A fellow contributor sent me a message a few hours ago to tell me this news, as I said to him 'I don't know what to say'...
To me, Cables was just 'always here' and 'go to man for the facts'. I sadly never knew him personally but I certainly recognise him from the photos on here (I was a prom dweller for long time myself).
Reading the messages & tributes to him have me sitting here with a tear in my eye. This is truly a sad, sad day for this forum. Cables is and always will be irreplaceable on the UAFC.
My sincerest sympathies to Mrs Phillips and the rest of the family circle. Sadly tomorrow is promised to no one.
Of course I never met the man himself but I recall one time we were discussing a particular aspect of the running of provincial and Irish rugby and I had rambled on in my usual fashion straying off on tangents and in Cables' response his first line was " I am a man of few words really" and he then went on to make his point in 2 lines....a point I'd probably drag out to a half an hour of reading.
For me this was really something. I thought "here's a man who can through it all and just get to the important points immediately with no requirement for dramatics". Not to mention his knowledge of how things are and how things work.
Anyway I should have learnt something but I'm afraid some of us are not as equipped to keep things simple and smart.
I hope nobody minds me posting a line from Cables.
Guess I should now renew my membership of Conspiracy Theories 2009.
As I love my conspiracy theories I was well impressed with this....even if it was meant in a somewhat different way by Cables that I wanted to think.
It is a man's own mind, not his enemy or foe, that lures him to evil ways.
Shan wrote:...... in Cables' response his first line was " I am a man of few words really" ....
As the man himself might have said "that's because he was short of breath from too many ciggies"
He was never going to stop though - he'd rather enjoy what time he had left to him than live a longer but more miserable life of abstinence. I think he did that.
I'm not arguing -
I'm just explaining why I'm right
Flicking through the posts made by everyone here today the principal
thing that shines first and foremost for me is the great respect and
esteem that Stanley was held by absolutely everyone here. I don't
believe there is another one of us here this that can be said about.
People appear and disappear all the time in these parts and few of
us make any real notable contribution, myself included. Cables on
the other hand did not fall into that group. I can only think that we
really were privileged that he gave so much of his knowledge and
time to us here. His loss has left a great void among us.
Grumps, thanks for the insight into what we all knew Cables to be.
A Gentleman.
I never knew him personally, but just the thought of never seeing that little heart avatar pop up on a thread again brings a lump to my throat. He will never be forgotten.
Super tribute Grumps.
You haven't seen me at my best yet. Let's be honest, you probably never will.
I've known cables since early 2004, the famous 33-0 match to be precise, seems like a lifetime now and could probably count the number of home matchs on my fingers that we haven't talked to each other, sometimes a brief hello other nights a good chat, started off in the beer tent, then the scoop, and laterly the Aquinas carpark, he probably has a speadsheet somewhere for the exact details.
His knowledge and statistics on Ulster are probably the most complete set of statistics anywhere and at times even proved UR and ERC to be wrong, Justin Fitzpatricks missing cap was a prime example.
I was lucky enough to have an insight into how he kept it all and despite no formal training, as far as I know, in computers he was a wizard in using Excel, the huge spreadsheet to run The Fantasy Magners League on here was a prime example of that, it was quite possibly the most accurate of those fantasy league tables ever used because of the combinations and scoring used, was a total pain to update each week because of amount of data to be added though, but it was accurate and that was his main desire in any information stored and used.
He got a large amount of the information using Google and if he read a score or team in one news report would check another if it was the same, his next thought would be are they both right or wrong ? most if not all of the rest of us would reckon they were both correct but Stanley would not be happy till he knew both were correct and would look further. I asked him one time how he found the stuff and he said it's the way you make the search not just what you search for, and for a person not brought up in the computer era he seemed to have the brain and thought process of a computer himself. Information is all out there it is gathering it up is the biggest task and I doubt we will ever see another on here who could do that as well as Stanley.
He was a man of not many words because you never need many words to state a fact and cables dealt in facts
Sincere condolences to all his family circle, you have lost a loved one and I have lost a friend and they don't make many like him any more.
“That made me feel very special and underlined to me that Ulster is more than a team, it is a community and a rugby family" Rory Best
I first meet his wife Margaret not long after I got married in 1971 and worked with her for a couple of years before she left to look after her family . Approximately about 20 years later my wife went back to work and worked in the same firm as his daughter and then I met Stanley. ( Which only goes to show how small and tight our community is )
Stanley the man was like Cables the poster a man interested in facts who voiced few opinions . He recognised that opinions can be the source of conspiracies created by those who may have an agenda but he respected those who stated an honest opinion . He never had an agenda but liked to sit at the back enjoy a drink and listen to others .
I always had visions of Stanley rising early in the morning sitting at his computer devising and up dating multitudes of spread sheets to answer queries and rectify the many mistakes of the purveyors of falsehoods like myself. I'll miss meeting him at the URSC and the Rosey on the odd match day when we watched the game shared a drink and talked about the grandchildren .
A Gentlemen worthy of rememberance.
Within this carapace of skepticism there lives an optimist
I think it's right to say it really puts things into perspective. The more tales people have of Stanley make him seem like more and more of a gent as they are told.
Chris Henry is superhuman... I think he's half cyborg
I never met the man, I only knew of him from here really, and yet getting up and reading in other threads that had something had happened immediately put a downer on my day. A scholar and a gentleman, and my condolences to his family and friends, whose loss is far greater than of posters such as me. May he rest in peace.
Sincere condolences to the Phillips' family and friends.
As a relative newcomer to the forum I had the pleasure of being politely corrected by Cables on one of my first posts and he did it in such a way as to make me feel good about it and welcome at the same time - takes some doing - from everything I have read here this was simply the tip of the iceberg
I remember in the early days some posters actually thought that Cables and myself were the same poster and whilst we agreed on most if not everything Stanley had a different approach to myself in expressing things. It was one of the main reasons why be both made the effort to contact each other and there after form a friendship.
Stanley was full of interesting stories, we shared many over the years and without doubt he was a man who stuck to his principles with an uncanny knack of being able to smell both bullshit and a bullshitter at 50 paces. Just glad we caught up a couple of times after the HEC Final.
