Why is this .htaccess not silently redirecting?
<p>Can anyone tell me why the following visibly changes the URL in the browser, rather than redirecting silently? The redirect works, but visibly.</p>

<p><strong>Example URL:</strong> <a href="http://domain.com/_test/sportswire/uk/football/huddersfield" rel="nofollow">http://domain.com/_test/sportswire/uk/football/huddersfield</a></p>

<p>...visibily redirects with query string arguments showing.</p>

<pre><code>RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /_test/sportswire

#favour naked domain over www
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.(.+) [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*) http://%1/$1 [R=301,NE,L]

#disallow trailing slash
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)/$ /$1 [L,R=301]

###THIS RULE### channel pages - territory/sport/channel/[res type?]
RewriteRule ^(\w+)\/(\w+)\/(\w+)(?:\/(\w+))?$ channel.php?territory=$1&amp;sport=$2&amp;team=$3&amp;res_type=$4 [L,NC,R=301]

#channel pages - with item (if from external referrer) - territory/sport/channel/res_type/"item"/item_id/pretty
RewriteRule ^(\w+)\/(\w+)\/(\w+)\/(\w+)\/story\/\w{11}\/[^\/]+$ channel.php?territory=$1&amp;sport=$2&amp;team=$3&amp;res_type=$4&amp;item=$5 [L,NC,R=301]
</code></pre>

<p>What I've tried/read:</p>

<ul>
<li>Remove the R flag (no joy; and I have other .htaccess files with R flags that redirect silently)</li>
<li>Add/remove a rewrite base (done; also tried an absolute one)</li>
<li>Don't use absolute URLs (I'm not)</li>
</ul>

<p>I'm fairly convinced there's nothing on planet earth quite as perplexing as mod-rewrite.</p>