The Baa Baas always conjure up romantic auld rugby images, with fly-halves ghosting defenders, props looping passes to wingers and penalty kicks declined to keep the ball in play for the benefit of a raucous crowd. To be honest though, half the time nowadays they are games where an opposition coach will try out his newbies against a hobbled-together team that has been on the piss all week. The Baa Baas is also a useful team to send off legends of the game: Jason Robinson, Katy Daley-Mclean and Chris Robshaw are all excellent examples of this. No one cares about the result really, even when Finn has ‘one of those days’ and beats England. It’s fun, it’s rugby values, it’s a good distraction when no other international rugby is on.
England
With Saracens and Leicester playing the Prem final, Eddie has gone for youth and I have to say it’s an exciting team:
Freeman; Cokanasiga, Marchant, Atkinson, May; Smith, Randall; Rodd, Walker, Collier, Ewels, Hill, Curry (c), Underhill, Dombrandt.
Replacements: Singleton, Goodrick-Clarke, Schickerling, Lawes, Willis, Care, Bailey, Nowell.
The best thing for me is the back row. Young, fast, powerful and actually able to jackal. Still feels a bit weird to be able to say that about an English back row, but I’ll take it.
Elsewhere, we have centres in the centre, wingers on the wing, and in-form scrum halves. Madness. Here’s hoping that Danny Care is coming back for real too.
Eddie even came up with this gem in the build up:
“We are looking forward to playing against an unusually French Barbarians side – which you normally only get when you play the French Barbarians.”
No shit. And no insults either.
Baa Baas
Spring; Penaud, Vakatawa, Botia, Niniashvili; Hastoy, Couilloud; Gros, Bourgarit, Gigashvili, Kruis, Skelton, Cretin, Ollivon (c), Tanga
Replacements: Priso, Tolofua, Falatea, Lavault, Le Garrec, Carbonel, Macalou, Vili
Kruis gets his send off! Probably by buggering up a conversion from the touch line too. But as Eddie sagely stated it’s a France heavy team coached by a French coach with a sprinkling of Fijian, Aussie and Georgian muscle. It’ll be interesting given the French have a newfound habit of winning stuff.
Prediction
It’ll depend who wants it more. I think the new and returning England players will want to lay down a marker and hopefully the Baa Baas will still be drunk etc. It’ll be fun but ultimately I think England should win it*.
35-20
*Bloody jinxed it now though.
Onna telly today
Sunday 19rd June
| England v Barbarians | 15:00 | Amazon Prime |
As barbered by Craigsman
Ovally Balls 
This was a pretty unique wicket
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Watched that a few times! When the gods decide your time is up, you’re farting against thunder!
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Has anyone else noticed how shit cricket has suddenly become?
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BK – cricket has always been shit.
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Possibly, but it was slightly less shit when we were winning.
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6 Nations Under 20 Summer Series – featuring 8 Nations – starts this afternoon. If you can stomach watching any more rugby, it’s available here:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJHm6BFw-9JRA1CMekNLwMg/videos?view=2&live_view=502
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Found TMS on the BBC website! Makes finishing reports a little more bearable! New Zealand 325/8 at lunch, with Mitchell tossing his wicket away in the over before lunch. England picked up three wickets, but would wanted to have finished off New Zealand this morning, whilst New Zealand made 100-odd in the session, but would love to have gone to lunch with Mitchell still there. Below 350 and England will be happier, above 375 and New Zealand will be delighted, right now.
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Who’s making up the numbers in the 8 nation 6 Nations, TomP?
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South Africa and Georgia, Deebs. You’re playing England today. Your team:
15 Duran Koevort (Western Province), 14 Donovan Don (Griffons), 13 Ethan James (Western Province), 12 Carlton Banies (Bulls), 11 Suleiman Hartzenberg (Western Province), 10 Sacha Mngomezulu (captain, Western Province), 9 Nico Steyn (Bulls), 8 Cameron Hanekom (Bulls), 7 Ruan Venter (Lions), 6 Siya Ningiza (Sharks), 5 Reinhardt Ludwig (Bulls), 4 Connor Evans (Western Province), 3 Corne Weilbach (Western Province), 2 Lukhanyo Vokozela (Western Province), 1 Lamla Nunu (Western Province)
Substitutes: 16 Tiaan Lange (Bulls), 17 Juann Else (Bulls), 18 Sebastian Lombard (Bulls), 19 Corne Rahl (Sharks), 20 Louw Nel (Western Province), 21 Imad Khan (Western Province), 22 Compion von Ludwig, 23 Latica Nela (SA Rugby Sevens contracted), 24 Merwe Olivier (Bulls), 25 Paul de Villiers (Western Province), 26 Gcino Mdletshe (Bulls)
That’s the team list from the sixnationsrugby website. One Lion is normally one Lion too many but Venter’s a good one. However, Nico Steyn was a Lions player but is listed as a Bull.
Ludwig has gone from Affies Under 15 C team to the URC squad. A lot of players from the Southern Suburbs schools and the two Paarl schools in there.
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England (Jack Leach) mop up the last two with the addition of only four runs, to bowl the Kiwis out for 329! Then lose two wickets with only 14 on the board. Is it too early to talk of a follow-on?
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Pfft! We don’t do trivial development at the Lions, we take other unions discards and make them great! Then lose them to the others or Scotland.
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17/3 as Boult bowls another! That’s clean bowled for the first three wickets. Wonder when that last happened?
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21/4! Cricket is buggering up my ability to finish my damned report. Southee into the action, with Root caught behind.
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@deebee
In other cricket news – on Monday a certain South African international and I joined forces to put up some fielding nets. I didn’t agree that his method was the best but didn’t argue and went along with it.
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Rugby news for Thaum:
Ulster have a pre-season ‘friendly’ against Exeter, at home…………………
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OT…………….
clearly, he would tie them upside down, coming from the other hemisphere an’ all – obvs. really……………
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@slade
These nets have poles that come in 2 halves – a top and a bottom. Our usual method is to attach the 2 halves and then attach the top of the net to the top half of the pole and the bottom of the net to the bottom half of the pole. Then you stand the pole-net combination up and stick it in the ground. The beauty of this approach is that if you get the spacing between poles wrong you can swiftly adjust it to make the net tight before you stick them in the ground.
The “JJ Method” is to attach the top to the top, the bottom to the bottom, but then to stick only the bottom half of the poles into the ground. Then you attach the top halves-plus-net into the bottom poles. If you get the spacing wrong you have a saggy net.
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I can’t abide a saggy net……………..
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Slade – sounds like a good match!
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England coming back from 55/6 with a 200 run 7th wicket partnership. YJB with another ton, debutant Overton going well.
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Overton on 89 overnight. What a stunning fightback after a top order disaster from England! YJB on 130. Day 3 should be a cracker!
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I guess RL took the same decisions 100+ years ago. I suppose American and Canadian football follow the same – you get ‘n’ goes with uncontested possession – only Australian Rules goes for contested possession (and with the mark – it isn’t 100%)
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History of the play-the-ball in RL
http://www.tony-collins.org/rugbyreloaded/2012/8/12/why-six-tackles-in-league
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Montpellier are worthy winners of the T14 tonight.
It’s not been the best second half, but the first quarter saw MH blow the opposition off the park, albeit with mistakes from Castres.
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– a satisfactory result
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Remember when i said ‘go full Texas’? Don’t go full American anything right now.
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Or even partially
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Baby Boks got off to a good start in the 8 team 6N last night – as did a scary looking France. We beat England fairly comfortably after a difficult start, whilst France apparently blew Ireland off the park.
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Scrapping Roe v Wade takes the US back to mediaeval times, quite frankly. It is stunning, literally, that a country built on individual rights can do this. And the same people who celebrate this abomination, are the ones slavishly devoted to ensuring the continued slaughter of kids at schools by not banning or restricting firearm ownership. You can almost see them screaming at rallies “Don’t kill unborn kids! Wait for them to get to high school before they’re gunned down!”
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……………………….where all human life is precious, from conception up to birth………………………
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@deebee – indeed. If it really was about “the life of the child”, they would also be advocating for free healthcare and social support.
And remember, the GOP voted down a bill to get more milk formula into the states just a month or so ago.
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Hypocritical bastards. Any religious group given power, regardless of its denomination, era or geography, will implement right-wing policies. It’s a deadly poison that can only be fought through education, the one thing the US lack most.
In rugby news, England aren’t selecting their best #8. Mercer had another terrific game yesterday for Montpellier. Great rugby brain, very fit, great skills. Probably too small for Eddie.
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@Slade – that was fortuitous timing, I hadn’t read your post yet.
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@OT
I’m a big fan of Collins – How Football Began is terrific and puts the evolution of the games in their social and economic context.
The interesting thing about “play the ball” is how it was a throw back to an earlier way of restarting the game.
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@trisk
And the four/six tackle rule was nicked from American Football.
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Maybe this new situation will lead to a proper law in the long run. Relying on a precedent which could be repealed like this was never a long term strategy. Tbh i don’t understand the US system enough to know whether they couldn’t just vote down a federal law anyway. But I’m hoping that this will motivate enough people to get this embedded. Maybe a constitutional ammendment
Also, this is not helped by the fact that Biden is so unpopular. A random Google threw up this site (so maybe take this with a pinch of salt) which shows him to be more unpopular than most presidents at this stage.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/biden-approval-rating/
He’s a disaster for the left in the US. Maybe this will turn the tide, but he’s not popular.
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@OT
I’m old enough to recall the early days of the – then – 4-tackle rule. Saturday afternoons on Grandstand – live coverage of the 2nd half of a match (seemed to be mainly Leeds, Featherstone and Castleford).
Plenty of confusion…and they hadn’t yet developed the “bomb” on the last tackle.
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I’d say a constitutional amendment on anything is now impossible – originalism has now been taken to the point where the constitution is treated like holy writ. If it wasn’t put in there by the Founding Fathers – it isn’t meant to be there now.
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Flair
I agree that Mercer had a top game last night. He’s a smart player, always available near the ball and vat his best when the play is broken as against Castres.
As you say, probably not big enough for EJ’s small man mentality. Because he always looks so relaxed perhaps some see him as a luxury player? St. Andre knows a good team player when he sees one!
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Slade, the moment Refit posted when Chalureau steals the ball from the maul, and Mercer makes himself immediately available, for me sums up why Mercer should be with England. But then Eddie doesn’t really encourage instant decision making on the field, does he?
An #8 does not need to be a big slump. The tight five can take care of that. What I like about Mercer is that he plays like the best flankers, the perfect link between forwards and backs.
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Craigs – the situation now is what it was pre-Roe: it is up to the individual states to legislate for abortion as they see fit. So some states will have safe and legal abortion, and the numpty states won’t.
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yes -his linking play is top-notch
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@Thaum & Craigs – this is the current landscape in the US:
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Thanks, Refit, some surprises there. Didn’t think WI, IA or OH would have standing bans, or that NH, PA and MI would be battlegrounds. Or indeed that AK would have protected status (Sarah Palin?).
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Ah! Bugger. Can’t get it to show properly. Pumas coach Jimmy Stonehouse’s comment before the Currie Cup Final: “the butterflies mustn’t turn into ostriches”.
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For a long time no one thought Roe v Wade would be completely overturned like this.
At the moment no one thinks it will be made illegal to travel to another state to have an abortion, but Texas and Oklahoma recently passed abortion bans that allow private citizens to sue people who perform abortions or who otherwise help someone get one.
This only a few days after the Supreme Court struck down a state law that meant people in New York were restricted in carrying guns outside their own homes, a law that had been in place for over a century’
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That map is basically the map of Trumpians vs the rest of the people , isn’t it?
I ventured a couple of times in parts of the US that are far from both the oceans. Chilling.
I recommend you reading a book called: “Deer hunting with Jesus.” Very entertaining and enlightening.
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