Round Three Redux? Round Five-and-three-quarters? In any case, Welsh fans will be biting their nails, or any other available substance, and wondering if France can win with a bonus point and 21 points to deprive them of the title.
Scotland will no doubt have plenty to say about this, as a win with a six-point points advantage will put them second on the table (giving them their best finish in the Six Nations), supposing France don’t score a LBP.
Sadly, both teams can finish above Ireland. Maybe we should just cancel this match.
And maybe we should support France to wind up the OH.
Onna telly this week
Friday 26th March
| Gloucester v Exeter | 17:30 | BT Sport 3 |
| France v Scotland | 20:00 | BBC1 |
Saturday 27th March
| Glasgow v Treviso | 13:45 | Premier Sports 1 |
| Bristol v Harlequins | 14:00 | BT Sport 1 |
| London Irish v Bath | 15:00 | BT Sport Extra |
| Worcester v Northampton | 15:00 | BT Sport Extra |
| Wasps v Sale | 16:30 | BT Sport1 |
| Leinster v Munster | 17:00 | Premier Sports 1 |
Sunday 28th March
| Dragons v Edinburgh | 14:00 | Premier Sports 1 |
| Leicester v Newcastle | 15:00 | BT Sport 1 |
Ovally Balls 
Only someone with an axe to grind would claim Heaslip was Israeli or ROG American. At which point I’d point out all the Irish lads in the American side.
LikeLike
Yeah, I think Paul Tait (who’s one of the ARN founders) does have a bit of axe to grind – he has a few twitter accounts (personal and professional) and is always fond of pronouncing how Argentina are all home grown by comparison to Ireland/Scotland/Wales
LikeLike
CMW – Faffa Knoetze was a Springbok centre with a very low centre of gravity and great step, whilst Freddie Ferreira played 9 for the Boks in that era. He was a gobby little shite, as you can imagine. Balie Swart was an enormous prop (for those days, probably still pretty big for today) who played for the Boks and coached both here and in New Zealand.
LikeLike
It’s a crying shame that Goggie van Heerden wasn’t doing his military service at the time.
LikeLike
TomP, was probably one of those navy or air force wankers.
LikeLike
BB with time on his hands produces a paragraph of Prog proportions…
LikeLike
There are enough fishy going-ons with the AZ vaccine right now that I’m wondering if there’s is a supply chain or manufacturing glitch somewhere? Or hasty approval issues? I grow more dubious as each days passes.
LikeLike
@iksy
Until I see a statistically-significant increase in clots or any other adverse reaction then I’ll maintain there is nothing to see here. It’s more likely (until I see otherwise) that AZ’s zero-profit, low cost solution has annoyed the competition so there’s some stirring going on.
LikeLike
I’ve got everything crossed, OT. Maybe it’s how Germany is handling the comms, as the latest runner is up to 37 deaths from brain-clots after the jab, mainly in women, and some States therefore stopping the jab for under 55s.
This on the back of the original positioning that the jab wasn’t tested enough on the over-65s, so that age group were excluded originally.
As Mrs. Iks and me are 60 and 64 respectively then we should be as right as rain! But we can’t get an appointment in our Region because supplies and vacant slots have both run-out – and AZ is the only game in town anyway at the moment.
LikeLike
@iksy
I’ve seen the numbers but I’ve forgotten them. A couple of weeks ago I saw the numbers of AZ and Pfizer. There were more clots for Pfizer than AZ but both were less than the blood clot rate for the general population. So no increased risk.
LikeLike
Ta for the info OT. Like most folks we are desperate to get jabbed and do our bit to help move things on. I suppose being practical we might get a cancellation at the vaccine centre with all that’s going on.
LikeLike
Had the AZ jab 2.5 weeks ago. Not deid yet.
LikeLiked by 2 people
OT, last week, somewhere, dog knows where now, I read that AZ are making noises in private along the lines of “stuff this not for profit malarkey if this is how we are going to be treated”
I hope that was just frustration at the time, I’ve neve made any secret of my opinion on EU membership, but the leadership in Europe have stuffed up big time on the vaccination programme.
I’m lead to believe that the contract the EU has with AZ is pretty flimsy in comparison with the one the UK struck, and that is at the heart of the difference in supply
LikeLike
There’s a joke somewhere about clots, I’m sure, possibly not in the best taste right enough
LikeLiked by 1 person
@ticht
I saw that as well. Remember Big Pharma like to make big money with high price products so AZ coming in with the low cost model will upset a lot of people. But AZ will be fine – they’ve been paid a load of money by the taxpayer to learn how to enter into the now very lucrative high volume vaccine market (they previously specialised in cancer drugs).
LikeLike
Thaum, we had ours almost two weeks ago, all good.
I felt pretty bad the next day, but that was a Sunday after Saturday night beer, so who knows?
LikeLike
OT, yeah, what is exciting about this is that they can now turn around a vaccine really quite quickly and any variants can be addressed in a very short period.
Would you know if it’s likely that the UK can tool up to become self sufficient in terms of production of the vaccine, the vials and anything else that could be needed?
Without knowing anything about it, it seems like a potential growth industry and it could be an export opportunity.
LikeLike
I had my first jab on March 1st – OK apart from a (very slightly) sore arm and a (very) mild headache, and both disappeared after a day. Mrs BB had her first jab today. Daughter 1 actually gets her second jab tomorrow – she works for a company that runs care homes and although she only deals with finance, the company offered her the jab and, not being an idiot, she took it. I know that there are loads of people who are perhaps more deserving of getting the jab earlier than her, but on this occasion, I don’t care, I’m glad she took it. Just a shame for Daughter 2 who is 27 and has no underlying health issues, so she might be waiting months yet.
LikeLike
@ticht
That’s exactly what’s going on now. Soon we will have platforms in the UK for adenovirus vaccine manufacture (AZ), mRNA (CureVac), and subunit virus (Novavax). So we should be well placed to react in future to anything arising. We seem to have some good elements in the supply chain as well, particularly the contract manufacturers and companies like Croda who make the nanoparticle lipids for the mRNA vaccines.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I got the jab on Monday at noon a fortnight ago. I was congratulating myself that I had no side-effects for the rest of the day. Then I woke up at stupid-o’clock, rolled over onto my left-hand side, and wished I hadn’t. Also wished I’d done the right arm when the dog bounded up to bond with me on the sofa: I’m right-handed, but she sits on my lhs.
Then we went for a hilly walk the next day, and I thought I’d expire before climbing the last hill. This lasted about a fortnight, although it lessened.
LikeLike
Spoke to my parents earlier and they said that everyone they knew of in their generation had got the jab, no one they knew of had turned it down, and these reports from you all just add to that. It’s good to hear.
LikeLike
TomP – yes, I wasn’t expecting a jab until some time in April. Came as a pleasant surprise.
I don’t know anyone who’s turned it down, but then I live in a village where there aren’t a lot of BAME people, who seem to be the most likely vaccine-refuseniks.
LikeLike
So the South African Sooper Sides are to based in a “Biobubble” in Bristol before the Rainbow Cup.
It makes completion of the tournament a lot more viable, I guess.
LikeLike
Playing 3 games each in SA first.
Big chance for Edinburgh as you get Glasgow twice plus one of the Italian sides before 1 SA side, 1 Welsh side and 1 Irish.
LikeLike
Nah, Embra are putting out a U20s side, or so we were promised a few months back.
It would be far better for the long term if they do that, the young guys who have had a chance this season have mostly shown up well.
LikeLike
U20 might be pushing it, but Cockerill did say he was going to blood a lot of the young fringe players in this thing
LikeLike
OK. Change Edinburgh to Glasgow in my earlier post.
LikeLike
So glasgow play glasgow twice?
LikeLike
Is this rainbow thingy going to be on premier spurtz?
LikeLike
All on the regular broadcast partners, Chimpie.
LikeLike
Mrs Craig’s is having the jab on Saturday. In typical fashion she asked why her (relatively young and healthy) and they said there was probably something about her medical history that puts her on the list. I’m just incredibly happy tbh and told her never to question shit like this again.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thaum – i read something about low levels of trust of doctors I some communities which has exacerbated the problem of low acceptance. Hence the comms from ‘community leaders’.
There are a few people in my village who are skeptical too but they also market themselves as ‘readers’ on Facebook.
Also, apparently France has a low overall vaccination acceptance rate which surprises me.
Just wonder if there’s anything that connects these groups.
LikeLike
it’s to make sure she gets her microchip implanted as soon as possible & Bill Gates can enact his masterplan.
LikeLiked by 3 people
@craigs
LikeLiked by 1 person
OT – That’s one interpretation of what I said.
LikeLike
Craigs, It’s a pretty widespread fear, isn’t it? Fear of needles, fear of side-effects, fear of the unknown.
I’ll be happy to have the vaccine some time in the future (hurry up, EU) but can understand why people are worried.
Plus, there’s a proud anti-vaccination history in the UK (wrong-headed though it seems to me).
LikeLike
The most Covid vaccine sceptical people I know are people who work in the industry. That’s not because of any irrational fear but more to do with the speed of rollout and some major corners that have been cut in their development. It means we’re looking at the mass roll-out for proof of both efficacy and safety, which is what usually happens before market authorisation happens. Am delighted that just in the past 2-3 days they have proved a) all vaccines create T-cell immunity to ALL variants (forget antibodies) and b) all vaccines appear to effectively stop all transmission (which wasn’t clear), but we didn’t know this in December.
So it’s not irrational to question the vaccines, and we should encourage it. If the vaccines work then the evidence that supports it will emerge.
LikeLike
‘So it’s not irrational to question the vaccines, and we should encourage it.’
I want absolute proof that covid vaccines aren’t a front for Bill Gates to microchip us all.
LikeLike
Just Asking Questions here.
LikeLike
@chimpie
A grand total of 0 vaccinated people have found microchips in their bodies after being injected.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Some people are very sceptical of having any involvement with the health services that they don’t absolutely feel they need to and this can be as a result of bad experiences. Mrs CMW is very sceptical on this front (though ultimately after some resistance the kids have all had their various jabs and she will very grudgingly have the Covid jab) and this pretty much as far as I can tell stems from her mother’s attitude. And that has something to do with an anaesthetist making a massive miscalculation and killing Mrs CMW’s mother’s sister when she was a child. It hasn’t become more positive as a result of various mistakes relating to Mrs CMW’s father’s relatively recent illness and death either.
Now not everyone reacts the same way to these things. According to the specialists that my father later saw his chances of surviving his cancer were pretty much wiped out by an operation that was unnecessarily carried out by less well informed and experienced doctors who still should have known better early in his treatment and he would have had a good chance but for this. However, I don’t really have anything like Mrs CMW’s attitude to doctors. Perhaps that’s because my mother doesn’t either though she does definitely ignore stuff more than she should and probably so do I.
I’ve no time for conspiracy theories and so on, but sometimes it is important to have a bit of patience and understanding for people’s points of view. Some experiences mean people will behave in ways that even they themselves don’t feel is completely ‘rational’ when it comes to some of this stuff.
LikeLiked by 2 people
There’s been quite a lot of propagandising about liberty and freedom from state coercion over the last few decades as well so that probably has a part to play in it as well. Plus, Big Pharma isn’t a disinterested benevolent party. It’s rather complicated.
LikeLike
‘A grand total of 0 vaccinated people have found microchips in their bodies after being injected.’
They haven’t been looking properly.
Microscopic stealth microchips. You can’t find them. THEY ARE EVERYWHERE!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Tomp – I always go back to which is scarier? The needle/sides effects or the disease. Pretty sure rational thinking leads to only one outcome. But then, France isn’t less rational as a population Shirley? And minorities aren’t either.
The anti vaxxers in my village are morons.
LikeLike
Iatrogensis is a very real thing:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iatrogenesis
It’s one reason homeopathy has survived as long as it has – in the 19th Century for example it didn’t kill anyone because it didn’t do anything, which is a better outcome than some medical interventions at the time.
LikeLike
Yeah tomP Big Pharma often doesn’t have a great track record (just look at the opioid crisis in the US for an obvious recent example) . Factor in influence on / of politics as well & it’s a mess. Divorcing the fact that things like vaccines absolutely work if done properly from bad behaviour of some big organisations / politicians / lobbyists etc. can be a bit of a challenge.
LikeLike
There’s a family story that means if a dentist were ever to say “Ms …. is a dental student here to observe the procedure that you are about to go through while you are under general anaesthetic. Is that ok?” I would refuse.
Everything went off fine in the story but still.
LikeLike
Also the medical profession comprises people, and, as everywhere else people can be incompetent and useless
LikeLike
The medical school cohort who were in my year at university had a disproportionate number of bellends.
LikeLike
Simply explaining the revolting details of mid-19th-century vaccination does much to render its critics understandable. Vaccination was hardly a matter of ‘clean needles’: at that time it did not involve needles at all. Instead, the infant’s skin was scored with a lancet in several places and viral material rubbed into the wound. Eight days later, the parent was required to bring the child back: those who had developed vesicles had the lymph harvested for direct application to another child. This ‘arm to arm’ method was cheaper than vaccination with calf lymph but was, unsurprisingly, much resented by the poor, who could neither prevent their children from being used as a sort of petri dish for the cultivation of vaccine material nor choose the source of the material smeared into their own child’s wounds. (The better-off had their children vaccinated privately, with calf lymph or lymph taken from a child whose pedigree they knew.) At best unsanitary and at worst positively dangerous, ‘arm to arm’ vaccination carried the risk of exposing children to blood-borne diseases, and some children contracted syphilis this way. Small wonder, then, that mothers tried to suck the virus out of their children’s arms the way they would snake venom, that fathers were willing to move house in order to protect them from the knife, and that the leagues eagerly photographed children’s festering or septic wounds in their drive to document doctors’ and medical officers’ devilish practices.