy) The European Union and United Kingdom continue trade talks in Brussels today, following months of stalled debates and stalemate. At this point there have probably been more “pivotal” weeks over the course of Brexit negotiations than there are European Union member states, so what makes this time different? The most important factor is time, and the lack of it. The so-called transition period for Britain and the EU ends on Dec. 31, bringing in a new era of trade relations. The next few days will decide whether that era is relatively smooth or chaotic in the event of a no-deal outcome. Time also weighs on the European parliament, which ultimately has to read the draft deal (after it’s been translated into the bloc’s 24 official languages) and approve it before that end of year deadline.

Northern Ireland and Amazon (Foreign Policy) Amazon may be powerful enough to get away with a light tax bill, but erasing international borders is likely a step too far, despite the inadvertent efforts of the company’s online customer service team. Replying to a frustrated customer in Northern Ireland wishing to watch a rugby match on Amazon’s streaming service, the helpline unwittingly took a side in one of the world’s longest running geopolitical conflicts and told the customer that the reason he couldn’t see the game was because it was only available for viewing in the United Kingdom. Amazon’s response quickly went viral, causing gleeful Irish nationalists to ask the company to help cancel Northern Ireland’s nearly 100-year-old membership in the United Kingdom, as it had been “automatically signed up.”

Mixed messaging in France (Washington Post) The French government is bristling at international criticism of its response to recent Islamist terrorist attacks, accusing foreign leaders and journalists of misrepresenting an attempt to target extremist violence on French soil as a crackdown on Islam. But some French Muslims say the government’s own mixed messaging is to blame. In the wake of the beheading of Samuel Paty, a middle school teacher who had shown his students caricatures of the prophet Muhammad, and the stabbing of three people inside a basilica in Nice, the French government has closed a mosque and is investigating more than 50 Muslim organizations it has accused of fomenting violence. The actions follow a broader initiative unveiled by President Emmanuel Macron in early October to combat “Islamist separatism” and to “reform” the practice of Islam in France, mostly by targeting foreign funding for Muslim community organizations and by creating certificate programs for French-trained imams. But in so doing, Macron called Islam a religion “in crisis all over the world” and said he seeks to create an “Islam of the Enlightenment,” comments that raised eyebrows in the Muslim world. Amid the furor, the government has rejected accusations that it is Islamophobic and voiced exasperation at what it perceives as a smear campaign that amounts to little more than victim-blaming in a time of national mourning.

Cyprus split? (Foreign Policy) Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has called for Cyprus to be split permanently during a visit to the island over the weekend. Erdogan met with the Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar, whom he had backed in recent elections in the northern part of the island. Erdogan added that Tatar would soon visit Azerbaijan, which suggests the country could soon join Turkey as only the second nation in the world to recognize the independence of Northern Cyprus. “Ankara has absolutely no respect for international law, European principles and values, and its obligations towards the EU,” the Cypriot presidency said in a statement reacting to Erdogan’s comments.

New Asian Trade Deal Pushes West to Margins (Foreign Policy) On Sunday, 15 countries in the Asia-Pacific region signed the world’s largest trade agreement, which is expected to accelerate a shift in global trade toward East Asia and away from the West. Negotiations for the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), spearheaded by China, began with a slow start in 2012 but gained new urgency as the Trump administration pursued a protectionist trade policy. The United States is not party to the new deal. The RCEP will reduce tariffs over a 20-year period, streamline customs procedures, and replace a number of bilateral trade agreements in the region with one set of rules. The pact establishes the Asia-Pacific as the world’s largest trading bloc, bigger than the European Union or North America, accounting for $26.2 percent of global output—some 30 percent of the global economy. The Peterson Institute for International Economics estimates that by 2030 the deal could increase global GDP by $186 billion, although China, South Korea, and Japan are expected to benefit more than other signatories.

Asia at a crossroads as cases surge (Reuters) Countries across the Asia-Pacific region reported record new coronavirus numbers and fresh outbreaks, with Japan facing mounting pressure to reimpose a state of emergency and South Korea warning it was at a “critical crossroads”. The resurgence of the virus in Asia comes as travel restrictions are gradually being eased in the region. New daily cases in Japan reached a record 1,722 on Saturday, with hot spots in the northern island of Hokkaido and the western prefectures of Hyogo and Osaka. In South Korea, officials reported more than 200 new cases for the third consecutive day.

Bach says Tokyo Olympic “participants” may need vaccinations (AP) Olympic participants and fans arriving for next year’s postponed Tokyo Olympics are likely to face requirements to be vaccinated to protect the Japanese public, IOC President Thomas Bach said Monday after meeting with new Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga. “In order to protect the Japanese people and out of respect for the Japanese people, the IOC will undertake great effort so that as many (people) as possible—Olympic participants and visitors will arrive here (with a) vaccine if by then a vaccine is available,” Bach said. “This makes us all very confident that we can have spectators in the Olympics stadium next year and that spectators will enjoy a safe environment.” The Olympics are to open on July 23, 2021.

They Once Ruled Ethiopia. Now They Are Fighting Its Government. (NYT) When it comes to mountain warfare, the people of Tigray—an ancient kingdom in the far north of Ethiopia, spread across jagged peaks and lush farmland—have decades of hard-won experience. Tigrayan fighters led a brutal war through the 1970s and ‘80s against a hated Marxist dictator of Ethiopia, whom they eventually toppled in 1991, becoming national heroes. For most of the next three decades, Tigrayans ruled Ethiopia. But after Abiy Ahmed, a peace-talking young reformer, came to power as prime minister in 2018, he brusquely sidelined Tigray’s leaders. Tensions exploded violently on Nov. 4, as the world was focused on the presidential election in the United States, when Mr. Abiy launched military strikes in Tigray. Now Tigray is once again at war, fighting the federal government. The battle pits the nation’s army and Mr. Abiy, an internationally feted winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, against the ruling party of Tigray, which commands a large force of well-armed and experienced fighters who know their own mountain terrain well. Already the conflict has escalated at alarming speed with intense fighting that has involved airstrikes and artillery barrages, sent thousands of civilians fleeing across borders—some in boats or even swimming—and led to reports of civilian massacres. The rush to war has exacerbated ethnic divisions so badly that on Friday it prompted warnings of potential ethnic cleansing and even genocide.

The Pandemic As A Welcome Lesson In Humility (El Espectador/Colombia) What a drag. It’s so exhausting. I can’t take it any more. These are the kinds of everyday complaints that come with the pandemic, and they’re understandable, because the situation really is an energy drain. And yet, the pandemic also offers some benefits. By pulling the curtain back on some painful inequalities, it may trigger fundamental changes around the world, even if they must happen under duress or fear. Events are forcing us to consider outside realities, but also to look inside ourselves for purpose. We may be wondering what our lives mean. Threats strip our life goals bare like surgery without anesthesia. Without them, life may become painful and depressing, but this may precede a recovery toward a healthier spirit. and that’s because anxiety is an unexplored source of creativity and resilience that is usually only approached by the brave or saintly. Our hidden resources emerge under the pressure of hostile surroundings, when they might have remained hidden and dormant. Uncertainty has recovered its rightful place as an essential part of existence, without the comforts and structures we use to cushion our lives. We are not in control. Science is not an all-powerful god and, believe it or not, Google can’t answer all of our questions. As we do not know what will happen tomorrow, the wisdom is to follow the age-old counsel of living in the present. One day at a time, trusting in God, loosening our expectations and letting go of the absurd ideas about control. It’s better now to be a humble bamboo that bends with the wind than a colossal, and unyielding tree that could come crashing down.

#headlines #news

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leicamoments · 7 years ago

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Credit where it’s due...

I wanted to follow-up from my previous post, to write about something very much related and is something that amateur, semi-pro and pro photographers get asked regularly.

Actually…reading that first paragraph back…I wonder how many ‘creatives’ [writers, artists, graphic artists etc.] this resonates with.

Now I want to make this very clear – this blog is not about anyone in particular, absolutely not – but it is something that many photographers have happen to them multiple times a week. So please whoever is reading this and may have contacted me recently, do not think I am talking to you directly – I am not.

First things first…a long-winded question [and people who know me will ask if I ever ask anything other than long-winded questions!]

Do you think it would be right for someone to walk into a shop or supermarket and pick up their lunch, weekly or monthly shop and walk out without paying?

Would you contact a plumber and ask them to come and fix your water leak, put in a new bathroom, or install a new heating system without paying them?

Would you ask a cleaner to come into your home or office to vacuum, dust, empty bins and clean the toilets for no pay?

Are you asked to go to your place of work and spend eight hours or more there, do whatever tasks you are contracted to do and meet the goals that are set for you by your employers – for no pay?

It goes without saying that we all know the one word answer to those questions.

What if you were to say to the shop “I will let everyone know that you supplied me, my lunch – that will act as payment”. What do you think their response would be?

If you were to say to the plumber “Now that you’ve done the work, I don’t expect an invoice but I will tell everyone how good you are at what you do – that will act as payment”.

What about the cleaner? “I’m not going to pay you, but I’ll put up a sign that says how good you are at cleaning toilets…I’m sure you will get more work cleaning toilets as a result of me recommending you. You love cleaning toilets anyway, so the opportunity to clean more toilets will be a bonus for you”.

What if your boss said “you are fantastic at the job you do, but sorry there isn’t any pay this week”. However, he tells you that he will let everyone know you are working for his company and you will get the reflected glory of working for his brand name. Would you be happy with that?

I chose to work as an editorial sports photographer and photojournalist. It is my responsibility to make it pay. I understand that and I make no excuses.

I have a house, a car, bills to pay, food to put on the table, clothes to put on the backs of my four and nine year old children. These are the same things that most people, including you [the person reading this] has to do…and I fund my life-choices by taking photographs and selling them.

The problem I, and many photographers face, is the request for free photos. It isn’t a rare thing…it is actually a depressingly regular occurrence. By regular, I mean several times a week.

‘Of course I will credit you’ is one of the lines that goes along with the request. But the problem is that a ‘credit’ doesn’t pay the bills. If you think about it, you are actually asking me to work for free when you approach me like that.

The common myths surrounding images are many…definitely too many to address here in a reasonable number of words. But I see people using images found on Google searches and saying that those images are ‘free to use’ because they are on Google images. Let’s be clear…they are not free to use.

Google’s search results say that images may be subject to copyright and it is your responsibility to determine usage rights and the costs involved in using those images for your own purposes.

You cannot stand in front of a judge and claim you are innocent because you didn’t realise that you had broken a law, just because you say you didn’t know that there was a particular law in place that you broke. The judge will tell you ‘Ignorance of the law is no defence’.

Just because an image is put up on social media, it doesn’t mean you can do whatever you want with that photo. Yes you can share/re-tweet it – the terms and conditions of the individual social media platforms give you that right.

However, you cannot download it, attach it to another tweet and publish that up. You cannot edit that photo, add filters, cut out the watermark that clearly shows ownership, and then post to a completely different social media platform.

But this happens all the time and people use the ‘it is available on Google search/social media’ as an argument why they can continue to do so. They say that you’ve “handed over” ownership as soon as you’ve hit the ‘post’ button – that is simply, completely and utterly wrong.

The watermark is there for a reason. Hell…even if there is no watermark, the very act of creating that image means (in most countries) that the image is copyright of the person taking the image.

Where am I going with all this?

Well when I first started out earning my living as a photographer, I would cover sporting events, then put up images on social media with watermarks to show that I had taken them. The idea being, those individuals would hopefully see how good my images were and then find me to buy additional shots.

I would get people approaching me, tell me how wonderful those photos were and ask if I had other images of them.

I would then work away at getting a gallery of images put up on a website, to enable people to browse those photos and buy them if they wanted to.

I would often get additional requests to see if I had more images of an individual and could I put them up in the gallery. I would spend more time sorting through the images taken and put up additional shots [as requested] to buy.

The problem was…despite being told how wonderful those images were, I wasn’t selling many. In fact certain individuals who kept coming back asking for more shots to be made available, didn’t seem to be buying any…

Then you’d see galleries of screenshots going up on their social media platforms. A cover photo changed to one of my images. A profile photo used that was a heavy crop of one of the shots I had taken with filters applied. But they hadn’t paid for the use of any of those photos.

You may love my photos, think they are superb and want copies of them…I really do love that sort of feedback when it happens.

You may hate my photos, I accept that criticism and in that case, you wouldn’t want to have copies of, or buy them at all. That is a risk I take.

However, I need to earn a living from selling photos. If I cannot, I need to go and do something else to earn money.

I have my overheads…the cost of attending the event, my time (which is as valuable as yours), the cost of the insurance which I need to have to enable me to sit pitch-side and hold various licences (such as National League licence, Datco licence, Rugby League licence, or simply mandated by the venue), the cost of my camera equipment, the cost of my computer equipment, the cost of my training/education, the cost of the software I use, the cost of data storage, the cost of the website through which I sell the photos…the list is much longer, but you get the point.

So when I get those requests from individuals, publications and other organisations for photos, asking me to do additional work to locate, process and supply images and then they either don’t offer to pay or say they don’t have a budget for buying images - but will credit me…you wonder why there is silence from my side or [hopefully] a polite response to say that galleries will go up at some point and images will be available to purchase.

I do want to continue to support clubs and grassroots sport in general, but there are only so many hours in the day to earn a living and if I continue to attend sporting events for free, I need to make a few sales to individuals to help pay the bills and replace the camera equipment that eventually wears out.

If I cannot make a living supporting those events, then I am forced to abandon them in search of other events that I will get paid as a result of covering.

So the next time you drop a photographer an email, or a direct message, or a tweet asking for free photos of yourself, just imagine that you were sending that message to a shop owner, a plumber, a cleaner…or your boss was sending you that message asking you to work for free.

It may just make you think again before hitting the send button.

#DivaPhotographerProblems #photography #business #sport #sports photography #credit #useitpayforit #respect #earn a living

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coachjukeboxx · 8 years ago

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I’m a pregnant roller derby athlete  Part one: Holy shit this is happening

Warning : I want to start out by saying this is me being honest. This is what I went through. It might not be popular or what other people went through, but this is what happened and how it made me feel and how I handled it. I’m here to share my experience so others don’t feel judged by expectation, so please don’t jump down my throat for my choices. Oh and ps, I also use tons of run-on sentences and speak in a stream of consciousness but here goes nothing. Pregnancy has a million expectations on women and that’s part of what makes it difficult …because its not just the craziness of hormones and body changes, but also the set of parameters of how you should feel because that OH THIS IS ALL WORTH IT CAUSE- BABY. That makes me furious. It ignores my struggles and frustrations like I should be some happy robot housewife from the 50s. So without further ado, here’s my story of learning about my pregnancy.

I took the test shortly after coming back from our offseason. Balls and I always wanted kids, but we didn’t expect it to happen so quickly. Like, immediately quickly. Last weekend I was eating bloody steaks and drinking amazing wine and scrimmaging (not all at once, but you know). Went to the GP the next day- according to them no more of most of my favorite foods, and no more roller derby. It hit me like a train. I didn’t feel a shred of excitement. My identity was skating, it was playing the sport, coaching, and training with my best friends. I was now out of contention to skate at the world cup. (while its not impossible to return, the pressure of competing with that caliber of athletes post-nataly is unrealistic with my timeline and time off playing. I’ll do my best to come back but that pressure is unrealistic when also having a newborn). I felt loss, not only of control of my body but fear about what would happen to my strength, my skills. I work SO hard on skating, on my body, it’s a huge investment. It felt like that would all just unravel based on recommendations for pregnancy activity. I also felt guilt, like I was letting my team down being out so soon in the season. My due date is champs, that also means our coach (Balls) is out. While a baby was something we were looking forward to in our lives, the results of that test made me full of confusion. I felt an array of sadness, guilt, loss, expectation. I felt guilt for feeling sad about my pregnancy. HOW USEFUL IS THAT? In the first day I got my act together and was like ok, this is happening, no turning back now. I told kitty first cause I knew she’d understand. It was hard for her too when she got pregnant. To me having a kid is exciting, but it’s not my main purpose in life, it’s not what I spent much my days thinking about. I wouldn’t say I was even broody. But I’ve heard these same feelings can creep up even when you have been obsessing, trying, and broody. It has never been the most important goal in my life. Maybe I’ll feel differently after the kid is here, but for now, that’s where I’m at. I have loads of aspirations that are just as important to me as parenting will be. I still feel that way. Kitty came over with some flowers and we cried a bit and worked on processing the info. It was nice to not feel alone, and she validated my feelings. She didn’t try to tell me it was all worth it, and that I should just deal with all the negative. We just.. talked about how crazy it all is. I read this article recently by the nytimes that sums it up nicely in this quote. “Becoming a mother is an identity shift, and one of the most significant physical and psychological changes a woman will ever experience… Most of the time, the experience of motherhood is not good or bad, it’s both good and bad. It’s important to learn how to tolerate, and even get comfortable with the discomfort of ambivalence.” Here is the link to that article, I highly recommend it. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/08/well/family/the-birth-of-a-mother.html

While all this was going on Balls got a message from Lexi to leadership that SHE WAS PREGNANT! With my permission he told her about my news and we talked. It was the first joy I felt about it. I was happy for Lexi, and Lexi seemed genuinely excited.... and also I wasn’t alone. I wasn’t disappointing everyone, and if I was, I wasn’t the only one to blame. We gushed about it and decided to tell the team straight away. I still felt pretty disconnected from the idea of this thing inside me, but these were the first glimmers of positive emotions I had. That made it easier to imagine, but it didn’t by any means overshadow everything else I was experiencing.

I decided to take some control after feel so much loss of control in my body and identity. In the next day I researched a million articles on playing in the first trimester of contact sports. Kitty anonymously “asked for a friend” on some of the derby moms groups about the situation and continuing to train. While I waited their response, I found that most of the articles pointed to studies based on car accidents, not actual sports. The info is sparse and generally says - relax, take this time to take it easy. Go for a walk or take a pregnant lady class. GROANNN. (Mind you while this was happening Serena Williams was busy winning the Australian open while pregnant. MY TOTAL HERO) I found that rugby guidelines were against contact, and hockey was ok with it into trimester 1, both were just club policy.

While waiting for the info from Kitty, there was one training session where I coached or just tried to avoid contact, I decided that felt so ridiculous. I didn’t have any morning sickness and was feeling really good - normal even, all things considered and was super keen to keep playing into my first trimester. In the next few days I got a response from an Angel skater that played playoffs 8 weeks pregnant, and continued on till her first trimester. I also heard from a close friend/old teammate from Madison that played through the first trimester for both of her pregnancies. Her midwife had advised her that it’s so small, and so well protected in your pelvis, that really only serious injury would be the thing that made it miscarry. (not normal bumps from skating). She skated (jammed even!) till 12 weeks with one and 9 weeks with the other, the second one she stopped due to fatigue. Seeing as how I had never had or seen anyone with a major uterine injury from playing, I made the choice to play. I made the choice to keep playing, but at this point I was outed with many of my teammates. Balls was really supportive and let it be up to me. He has been really great about that in general, and it helps to have my partner not place any limitations on me. The response from the team was really great. I was really afraid people wouldn’t play with me since I had told them. I gave the option to not pair up with me and checked with people to make sure it was ok, in the end no one refused me. Gaz said something like “women have been doing stuff for thousands of years so if you’re ok with it, go for it” and other people said things along the lines of “your body, your choice”. I continued to play for another 2.5 weeks until I started to just feel so tired and bloated the idea of smashing into people sounded terrible. But those 2+ weeks, it meant so much. I had closure, I had control, I had the choice, and most of all I had SO much fun playing party roller derby with Brawling. I felt ready to partake in this next adventure, take on a new role in the team and in my life. Getting to chose my own risk assessment also was a really big deal for the loss in confidence as being labeled the pregnant lady. It just seems that all of a sudden you’re looked, and supposed to look at yourself, like this fragile flower “in my condition”. That makes me crazy and I’m focused on doing everything I can, pushing myself and smashing this pregnancy at my own personal Birth Champs in Nov.

Im still skating at training, just no contact anymore. The next step in my journey was the whole” fake injury for the rest of the league until my scan”, but I’ll explain more of that experience in my next blog post. Part 2: The “secret” struggle. (Oh and ps - these were my feeling in week 5-7. Things are way different now at week 16.. I have lots of blog posts to catch up on cause those early days prescan were full of hard times. Things are really really good now, but i think it's important to record the journey as it was.)

#pregnantathlete #rollerderby #firsttrimester #jukeboxx #londonrollergirls #usarollerderby #realtalk

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outlawmichealtomsik · 4 years ago

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How it all started The Outlaw Micheal Tomsik

My wife when she meet me asked me if I was into sports and at the time I told her I watch it once in awhile. In my youth I did play football, surfed, roller bladed, roller skated, and played a few other sports but was not my main interest In college years I modeled and was an amature actor in Califorina. My career in that industry never took off but I had a lot of fun doing it.

To tell you the truth I never thought about a career in broadcasting sports.

In college originally I wanted to work with animals being a vet or something along those lines. However ended up getting my degree n Computer Science with a minor in Business Management. Most of my experience came from working in casinos after my graduation living in Las Vegas Nevada.

I got an education on how casinos operate and I became involved with several bg casinos in Las Vegas as a personal trainer for the staff or assisting casinos with selling or buying properties in Vegas. I spent 7 years doing this and finally ended up in Reno Nevada at a casino called The Reno Hilton. I was there due to the casino was being sold and the position they offered me was in the Sports Book to help with the closing of the book.

It was funny however I spent 4 years n this position before the sale happened and I left the company before it did.

At the Hilton there was an ESPN broadcasting booth if front of the sports book. They did live shows and broadcasted locally in Reno, NV. Working at the sports book was always a fun job for me I still love it today.

I would write my picks for games up on a board every week and many people would talk to me about sports at the book over the years I got more involved in following all sports. One day I was asked to do my picks on the radio show so I did. It was fun for me and amazingly my picks had been pretty good. The next thing I knew I was being interviewed by local TV stations. This made me even more popular in the local area.

This continued for some time and I started calling myself The Outlaw Micheal Tomsik as a radio personality.

However I had been sent to the casino knowing it was going to be sold and the book was going to be closed eventually. I decided to leave the company before all this happened. As soon as I left all this stopped however I was offered a new start in Florida.

After my departure from the Reno Hilton it took two years to get to Florida. During this time I kept a pretty low profile writing my picks in a local newspaper. When we moved to Jacksonville Florida I got an opportunity to run my own show called Outlaw Sports Show on Centiflix Radio out of Saint Augustine Florida.

However the station was not doing well and only a few shows hit the air before the station was to be closed. The shows had been pretty awful to tell you the truth. I had no one to talk sports with. The owner of the radio station tried to step in and even Anne my wife helped out. In the end the station closed and I bought a bunch of the equipment.

I was determined somehow to make this work and I set out on a mission. I contacted every amature sport I could find and then I pitched an idea to ESPN. I was hired as a freelance journalist by ESPN. and decided to open OUTLAW SPORTS RADIO. My idea was to broadcast live games on the radio for local sporting events. I had gotten several football programs, roller derby, rugby, basketball even some MMA leagues to participate.

It all happened but I was not satisfied with just the radio broadcasting we moved to live broadcasting on the internet.

This continued for 4 years. We covered tons of sports, broadcasted several games live but one problem it never really created enough revenues and fans for ESPN so they finally pulled the plug. To this day you can still find me on the net.

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robyncourtneyphotographyhnd1a · 6 years ago

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Catch me if you can Research

Basketball

Image shot by Stephen Curry.

https://improvephotography.com/30194/20-tips-photographing-youth-basketball/

When photographing basketball it is recommended that you shoot in manual and to make sure that you have a high ISO and to capture the images with a small aperture of around f/2 or the lowest you have, this will allow you to get as much light into your image as possible and let the bright colours pop out of your image. If you want to capture the movement shutter speed is recommended at 1/500th so that the images aren't blurry and you can get everything in the image. It is recommended if you are going to shoot basketball games you will have to shoot in portrait frame as you will be able to capture the people and the ball in the same image as sometimes it will be hard as the ball can move very fast and sometimes can come out of the frame you are trying to shoot. Also, you will have to consider the position/angles you are going to shoot the subject in as just like any image you want to have a main focus. I think basketball would be an interesting sport to photograph as there seems to be so much going on that it would be hard not to get at least a few images you could use for a final.

Football

Image by Tony Nicoletti.

http://wearesophoto.com/football-photography-top-10-tips/

In football photography it is best to get down on the ground or get as low as you can so you can shoot everything from an angle as it gives you the best outcome for your images. It is recommended to use a fast shutter speed of around 1/1000-2000 and even as low as 1/320 so that you can capture the movement very quickly but also not get the subject blurry. For the bright images you would probably want to go with a low aperture of around f/2.8 or as low as your camera settings will allow you so that you can allow as much light as possible and get the brightest of your images at the best it can be. With football the action happens very very quickly so you have to be constantly ready to get the shot as quick as possible, don't just follow the players follow the ball and anticipate the action (take as many images as you can, there will always be hidden images you will capture). I am interested in football which makes me want to try and photograph it more than any other sport as I feel like it would be very interesting and very challenging but worth it when you get the final images.

Rugby

Image shot by VIILevent Photography

https://stuartcomerford.wordpress.com/2013/04/20/how-to-photograph-sports-rugby/

Rugby is kind of like football when you want to take images of it. You have to get down low for the best angles as you don't want to tower over the players and take the image from a weird angle which won't show you the expression on their faces or even show you most of the action. Again, just like football the shutter speed, iso and aperture have to be around the same for rugby as they are both very similar to photograph. I think rugby would be a challenging yet interesting type of photography to try and capture for the catch me if you can brief and I would be interested in giving it a go.

Track and Field

Image captured by OK3SPORTS

https://www.picturecorrect.com/tips/track-and-field-sports-photography-tips/

For Track and Field photography it is recommended that your lens is long (around 400mm) so that you can open up your aperture to let the most amount of light into the image as possible. You would want your shutter speed to be fast as you are trying to catch the movement of the subjects, this would be around 1/320 so that your image can also be very sharp. In track and field the athletes move very very fast so in order to capture a good image you should keep shooting constantly trying to get any photo you can. You should consider your angles/position the subject is in as if you were shooting them you wouldn't want to get images such as their back, you would want to see the side or the front of the athletes to capture the emotion in their faces etc.

Ice Hockey

This photograph was captured by Darryl Dyck.

https://www.digitaltrends.com/photography/shoots-scores-tips-capturing-stanley-cup-winning-hockey-photos/

In Ice hockey it is very dangerous to have your camera so close to the lens/camera as it can brake them in seconds, so when taking photographs of games like this you have to be very aware of the way you place your camera/lens and make sure you are not too close to any of the action although that is what your trying to photograph in the first place. Dyck says “I typically will shoot in manual mode at ISO 2,000 with a shutter speed of 1/1,000 of a second at f/4.” This seems like the most efficient way you can capture images at a hockey game as you want it done very quickly and you want to make sure the images are as bright as they can be and also as sharp as they can be. As well as this, make sure you are anticipating every move so that you know where to take the photograph. I think it would be very intriguing to photograph an ice hockey game but also very dangerous for the equipment so I don't think I would try doing this sport when doing my contact sheet for the brief, however, I won't rule it out in the future.

Bowling

Photo taken by Peter Dogan

When doing photography in a bowling alley, the lights aren't the most flattering so you need to make sure your iso is higher than normal and have a wide aperture. Your shutter speed will need to be fast to catch the movement of the ball/bowler (around 1/180 +). In the bowling because there is “party lights” you will need to pure your white balance to fluorescent Iights, however you might not need it depending on the lighting etc. I probably will give this sport a shot as I do work in a bowling alley myself and there are lots of league bowlers and tournaments to try and do.

Boxing

Image by Jeff Fusco

https://digital-photography-school.com/tips-on-shooting-ringside-an-introduction-to-boxing-photography/

When going to photograph a boxing match it is important that when you have chosen the place you are going to take your images, you don't move around as it can distract other people doing their jobs so always make sure you have a good place to capture a lot of different images. Lights can change in the boxing match also so be prepared to keep on top of your settings and adjust accordingly to your surroundings. As you want to capture the movements you all have to have a high shutter speed at 1/400sec to 1/500sec and if you are completely wanting to freeze the image you can even go to 1/1000 which is good for capturing the sweat like the image above. Also, to have a main focus and blur out some of the commotion in the background use an aperture at around f/3.2 to f/4, also allowing more light to your image. A High iso is also good to use if the room isn't very well lit. You would want to set your camera to burst mode so that you can take as many images as possible and capture all of the details and things going on.

#research #catchmeifyoucan

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communitysaints · 6 years ago

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Saints+farewell+interview%3A+Christian+Day

%3Cdiv%3E%3Cdiv%3E%3Cp%3EIt+might+have+come+two+weeks+after +than+%2C+however +Christian+Day+currently +has +his+chance+to+state +a+proper+Franklin%27s+Gardens+forth +on+Sunday. %3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3EThe+lock+was+unable+to+feature+at +the+closing +match +of+the+Premiership+year%2C+from +Worcester+Warriors+on+May+5%2C+due+to+a+shoulder+accident. %3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3E+While+Ben+Foden+scored+per +attempt +and+Stephen+Myler+off+with+a+powerful +penalty+effort +that+put+the+spin +to +the+success %2C+Day+was+forced+to+watch+from+the+stands. %3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3E+He+did+get+the+chance+to+go+onto+the+area +of+play+after+the+closing +whistle+was+blown+as+he+and+the+other+16+departing+players+were+presented+with+a+framed+shirt+with +chairman+John+White. %3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3E+But+thankfully+for+Day%2C+he+will+get+a second +chance+to+run+out+on+the+Gardens+mulch +as+he+hosts+his+paychecks +game +this+Sunday+%28kick-off+1.30pm%29. %3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3E+It+will+be+a+match +of+signature + Baseball +as+Day%2C+that +is+now+Wrestling +and+will+take+up+a+role+as+participant +liaison+officer+in +the+Rugby+Players+Association+%28RPA%29+this+summer%2C+is+not+match +for+contact. %3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3E+But+even+though+it+does+not+carry+the+heating +of+a+Premiership+or+cup+combat %2C+it+will++be+a+hugely+special+day+to +a+person +who+has+given+so+far +to+the+Saints+trigger +because +signing+to +the+club+at +2008. %3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3E+He+has+known+the+time+is+right+to+retire+to +several +months+now%2C+and+he+is+searching +forward+to+remaining+at +the+match +with+the+RPA. %3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3E+%22Most+players+get+to+a+point+where+they+start+feeling+like+it%27s+the+time+to+retire+and+then+it%27s+a+instance +of++persuaded+differently%2C%22+stated +Day%2C+that +will+turn+35+at +June. %3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3E+%22Last+season+I+was+thinking+%27should+I+stop+this+year%27+but+the+coaches+said+they+actually +needed+my+direction +to +one++season +so+they+signed+me+up+to +another+season. %3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3E+%22I%27ve+been+on+single-year+rolling+contracts+to +the+past +four+years+so+that+if +I+understood +the+time+was+directly +to+discontinue 2C+I+would +quit. %3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3E+%22This+year%2C+around+about+Christmas+time%2C+I+only +believed +this +this+was+the+appropriate +time%2C%3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3E+%22I+wasn%27t+quite+where+I+wanted+to+be+in+terms+of+my+body+and+head +and+it%27s+time+to+let+a +other+men +have+a+crack+in +the+initial +team. %3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3E+%22There+are+no+Truth +to +my+behalf. +I%27d+known+to +a+long+time+that+I+was+going+to+be+retiring+at+the+end+of+this+season+and+that+allows +you+put+the+correct +things+at +place+to+make+sure+you%27ve+got+a+job+to+go+. %3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3E+%22The+fact +for+90+percent +of+players+is+that+when+we+stop+playing+5%2C+we+need+to+have+a+task. %3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3E+%22I%27m+really +lucky+that+I%27m+becoming +to+stay+at +rugby+off+the+field. +It+was+my+dream+to+remain +included +but+I+didn%27t+want+to+trainer +or+play+at+a+lower+degree. %3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3E+%22It%27s+very+much+my+dream+project +to+help+the+match +off+the+area +and+one+day+climb+the+ladder+to+1 +day+being+the+man +who+is+making+the+decisions+about+how+the+match +is+streak. %22%3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3E+Day%27s+last+appearance+for+Saints+wasn%27t+1 +to+savour+as+his+shoulder+trauma +forced+him+off+in+a+tremendously +unsatisfactory +63-13+conquer +to+Saracens+at+the+Gardens. %3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3E+%22I+picked+the+injury+Exeter+away+%28on+February+24%29%2C%22+he+said. +%3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3E+%22The+experts +state +it%27s+a+Gamble +problem +that%27s+probably+been+building+up+to +a+long+time%2C+however +I%27d+not +had+a+shoulder+problem +in+my+whole+livelihood. %3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3E+%22Against+Exeter%2C+I+made+quite+an+embarrassing +tackle+and+my+shoulder+only +came+outside +of+it%27s+joint+and+went+rear +in. %3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3E+%22I+conducted +to+the+physios+to+say+that+I+believed +my+shoulder+had+turn +out%2C+they+assessed +it+over+and+told+me+I+would +carry+on+so+I+played+the+rest+of+that+match. %3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3E+%22It+was+a+funny+period+of+the+year +where+we+had+a+lot+of+openings +involving +matches +therefore +I%27d+do+loads+of+rehab+building+into+the+game+and+by+the+time+I%27d+hit +the+match +it+will +sense +good. %3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3E+%22But+by+the+really +second +match%2C+it+came+outside +of+its+joint+%2C+from +I+did+rehabilitation%2C+however +I+got+knocked+outside +cold+at +a+match +from +Sale+and+then+I+had+a+remainder +after+this. %3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3E+%22It+got+to+the+point+where+I+went+into+the+Saracens+match +and+I+was+already+struggling. +I+couldn%27t+lift+my+correct +arm+and+it+was+at+that+point+where+the+physios+told+me+it+wasn%27t+directly +and+I+was+performing +myself+long-term+harm +thus +I+needed+to+get+it+looked+at+properly. %3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3E+%22I+had+a+22I%2C+saw+the+expert +and+the+response +was+that+I%27d+need+a+inch +Dollar +or+it+was+going+to+keep+happening+so+it+is+sad+and+I+did+miss+out+on+the+last+three+matches +but+I+got+to+play+in+226+other+games+to +the+Saints+and+I%27d+never+have+some +regrets+about+my+career+in +Saints. %3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3E+%22I%27m+incredibly+lucky+to+have+played+to +such+a+brilliant+club+and+I+got+to+play+a+lot+of+matches +therefore +to+miss+out+on+a+few+didn%27t+create +any+gap. +%3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3E+%22That+last+day+was+still+excellent +since +I+got+to+walk+round +the+pitch+with+my+family+and+take+it++in. +It+was+great. %22%3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3E+Day+will+walk+away+from+Saints+with+226+looks +below +his+belt. %3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3E+He+won+per +Challenge+Cup+in+his+first+season+and+went+to+assert +another+winners+medal+at +that+competition+as+well+as+glory+at +the+Aviva+Premiership+and+Anglo-Welsh+Cup. %3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3E+The+Blackpool-born+lock+won+the+coveted+players%27+participant +of+the+season+prize+at +the+double-winning+season+of+2013%2F14%2C+showing+only +how+crucial +he+was+to+Saints%27+bundles. %3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3E+And+his+only+disappointment+is+that+Saints+couldn%27t+carry+on+their+success+beyond+2015%2C+if +they+completed +shirt +of+the+Premiership+table+for+the+first+time+in+the+club 27s+background. %3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3E+%22It%27s+the+expectation+that%27s+the+thing+that+gets+you+because+we+know+how+great +a+group +we+have+had+in +Saints%2C%22+Day+said. %3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3E+%22We+probably+overperformed+tremendously +at +the+first+few+years+of+Jim%27s+Stud +and+that+probably+set+us+up+to +a+fall+afterwards. %3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3E+%22We+won+the+Challenge+Cup+the+first+season +we+came+back+up%2C+we+went+quite +much+undefeated+in +home%2C+we+had+a+good +run+of+manufacturing +the+play-offs%2C+reached+per +Heineken+Cup+closing +%28in+2011%29%2C+won+the+Premiership%2C+won+the+league+the+season +after+that. %3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3E+%22Since+then%2C+we+haven%27t+done +to+that+typical +and+that+can+be+difficult +to+take%2C+however +that%27s+what+professional+sport+is+and+there%27s+an+dreadful +bunch +of+expectation+on+people+to+perform. %3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3E+%22The+expectation+is+on+both+teams+that+take+the+area +at+a+weekend+however +1 +of+people +teams+is+going+to+lose+so+it+can+be+tough+and+a +people+can+be+quite+cruel+in +times+to+professional+sportspeople. %3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3E+%22In+my+project +heading +ahead%2C+I+hope+to+help+with+that+type +of+thing%2C+with+players+that +are+suffering+in +mental+issues +and+they+are+on+the+wrong+side+of+outcomes. %3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3E+%22If+you%27re+winning+each +week%2C+it%27s+a+lot+easier+to+be+happy+and+moved +about+your+task +than+if +you%27re+not. %22%3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3E+So+what+were+his+maximum +highs+and+lowest+lows+throughout +his+period +at+the+Gardens%3F%3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3E+%22There+are+way+too+many+highs+to+talk +any+lows%2C%22+he+said. %3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3E+%22Highs+are+mainly+centred+around+large +wins+and+we%27ve+had+percent +of+that. %3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3E+%22The+whole+ethos+of+the+club+is+what+I+think+a+Football +club+is+about. %3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3E+%22The+whole+town+is+focused+to +the+club%2C+you+can+sense +large +atmospheres+building+up+and+some+of+these +large +Friday+night+matches +or+large +Baseball +games%2C+you+can+feel+the+whole+town+focused+on+the+match. %3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3E+%22The+sound +amounts +are+incredible+and+it%27s+1 +of+the+best+places+to+play+rugby. +I%27m+quite +grateful+that+I%27ve+got+to+represent+the+club+to +the+past+10+years. %22%3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3E+Day%27s+role+with+the+RPA+will+see+him+aid +players+cope+with+the+demands+of+specialist +Baseball +and+he+will+see +most +12+Premiership+clubs+on+a+routine +foundation +second +year. %3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3E+But+he+knows+it+will+be+really +different+being+a+player. %3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3E+%22You+miss+the+bus+trip+rear +after+the+large +away+win%2C+you+miss+the+banter+at +the+changing+room+that+you+have+each +day%2C%22+said+Day%2C+once +asked+what+he+will+miss+maximum. %3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3E+%22When+you+go +nightclubs%2C+you+abruptly +possess +40+new+best+friends+that+you+spend+a+lot+of+time+with+and+that%27s+the+thing+a+lot+of+people+struggle+when+they+get+removed+in +sport. +They+miss+that+aggressive +component +to+a +scope%2C+but+the+primary +thing+is+the+social+team +that+they%27re+suddenly+removed+from. %3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3E+%22It%27s+not +the+same+if+you%27re+not+a+player. +I%27m+under+no+illusions+that+second +year+I%27ll+go+back+to+the+club+each +now+and++and+everyone+will+shake+my+hand+and+request +how+I+am%2C+however +it%27s+not+the+same+as+being+involved%2C+going+to +the+pitch+collectively +and+going+out+to +a+drink+collectively. %3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3E+%22That%27s+the+roughest +thing+and+that%27s+the+thing+I%27ll+drop%2C+however +I%27m+very+much+searching +forward+to+using +a+Saturday+rear +where+I+can+actually+see+my+wife+and+children +now+and+. %22%3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3E+Saints+will+absolutely +miss+%2C+that +has+been+part+of+the+paste +that+has+held+the+club+collectively +because +the+advertising +to+the+Premiership+at +2008. %3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3E+But+the+studious+moment +row+forward+Feb +the+black%2C+green+and+gold+will+cope+only +nice +minus +him+and+he+has+backed+them+to+become+contenders++below +Chris+Boyd. %3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3E+%22I+don%27t+think+the+players+will+disagree+that+we%27ve+underperformed+throughout +the+past+few+years%2C+however +I+don%27t+think+it+will+take+far +to+get+back+up+5%2C%22+Day+said. %3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3E+%22We%27ve+got+several +awesome +young+players+that +are+gagging+to +a+go+and+we%27ve+got+the+likes+of+Dylan+%28Hartley%29%2C+Courtney+%28Lawes%29%2C+Piers+%28Francis%29+and+Teimana+%28Harrison%29+most +banging+on+the+England+doorway. +%3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3E+%22We%27ve+got+no+shortage+of+gift%2C+but+the+best+thing+to +the+club+was+a+breath+of+fresh+atmosphere 2C+a +brand new +inputs +that%27s+going+to+happen+this+summer+and+I%27m+confident +the+club+will+climb+rear +up+that+table. %22%3C%2Fp%3E%3C%2Fdiv%3E%3C%2Fdiv%3E

from Welcome To Community Saints http://www.communitysaints.com/saintsfarewellinterview%3achristianday/

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ultrasfcb-blog · 7 years ago

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PRL boss Mark McCafferty sounds

Mark McCafferty became the chief executive of Premier Rugby in 2005

Welsh Rugby Union chairman Gareth Davies says Mark McCafferty sounds like a “man under pressure”.

Premiership Rugby boss McCafferty criticised Wales playing South Africa in Washington DC last week outside World Rugby’s international window.

McCafferty also ruled out shortening the club season to allow the British and Irish Lions extra preparation time.

“He sounds like a man under pressure, with some comments he has come out with in the last week,” said Davies.

The Lions’ tour to South Africa tour in 2021 is set to feature a reduced programme of eight games over five weeks.

But McCafferty says reducing the English club season in 2020/21 would be “suicidal” for Premiership Rugby, instead suggesting the Six Nations could be condensed to six weeks from seven.

It is unclear yet how it will fit into the calendar and McCafferty says Lions’ management have shown “disdain” by not contacting Premiership Rugby.

Lions board member Davies says an agreement first has to be reached with Sanzaar, the body which operates Super Rugby and the Rugby Championship.

“With the Lions there is a process first of all to be agreed with Sanzaar. At the last board meeting, we agreed we would move forward in terms of trying to negotiate that contract and speaking with all the interested unions,” Davies said.

WRU chairman Gareth Davies played 21 Test matches for Wales

“So I am a little puzzled why he came out on that attack on that front.

“These things do have to be discussed. The one point I would agree with Mark is to solve this everyone needs to get around the table.

“It seems to me, though, Mark puts Premiership Rugby above all else. A few people will take exception to that.”

Lions ‘the big brand’

Davies insisted the Lions remained a special concept that should not be devalued.

“The presence and importance of a successful Lions tour can help transform the game,” said Davies.

“It attracts so many young viewers and is the big brand in rugby. You only have to see that with what has happened in recent tours, especially in New Zealand last year.

“So it should not be a case of either or. People have to be sensible and pragmatic and not think their competition is the only thing that matters.”

The New Zealand tour was dogged by issues over the messy schedule, with the tourists playing 10 games in six weeks, including an opening fixture a matter of days after arrival in Auckland.

Following the drawn series against the All Blacks, head coach Warren Gatland and tour manager John Spencer pleaded for a longer preparation period.

Davies believes the Pro14 appears willing to help the Lions: “The Pro14 have indicated they could shorten the season by a week and you look at the results this season, the league has not done badly in terms of quality.

“I am not sure why the Premiership is seen as so much better and should be treated differently to anybody else.”

Springboks Test ‘not for cash’

Davies also defended Wales’ one-off Test against South Africa in Washington, pointing to the fact England played the Barbarians the week before out of the Test window.

“It seemed an odd comment to come out with,” said Davies.

“Everyone says the South Africa match was played for cash but that is where some of the pundits got it wrong.

Tomos Williams scored a try on his Wales debut against South Africa in June 2018

“It is not about cash. It was about looking at the American market, blooding youngsters in an environment that will be similar to next year’s World Cup.

“If you asked Tomos Williams, Tom Prydie or even George North how important the last game was, they will tell you.

“They enjoyed that totally different experience. We have to think a little bit outside of Offa’s Dyke.”

‘Nobody else matters’

No English-based Welsh players were released for the fixture with Tomas Francis, Luke Charteris and Josh Adams missing out.

McCafferty said it placed an “unnecessary burden” on the clubs and players involved but Davies disagreed.

“Warren said he could not understand the stance PRL took over South Africa and I support him,” said Davies.

“We could understand the autumn internationals in terms of taking away players in mid-competition.

Warren Gatland says Wales will celebrate their win over South Africa on Hadleigh Parkes’ stag do

“But Josh, Tomas and Luke were metaphorically on the beach last week, doing nothing in terms of [club] rugby.

“What sort of rationale is behind that? I just don’t get it.

“They will then also return to their clubs a week earlier than the English players after the tour.

“It seems to be that they think their competition is all important and nobody else matters in this world.”

BBC Sport – Rugby Union ultras_FC_Barcelona

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investmart007 · 7 years ago

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WINDSOR, England | The Latest: Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are married

New Post has been published on https://is.gd/e7SexJ

WINDSOR, England | The Latest: Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are married

WINDSOR, England — The Latest on the royal wedding (all times local):

12:40 p.m.

The archbishop of Canterbury has declared Prince Harry and Meghan Markle husband and wife.

Justin Welby, the head of the Church of England, has made the proclamation after the couple promised to love and cherish one another “till death us do part,” and exchanged rings.

The British-American pair are now officially known as the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, and the duchess will take her place among senior members of the royal family.

Saturday’s ceremony took place at St. George’s Chapel in Windsor, the British royals’ longtime home.

___

12:10 p.m.

Dean of Windsor David Conner has welcomed the congregation at the start of the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.

The couple are standing at the altar in St. George’s Chapel. They smiled at each other as a soprano sang a work by Handel.

As they stood at the altar, Harry said to Meghan: “You look amazing.”

Markle arrived to a fanfare and walked down the aisle accompanied part of the way by Prince Charles, and by 10 young page boys and bridesmaids. The children include 4-year-old Prince George and 3-year-old Princess Charlotte, children of Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge.

___

12 p.m.

Meghan Markle is wearing a dress by designer Clare Waight Keller for her wedding to Prince Harry.

Markle’s choice is being closely watched Saturday given how big an impact royal wedding dresses have on what brides everywhere want to wear. Princess Diana’s 1981 wedding gown, with its romantic details and dramatic train, defined the ’80s fairytale bridal look.

More recently, when Kate Middleton married Prince William in 2011, her long-sleeved lace gown immediately sparked a trend for more covered-up, traditional lace bridal dresses.

___

11:55 a.m.

Queen Elizabeth II arrived at St. George’s Chapel in Windsor in a flared lime-colored dress in printed silk and an edge-to-edge coat with a lime silk tweed fastening.

The royal palace said that both items of clothing were designed by Stuart Parvin. She was joined by her husband, Prince Philip. The guests stood to attention as the pair entered the chapel.

___

11:50 a.m.

American television star Meghan Markle has arrived at St. George’s Chapel for her wedding to Prince Harry.

Markle, who is being ferried to the grounds in a vintage maroon Rolls-Royce with her mother Doria Ragland, is expected to enter the chapel shortly.

Prince Harry and his brother and best man Prince William were seated waiting for her on Saturday.

___

11:35 a.m.

Prince Harry and best man Prince William have arrived at St. George’s Chapel for his royal wedding in Windsor to American actress Meghan Markle.

The pair, dressed in formal military uniforms, waved and smiled as they stepped across the grounds of the 15th-century church.

William, who was married to commoner Kate Middleton at a ceremony in 2011, is carrying his brother’s rings. Saturday’s ceremony is supposed to last about an hour.

Other members of the royal family have taken their places inside St. George’s Chapel, including Harry’s uncles Prince Andrew and Prince Edward, his aunt Princess Anne and his cousins Princess Eugenie and Princess Beatrice.

Guests are awaiting the arrival of the most senior royals, including Princes Charles, who will walk Markle down the aisle, and Queen Elizabeth II and her husband.

___

11:30 a.m.

New York theatre producer Allen DeWane has a prime viewing spot on the sunlit grounds of Windsor Castle along the procession route Prince Harry and Meghan Markle will use. He was invited because of his charity work, and happy to have the chance to share the moment.

The 47-year-old DeWane said: “I’m African-American and I’m very proud of Meghan Markle. She’s such a very class young lady. She carried herself so well and I think she’s made us all proud.”

DeWane says his contacts in the industry speak highly of Markle’s professional conduct on the set of “Suits” when it was filmed in Canada.

He said: “She’s got an excellent reputation with the workers and the crew, and not everyone does. It’s not talked about every day on the streets, but I think the majority of African-Americans are quite proud of her. And happy.”

___

11:25 a.m.

American actress Meghan Markle has arrived at her hotel on her way to the royal wedding.

The 10-mile (16-kilometer) trip will take her to St. George’s Chapel in Windsor, where she will marry Prince Harry.

Markle waved for the cameras as the car she was traveling in, a vintage Rolls-Royce, drove past Saturday. She appeared to be wearing a white dress and a long veil.

___

11:15 a.m.

Patsy Small, a 53-year-old nursery manager who was invited to the Windsor Castle grounds, says she is “very British” but she has close relatives in the United States who have been calling her in the last few days to talk about Meghan Markle.

Small said: “As a black British woman I am so happy. Everyone’s phoned me from the States this morning, they are so happy that she’s here, that she’s biracial, all they’ve been saying is black people in America are so proud and so happy.”

She said she is very impressed with Prince Harry and Prince William.

Small said of Markle joining the royal family: “Will this bridge the gap? We don’t know. But one thing we know is these two boys are real. Harry and William. They are real. They go to the West Indies. They go to Africa. They are trying to have a legacy like their mother. They know they’re royals, they know who they are. But they are also entwined with the general public and the community. They have a mind of their own.”

___

10:55 a.m.

Tennis great Serena Williams and soccer star David Beckham are among famous guests from the world of sports attending the wedding of Prince Harry and American actress Meghan Markle.

Williams, a 23-time Grand Slam champion, said on Instagram on Saturday that she was “getting ready for my friends wedding.” She later walked into the chapel.

Williams returned to the WTA tour briefly this year, after a 14-month absence to give birth to her daughter. But she withdrew from the ongoing Italian Open, saying she wasn’t “100 percent ready to compete,” leaving her free for the wedding.

Beckham won six Premier League titles at Manchester United and had 115 appearances for England. He also won league titles in Spain (Real Madrid), the United States (LA Galaxy) and France (PSG).

Stars from the rugby world included Sir Clive Woodward, who coached England to the world cup in 2003, and Jonny Wilkinson, a member of that title-winning team.

___

10:35 a.m.

A-list couples including George and Amal Clooney have arrived for the royal wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.

Crowds cheered as the Hollywood star and his lawyer spouse arrived at Windsor Castle — he in a gray suit, she in mustard yellow dress and matching hat.

David and Victoria Beckham have also arrived at St. George’s Chapel for the ceremony. The former soccer star doffed his sunglasses to pose for photos with well-wishers. Designer Victoria wore a smart navy blue ensemble and hat with half-veil.

___

10:15 a.m.

Kensington Palace says that Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have chosen Cleave & Company to make their rings.

The American actress’ ring has been made with Welsh gold given by Queen Elizabeth II. The company also made her engagement ring.

Prince Harry’s ring is a platinum band with a textured finish.

Prince William will carry the rings into St George’s Chapel on Saturday.

___

10 a.m.

St. George’s Chapel has been given an overnight makeover with flower arrangements at the main entry door and inside the great room where Prince Harry and Meghan Markle will wed.

A cascading hedgerow style using native flowers and foliage graces the entryway. A similar display was inside.

Senior chapel official Charlotte Manley said the flowers were put in overnight while other decorations were put in place in recent days.

She said Markle helped choose the plants but has not seen them in place. That will happen when she arrives to be wed.

The chapel was filled with light from the extensive stain glass window on a bright sunny morning as guests started to arrive.

___

9:50 a.m.

Oprah Winfrey and Idris Elba are among the first guests to arrive at Windsor Castle for the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.

The American talk-show titan and the London-born Hollywood star are among celebrities, royalty, athletes and family friends in the 600-strong congregation invited to St. George’s Chapel in Windsor.

Singer James Blunt has also arrived Saturday at the gothic chapel, where the wedding will start at noon (1100GMT).

Royal relatives on hand include Charles Spencer, the brother of Harry’s late mother Princess Diana.

___

9:20 a.m.

Royal fans have come from near and far for a glimpse of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle on their wedding day in Windsor.

Hundreds camped out overnight to get a prime spot outside for the newlyweds’ horse-drawn carriage near Windsor Castle after the ceremony.

“I woke up wet, and I’m freezing cold, my back is sore, and I just want to go to bed,” said Bernadette Christie, a Canadian from Grand Prairie, Alberta.

“I’m here for that 10 seconds when that coach goes around the corner,” she said. “It’ll be well worth it.”

Farkahanda Ahmed came with her mother and a friend from Slough, a few miles from Windsor, arriving at 4 a.m. to get a good spot. The trio wore Union Jack hijabs in honor of the occasion.

“It’s a proud moment for us — times are changing,” Ahmed said. “Who would have thought a Hollywood actress would become a British princess?

“We are proud to be British and we wanted to come here and show our support.”

___

9 a.m.

The members of the public selected for prime viewing spots for the royal wedding have started arriving.

Alan Scott was one of the first arrivals among the roughly 2,600 people invited to watch the procession from the grounds of Windsor Castle. He was invited because of his 45 years of service to scouting, an activity that enjoys much royal family support.

He will have a front row view of the wedding procession and hoped for a good chance to see Prince Harry and Meghan Markle after the ceremony.

The 69-year-old Scott had come in from Lincolnshire the night before for the big event.

“It’s a great honor,” he said of the unexpected invite. “The atmosphere is great. The royals are great supporters of everything and the young element is really coming through. I think they’re going to take things forward.”

___

8:30 a.m.

Royal watchers have swarmed the first trains from London to Windsor as they headed for the wedding of Prince Harry and American actress Meghan Markle.

At the station in Slough, the changing point for travelers from London, revelers found sign boards reading “All aboard the royal wedding special to Harry & Meghan Central.”

Many of those on the standing room only trains were Americans, including Christine Clancy from Virginia.

Clancy says she’s “always been a royal fan — not an extreme one — I just love British history and love the royals. I just wanted to be part of the wedding celebration.”

Irene Bowdry, a lawyer from California, booked her trip with four friends as soon as the date was announced. She said “an American in the royal family, isn’t that so exciting?”

___

8:20 a.m.

Queen Elizabeth II has conferred a dukedom on Prince Harry — making him the Duke of Sussex, Earl of Dumbarton and Baron Kilkeel.

The new title will mean that when Harry marries American actress Meghan Markle later Saturday in Windsor, she will become the Duchess of Sussex.

The secondary titles are for use in Scotland and Northern Ireland.

The monarch similarly bestowed titles on the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge before their wedding in 2011.

___

8 a.m.

Thousands of people are on the streets outside Windsor Castle after many of them camped overnight to grab the best spots to catch a glimpse of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle on their wedding day.

It was the fourth night sleeping rough for Canadian royal-watcher Bernadette Christie, who says it will be well worth it if she sees the royal couple pass by in their state carriage.

Christie says, “I’m freezing cold, my back is sore, and I just want to go to bed.”

But she is unrepentant. She says “I’m here for that ten seconds when the coach comes around the corner.”

Police and security marshals are out in force to ensure the safety of the tens of thousands of people expected to converge on Windsor during the day.

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5 a.m.

The big day is finally here: Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are to wed at St. George’s Chapel on the grounds of Windsor Castle.

It all started with a blind date two years ago that went very, very well.

That has turned into a global mega-event Saturday that is helping reshape the British monarchy and will be watched by tens of millions of TV viewers around the world.

By Associated Press – published on STL.News by St. Louis Media, LLC (Z.S)

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#Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are married #The archbishop of Canterbury #TodayNews #WINDSOR

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