Good morning! No news as yet on the Perth logo or name... it will supposedly be released 11.00am-ish WA time.

Interesting story in Stuff.co.nz this morning about ticket scalping for the upcoming Lions tour of NZ. Apparently a swag of Kiwis are auctioning off their tickets on TradeMe - the shaky isles homegrown version of ebay. The NZ Union isn't too impressed and have said that they "would wipe the validity of tickets sold by on-line scalpers".

Let's think about that for a moment. The same story goes on to tell us that scalping is legal in New Zealand. (that's ticket scalping - not the other sort, I'm sure they've made that illegal by now) - so what's the problem? By making scalped tickets invalid the only people who will dip out are the poor sods who pay the big money for the tickets to the scalpers. The scalpers aren't going to lose! I don't see the point in punishing the ticket buyers - is it some kind of reverse logic peculiar to Australia's East island neighbours?

I don't condone ticket scalping, but hey it's not 'new' - I suspect there were shady looking guys in skirts hanging around outside the Gladiator events in ancient Rome muttering 'Tickets for sale'. It's supply and demand. Quite frankly I find it more annoying that the ARU only offered tickets in sets of 4 for last year's Australia vs England test, and the Quarter finals onwards RWC games in 2003 - too bad there's 5 people in this family, three of them being kids. It would have been pleasant if we'd been able to sit together, alas that is apparently a too big an ask.

Ticket scalping is no doubt the last thing on the minds of the English dominated Lions squad - Clive Woodward's apparently gathered his crew together and the chest puffing has commenced. I'm sure we're all pleased. Clive wants them to focus on winning, but also wants the squad to enjoy themselves on this upcoming tour - according to the article that's a newie.

Hansie's Round 8 wrap up is up! Thanks mate! psssst... I think I did better in my tipping this week than he did.. heh