NPR

HKCJ wrote: Sat Sep 05, 2020 6:01 am Grow a fucking spine

laurent wrote: Sat Sep 05, 2020 6:11 am Whinging kiwis

FujiKiwi wrote: Sat Sep 05, 2020 6:05 am

HKCJ wrote: Sat Sep 05, 2020 6:01 am Grow a fucking spine

One of his lines? What kind of poster would he use that on?

FujiKiwi wrote: Sat Sep 05, 2020 6:05 am

HKCJ wrote: Sat Sep 05, 2020 6:01 am Grow a fucking spine

One of his lines? What kind of poster would he use that on?

Gumboot wrote: Sat Sep 05, 2020 6:25 am Mr Bungle's avatar reminds me of Bulldog's 3-legged mutt, Lucy.

Gumboot wrote: Sat Sep 05, 2020 6:25 am Mr Bungle's avatar reminds me of Bulldog's 3-legged mutt, Lucy.

Mr Bungle wrote: Sat Sep 05, 2020 10:01 am

Gumboot wrote: Sat Sep 05, 2020 6:25 am Mr Bungle's avatar reminds me of Bulldog's 3-legged mutt, Lucy.

Who were you in a former life?

FujiKiwi wrote: Sat Sep 05, 2020 6:12 am

laurent wrote: Sat Sep 05, 2020 6:11 am Whinging kiwis

He can’t have hated us all that much? He and Enz were close?

TB63 wrote: Sat Sep 05, 2020 9:40 amYap Yap Yap..

Ata Rangi wrote: Sat Sep 05, 2020 1:37 pm

FujiKiwi wrote: Sat Sep 05, 2020 6:12 am

laurent wrote: Sat Sep 05, 2020 6:11 am Whinging kiwis

He can’t have hated us all that much? He and Enz were close?

He was a noted kiwiphile.

Enzedder wrote: Sat Sep 05, 2020 3:47 pm

Ata Rangi wrote: Sat Sep 05, 2020 1:37 pm

FujiKiwi wrote: Sat Sep 05, 2020 6:12 am

He can’t have hated us all that much? He and Enz were close?

He was a noted kiwiphile.

He was - but when he ventured down here a month before he died he became the generous host. I bet our waitress never forgot him as I bet that his tip was the biggest she ever received.



I'll never forget the "lurker" who struggled on walking sticks to come down to the pub where we met just to shake his hand.

FujiKiwi wrote: Sat Sep 05, 2020 6:12 am

laurent wrote: Sat Sep 05, 2020 6:11 am Whinging kiwis

He can’t have hated us all that much? He and Enz were close?

Openside wrote: Sat Sep 05, 2020 10:47 pm Softie arranged a memorial drink for him at a pub in London. About 40 bore dies showed up.

Blake wrote: Sun Sep 06, 2020 1:27 am Abbysinya!

Much missed poster along with a host of others that managed to escape this place.

The phrase 'Online Community' is often touted these days without people realising just how reliant we have become on the WWW for our social, professional and even love lives.

Planet Rugby has become a huge online rugby community with its very own identity and thriving and opinionated chat forum, where many rugby fans from around the globe debate the game, their allegiances and virtually everything else about life! Without their contribution and interest, it's a truism to say PR would not exist today in the form we find it.

One of the Veterans of that Chat Forum, and someone that has contributed his garrulous views on almost a daily basis since 1998, posted as Bulldog, who in every day life was an English light-oil trader named Simon Dickson, based out of Houston in Texas.

Sadly, Simon passed away on 21/07/08 aged 48, a heart attack taking a young life and an athletic mind.

He was a rugby fanatic, a Harlequin and England supporter, but more East End geezer than public school toff. His first allegiance was to Buller RFC, who appeared more times in his threads than Auckland or Leicester! His watching history stretched from the mid 70s to date and he had watched England in every major Rugby playing country, including the 2003 Rugby World Cup final that England won, his proudest moment. A lover of fine wine, of beer and life itself, he lived every minute of those 48 years to the fullest.

For us here at Planet Rugby, it's difficult for us to describe his contributions, so we thought it would more appropriate to edit together some of the comments that have literally been flooding in, either via mail or through our forum.

1) My first day on the forum he sent me a personal email welcoming me in.

He knew his rugby all right. When I couldn't remember the name of a "one cap wonder" Welsh hooker, describing the man as a ruddy faced chap, Simon came straight back with his name - Nigel Meek. Encyclopaedic knowledge.

2) Bulldog's first words to me....

When we first met in the LJ (he was in Rio de Janerio to play golf, naturally), he walked in wearing a Lions shirt. Quite a lot of other people were wearing rugby shirts but I just knew it had to be him.

He strolled up to the bar, ordered a pint of Guinness, took a sip and said in his best Estuary English, "Christ, this is p*ss!" and ordered a bottle of Heineken.

3) Last time I saw him was at a head-wetting drinks in the function room upstairs at the Nellie Dean in November 2006, to which he cordially invited not only himself but a couple of his mates, too. The miserable sod talked too loud, smoked too much and abused my hospitality no end: the drinks bill at the end of the evening was huge (although, to be fair, he was not solely responsible for that...).

Mind you, it was difficult to begrudge him, since only hours earlier he had stood my mate and I a lovely lunch in Mayfair.

He was generous to a fault. First time I met him was at the Hole In The Wall (anyone else noticing a theme developing here...?), his favourite boozer in all the world (no surprise, really: it is a dump). I can't remember exactly who was there, but I do know he brought his then wife with him. The event sticks out in my mind for two reasons. First because I somehow contrived to pour an entire pint of vitamin G all over his wife and he didn't even punch me; second because he then took her - soaked through - and me to supper at Bank and wouldn't hear of us paying. You can't argue with that kind of quality.

Garrulous, irascible, scarily loud of voice, often deliberately coarse, deep of pocket and warm of heart, we shouldn't be shocked at his passing: he drank like a fish, smoked like a trooper, had a pretty stressful job, spent too much time on planes and considered exercise to be something for other, less interesting, people.

Although he will leave a large hole in the board and my email will be less busy, personally I shan't mourn the bugger. He would, I believe, be horrified at the thought; so I'll raise a glass of red to him this evening and mark his passing by doubling my resolve to make sure I get to the gym as often as I promise myself I will.

4) It's been almost five years since I caught up with Bulldog a couple of times while he was here for the 2003 world cup, having known each other for a couple of years prior to that on the chat board.

We met for lunch at The Royal Exhibition by Central Station around midday and immediately I had some catching up to do as he'd been on it for a couple of hours already. We hit it off straight away and within a short time the force of his personality had attracted half a dozen others to our table in the beer-garden including several lovely young lasses that Bulldog charmed across from another table, whom he effortlessly passed himself off to as a globe-trotting rugby journalist. (Personally I thought being an wealthy international oil Baron would have been far more impressive, but he was probably bored of the reality.)

For the next 14 hours we drank, smoked and laughed ourselves stupid about anything and everything. His rugby knowledge, at least as far as England was concerned, was impeccable. He crashed at my place, but before he did, found my laptop left on and logged in, as I popped out for a paper. Par for his treasured courses that he managed in that time to leave several acutely embarrassing messages on the PR message board in my name.

He was gone before I woke next morning but we caught up not long after following England's victory. It was difficult to get a sensible word out of him as he'd been on the booze for 24 hours solid. He was one extremely happy Bulldog, a world champion, in perhaps one of the happiest moments of his life.

When I look at some of the recent pictures posted of Simon it's clear he had aged far more than the five years since I last saw him, though it's an incredible shock to have learned of his passing.

Bulldog was a chat room fixture from the earliest days, a prolific poster but one who never took the place seriously. You never saw Bulldog lose his cool, in fact only one post in 20 was more than a short sentence long, most often just a few well chosen words to cheerfully put someone in their place.

He was a stirrer but never a troll, the keenest student of the game but never a preacher, came across as a gruff bastard but in my mind is only his grinning mug from 2003.

I don't know his family or his many friends away from the board, so while my thoughts are with them, it is here on the board where his loss will be felt most acutely for me. His loss to the PR forum cannot be understated. He was just always here, and now he's gone.

5) He laughed at my jokes,
He endured my doting father "my kid is the smartest, funniest, bentest" stories,
He leapt to commiserate,
He pounced on anything stupid,
but, as quick as he was with the one-liner, or emphatic putdown,
He was quicker with the reach for the wallet and the first beer,
He was always there, even when we were not,
He had an enormous heart, which, sadly, was not large enough for his unquenchable appetite for life.

6) I was busy in Deadmonton laughing at Bulldog's attempts to pick up a rather busty ginger burd.
He used the following line as his coup de grace but it didn't quite come off: 'I don't sweat much for a portly fella, dahling.'

7) And now, a word from the man himself.....Bulldog was famed for his wit and full on banter. When every Kiwi in the land bemoaned Newcastle's signing of All Black Legend Carl Hayman, Simon was quick to see the flaw in their argument. Quick as a flash he responded:

"Hayman this, Hayman thaaat. I'm sick of Kiwi hypocrisy. No-one said a word when Ben Gollings was starring in the Air NZ Cup!"

Equally when another poster eulogised about Wales' future, Bulldog was quick to remind him of some of the perceived root courses:

Welsh poster: "Wales have learned from our mistakes, the future is red- we won't make the same mistakes again"

Bulldog: "So you're going to stop picking fat useless blokes then?"

Great banter, all done with tongue firmly in cheek.

8) Lastly, it is without doubt that Bulldog has perpetrated the most successful flounce in the history of Planet Rugby...in fact ever! Leaving us not with "good riddance", or "he was a tosser anyway" or any other negative thoughts, but rather with an empty feeling of "WTF?", "Why", and an empty silence, with that awful notion that there is something left undone, something left unsaid, something left unfinished.

"Larger-than-life" is a term that is overused, and it's currency is often devalued. But in this case, it is the only term we can think of that fits all facets of Bulldog. Bulldog is, was, and always will be larger than life.

In the footsteps of another English great, Martin Johnson, the garrulous, gruff, impossible, lovable, grizzly Pom has left us, and left us as all great athletes should do, at the top of his game, and as the consummate showman leaving his audience wanting one last finale.

RIP Bulldog

You'll be missed.

From Planet Rugby and the PR forum community

The first time I met Bulldog I walked into a tearoom in Long Melford and over the clinking of tea cups he yelled out “NO FUCKING KIWI CUNTS!”. He then said nothing to me all night but ; punctuated every so often with “CUNT!” or “Boxhead”. I have never met such a witty and funny bloke. He was a diamond fucking geezer.

A couple of years ago I was putting together a multi-billion pound renewable energies hedgerow.com and I needed to set up a modest trading floor of about 100 traders. Bulldog provided a line of credit for $500m, and worked for free for six months recruiting the traders and managing the team for me. His first trade netted $400m. But he wouldn’t take any of it. What a bloke.

Then there was the time he flew in from La Paz, where he’d been playing golf and drilling for oil, and we drank 52 pints of Guinness, a dozen bottles of Barolo, smoked several thousand cigarettes and over a hundred cigars. I nipped out to the shop to buy an oak barrel of port for after supper (four Argentinean cattle craftily stowed in his hand luggage) and when I’d got back found he’d logged onto my computer and sent an abusive mail to my mother, my boss, and wiped my hard drive. Christ it was funny.

I can’t not mention the time in the HITW I accidentally poured a vat of sulphuric acid on his wife. He took it surprisingly well. He just said He divorced her soon after. He still stumped up for dinner at La Gavroche though, despite skin hanging from his wife’s desiccated face. We had a huge piss-up in a suite in Claridges after dinner, as his wife lay melting on a divan. It was a fucking classic night.

One time he bought me a yacht. Just for no reason. I offered to pay for the sail cover, but he wasn’t having any of it. He just said “Stop yer fucking whinging.” That was the mark of the man.

You know, he was like a brother to me. In fact, I think he was my brother. As I type this the tears are pouring from my face. I’ve been in counselling these past two days, just bawling my eyes out cursing God for his inhumanity and cruelty. My faith as a Christian has been rocked, and idols are tumbling into the sea. I am questioning everything now. What is this all FOR???

Goddam you Sir Tim Berners-Lee and your infernal interweb! What suffering and pain hath thou wrought! I cannot go on.

BULLDOG! BULLDOG! Why has thou forak----

As Enz said after many days of thinking and debating with myself I gave Simon's Mum a ring.

Moira is a lovely lady and we chatted for about 30 minutes. Bulldog's ashes are currently sitting in her lounge and she can still hear him talking to her sometimes. She has been stunned with the letters, cards and phone calls she has had from all over the world. She mentioned Korea, Russia, Thailand and the US just to name a few. She knew Simon was a lovely guy and has been cheered by the fact that so many other people did too. She wanted to know about his trip down here, if he was still smoking and was he looking after himself. Was he happy as she felt he never recovered after his failed marriage. She knew that Simon had a high stress job to go with his high blood pressure and very high cholesterol as well as diabetes, which he did nothing about. I told her of his many friends around the world and how we all missed him. I also told her of the planet rugby tribute and how to see the news item on the website. She, like us, knows that Simon lived fast and hard and did what he wanted to. She is just so sad that we didn't have the pleasure of his company for another 30 years.