Digits, dogs and a rowing challenge
As , it's the coaches rather than the players who have dominated the winter headlines. Well, .
Fair play to Terry Matterson for doing his bit to edge rugby league into the national spotlight in the run-up to the new season.
The nation winced last week when the Castleford coach revealed he had lost a digit on a pre-season training camp in France. So much so that there was a flood of texts asking me to drop the story from the sports bulletin on 91Èȱ¬ Radio 5 live.
"We were just tidying up after training when I saw a ball on the other side of a steel fence," Matterson told me when I caught up with him for a chat.
"I pushed off the fence, got the ball, threw it back, looked at my hand and saw the finger had gone. I looked around for it, couldn't find it and couldn't get back over the fence. The players located my finger, which was stuck on top of the fence with my ring!"