Being short of time as I’m travelling tomorrow, I have shamelessly stolen Deebee7‘s prognostications.
But first, I’m sure we can all rejoice that Stuart McCloskey has kept his starting place on the Ireland team with Aki relegated to the bench.
Your results for the weekend:
Tonga v Uruguay: Tonga by 14 – Tonga are enjoying playing against Spanish speaking sides, and will dish the pain once again!
Italy v South Africa: South Africa by 4 – Boks have had two narrow losses and will look to get their tour on the board, with four straight losses for the two sides so far. Bench to haul them over the line.
Wales v Georgia: Wales by 19 – good win for Wales last week and they’ll look to build on that (and cement their place in the 6N at Georgia’s expense).
Romania v Samoa: Samoa by 6 – just because I don’t have a clue, but Samoa seem to better at the moment.
Scotland v Argentina: Argentina by 3 – Did Scotland blow a gasket against the Kiwis last week? Argentina have some good scalps this year and will look to take a Scottish one on their own turf.
England v New Zealand: New Zealand by 9 – don’t think it’ll be a shellacking, but the Kiwis are cruising this November tour after a dodgy start against Japan.
Ireland v Australia: Ireland by 8 Aussies are one from three, but all their matches have been single point affairs so far. Ireland will put a bit of distance on the scoreboard, but not that much.
France v Japan: France by 24 Japan won’t be as bad as they were against England, but they also don’t have the ability to step up and close the gap that much either. France for win 13 on the trot and getting within touching distance of some serious records.
Onna telly this week
Friday 18th November
| Sale v Harlequins | 19:30 | BT Sport 1 |
Saturday 19th November
| Italy v South Africa | 13:00 | Amazon Prime |
| Wales v Georgia | 13:00 | Amazon Prime |
| Scotland v Argentina | 15:15 | Amazon Prime |
| England v New Zealand | 17:30 | Amazon Prime |
| Ireland v Australia | 20:00 | Amazon Prime |
Sunday 20th November
| France v Japan | 13:00 | Amazon Prime |
Ovally Balls 
And Treviso get the ball off the pitch and win.
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Newcastle gave Tigers a bit of a tonking. Final score 45-26.
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Interesting development in the Exeter/Saints match. The ref has injured his leg. One of the linesmen has moved up to ref, the 4th official has moved to running the line and Luke Pierce, who was just watching the match, has been drafted into be the 4th official.
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Embra snatch a victory at the last moment shocker.
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Well, that was better………………..
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Bloody Bristol got beat again.
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Bloody Glasgow beat Stormers (and Brace) with a last minute try in the Scotstoun rain! Ticking along nicely now, just need to keep this going.
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BB, the Weege were full value for the win with some superb backline play that completely turned the match. They seemed to have worked out the Stormers rush defence from early on (with having two 12s in midfield not helping) with decoy runners from deep busting the line regularly. Very impressive. Lots of moaning down here about the Warriors being allowed to disrupt the rucks and mauls coming in from the side, as well as the ref having no clue about the scrum, where the Stormers were dominant, but got penalised more as the game went on. Kitshoff’s expressions were quite revealing! But I’m sure if you put on Glaswegian specs, there’d be plenty to question too. Great result for Glasgow, they just seemed mentally quicker to react and sharper than the Stormers.
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Is the Munster scrum generally this crap
@deebee
Academy hooker in after 5 mins, starting LH – looks like he got a rib injury. Kilcoyne and Archer are probably in final year (Kilcoyne might get an extension – Archer is probably gone, Loughman away on 6N break).
2nd row – Coombes (an 8 or 6 normally) and Kleyn who’s starteed nearl;y every match since who know when (Ahern, Edogbo injured, Snyman long term injured, Beirne on 2 week break before 6 nations) – very short on 2nd rows ….
Munster are chasing an LH and hooker – Marx has been mooted for NIQ role
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Farrell to the naughty step – who’ll get called into the squad?
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Well at least, now that Eddie is gone there won’t be the chance of Nowell replacing Curry in the back row
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Re Owen Jones, I think he should be able to criticise Starmer but I also think that Labour should be more united. It’s one thing the right is really good at and it should happen more on the left.
Also, there was something in the news about the Shadow Health Secretary maybe, possibly banning smoking. To Laura Whatsherface:
“We’ll be consulting on that and a whole range of other measures”
Fucking hell, what a way to give the Tories a boost.
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Remembers schisms under Corbyn… maybe rethinks above comment slightly. But still thinks it’s generally true.
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Deebs – I don’t know how much crowd sound you could hear, but the Glasgow crowd were definitely NOT pleased with a lot of Clancy, sorry, Brace’s decisions. Mind you, they’re never happy with him anyway. It seemed that we got pinged a lot in the first half, then it turned around to be the Stormers that got pinged a lot in the second.
I wasn’t to keen on Tuipolotu earlier this season, but he played a blinder against the Bulls and was good again (and it was his kick through for the winning try), Jones was back to his best too, should be a cert for our 6N team
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Wonder what positions the two from the Daily Star front page played…..
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He’s off to Lyon, apparently
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Toonie’s off too? Post WC.
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BB, my dodgy feed has no sound, so couldn’t hear the crowd at all. Booing with a thick Glaswegian accent would probably be incomprehensible to me anyway. Huw Jones definitely seems to be getting back to his best – wonderful for Scotland if he does.
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Having said that, 12 hours ago with nothing in-between, as long as he doesn’t play like that against the Boks in a few months.
Where is everyone? In shock at OF’s six month ban?
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I think they should give Faz a 6 week ban, just to spite Ugo and Care.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/64223850
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When do they announce the outcome? The hearing was yesterday evening, as far as I know? To be fair to Ugo, he’s speculating on what he thinks will happen, not what he believes is right, no?
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Guess I’m not watching the Royal Rumble this year
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I think it would be wrong to start Borthwick’s tenure with a whitewash job, but that is what Monye thinks will happen. Personally, I can see no reason to reduce a six week ban, we hear the refs going thru the protocols every week on telly, its a straight red card offence with no mitigating circumstances, and its certainly not his first offence. a lot of people have been commenting on his technique for many years, if the RFU want to be taken seriously and seen to be doing something proactive about head injuries, any other outcome would be a travesty..
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Aaron Cruden should get a lengthy ban for this attack:
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Is it OT who likes Right Said Fred? If so only £130 to see them do comedy next to a non royal, behind a pub, field shagger.
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To clarify, ‘field shagger’ is not a league reference.
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Is it hell as like. Although I do like Kenneth Williams
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Fork handles, no four candles, no four match ban for Faz.
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OT – pretty sure you did say you like RSF.
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Wonder what that means though. Will they rush Ford back or stick with Smith?
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No. Expro once put a photo up of his latest band and I compared it favourably with Right Said Fred (both bands were fronted by two bald muscular men).
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I compared it favourably with Right Said Fred
I’d call that a Cruden to the jaw, myself.
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Craigs, a very muddled ban from my reading: attending tackle school reduces it to three matches, which leaves him free to play for England, except that the third match against Bristol would be played on a day that England players are in camp and not eligible for their clubs? So if Borthwick doesn’t select Farrell when he announces his squad, then he’s banned for the three club matches and can then be selected as an ’emergency replacement’ when someone ‘breaks down’ in training?
On the positive side, at least he got cited and punished; still can’t believe how many people defended him BTL on the Graun!
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Sorry, but I think those defending him on the Graun were mostly right. It was a yellow card offence.
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Due to the dip of the tacklee, I mean.
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@deebee
Expro was delighted. He even made the same comparison on his band’s Facebook page. And incorporated a song of RSF’s into their playlist
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OT – that’s not what I choose to believe.
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Dab, half the supporters felt he had done no wrong at all – the number of comments about ‘what was he supposed to do, not tackle him?’ rather than focus on the fact that he didn’t actually attempt a tackle, in the sense of using, and wrapping, his arms. He led with the shoulder from the off, I suppose hoping that it would hit the bloke in the chest, not the chin, but it didn’t. I Googled the clip again and it’s pretty clear. There was another clip of ‘Owen Farrell’s Most Savage Moments’ (their words, not mine) which has another four or five almost identical hits (and a comedy collapse by Bryan Habana), so for me it’s not simply a mistake or mistimed: have a look for yourself and decide – I think Farrell sometimes doesn’t like a bloke running at him at pace and chickens out of a proper tackle, rather than being malicious after viewing this. Perhaps I’m being too generous though!
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Farrell’s tackle was foul play, if foul play results in head/neck contact then the guidelines are that it is a minimum of “mid-entry point”, ie 6 weeks.
Then you get mitigation or aggravation.
In mitigation there are the following;
Admits foul play
Good Record
Remorse/apology
Good conduct.
Farrell doesn’t have a good record, as the RFU have found in this case.
In aggravation;
Repeat offender
Need for a deterrent
Any other factors
The RFU ruling on Farrell says that he is a repeat offender, it also has that there is no need for a deterrent for striking the head with a shoulder. What the actual fuck?
So six weeks was mitigated down to four – he only got the two weeks taken off because he doesn’t have a clean record.
But he can get another week off if, at age 31 and having played circa 350 senior rugby games , he attends a course to learn how to tackle.
the course takes place at the player’s club and they send a video of it to the RFU as proof.
Fuck you Steve Thompson and anyone else suffering from the effects of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy.
My ire has nothing to do with the personalty involved or his nationality.
I’m getting sick of this joke of a system, it’s as bad as boxing, probably worse.
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As much as I take all these points (esp about Steve Thompson), he does leave it all out there. And that’s good for any team he plays in. I also think that he mostly aims just below the chin (except for the obvious barges), which is allowed IIRC. But I’d change that.
He’s had 9 yellows and 1 red across his Sarries and England career over 327 games. I wouldn’t put him in the ‘dirty player’ category.
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To be honest I thought Tuilagi’s ‘tackle’ on Allen was much worse – reckless and I don’t believe he couldn’t have attempted to pull out. Result was game/life threatening imho.
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@slade
I reckon the villain in that piece was O’Flaherty who shoved Allen onto his knees which meant Tuilagi couldn’t get low enough to miss his head.
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A few things to take from this. Firstly, the Hask has 7 books out! 7 fucking books!!! Secondly, he manages to go all JBP and tell people to stand up for themselves. Thirdly, he contradicts the second and pushes the importance of a postmodern narrative. And lastly, he’s a bloody feminist!!!
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Craigs, there are quite a few times Farrell didn’t get carded/cited where he might well have been/should have been.
His record doesn’t really reflect how he plays.
Worst case scenario, Farrell is back for the Calcutta Cup and flattens Watson with a high shoulder to the chin. Watson is just back from two months off due to concussion.
The outcome of that is potentially horrific.
Should we be in a situation where it is even possible for this to happen? We all know how Farrell tackles.
Slade/OT
Tuilagi was in that position because he was going to absolutely smash Allan in the tackle, and this is the crux of both incidents, until rugby moves away from demanding dominant hits and back to tackling these incidents are not going away.
The fact that there weren’t anything like the number of concussions back inna day is not just because of the size of the modern players (or more checks), the game is very definitely played differently – you practically never see a tackler let the ball carrier go to their side and then take them around the waist/legs – when was the last time we saw that?
You never see a head on tackler use the weight of the ball carrier and passively fall backwards, you could spin them around and have them fall on your side too.
No, all we see is shoulders to the chest (if they get it “right”)
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Not posting much cos still have to sign in every like of comment, but really, they are taking the piss. Clement didn’t dip, he drove low in the first place. Mitigating circumstances on a dip is a slip, or another player knocking them lower. Faz set himself up for a tackle and drove in shoulder, without any attempt to wrap. How he can be allowed to play against Scotland is mind boggling. There must be any number of players who have spent more time sitting out games for far less.
Maybe Borthwick will drop him anyway. I really hope he isn’t made captain, I am really tired of being embarrassed watching a petulant England captain whine at a ref, even allowing for the fact of him playing well occasionally. Surely the powers that be can see how that must have a derogatory effect on ref impartiality and team moral and standards of behaviour.
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Firstly, the Hask has 7 books out! 7 fucking books!!!
Wow! How many crayons did that take?
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Ticht – I think that Faz mostly plays right to the limit of the laws, which I would change. I agree with you re the way the game is played now but I also think people mainly don’t like Faz due to his on field manner. He isn’t especially dirty.
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Deebee – 7.
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