The greatest sports documentary of all time?

Living With Lions is the warts and all documentary account of the historic 1997 British and Irish Lions Tour of South Africa. This defined sports documentary making for a generation. For me, it combines my love of rugby, and little known to me at the time would be a big influence on my future as a documentary filmmaker.

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MUSIC: Every Valley by Public Service Broadcasting

Public service Broadcasting have a fantastic new album. Every Valley is a chronicle of the rise and destruction of the Welsh coalmining industry and features the voice of Richard Burton, James Dean Bradfield of Welsh band Manic Street Preachers as well as a Welsh language song performed by Lisa Jên Brown 

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PODCASTS: Adam Buxton talks to documentary film maker Adam Curtis.

Adam Curtis is one of my favorite documentary filmmakers and Adam Buxton hosts one of my favorite podcasts. So I was very excited to hear Buxton's latest episode featured Curtis himself in a fascinating listen. Curtis describes his work as journalism that happens to be expounded via the medium of film. What I especially love about Curtis style of filmmaking is the way he uses old discarded BBC news footage, the kind of footage you usually don't get to see, and plays it back to us in long, uncut edits that viewers are not used to seeing with today's short attention spans.

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NETFLIX: Five Came Back. Excellent new documentary series from Netflix

I recently got around to watching the excellent three part Netflix documentary series by Mark Harris. Five Came Back tells the riveting story of US studio directors’ impact on the Second World War.

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RUGBY: USA and Canada to join 6 Nations ?

Six Nations chiefs recently ruled out the introduction of relegation and promotion format to the worlds oldest international rugby tournament.

For all the talk of growing the game by World Rugby, the 8 founder unions of England, France, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa seem to be afraid of losing control of the game and have continually held back the expansion into other countries , instead keeping the game as a cosy old boys club just for them.

In recent years, however, there have been moves by the founder Big 8 unions to move into the Amercian market. 

Therefore, why don't the 6 Nations look to tap into the American market by adding USA & Canada to the tournament and make it 8 nations split into 2 pools of 4 with end of season grand final and relegation playoff with Rugby Europe (6 nations B). TV and sponsors would love it and this would open up the game to continental Europe and North America overnight. Sadly it won't happen as the game is run by officials with self-interest, who are afraid of change and losing control. 

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