Alan

Snap!

Thanks Robbob. That stone is a new one on me. What's the story behind Joe Lee?

It's a long time since I visited the dam, sixty odd years in fact and I'm blowed if I can identify which part those photos were taken at. Help me out please?

I seem to remember that when I was a child, BI was called BICC which I think was an abbreviation of British Insulated Callander Cables. As Callander is up in Jockland, does this imply that the BI origins were Scottish?

Those are common to all RL games. What puzzles me is why the attendances at Challenge Cup games are less than half those at normal league games

I was shocked to read about the low attendances for the Fifth Round this last weekend. Three Superleague clubs could only must 3000 or less and even the tie of the round between Castleford and Saints could only muster 5000, Any thoughts as to why the lack of enthusiasm?

I remember my first ever visit to the USA (Los Angeles) in 1971 and nattering about their cars to an American colleague. I asked him about maintenance of their big automatic cars with 6 litre engines. He looked at me as If I was daft. I remember his words to this day. "Alan, to us a car is like a fridge. We don't worry about things like home maintenance as they're designed to work without all that crap". About thirty years elapsed before our cars were so reliable and robust

Cracking win for Saints in what was a cracking game until the big Castleford forwards ran out of steam in the last twenty minutes. Ben Barba was the big difference. He was just fantastic and the effect he has on games takes me right back to Mal Meninga in the 1980s and Jamie Lyon later. I feared the worst when the draw put us away at Wheldon Road but no fear, we were magnificent

I was at both games when we lost. And yes, you're right. There was a snowstorm during one of them

Poor game last night when Hull FC beat Fev. To be honest, even though it was sixty years ago, I still hate Featherstone for beating Saints at Post Office Road in those two quarter-final games in the mid 1950s. It was like winning at Wembley to me whenever Carlisle or Barrow beat them in the league

In the early 1960s, I used to join my dad and a couple of his mates for last orders in the Lingholm pub when I was home from university. . It's all a distant memory but two of them were teachers at West Park. There was a Jerry and a Dickie. Both were bachelors. Maybe it was Jerry Platt and not Dickie. Great company and interesting conversationalists. I think Jerry lived somewhere near Taylor Park

Was the Mr Platt, Dickie Platt?

I spent June to September 1960 working on the fifth floor of that tower as part of what was known as The Concrete Gang hauling barrow-loads of concrete from a silo to a hoist and then up to the fifth floor. Great wage for a 17 year-old of £19 per week which included 3d an hour wellington money for providing and wearing wellies all day. The work was back-breaking and relentless as we were all on some kind of incentive bonus so the old-hands kept me whipped into action

Batley's Mount Pleasant ground has a slope of several feet