RIP Mike Smith, former England cricket captain

Pete must've been making us all laugh for twenty years now 😂 😃 😊

Pete made me lol. Again. 😀

Very good Pete

Should add, Lord Coe got the bulk of the plaudits for the Games, but in a massive part, the late Tessa Jowell was the driving force for much of it. Sadly that is often forgotten.

LOL@ Pete

I think there was an onus to make the London 2012 infrastructure with an eye to post-game use. IIRC this Olympics was the most "Green" one to date at the time, using almost all of the facilities in one way or another, including the athletes accommodation. Again from memory, I think that the advantages for the other facilities played a part in the now London Stadium being able to leased to the hammers at a discounted rate, given that no prospect of any other viable use for it was available. I believe they had to reduce capacity to make it an attractive proposition to the club, even if it did piss off the fans

Lord Nelson was 5ft 6 inches. His statue is 17ft 4 inches. That's Horatio of 3:1.

Karren Brady probably used a version of her famous line in the negotiations and it would have worked on Boris.

Hash - they wanted the hockey stadium that was built for the 2012 Olympics

Didn't Leyton Orient want the stadium at one point? Should have given it to them

I went to the site of the Olympic stadium that was built for Athens about 3 years ago, and it was even more dead than a typical Franchise game. Nothing like new flats, shops, restaurants etc that would have given it a bit of life.

The Olympic Park area has been hugely improved since the games - so much housing (albeit mostly expensive flats for rent…), and some great landscaping along the river, etc… The arrival of the V&A Storehouse and Sadler’s Wells East are the kinds of things that bring in footfall and money (plus obviously Westfield, with all the pros and cons attached to that…). It’s hardly a cultural desert or a back end if nowhere as it once was, although the removal of some of the previous industry there was in some cases shameful. I took a party of schoolkids to a viewing floor at the top of a high rise in Old Stratford during the construction phase around 2009/10 - it was an impressive site, astounding that it all got completed on time. Moving West Ham to that stadium was terrible for them - imagine the atmosphere next season when it’s half full against Preston or Lincoln…

I think West Ham had very skilled negotiators who got them a brilliant deal though the fans mostly wish they were back at Boleyn Road. It is hard to make good economic use of a very large athletics stadium that isn't that suitable for other sports.

Not wanting to get political, but Ledd is correct, the deal Was done under Johnson’s tenure - arguably it’ll cost a great deal more to London taxpayers because of the costs of policing the derbies between Hammers and Millwall, which presumably will be a massive undertaking. Pretty selfish of Spurs to stay up and cause this extra expense - maybe they’d like to pay for it…. 😬

The problem was the maintenance of an empty Olympics stadium would also been eye watering. So not sure whether tax payers would have been better off or not without the deal at the time

We have the then London Mayor Boris Johnson to thank for negotiating the West Ham London stadium deal in 2013.

[Link]

Hammers negociated a good deal !

Anyone heard anything about PSFs this close season?

Fantastic achievement by Aaron Rai to win the US PGA Championship [Link] I’m not really a big golf fan, but to be the first Englishman to win this title for over a century is remarkable!! ⛳️🏆👏

Aristocracy not above a bit of family love.

Was there more than one Horatio Nelson and Emma Hamilton back in 18th century? This is why you can't rely on Wikipedia for facts. Here Wiki says she was mother of Horatio Nelson. [Link] and his names somebody else as his mother [Link]

Thought it was interesting in his comments last week that Cope (PBUH) mentioned getting new defenders in specifically

I recommended a centre back from Wealdstone to Craig Cope by e.mail a few weeks ago, hopefully he has checked him out, wouldn’t be extortionate cost wise