The Autumn Internationals or End of Year Tours start in earnest this weekend after two weeks of watching the Kiwis dismantle half-baked sides in the name of ‘growing the global game for a few million pounds, mate’. Gents that they are. After the rancour of the Lions Tour (with more of the players now tearing up the St Gats Bible and tossing it onto the fire of missed opportunity, and the gross miscarriage of justice in holding the Rugby Championship in the backwater towns of a backwater penal colony, we get to some good old fashioned, meaty, North versus South matches: the northerners itching to avenge the defeats of the Lions tours or for those not involved to pick up some scalps as we hurtle towards France 2023 and putting down markers. For the southerners, it’s a chance to meet up with childhood family and friends who’ve strayed from home and been punished for it by having to endure the long bleak winters of their discontent (and weather and losing to the fleet of foot colonials). So to it!
Ireland v Japan
The unsmiling Irish will be looking for another, more convincing win against the Brave Blossoms, to further eradicate the memories of losing in the World Cup to Japan. They got a 39-31 victory in July, but will be looking to turn the screws this time and stamp their authority on the match. Sexton’s century and a very strong looking pack will be too much for the Blossoms, as Ireland take it by 25.
Italy v New Zealand
Not really much point in discussing this one, other than whether or not the Kiwis have put out a second- or third-choice side against the Abject Azzurri. Dane Coles and Sam Cane are the most experienced starters in the side with 75+ caps each, but from there is a long way down to Damian McKenzie and Richie Mo’unga at 38 and 29 respectively and then down to most having not more than a handful of caps. ‘A youthful combination’ is how the Kiwis have framed it, but whatever, they’ll still stick loads on Italy. New Zealand by 56
Spain v Fiji
Absolutely no idea what Spain’s 15s side is like and I can’t be bothered to Google it either. They’ve had a couple of decent wins in the 7zzz in recent years, but won’t be a match for Fiji who should simply be too physical, fast and inventive. Fiji blow hot and cold though, both temperamentally and skills wise, so it may not be the massive blow out expected. Fiji by 19
Portugal v Canada
Last time I looked the Cannucks were bloody awful. They got slapped silly in July by both Wales and England and have a win and a loss against both the USA and Chile in the current 2023 World Cup campaign, so not much to write home about. Portugal currently sit second in the Rugby Europe Championship behind powerhouses Georgia (drop Italy etc!) and look like a decent emerging side at that level. They’ve thumped Spain, Russia and Netherlands and lost to Georgia and Romania. Should be a narrow win for Canada based on experience, but stuff that – Portugal by 2.
England v Tonga
England injecting some new blood into the system, but retaining enough firepower to demolish Tonga after a sluggish start. Don’t expect any surprises in this one, bar perhaps all 15 Tongans staying on the pitch. England to win by how much they want to, and how much they’re keeping in reserve for the bigger matches to come. England by 51.
Wales v South Africa
One of the matches of the round! Wales have had the Boks number in Cardiff in recent years and have their foreign-based players back in the side after missing out against the Kiwis. An under-strength Wales were game for 55 minutes nonetheless and will feel confident that they can go one further and compete with – and beat – the Boks this weekend. The loss of AWJ is massive however, and the Boks arrive in town buoyed by their win over New Zealand and with a very strong pack. Some doubts out wide with Kolbe and Nkosi both missing and le Roux dropped, but the Boks will reverse recent form and win a hard, uncompromising duel in the end. South Africa by 8.
France v Argentina
This would have been a lip-smacker a few years ago, but Argentina have gone off the boil in the last year or so. France have improved, but still manage to confound every now and then. Which France will pitch up etc and which Pumas side will pitch up? No idea on either score, but at home, and with the depth they’ve got, it’s France for the win. Being a conservative Saffer, I’ve gone by 11 points to France, but it could be a lot more if they get going. Or not, if they don’t.
Romania v Uruguay
Romania may not be the side they were under Ceausescu, but they’re handily placed in Tier 2 of European rugby. They narrowly lost a friendly to Argentina in July, for what it’s worth, so do have some ability at the top level. Uruguay had a great 2019 World Cup and have qualified for 2023 as well, belting the USA out of the way in the process. That should see them as favourites for this match, but in a Romanian autumn, anything is possible. Romania by 4.
Scotland v Australia
Scotland warmed up for their bunnies with a sumptuous performance last weekend, missed by some Scots here who were foolishly hiding behind their sofas. They ran in some excellent tries, albeit some of the tackling was optional at times, but you’ve still got to get them in. They face an Australia that recovered from their traditional shellacking by the Ballsacks to beat both the Boks and Argentina twice, albeit all matches played in Australia. Still, the Aussies seem to be growing in confidence and getting a bit of backbone into their side. A tough match, but one I think will go the Wobblies’ way in the end. Australia by 7.
Preview gracias a Deebee7
Onna telly this week
Friday 5th November
| Leicester v Bath | 19:45 | BT Sport 1 |
| La Rochelle v Bordeaux | 20:00 | Premier Sports 2 |
Saturday 6th November
| Ireland v Japan | 13:00 | Channel 4 / RTÉ2 |
| Italy v New Zealand | 13:00 | Prime |
| Toulouse v Perpignan | 13:45 | Premier Sports 2 |
| England v Tonga | 15:15 | Prime |
| Brive v Racing 92 | 16:00 | Premier Sports 2 |
| Wales v South Africa | 17:30 | Prime |
| France v Argentina | 20:00 | Prime |
Sunday 7th November
| Scotland v Australia | 14:15 | Prime | ||
| England v New Zealand (women) | 14:45 | BBC2 / iPlayer | ||
| Wasps v Harlequins | 16:30 | BT Sport 1 | ||
| Clermont v Toulon | 20:00 | Premier Sports 1 |
Ovally Balls 
TomP, I think you’re referring to President Josiah ‘Jed’ Bartlet? With one ‘t’? Have 25 of his ‘best’ one-liners as punishment for bringing him up in the first place:
https://www.vulture.com/article/best-west-wing-president-bartlet-moments.html
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I quite often (though not always) wear a poppy on November 11th and am happy to do so though I do agree with OT to a great extent about what it’s become. Think it’s right to observe the silence too. Could do without the Sunday thing for me. Not really sure why, but I prefer it being done on the ‘right’ day. Do think it’s important to remember that people were still pointlessly getting sent out to their deaths that morning though and that in a lot of places what that war had turned into didn’t stop then in any case.
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CMW
Is he young enough to have gone over to your neck of the woods in the early 70s, now there’s a thought…
No, but the bloke who used to live on the other side was, as was another mate who lives in the village.
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@Criags, the cynic in me would say that a Corruption Perception Index is something the UK does relatively well in because it’s full of people who vote for the corrupt fuckers in the first place, and they still support them despite them being so brazen about it.
There must be something about a refusal to acknowledge a mistake in this.
@ Deebee, there certainly seems to be more brazen-ness around our political figures, but then is Trump any worse than Nixon or Kissinger, Hoover or McCarthy?
Johnson is a clown, Rees Mogg a caricature, but I don’t think they’re any worse, in a different way, than Thatcher.
As for poppies, I’m convinced that all the lionisation and refusal to get over two world wars is a big part of what led to Brexit.
It has never let up for my entire life, it’s part of comedy and drama on tv, it’s never really out of the news, it rears its head in the worst parts of the gutter press and it would be unbelievable if it doesn’t happen every time England play Germany at football, it’s part of sport in this country too.
Here we are over a hundred years after the first one and nearly eighty years after the second, we still are not allowed to let it go.
As has been said, this poppy fetishization has little to do with remembering people who were killed in wars
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You’d think I would know how to spell Craig as it’s my brother’s name
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I don’t know why I thought of this, but talk of Thaum’s village neighbours made me think of that Alan Partridge genius moment with the lookalikey singing rebel songs – “Double O Feckin Bollocks”
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Obama winning firnds and influencing Scottish people
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Hope to be going to Belfast for the day next Wednesday to do a bit of banking business. Am going to visit Waterstone’s to try and pick up the book that’s reviewed here: https://thebaffler.com/latest/empire-redux-braithwaite .
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craigs, remember this beauty?
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/11/countries-preparedness-pandemics/
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Ticht, I think you’re right. Probably is just that with instant access to news and social media, as well as the leaky nature of governments today, we’re just more exposed to both the bad and the laughable of our political elites.
The poppies thing is interesting. Clinging to past glories or identities isn’t unique to the UK and there’s a fair amount of lionization of murky or twisted histories the world over. It’s easy for populists and opportunists to take advantage of this, especially in times of change, uncertainty or socio-economic decline. Witness the return of muscular nationalism in many parts of central and eastern Europe after the collapse of the Soviet Union, reverting to 70 or 80 year old identities and the attendant prejudices that went with them. Similarly for the Falklands War instigated by Galtieri in the face of a rotten Argentine domestic situation, Trump’s narrow and barely disguised racism to pander to his ‘base’ and many other examples.
In Africa, pretty much every dictator will blame colonialism for the potholes they haven’t repaired and ‘the West’ for almost any other failure of policy, planning or implementation. ‘The West’ is still accused by tin-pot intellectuals across Africa of denuding the continent of its mineral wealth and taking minerals home to process them and then export them back to Africa and thus oppress the continent by not allowing industrialisation here. This despite the fact that outside of the few oil producers in sub-Saharan Africa, the bulk of mining investment in the last 20 years has come from China, as well as India and most of the minerals are destined for those two countries. But the West remains a bogeyman to be hauled out whenever someone is caught with his fingers in the cookie jar.
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Deebee, someone has asked the Scottish Rugby Blog on twitter if caps are still given out for the Scotland v South Africa games, or is it just another Curry Cup match?
Fair play, a good joke is a good joke.
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Tomp/Ticht – the reason I cited that is that there doesn’t seem to be anything else that measures corruption over time. I don’t know how you’d measure it tbh (and why is Switzerland up at the top?).
I think that there is definitely a sense in this government that the rules don’t apply to them but I don’t know if it’s got worse under BoJo. Plus, on a day to day level there is hardly any corruption in the UK relative to say…. India or Morocco (2 places where I’vehad to bribe police). I know it’s not the ‘fairest’ comparison to make but it could be far worse.
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I don’t mind the poppies too much as long as I’m not pressured into buying one and there’s no kids with t shirts that say ‘Future soldier’ on them.
I’ll normally buy one and then pocket it tbh.
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Slightly more interesting article in The Guardian about the Yorkshire cricket thing than previously:
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2021/nov/10/racism-normalised-south-asian-community-yorkshire-on-cricket-ccc-scandal
“I was involved in some of the planning, but when the strategy came out it was totally different from what I had hoped to see. Quite a lot of investment had come from Sport England who want to see a rise in participation rates among adults. But for me it wasn’t about increasing participation, there’s huge participation in the south Asian community, the problem was progress to the next level, whereas Yorkshire saw it as a tick-box exercise about numbers.”
Recreationally, there are still huge problems of marginalisation. “There is a pyramid system, but most of the Asian clubs are not invited to be part of it. Asian teams like mine, we’ve got the expertise, the facilities, to be successful, but when we try and join the system, we simply don’t get accepted. When it goes to a vote at an AGM, we often get no votes at all.”
Along with other things that need to change to do with people’s behaviour, something positive that could come out of all this (but probably won’t) is a much greater clarity as to the realities of the pathways into the professional game. It seems to have been getting more and more private school based over the last twenty years or so as well as whiter and though I know some of my thinking on these matters is a little old fashioned I’m reasonably convinced there are some class issues as well as race ones that need to be resolved. This doesn’t of course just apply to Yorkshire, not that that necessarily makes it more likely for things to be brought out into the open.
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@cmw
I agree the cricket situation is a complex one. I think about where I grew up where there is a massive concentration of cricket clubs (the league structure has changed now but when I was a kid they managed to have the Saddleworth & Disctrict League that had 2 divisions with a professional at each one, and Oldham and Rochdale Boroughs probably formed a majority of clubs in the Central Lancashire League). Yet the only 2 local players to emerge on the county scene I can think of are Mike Atherton and Kyle Hogg. Athers went to the LCCC conveyor belt that is Manchester Grammar and Hogg is Sonny Ramidin’s grandson. So how does anyone who isn’t already connected to Old Trafford get into the system? No idea – there’s plenty from up Accrington/Burnley way, and a few from Bolton, so I expect it’s who you know.
And you are definitely right that at least the batters are increasingly private school and/or South African. Again, comes down to schools unfortunately…..
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craigs, well, there’s corruption and corruption. Your small bribes in faraway countries and then:
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-57484219
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@tomp
I fear we are on the brink of further corporate misconduct being exposed:
https://www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj.n2635
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Not sure if any cash changed hands, OT, so it might not be corruption.
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OT – ha! Maybe Obama is on to something, and we should say ‘Emerald Isles’ instead of ‘British Isles’, with Ireland of course being the ‘mainland’ as it’s greener.
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@thauma
I’m very comfortable with calling the British Isles something a bit less sensitive. England is of course the “green and pleasant land” so that would certainly work.
I still think we should formalise trade links just so we can call it the “Irish Sea Free Trade Area”.
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“England is of course the “green and pleasant land” so that would certainly work.”
The Pleasant Isles then. Hmmm, not sure we’re going to fool anyone just now.
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A South African bloke once told me we have a beautiful country. So there, I’m going with that.
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OT, always, always believe the South African bloke. They are terrific people who simply tell it like it is. Genuinely humble too.
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CMW, it’s probably more like the Empty Aisles if the Get Brexit Done mob are around for too much longer!
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Sounds as if the South African was being polite and well-mannered. Which sounds unlikely if he were South African.
They also call Britain “Mud Island”.
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Tomp – I’m not saying that corruption is non existent here.
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Was trying to find something in my Graun comments history and came across this pearler from October 2014, displaying, definitively and forever, that I have absolutely no clue about rugby at all:
Pollard is definitely the real deal, but it still sits uncomfortably that Meyer persists with Ruan Pienaar and Morne Steyn in his squads: both have proven in the last year that they are way past it, if they ever had it. His insistence on size in the midfield is also troublesome, with Juan de Jongh by some distance the form 13 in SA at the moment. On the whole though, looking a lot better than when the year started!
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I’ve been known to call Britain the rain-soaked outcrop off the coast of France before, but never to a Pom’s face. Oh. Shit. The mask has slipped.
I haven’t been to the UK for nearly five years now and I’m desperate for a visit. London, as you all know, I think is a quite magnificent city, and once you get into the countryside, it’s a remarkably beautiful place. I’ve been lucky enough to travel around a little bit by train as well, to Wales, much of the south of England, Midlands, Liverpool and Scotland (and Isle of Man, but not by train, clearly). Can’t really think of any places that I stopped in (as in walked around, had lunch, visited places etc) that were crap, although some of those towns on the outskirts of Liverpool looked pretty grim, to be fair.
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” although some of those towns on the outskirts of Liverpool looked pretty grim, to be fair.”
Best description of Lancashire I’ve seen in a while.
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” I’ve been lucky enough to travel around a little bit by train as well, to Wales”
You really were lucky. I gave up in frustration about twenty years ago.
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Reading the instructions for my new washing machine. First thing I’ve discovered is I’m not to use it more than 4000m above sea level.
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@deebee
Widnes, St Helens etc are ex-mining towns. You don’t get much grimmer than a mining town that doesn’t mine any more.
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@OT – I thought Widnes was a chemical factory in a swamp?
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@cmw
Try it and see what happens. I’d hope the water would burst out the door, with any luck.
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@OT – It’s got adjustable feet, but they don’t seem to go that high.
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Midlands
Particularly beautiful this time of year.
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@Craigs – And accessible by train. In fact Birmingham New Street station is just as pleasant regardless of the weather.
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I can assure you that the Midlands are looking rather gloomy today.
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Mrs Craig’s and I had a fantastic week in Birmingham in the beginning of October. No kids, booze and curry every night. Was amazing.
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@Thaum – That’s just Cov. You should move out to somewhere like Kenilworth.
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I once went to Dorridge. I half expected Miss Marple to cycle past.
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Once you’ve checked your altitude you put your clothes in it and shut the door. Put your powder or whatever in the tray thing, select a programme and press start. It starts going round and fills with water and stuff like that. Much better than the last one.
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Kenilworth? Far too close to Cov.
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Didn’t think you’d be willing to go further.
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After Finlay Christie was nicked by the All Blacks, England are poaching Scottish talent now too, Bevan Rodd called up in place of Marler
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/59234210
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After the invention of the Bevan Rod in 1786 production of cotton cloth in Lancashire increased by 86%.
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CMW – I’ll have you know that I’ve been as far afield as Leamington Spa today.
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I always associate St Helens with Pilkington Glass (apart from RL of course)
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I lived in Brum for 7 years and the curry culture was great – beer not so much…. 10h30 closing and Ansells or Mitchell and Butler’s everywhere…. can’t imagine spending a week there – unless you took trips to Stratford and the like everyday…..
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