I’ll try to keep this as short as possible.
Three games this week-end; that is, if France once again do not shrug their way out of the most porous bubble (called a sieve here, see below) ever seen since John Boyd Dunlop invented the flat tire.
The teams:
England: At the moment they look like a good example of someone’s definition of madness: do the same thing over and over and expect a different result.
Wales: Don’t call them fortunate; they hate it. Napoléon would have a word with Pivac though. A disastrous autumn followed by a welcome revival. Tedious at times, lethal sometimes. Will finish first unless France get a GS.
France: Will achieve a GS (see Wales).
Ireland: Stale but still mid-table. Reaching their tipping point on the declankidney-o-meter. That green jersey looks more and more like a corset, including to the meanies usually in blue.
Scotland: The perennial underachiever. Couldn’t even beat covided France by forfeit. Lovely to watch though. Definitely the colour of a dark horse.
Italy: they prove that the old adage “it’s easier to organise defence than attack” is plain rubbish. They produced lovely moves but they could not catch a slug on a Zimmer frame.
The games:
Italy vs Wales: makes me sad that a 6 Nations game is a foregone conclusion. Italy have unearthed some exciting new players but they lost what was their main strength, a solid if unimaginative pack. Their scrum is so wobbly they could hire Australians to improve them, the line-out is a mess and their defensive line look from above like a child’s drawing of a bolt of lightning. The only uncertainty is whether Wales will get the bonus point before or after the oranges. As for Wales, it’s a bit strange not to experiment a bit more, most of the team being a known quantity. Pivac probably wants battle hardened warriors for next week’s game, but it looks like a missed opportunity to blood new players. I’ll watch it, if only for AWJ and of course for Liam Williams: he may look like a horse rider but he’s a superb full back.
England vs France: both teams pick themselves but for different reasons. Eddie is so conservative he’d make Maggie look like a socialist. Apart from the obvious, he seems quite reluctant to change a formula that has shown its limitations. Scotland, who play a similar game to France, cruelly exposed them. And so did Wales in a different style. In both games England seemed incapable of changing gear and controlling their discipline. Of course, they’ll be more fit and the inclusion of Malins will bring more threat but Daly is still on the bench. Funny how a vibrant club game does not translate into a more fluid national squad.
France easily beat England in Paris last year and came close to winning the AI cup with a B team. It certainly helps in terms of confidence, but this is different. They might be as rusty as England, after the covid bubble burst. They also have the same problem as England in terms of discipline and the team that will remain on Andrew Brace’s side will take a big step ahead. But France have been rebuilding seriously for the past two years, they have a young but settled team, they know what to do and they’ll trust their ability to do it. A curiosity: France’s bench will be 6/2 whereas England’s will be 5/3.
I can see only one outcome. If the packs cancel one another, which I expect, then France have more threat in the backs. France by one score. With a bonus point, like Wales? Nah. A win would be good enough.
Scotland/Ireland: this should be a cracking game and it’s a hard one to call. Both teams lost to Wales, with one man down, but in different fashion. Both could’ve won (fine margins etc.) but I thought Scotland were the most enterprising of the three.
Ireland play a well-rehearsed game, easy to read, hard to stop. Sexton is a fading force but the way they play, he can still do the job for a couple of years. What’s that I hear? Deep sighs from the notablog showrunner? And where is Cooney, anyway?
I expect a lot of box-kicking, some good chases, some not so good and then beware Hogg and friends.
Just like France, Scotland might be a bit rusty for missing a game but I heard they played within their clubs. They should play a looser game than Ireland, with more unpredictability. Finn had a mediocre game last week with Racing. Was he keeping his powder dry? It does not really matter because Scotland have proven last year they can play without Finn, and well.
My money would be on a Scotland win but not by much.
I hope you all enjoy the week-end of rugby and I hope the refs will not be at centre stage like two weeks ago.
Oh, and before I go, a little recipe. No need for a sieve, but keep one handy, just in case you need to escape from Marcatraz (that’s what the French players nicknamed their rugby camp in Marcoussis, south of Paris).
The most famous omelette in France is served by La Mère Poulard restaurant (overrated and overpriced) in the Mont Saint Michel. It may not be the best omelette but it’s quite striking.
You’ll need 10 eggs.
2 table spoons of crème fraîche
40 g of butter
Salt, pepper
It will serve 4 people or a prop.
Save two eggs for the end.
Separate the yolks from the white. Whip the yolks lightly, but the whites ferociously with the salt. If by hand, at least several minutes, so they become almost solid.
Melt butter in a hot pan, add the yolks. When they begin to stick to the pan, add crème fraîche and the whipped whites. Do not stir. Make sure it does not stick too hard on the bottom. When ready, fold the omelet in two, so it looks like this:
Spray freshly ground pepper on top and serve immediately. Some in an upside down universe recommend Latour ‘82 with it, but it’s bollocks. I have yet to find a wine that goes well with eggs. Cider will be fine.
While you enjoy your first fluffed omelette, take the remaining eggs and throw them at my face when – if, he says tentatively? – my predictions, as usual, do not come true. As I said, I tried to keep this as short as possible.
As foretold by Flair99
Onna telly this week
Friday 12th March
| Zebre v Leinster | 17:45 | Premier Sports 2 |
| Bristol v Wasps | 19:45 | BT Sport 1 |
| Munster v Scarlets | 20:00 | S4C / Premier Sports 2 |
| Glasgow v Ospreys | 20:00 | Premier Sports 1 |
Saturday 13th March
| Newcastle v Bath | 12:30 | BT Sport Extra |
| Exeter v Harlequins | 12:30 | BT Sport Extra |
| Italy v Wales | 14:15 | ITV / S4C |
| Northampton v Sale | 14:45 | BT Sport Extra |
| Gloucester v Leicester | 15:00 | BT Sport Extra |
| England v France | 16:45 | ITV |
| Dragons v Ulster | 19:35 | Premier Sports 1 |
| Connacht v Edinburgh | 19:35 | Premier Sports 2 |
Sunday 14th March
| Treviso v Cardiff Not-Blues | 13:00 | Premier Sports 1 |
| London Irish v Worcester | 13:00 | BT Sport 1 |
| Scotland v Ireland | 15:00 | BBC1 |
Ovally Balls 
Been an issue for ages
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TBH I thought we were deid and buried at 24 10 down, so the fightback was at least something nice to watch
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I thought our kicking (box or Garryowen) was not great….that Scotland failed to deal with it isn’t a good reason to repeat the dose vs England.
I’m seeing us try to play England the same way….and this hasn’t been a success last 3 or 4 times… one out runners getting swallowed up and kicks to Watson and May who are fine under the bomb. However, I don’t see any progression that we can go around England….
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It was a good comeback. The kickoffs thing is a weird one – bad teams are often crap at them, but as I remember it Scotland were OK at that sort of stuff back when they were at their worst, but now that they’ve improved in lots of other ways that sort of thing has gone to shit.
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That was a pretty uglyish game but entertaining enough. Some good individual performances on both sides and some horrors. For Ireland, Henderson, Beirne and Connors up front did very well and Earls was a menace even if he doesn’t get the ball in attack. Keenan was very solid under the high ball, Henshaw very good, Watson and Johnson the best players for Scotland for me, Maitland solid. Scotland’s line-out, though, from rock solid against England to a little wobble v Wales to that.
On the re-starts Scotland handled them ok. One slipped through someone’s hands but was tidied up. The trouble was they played the same play every time, a Price box kick. On the last one it took so long to set up it allowed Baird into a position to knock it down but there still should’ve been someone in a better blocking position and Price should’ve got it away quicker. Because he’s left-footed.
Ireland’s attack is very poor. Too much across the field running. Then their defence went totally passive in the second half giving Scotland easy easy metres.
And you can understand why James Lowe moved hemisphere. It would’ve been the beginning of the end if he’d got an All Blacks cap.
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His left-footedness didn’t matter that much in that moment. Not sure why I wrote that.
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That leprechaun they got at 9 instead of Cooney isn’t helping. He’s obviously received only one directive: do not take any initiative!
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“Ticht, Poite always favours the team in possession, therefore he’s a blessing for teams like Wales or Ireland who go through endless one pass and crash phases. But he did not lose you the game, your lineout did.”
I don’t think I suggested Poite lost us the game, but it is difficult to gain a footing when the breakdown is not being refereed the same way for both teams.
I didn’t particularly want to get into this, but since you’ve brought it up, Healy was hinging in every scrum, if Poite had refereed what was in front of him Healy would either have stopped hinging and would have been driven backwards or he would have been carded.
“As for the try he awarded, what about we trusted he refs, as we did for so long, without questionning them? After all Poite, for all his shortcomings, before awarding that try, put his head where few players would’ve put their feet. He was inches away from the action and had a better view than any camera.”
We are not playing amateur rugby in the 1980s any more, that time is long gone.
What Poite saw when he put his head into the pile of bodies was where the ball was a good five seconds after it had been taken over the line. The replay showed it was held up.
The technology is there to prevent discussions such as this, if he went to the TMO for the Scotland try, why didn’t he ask for confirmation for the Irish one?
I know this makes me sound like a sore loser, I can live with that because that is not my intention. It is a bugbear of mine that we expect so much from players, but the games themselves are still at the mercy of subjective interpretation and it’s the inconsistency and refereeing on reputation that gets my goat.
Referees can have just as poor games as players, they can equally have very good or great games, those are the ones where you don’t notice them at all, unfortunately for them I suppose.
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Price should’ve been protected better, but then it was his responsability to request a couple more players to the dreadful caterpillar – the sooner that thing is banned the better, but how?
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I think Poite probably thought there was a chance Watson had lost the ball forward prior to grounding it and that the replay might show that if it was the case (it did turn out to have a clear enough view to show that it wasn’t). I guess there was no such consideration with Beirne’s try and he felt he’d seen it grounded. He did get himself a good view though I agree it looked like he maybe took to long to get one for it to necessarily have been a valid one. I can understand him thinking he needed to make the call on the one and not on the other though.
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Ticht, first of all, I don’t think you’re a sore loser and you’re rightly disappointed. I agree with you about Healy and he milked a penalty that IMO should’ve gone the other way. But there was only one.
Poite reffed the breakdown consistently, if infuriatingly, always in favour of the attacking team, and yet the Irish managed several turnovers when Scotland were seldom quick enough to get one.
About the try, I thought Poite was right as I found the replay inconclusive.
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“Scotland also had a poor day dealing with up’n unders. The Irish 9’s kicks were mainly hopeless, but Sexton was happy to punt it up high into the Scottish half because their back three really struggled to compete for and catch any contested kick cleanly, so there is no platform to clear up or run with the ball.”
I sort of agree with you MrIks, or at least to a point. The Scottish back three all took high balls very cleanly when Sexton sent it just the wee but further than he meant to, but when he got it right the Irish chase was so good that virtually no one in the sport was going to make a clean catch,
For the most part Sexton’s kicking was superb, it might not be the prettiest way to unlock a defence but it is effective.
Ol Raisin Puss is still the boss when it comes to those kicks and it really unsettled our defence.
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“Ticht, first of all, I don’t think you’re a sore loser and you’re rightly disappointed. I agree with you about Healy and he milked a penalty that IMO should’ve gone the other way. But there was only one.”
I’m actually not that disappointed, not now after the game is done it’s done as far as I’m concerned but I’m always up for discussing the minutiae of a match.
Healy got away with going to ground without penalty several times after the first one, it wasn’t just that Scotland didn’t win the penalty, they weren’t being allowed to go after the Irish scrum, an area where they had the ascendancy.
The Scottish complaints about the breakdown were that Ireland were going in over the ball carrier and not allowing a competition for possession, the Scotland forwards were still calling it well into the last quarter.
I would have done exactly the same as Ireland if I was playing, you keep doing it if you are getting away with it.
Jamie Ritchie was penalised for an offence at the breakdown that Ireland seemed to be doing every time, that led to a lineout which eventually resulted in the try that we are talking about.
The decisions at the breakdown didn’t seem consistent to me
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Richie got pinged for holding on, no? Herring over the ball.
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1minute 42 secs on this if it doesn’t go to the right place
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“Richie got pinged for holding on, no? Herring over the ball.”
The replay of it had all three commentators saying it was the wrong call and that Ritchie should have won the penalty
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@TomP – He was done like a kipper.
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Looking forward to next weekend from a Scottish perspective could be interesting, Finn failed an HIA, that leaves the Scotland options as starting Jaco van der Walt, starting Hogg at ten or bringing in either Ross Thompson or Nathan Chamberlain, the bairns from Glasgow and Edinburgh respectively.
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Still trying to work out which was worse – Lowe’s work on Try 1 or Try 2.
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I watched it on Irish telly, ticht. They were happy with the penalty for Ireland as Ritchie got in a bad place and the Cummings (?) couldn’t move Herring.
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I’ll get back to you on that Tam, if I get a chance to watch the game again, but since we’ve retired into lockdown I don’t seem to have a spare minute for re-watching games.
Jamie Heaslip thought Ritchie was hard done by. Even Chris Paterson thought so, and he calls against Scotland by way of being overly polite and overly neutral as a matter of course.
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Anyway, watched the game on catch up cos we were out visiting today. The daughters of the couple we were at are in the same class at school as the daughter of the main guy from The Waterboys.
They’ve met him and his new wife – not the mother of the child – who’s a Japanese visual artist who has run into some controversy in her home country: https://www.thejournal.ie/megumi-igarashi-vagina-artist-charged-1851478-Dec2014/
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Mike Scott?
I have a story that’s indirectly about him, well, it’s about him, but it was nothing to do with him.
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That’s the guy. I showed them the video of The Whole of the Moon and they said they didn’t recognise him because he always wears a hat nowadays. That seemed a good enough reason to me.
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Sag’s favourite song that was, The Whole of The Moon. Seem to recall him waxing lyrical about it a few times and how it influenced other classics like ‘Dignity’ by Deacon Blue.
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Although I may have misremembered that…
Waterboys’ best albums are either Fisherman’s Blues or Modern Blues.
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The production, the lyrics, the saxophone solo, the Scot who wants to be Irish, it all falls into place with that song for Sag.
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He’ll have enjoyed Scotland’s no lineout, no structure approach to today’s match too.
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Fisherman’s Blues was part of the soundtrack to a lost few years
Sigh.
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There were a couple of moments today when I felt sorry for the Jibometer.
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I can honestly say that I do not recall ever having heard another song by The Waterboys. I know I have because my brother had the album with That Song on it, but really don’t remember anything else. I think it’s magnificently awful and am always happy when it comes on the radio.
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Me and Sag bonded over a mutual allergic reaction to WOTM. It really is the absolute peak/nadir of formulaic, ernest, anthem pop.
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I don’t understand why Scotland called up Skinner to the squad pre-selection, then dropped him from the 23 entirely – to Exeter’s gratitude no doubt.
Is there deal with Exeter; a personality problem in the squad or what? I’m sure that a second row of Gray plus Skinner would have been more effective.
Also, if a prop is hinging, why doesn’t his adversary point it out to the ref? I don’t recall ever seeing that.
Apart from the ever excellent Henshaw, Sexton’s towering kicks seem to be the only good thing going at the moment, allied to the fact that Stander in particular was regularly offside, thus squeezing the Scot’s main weapon, their backs.
Finally, Hogg (and Townsend?) needs to realise that he isn’t the answer to everything. For a full-back, defence comes first, then counter-attack. He needs to focus back on his basics (at Exeter, too).
Overall, a great w/end’s rugby………………..looking forward to next w/end already!
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The only songs that give me a Herbert Lom/Chief Inspector Dreyfus twitch are the hymns we used to have to sing at school
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@ticht
This does it for me. It was in our school hymn book
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Slade, I read that there was a bubble issue that led to Scotland-based players being selected, hence Gilchrist over Skinner. I don’t particularly follow the logic, but that is what is being said.
Gray and Cummings have been our best performing locks, our lineout wasn’t an issue until this game.
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Oh.
My.
Dog.
It’s only Daniel O’Donnell, or He Who Must Not Be Named, HWMNBN for short. He was called that on the old Dick Gaughan forum, a place where people talked music and politics.
Gaughan himself came up with the name, it was a bit of fun but it became a long running joke.
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Probably, try #1 – ultimately for #2 he does make a tackle (not a good one) – for #1 he seems not to see the danger at all or is awaiting a call back for the apparent knock-on
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@OT – I like some of the hymns we used to sing at school, but I have to say that is quite special.
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Mrs CMW announced the other day that she wanted a St Patrick’s Day activity for the chilmindees. Apparently my suggestion was inappropriate.
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Would you like to see Stockdale back v England, trisk? Or even Larmour on the wing?
Not going to ask about half back cos that’s too obvious.
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Is there a new Hask?
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Yep, there is a new Hask
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I think he’s a bit brighter than Hask.
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OT – not sure where that gets us though. Brighter than Hask is meaningless without further context.
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Slade, that is epic
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Sorry, Craigs, that is epic
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Don’t credit Craigs, even if belatedly. He’ll get all Hasky on us.
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Ticht – I love that he’s casually neck planking before the interview.
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Re the Scotland vs Ireland game. I watched the last 30 mins or so. You could just tell that Ireland were going to milk the penalty once Scotland had levelled the scores. There was a sense of complete certainty. Scotland should have just let Ireland have the ball cos they weren’t exactly doing amazing things with it.
It’s not having that level of bastardary that put Gats off some of the Scottish player imo.
That said, Hamish Watson gets a nod from me.
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