Only two games this weekend, with Ireland treating Italy like a Welsh prop’s face and England facing their sort of nemesis in Cardiff. France and Scotland have had their game postponed as a result of an outbreak of lurgies in the French camp which was due to Galthié being a messiah very naughty boy. Craigsman, of course, would never do this.
Italy vs Ireland – Rome
Gonna be a spanking. I was going to leave it there but to be honest I should explain why. Ireland will be hurting after a disappointing run against Wales and France and will be keen to get back on track by putting a lot of points on Italy (who last won against them in 2013). Ireland also have an almost full strength squad too. They are just missing Cooney who, for some reason isn’t included. No one apart from Big Faz knows why this is and it really needs to be a talking point on the notablog. Has anyone mentioned that? Someone should mention that.
Italy will score one or two tries but are always a few years behind the curve and they don’t have the players. I can see them holding out for the first quarter before the floodgates open and we can all talk about whether they should make way for Georgia.
13 – 45 to Ireland
Wales vs England – Cardiff
I’m not sure about this one. Have Wales been spawny this year or have they been tenacious when behind and fought back valiantly to win? I think it’s both. You have to be good enough to capitalise on your luck and some of the tries have been great. They have fielded a team with a mix of old and new heads and seem to be finally getting to grips with Pivac’s style of play. If they can get it right and build an early score, then it will be tough night for the Saes.
England seem to be wobbling a bit. With Eddie emphasizing defence and several players out of form they haven’t set the world on fire recently. That said, they should be tough to beat and I’m hoping that they will have a bit more confidence about them this week. Expect a lot of kicking and muscle which hopefully will see them home in a tight game. Some might complain about this, but not me.
30 – 22 to Wales or 20 – 15 to England
France vs Scotland – Paris(ish)
So this has been postponed. What a bunch of les muppets, eh (who I hope will fully recover)? I can’t even ask ‘which France will turn up’ just to sound like a knob. Ah well, let’s pretend that it’s going ahead and look into my crystal ball…
I reckon France at a canter. They are looking very good at the moment and will likely stuff the Scots up their holes. There will be some nice stuff from the visitors but ultimately France are becoming more and more evil every year. It started with some strange glasses, then came a blunt talking defence coach and a change of culture a few thought would be unpalatable and then selection of form players and a sensible game plan going forwards. Who’d have thunk it? Witchcraft, I tell you.
I could be wrong. No good ever comes from a postponed game. None at all.
35 – 15 to France
As foretold by Britney Spears
Onna telly this week
Friday 26th February
| Treviso v Connacht | 17:30 | Premier Sports 2 |
| Sale v Exeter | 19:45 | BT Sport 1 |
| Cardiff v Munster | 20:00 | S4C / Premier Sports 2 |
| Ulster v Ospreys | 20:00 | Premier Sports 1 |
Saturday 27th February
| Edinburgh v Scarlets | 12:00 | Premier Sports 1 |
| Bristol v Leicester | 13:00 | BT Sport Extra |
| Italy v Ireland | 14:15 | ITV |
| Newcastle v Harlequins | 15:00 | BT Sport Extra |
| Wasps v London Irish | 15:00 | BT Sport Extra |
| Gloucester v Worcester | 15:15 | BT Sport Extra |
| Wales v England | 16:45 | BBC1 / S4C |
| Zebre v Dragons | 17:15 | Premier Sports 1 |
Sunday 28th February
| Northampton v Bath | 13:00 | BT Sport 2 |
| Leinster v Glasgow | 17:30 | Premier Sports 1 |
Ovally Balls 
It’s a bit annoying that the ref has been so seemingly blaze about his mistakes. Especially given that he was so certain at the time. He gave the on field decision of a try in the knock on. Could have asked if there was a reason not to award. It’s fine though. At least it wasn’t a rwc quarter final against the Aussies.
Tbh the abuse Sonja McLaughlan has taken after the interview pisses me off more.
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What McLaughlan says: “Toxic, embarrassing, disgraceful, appalling. Just some of the feedback I’ve had.”
I thought all of those things about her post-match interviews, and you know what a fan of Farrell and Jones I am. That’s not abuse: that’s fair comment. She was doing her best to provoke a tirade from both of them. They didn’t play ball, much to their credit.
Mind you, I did not feel the need to let her know what I thought about it, and there was probably much worse stuff directed at her as well.
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OT – that seriously disturbed my dog. (And me.)
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This guy tries to keep up with her latest key
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Surely Sonja’s job is to either:
– work to provoke a ‘valuable’ response, or
– act as a space filler while everyone goes for a piss.
Either way, it’s not a great role to reveal to St Peter when he asks at the pearly gates what you did in life.
Also, the Beeb should review why they employ her and what their objective is.
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OT – a lot of those notes don’t exist in any key.
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Slade – ironically, McLaughlan would have been much more likely to get the result she was looking for if she’d been less bloody obvious about it. It was really tabloidy.
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OT – my fave part of that is the ‘America Uncancelled’. Nice touch.
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Thaum – I rewatched the interview and it is aggressive. Doesn’t justify a pile on though.
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Arrgh my ears
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Craigs – if she had death threats, rape threats or lesser stalkerish behaviour, I absolutely condemn that. But from her comment, it seems she had people who thought her interview was unprofessional. Which it was. This made her cry. It seemed to me she would have loved it if she could have provoked her interviewees to tears. And perhaps she did, off-camera.
She did it on national television, though – and she does this kind of thing (playing on emotions at emotional moments) consistently. As I said, it’s the stuff of tabloids, and I don’t know why the BBC tolerate this kind of thing. If it’s a diversity issue, there are several other female rugby commentators who seem to manage to do the job professionally – including Gabby Logan, who was in the studio. Also Maggie Alphonsi and Sarra Elgan – and I’m sure loads more of potential ones that we’ve never heard of.
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Thaum – it might be that we have differing interpretations of the following sentence in her tweet:
Now imagine getting inundated with abuse for doing your job.
I interpret that to mean that she is getting more than criticism.
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I think there’s a wholesale problem with this kind of post-match interview as a format which leads to this kind of ‘overreaching for an admission’ to try to cut through the blandness of the PR-trained responses. There’s a tightrope to balance and inevitably people will fall down on one side or another – too aggressive or too easily mollified. For me I would blame the wheel and not the individual cog.
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Craigs – true; a tweet is easily misinterpreted, which is why it’s mostly an idiotic form of communication (she says in 240 chars or fewer). And as Beadle says, it’s the nature of the job that’s the real problem.
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Mostly sports interviews are insufferable, either with overly coached soundbites from players and coaches or trenchant ‘I won’t say anything because I’ll get picked on by the governing body’ type stuff. Seldom do you get insightful responses (or questions) in the immediate aftermath of a match. I seldom watch them, and if I do, don’t take much away from them. What is sad these days is that a whole lot of idiots apparently sit, fingers trembling on their mobiles, waiting to unleash abuse on players, coaches, commentators, interviewers etc if they happen to ask or say something that said swivel-eyed trench dweller doesn’t like.
Now, I’m not saying you can’t criticize or have an opinion – and a very strong one – about aspects of a match or performances of players, refs, coaches and the like: far from it. We have had some fabulous bust-ups here and on previous iterations of this site over the years because we’re passionate about our sport and and our teams. As it should be. But unless Jiffy, Sonja, Faz etc are lurking here, they won’t know or give a toss. Even on large publications (with the lack of excellence in analysis that they bring compared to here), a player or coach would have to go BTL to see what’s being said about them – on your own Twitter feed you don’t have that choice.
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Swivel-eyed trench dweller skips free lunch to bomb blog.
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@DeeBee
By dog, I admire your commitment……………what sacrifice!
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Ian St John RIP
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I used to watch Saint and Greavsie long after I stopped following football.
RIP.
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On the CPAC thing, the hotel chain has been forced into making big apologies after this
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Looks a bit like this
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Well I thought it was a coincidence the SNP and the Nazis both used a similar logo, turns out it isn’t. The logo comes from the pagan Othala Rune, and is part of the runic alphabet system. It was appropriated by the Nazis but that doesn’t mean it is a Nazi symbol any more than speaking German makes you a Nazi. A bit like the swastika in the foyer of Upminster Bridge tube station:
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The swastika is a Hindu/Buddhist/Jainist symbol anyway.
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The SNP symbol is a thistle.
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Well, a thistle incorporating the Saltire, or St Andrew’s cross
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Ben Vellacott to Embra
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Hmm. Does that mean Groom and / or Pyrgos are offski?
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Not jumping up and down with joy TBH as I don’t think he’s a regular premiership starter is he?
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Just never happy me.
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I’ll be happier when Dan Carter & Aaron Smuth’s Scottish clones come online in Embra in coming years.
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They are both OOC at the end of the season, Chimpie, the rumour mill has it that one of them is off, I’ve heard one for each of them.
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Chimpie, iirc Vellacott was behind Heinz and someone else at Glaws, then didn’t he get injured when he went to Wasps?
I don’t really know too much about him, he seems pretty quick from a few clips I’ve seen. There is apparently interest from Toonie regarding Vellacott making the step up, I’m supposing he will have done some homework on him.
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Ha, someone pointed out the other day that Grayson Hart had kept Smith out of the junior ABs.
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TomP’s been quiet since he moved to Dublin. Someone needs to go round and switch his internet on.
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Ticht, ‘they’ are also saying that Glos have making enquiries about Ali Price. Price and Hastings reunited?
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BB, there’s an argument that Price leaving for a bigger paycheque is what should happen, not specifically him of course, but Finn leaving meant Hastings came through, Price leaving means Horne ss first choice, probably, but Dobie is a prodigy, he is going to be something quite special.
Ross Thompson looks okay, I think Hastings was ahead of where he is now in terms of taking over as first choice fly half.
In an ideal world we’d have four teams and piles of Scottish-born players to fill them, a Leinster-like production line where if they don’t make it for the Blue Meanies they can still make it with one of the other three teams.
We’ve seen the reality this season of where we are in terms of squad depth at both sides, with our two teams languishing at the bottom of the pools, which of course means no big cup and smaller amounts of dosh, unless we can qualify through this Rainbow Cup thing, which almost certainly won’t take place.
It’s a shite state of affairs, but we just have to get on with it I suppose
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I think the idea was that the academies would produce players that would then get ‘toughened up’/game time in the semi-professional league and from there they could drip feed into the professional teams as and when. Of course, COVID has put paid to that and I’m not sure how all of that will start up again. I don’t think we’d ever be able to have 4 pro teams financially, but I think a third one would have worked, possibly in somewhere like Perth. It may just be that Scottish pro players will move on from Glasgow and Embra. I think this season was always going to be a write-off for the Scottish clubs, and there does seem to be huge amounts of movement now (certainly in Glasgow) for next season. Of course, if both teams are shite next season, THEN we’ve got problems. Danny Wilson’s already getting a bit of flack from Glasgow fans (partly because he’s seen as a ‘pragmatic’ coach, unlike Toonie and Dave), but next season it will be ‘his’ team, so we’ll see.
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Perth is a helluva long way away to base a side. And they already have one there, albeit filled with worse Saffers than Embra.
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Ticht, The other SH that Vellacott was behind at Glaws was Calum Braley. There was a fans feeling that he shouldn’t have been behind Braley at all and that he was a good prospect as well as super quick. Sad that he went, unfortunately no idea how he got on at Wasps.
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Paul Rees comes up with a pearler of contorted logic in his talking points from the weekend:
France supply more referees to the Test panel than any other country and they are, generally, consistent in their application of the law. From the start on Saturday, Gauzere was strict on players entering a breakdown from the back, not the side, and remaining on their feet. It is part of the game’s drive to reduce head injuries by applying laws governing the ruck, but it was enforced earlier in the Top 14 than the Premiership and England lost against Wales primarily because they did not react to the way Gauzere was refereeing and carried on regardless.
Um, Welsh sides don’t play in the Top 14 either, so what relevance does it have to the fact that England got blown to bits (Karl!) for side entry (oh dear!), unless the law was introduced in the Pro 14 earlier than in England?
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Tokyo has requested Beijing to stop taking anal swab tests for Covid-19 on Japanese citizens because the procedure causes psychological pain, a government spokesperson has said.
Life imitating South Park.
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His assertion that England suffer at the hands of French refs also needs a bit of nuance: he cites the pre-WC 2019 loss in Cardiff, the 2017 loss in Dublin and the two 2015 WC defeats (he doesn’t mention the 5th match and I’m too lazy to Google it). So in an alternative universe, England’s 2015 World Cup was universally agreed to have been shambolic and embarrassing, rather than refs involved, whilst losing to Ireland in 2017 is hardly startling: from November 2016 to June 2018 Ireland also beat New Zealand, France, South Africa (a thrashing), won a series in Australia and beat England at Twickers, amongst other results. The WC warm up hardly counts given it was used for experimenting as much as anything else.
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Simon Jenkins has an article up on the being rude on social media to sports journalists thing. So does Kitson though I think he just wanted to have a go back at swivel-eyed trench dwellers like Iks who slagged off his article about the ref.
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Craigs, didn’t the Simpsons also have Trump as president years ago?
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@Deebee – He just can’t work out why some of England’s losses have been refereed by French refs despite writing that France provides more of the refs than anywhere else.
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Being a swivel-eyed trench dweller is still preferable to being an anal swab tester.
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CMW, I remember before the last World Cup Final there was all sorts of noise on rugby sites down here about Jerome Garces and his ‘bias’ against the Boks. When you looked at it (also something like 6 from 9 against us), it was largely during the horror run of Alister Coetsee’s coaching reign when we lost to Italy and Japan, (no disrespect, we deserved to lose both matches) amongst others. Pointing out that if these results were removed, we actually had a positive record with Garces in charge led to lots of swivel-eyed, trench-dwelling, grenade lobbing in my direction. I took an early lunch.
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Lots of ‘hate’ still exists between Japan and China – so any chance to humiliate………………
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I’d imagine taking an anal swab would be just as humiliating as having one taken.
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