It’s Christmas in July as the Northern behemoths head south to upside-down-world and a feast of rugby! With this being the last July tour before the World Cup next year in France, there are markers to be put down, there are points to be made and there are matches to be won! Not the usual ‘development tours’ we see, but full-blooded Tests, with a capital T and an exclamation mark to boot. So who’ll be the turkeys (not Türkiye, as they’re not playing anyway), who’ll get a stuffing and who’ll provide the trimmings and the sauce? A veritable smorgasbord awaits:
Romania v Italy
After slaying the Welsh dragon in February, there’ll be a sprightly step in the Italian dressing room before facing off with a Romanian side that lost its last two matches (narrowly to let’s-replace-Italy-with-Georgia, and more convincingly to Spain) to end a decent five match winning streak prior to that. Solid second tier, but not enough to get past Italy, who broke a 36-match losing streak at the Principality with THAT try. It won’t be a canter, but Italy should start their summer series with a fairly comfortable win: Italy by 15 over Romania
Australia ‘A’ v Samoa
Much talk around the improvement of Australian sides in Super Rugby this year, but frankly I’m not sure where that came from. A couple of wins against Kiwi sides masked the fact that they only got one side in the semis and propped up the bottom of the combined table along with the Samoan and Fijian sides. The Brumbies were the only consistent side in Australia, but they’ll have too much depth anyway to field an ‘A’ side that will see off Samoa easily enough. No idea what to expect from Samoa, or who they’ve selected, but history tells us they’ll be blood and thunder for 60 minutes, whilst still getting the wrong end of the scoreboard and cards, and fade away as the superior conditioning and game plan of the Aussies takes control: Australia ‘A’ by 23
Fiji v Tonga
A spicy affair for sure, although Fiji have emerged as the most consistent of the Pacific Island sides in recent years, combining some electric running from all 15 (or 23) players at times, with brutal defence and a set piece that’s better than most of their neighbours. It’ll be fierce, it’ll be fast, it’ll be fun to watch from afar, but ultimately Fiji will have too much: Fiji by 13
Japan v France
Two of the world’s great cultures and two of the world’s great cuisines. Most recent and next hosts of rugby’s great showpiece. Two sides renowned for silky skills and derring-do with ball in hand, but that’s where it ends, I’m afraid. France are building up a fearsome head of steam in the lead up to their home World Cup and have oodles of talent and power in most positions, led by Dupont and Ntamack at 9 and 10, behind a pack that won’t step back for anyone. Japan have been solid recently, with good wins over second-tier sides and running the likes of Scotland, Australia and Ireland relatively close (bar one blowout against Ireland), so they have the wherewithal to mix it with the big boys. However, this is a France on a mission and they should stroll away with it in the end: France by 33
New Zealand v Ireland
One of the most eagerly awaited July series, with Ireland having got the measure of the Kiwis in recent years. But not in New Zealand. Both sides come into the series with question marks hanging over them – the All Black pack got dusted in Dublin and flayed in France last year and they’ve gone with Scott Barrett at 6 in an effort to bolster the lineout and scrum. Worked a treat in the 2019 Semi against England, didn’t it? Ireland’s Leinster-dominated side has struggled against top packs, but they’ll probably fancy they’ve got the wood on the Kiwis up front. The AB backline has suffered some Covid disruptions, but such is the depth of talent in New Zealand, they’ll be fine there. The noises coming out of New Zealand are ominous and they’ll throw everything at Ireland this week. Perhaps overly generous, but it’s New Zealand by 17
Australia v England
Another hugely anticipated match as Eddie’s eagles got their wings clipped in the 6N, amidst rumblings around his sometimes leftfield selections. Australia have been building quietly under Dave Rennie and demolished a Bok scrum last year thought to be their key weapon. The Aussies always bring that mongrel spirit to matches like this and they won’t back down against England’s forwards. It’s an intriguing match-up with England’s centres – as ever – a topic of debate and the backs in general, from 9 to 15, with the exception perhaps of Marcus Smith being anything but nailed on. Both sides are actually a little unsettled and it could go either way, with the match-up between Smith and Cooper at 10 a key contest. Australia will look to run England around the park, whilst England will look to smother the Aussies before letting loose later on. Could go either way, I’m backing Rennie’s Roos to break some hoodoos: Australia by 2
South Africa v Wales
Everyone in Wales apparently thinks the Boks will smash Wales. So does everyone here. Except for the people who think it’ll be a tight, ugly affair. Of which I’m one. The Boks are generally slow out of the starting blocks in the international season and are probably most vulnerable in this first Test. That said, it’s a pretty settled squad, with most of the players in their prime, or near enough. They’ve all played together for a few seasons and so should be settled enough. Wales, on the other hand, have come off a horror 6 Nations, only winning one match and losing to Italy in the final match – but they also got three losing bonus points, so three tight defeats. Whatever the missing links are in the Welsh side, it’s not guts and defence and bloody-mindedness. And the matches between Wales and South Africa have been tight in recent years, so I expect another tight affair, with the Boks perhaps easing away at altitude later on: South Africa by 9
Argentina v Scotland
This has all the potential to be a cracker, with Argentina now under the tutelage of Michael Cheika and with some of the Euro-based players back in the fold. Having stunned the ABs in 2020 and played some fabulous rugby in the process, they slipped back badly in 2021, winning only one match, against Italy. Scotland’s all-new, all-singing, all-dancing style fell a bit flat in the 6 Nations after a promising start and the Scots once again failed to live up to expectations. That said, they have some wonderful, athletic forwards and some serious gas out wide that can blitz most defences on its day. This could be a great match. Would back Argentina’s 2020 version, but not the 2021 version, albeit they’ve changed management and got a few players back: Scotland by 5
Merrily foretold by Deebee7
Onna telly this week
Thursday 30th June
| Scotland v Italy (U20s) | 19:00 | YouTube |
| Wales v Georgia (U20s) | 19:00 | YouTube |
Saturday 2nd July
| Japan v France | 07:00 | Premier Sports 1 |
| New Zealand v Ireland | 08:00 | Sky Sports Action |
| Australia v England | 10:55 | Sky Sports Action |
| South Africa v Wales | 16:05 | Sky Sports Action |
| Argentina v Scotland | 20:10 | Sky Sports Main Event |
Tuesday 5th July
| France v South Africa (U20s) | 16:00 | YouTube |
| England v Ireland (U20s) | 19:00 | YouTube |
Wednesday 6th July
| Scotland v Georgia (U20s) | 16:00 | YouTube |
| Wales v Italy (U20s) | 19:00 | YouTube |
Ovally Balls 
Flair – I dunno; I read it in the Guardian!
Nuclear is the worst worst option.
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Not having sufficient baseload is the worst worst worst option.
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I thought the new nuke powerplants were safe and clean?
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If it was me I’d build 10. Not near Thaums house though.
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Test
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Flair, Scotland can produce up to 97% of its energy needs from renewable sources as things stand now.
However the whole picture is more complicated because it supplies a national grid for a UK.
Add in nuclear power and coal-fired power stations and we have a surplus of energy production
People also cook with gas and use petrol and diesel for vehicles so switching over to 100% renewable sources is not quite possible yet, the yet being the operative word
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Is an electric central heating system as good as a gas one?
I’ll need to find out.
I looked into heat pumps but it wouldn’t work in my house
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@ticht
I expect it would be very expensive. For example an immersion heater takes a lot of energy to warm up a boiler compared to doing it with gas. That’s what I’d be asking, anyway.
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Ticht – 97% is pretty impressive. Do you know ow if there are plans to build more turbines to export more energy to the rest of the UK?
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OT, that assumes using circulating water, I was talking about modern electric heating systems
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Craigs, I believe there are plans to build more turbines and exploit more geothermal, hydro, wave sources where possible
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Ticht – my families house in Sweden had a geothermal thing which was subsidised by the government there.
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@craigs
Tha 97% fluctuates rapidly on any given day given the state of the wind, so it’s a bit of a red herring. The hydro and tidal are very good for baseload but not enough to keep the lights on. So they still need some big plant in place to satisfy demand.
It’s not that great an idea to transport electricity from Scotland to the more populated parts of SE England – you get big transmission losses plus wind is low quality energy which makes it very difficult to convert to more useful forms. So again we need investment in plant.
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OT – there’s a dude going for governator in California who has been very critical of the recent Cali and German energy policies. I don’t know enough to assess what he says but it seems like there is a similar issue in England at least.
He seems to agree with you re wind energy.
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@craigs
That graph is a bit misleading as it suggests Iceland doesn’t have much renewables. In fact it has loooooads of geothermal but that graph excludes that and only includes wind and solar. They have even managed to create a low carbon emission aluminium smelting industry using geothermal energy, which is fantastic.
On another note, less than a mile from my house is a windmill which is literally a museum. The technology became obsolete in the 19th century when it was replaced by something else that was able to deliver higher quality, more useful energy more of the time.
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OT, the wind variability in Scotland lowers average output from wind turbines to between 25% and almost 60% of capacity, depending on where they are.
With that in mind, from wiki,
“It is estimated that 11.5 GW of onshore wind potential exists, enough to provide about 45 TWh of energy in a year, allowing for wind variability. More than double this amount exists on offshore sites[72] where mean wind speeds are greater than on land.[73] The total offshore potential is estimated at 25 GW, and although more expensive to install could be enough to provide almost half the total energy used in Scotland.[72]”
I believe storage is still an issue but we are playing catch up, energy engineering was the subject I studied at uni, back then we were told that the total amount spent on research into all renewables in the UK amounted to less than 1% of that spent on nuclear, and that was not the commissioning and building of nuclear plants, it was the research into the tech
Craigs, a comment I made on my phone got trapped in the spam bin, I think, i believe there is a lot of research going on in Scotland and a desire to widen the renewable portfolio as much as possible. The Scottish government, or the SNP at least, is very much against building new nuclear plants.
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That’s a good read, Refit.
I know the location of Seaford RFC, we go for walks along there quite a lot, it’s right on the seafront, great place in winter, very bleak.
Hove rugby club is very inclusive, I planned to coach there but stuff came up and I just didn’t have the time
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There’s nuffink the spam bin, Ticht. Perhaps Refit rescued it.
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Cheers Thaum, I can see it now. Sometimes when I use my phone the post takes a wee while to show
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I just had my mind blown. Does this sound familiar to anyone?
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Refit – givvus a clue.
Anyone watch the ‘debate’? I’m sure Rish! had done about half a gramme of coke just before going on stage. I’d’ve turned his mic off. What an arsehole. Made Truss look sane and reasonable.
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@Thaum – Dr Dre & Snoop Dog.
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Oh. I wouldn’t know. :-)
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Thaum:-
“Flair – I dunno; I read it in the Guardian! ”
Says it all right there. Probably managed to massage figures about 70% by including calculations for vegans farting into brown paper bags to power public transport,
Truss brought up by CND parents. Maybe she is playing the long game, getting into power, then wammo, tax the bejesus out of Amazon and google etc, ( if they paid what they theoretically should, everyone under 100k could pay no tax at all and the government’s coffers would be full to bursting ), renationalise utilities and railways, fund education and the NHS properly, bring back village greens, and make wearing of socks and sandals compulsory for cops. Nirvana!
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SBT, that all sounds largely sensible on a policy front, except for socks and sandals. That should be punishable by being the storage facility for the gas from vegans and brown paper bags.
On that note, I think it could work in India, say, where a large proportion of the population is vegan and the potency of the food surely produces combustibles of a high quality for the running of public transport. I wonder though, if there is an inverse correlation between combustible quality and quantity on the one hand, and the body’s accustomisation to the heat of the food? Would it require an ever-increasingly spicy diet to maintain optimum output? At what point does colon warming become unsustainable? Could we press gang the management and shareholders of ‘public’ transport into a tiffin box style collections operation? More research needed from the Graun!
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Sbt – can’t bring back Nirvana, lead singer is deid.
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Stranger Things brought back the 80s, so don’t see why not.
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The URC fixtures are supposedly to be announced on Thursday, someone saw a fuzzy image of Edinburgh’s fixtures and they are exactly the same as last year, only with home and away locations changed.
So if that is the case we’ll be off to South Africa to play Stormers and Bulls in late Sept/early Oct.
They probably won’t have their Boks players available by then.
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Sport governing bodies have been called on to acknowledge that repetitive head impacts cause a degenerative brain disease after new research found a causal link between the two.
The authors say they have found “conclusive evidence” that repetitive head impacts cause chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/62302408
There was an article in Sunday’s Observer on this topic and the writer brought up an angle I hadn’t considered before. He said that his wife had been diagnosed with CTE, being in her early 50s and displaying what is euphemistically called “challenging behaviour” due to the illness, it was very difficult to find a place in full time care for her.
She is apparently a little over five foot tall, and to paraphrase, “Not an ex international rugby player”
The implied message was “What do they do with guys six foot five and 18 stones in their late 40s/early 50s who are behaving aggressively?”
They will probably spend the rest of their lives drugged, drooling out the side of their mouths, staring at afternoon game shows on tv.
Is it worth it?
Not all cases end up with “challenging behaviour” obviously, but there will be some and the numbers will increase as things stand.
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“If some or any of these conditions reported by players turn out to be degenerative, that storm in the distance is heading rugby’s way. When the story broke of the crisis in 2020, I wrote about my family’s own experience with early-onset dementia. In 2019, after years of escalating difficulties with memory, executive function and emotional ability, my wife was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s at the age of 49.
In October last year, after a seizure in the small hours one morning, she was taken to hospital and thence to a nursing home, where she now requires full-time care. The search for a home for her was already under way by then, but the vast majority were unable to take her.
The underlying issue, sometimes not even unspoken, is the very real responsibility homes have for their residents, who are frail and vulnerable. They could not accommodate someone in her early 50s known to exhibit what is euphemistically known as “challenging behaviour”.
My wife is closer to five foot than six and she did not play international rugby. If she is too much for most homes to take on, how many will consider someone who does answer to that description?
She suffers from a rare and aggressive form of Alzheimer’s, which is different from CTE. Her deterioration has been swift and unanswerable. There is every chance the diagnosed players will follow a less precipitous decline, which might respond to treatment and good living, if they follow a decline at all. But for those who do turn out to have CTE, which is by definition degenerative, the need to find accommodation will be as much about the safety of their families as a question of practicality.”
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2022/jul/24/rugby-and-dementia-if-it-thinks-it-is-going-away-the-game-is-deluding-itself
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They probably won’t have their Boks players available by then.
RC finishes on the 24th of September, so I’m assuming the guys will be given a week or two off to recover, so you’re probably right. That said, for some reason there’s a notion that we’re in ‘four world class hookers’ territory in almost every position, bar 10 and 15 with scribes and fans posting 3 or 4 match day squads to take on anyone and win. All a bit bizarre, especially as the (largely) second XV lost to Wales. We will be without our European-based players for the Test against England in November though, so lots of speculation on what a ‘local’ Test side would like.
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@Ticht – I found that moment reading that a bit of an eye-opener too. Have to applaud Aylwin for the article. I don’t think any match I’ve ever seen has had much to resemblance to any of his match reports on them, but he deserves a lot of credit for being prepared and able to address this issue from the situation he’s in.
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Two of my father’s family ended up in nursing homes with dementia. My nanna was in her eighties, crippled with osteoporosis and weighed almost nothing. She was in there for a lot of years that were no good to her though and sadly made it all the way to 99. My uncle can’t have been much more than 70 and didn’t last long at all. At his funeral he was played out to Land of Hope and Glory with my aunt and cousins laughing about it. My brother and I were kind of amused too (if a little surprised) as we knew something of his outrageously right-wing views. Turned out they were laughing as they’d chosen it because he would belt it out at the top of his voice to keep the nurses off him in the home. I think it’s fair to say he put up more of a fight in there than my nanna could.
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CMW – yeah, I’ve had some relatives with dementia. It’s really horrible.
My granny started singing a dirty song about a sailor in church once though, which was quite amusing!
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The same granny was not violent at all – I would say she was depressed, rather – but she had looked after her own demented mother, who *was* violent. She’d asked us to kill her if she ever got ‘like that’, by which she meant losing her memory. Well, you’re not allowed, are you, even though you’d be prosecuted by the RSPCA if you cruelly prolonged an animal’s life well past enjoyment.
Of course you have to safeguard against anyone wishing to inherit a bit earlier than strictly necessary, but it’s not beyond the wit of humans to involve a couple of doctors to verify.
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On a completely different subject, here’s (yet) another article on the Graun that just gets it wrong: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jul/26/sunaks-interruptions-ignite-debate-over-mansplaining-in-politics
Sunak wasn’t mansplaining; he didn’t listen to either Truss, Haworth or indeed the two blokes on the sidelines to mansplain. Manterrupting is quite a good word, word, and he was certainly doing that. It was rude, obnoxious, and probably lost him every woman’s vote.
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I did an audit of a nursing home when I was training to be an accountant. I sat at one end of a hall and listened to everything that went on. Not great if I’m honest. I wonder if anyone notices a slide. Obviously these ex players notice because they are young but if you are just getting old it might be harder to notice.
And that place was expensive. Believe me, rinsed everyone dry, fuckers.
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Something light and happy to end the day for me, and start the day for you.
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SBT – video unavailable.
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The Beautiful Girls- Cash Money, from the album Learn Yourself.
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Unavailable here too.
Thauma you’ll be happy to know I MC’d an event this morning where the two keynote speakers were advocating for nuclear and gas power respectively, trashing renewables as a carbon-heavy hoax with a deadly and badly understood end of life quandary. They were both lovely blokes.
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In news from other sports, our county (Kerry) gaelic football team won the All Ireland championship for the 38th time and first time since 2014.
To my mind, the reaction was a bit like beating NZ. Kerry had won 5 consecutive U18 (minor) championships 2014-2018 – so to an extent there was a huge degree of expectation that the that would convert into success at adult level – by my count 13 of the squad came from the various age grade winning teams ( 3 or 4 went off to AFL ). 2019 – should have won the final but lost the replay, 2020 – manager’s conservative approach led to a last minute defeat at provincial level in a monsoon, 2021 – lost the eventual winners but obvious defensive issues from earlier campaigns had been left unremedied. So, the overall feeling on winning was of a job well done not euphoria – we knew we had the talent so we just needed to get them to play up to standard.
I feel there was a similar reaction to winning in NZ, 1st test went wrong but for much of it Ireland were competitive…. winning tests 2 and 3 – it was clear Ireland were the better team (bit like last year’s AIs) – so the overall reaction was “we are” – currently anyway – “the better team, we ought to be winning these games no matter where they are played”.
It’s an interesting reaction – happy and pleased but not ecstatic. Its the level you expect to be at and you’ve the players/talent to support that expectation.
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The Big Question, Trisk, is have Ireland peaked a year early? Again. Without wanting to put the kibosh on anyone. Cough.
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Deebee – almost certainly.
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Always seems to be cliffs up and cliffs down rather than peaks and troughs.
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For those who don’t follow Cat on twitter, his Keithnoir series is quite something:
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Ireland peaked a year early? Again
Very possibly – teams have a year to work out how to stop our RL-style tactics. Now, to an extent they already have an idea – France made wreck in the 6N although the 3rd quarter rally was admirable.
England also caused problems but 78 mins with 14 was ultimately fatal. Granted another day we might not have been as heavily penalised at the scrum – we got done in the scrum vs NZ in 1st test but not in tests 2 and 3…. so you could say that was a one-off.
AI vs SA will tell a great deal on how we can adapt to the bigger teams. Equally, if we struggled, it’ll point up to everyone how to get at us.
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Craigs – that is genius of Cat’s. I don’t suppose there’s a location where the whole thing can be seen?
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