The image editor posts hopefully
Scotland vs Italy
Previously the wooden spoon fixture, these teams have made some recent progress but the Italians are definite underdogs here. Italy have made 4 changes and given a dayboo to Simone Gesi on the wing. However, they lack Capowuoouuzzzo at full back so, whilst they look fairly settled, they don’t have much in the way of X factor.
Scotland have made 5 changes including leaving out Finn and Hoggy so, while I predict a win, the margin will be smaller without them. Also, given they have lost their last 2 games, they will be motivated to end in style (same could be said for Italy tbh).
Scotland have a better pack and cooler heads. Against Wales, Italy played like headless chickens for much of the game and gave Wales some points either by coughing up the ball in their half or failing to execute the basics. Scotland will be patient and gradually rack up a decent win.
Head-to-head Planet Rugby says that Scotland have won the last 8 fixtures but this only goes back to 2017 and I haven’t dug further. It would take a miracle or a card for Italy to win and it won’t happen this weekend as Scotland get their 9th (or more) win in a row.
30 – 10 to Scotland.
France vs Wales
France, France, France. Until last weekend many people said they had been underwhelming despite only losing in Dublin. That all changed when they swaggered into Twickenham and put 50 on some boys Borthwick had found. They said they could play rugby, double promise, cross their hearts – but they couldn’t.
To be fair, that was the best performance I’ve seen from a team against the English since the dastardly Saffas won the 2019 RWC. Maybe even better. Every time Dupont kicked the ball into space it opened up the back line and a French player waltzed over the line about 10 seconds later. Their defence was aggressive, their ruck speed brutal and every carry seemed to gain at least 3 Robshaws. But most impressive was how clinical they were. I can’t remember a scoring chance being wasted.
Wales on the other hand were solid last weekend but otherwise haven’t set this tournament on fire. They still drag around the reanimated corpse of AWJ but have some new talent including a footballer on the wing. How there isn’t a better 13 in Wales than George North I’ll never know.
There is a ‘last hurrah’ feel to this team but rather a white orc filled Dad’s army willing its way to victory, this feels like a Clive Woodward selected Lions team. If Clive Woodward had coached Wa…. You know what I mean! France to make it 5 in a row against the men in red.
50 – 12 to France
Ireland vs England
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
60 – 8 to Ireland (*starts crying*)
Laughing and crying by Craigsman
Onna telly this week
Friday 17th March
| Bulls v Western Province | 17:00 | Sky Sports Arena |
Saturday 18th March
| Scotland v Italy | 12:30 | BBC1 / RTÉ2 |
| France v Wales | 14:45 | ITV1 / S4C |
| Ireland v England | 17:00 | ITV1 |
Sunday 19th March
| Scotland v Italy (U20s) | 14:00 | BBC iPlayer |
| London Irish v Exeter | 14:00 | BT Sport 1 |
| Ireland v England (U20s) | 17:00 | BBC iPlayer |
| France v Wales (U20s) | 20:00 | BBC iPlayer / S4C |
Ovally Balls 
The closest I can stand is this (and I have a completely different arrangement in my head):
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See you, Jimmy. ;-)
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Make a joyful noise unto the rugby gods. (I tried to find the version from the film with Placido Domingo and Julia Migenes-Johnson, but couldn’t find just the overture.)
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Refit – :-D
I’ve heard worse boy band songs.
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Well, if we’re doing Irish bands…
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I think England played their best game of the tournament tonight, and Ireland their worst. I was proper swattin’ it, so I was.
So a song for the losing side.
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My first live band…
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This lot are great live. New album out too.
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That drummer is a genius.
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Oh, too slow! I meant the Steeleye Span one! Now to listen to the other contributions….
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As Thaum and Trisk will be celebrating, I’ll avoid Chris de Burgh, and the Corrs, and Boomtown Rats, and U2.
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BB – SLF is the band whose name I was trying to recall.
If you google their name, the first question that comes up is ‘Is SLF Catholic or Protestant?’.
*sigh*
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Really liked The Answer track – never heard of them before. Tight band, deep groove, rawness. Excellent.
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BB @20:50 – oh I do like this song, no matter how uncool it might be to say so….
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The video is pretty damn cheesy though.
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While we’re into 80s cheese, this might be appropriate for the tournament:
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If you have to do a Rats song, then this is the one.
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Not one of the great man’s best, but a sort of reggae/calypso thing featuring the divine Tina Turrner.
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BB – yes, that’s probably a better tune.
I’ve read a couple of rat-themed books lately. One is Ratman’s Notebooks by Northern Irish author Stephen Gilbert, considered by some to be one of the first horror novels, and turned into a cult fillum called Willard with Ernest Borgnine (fillum hated by author, whom I knew).
The other is King Rat, the first and least likeable of the Asian Saga novels of James Clavell (Shogun).
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I’ve not seen the Jurassic Park fillum, but from what I’ve heard of it I reckon it was ripped off from Stephen Gilbert’s Landslide.
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Well, a 3rd GS not to be sniffed at ….and winning a championship running into the RWC is a great stepping stone
Naturally, England were never going to be close to the level of the France game. Ireland weren’t great – nervy and inaccurate. How much that was England and how much the weight of the occasion – who can tell?
Ultimately, the extra man told – everyone’s had a say on it – I won’t add anything worthwhile.
Sexton looked shook at the end. To be fair, we’re operating without him to a greater or lesser extent. Gibson Park did some good things without really playing well at 9. Ryan and Baird were good. Doris was less influential but seemed to be double teamed.
Overall, it was a 6N won in dribs and drabs – 1st 30 vs Wales, last 30 vs Scotland, 2nd and 4th quarters vs England. I wouldn’t think that level would be sufficient at RWC.
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Trisk – yes, I reckon we’ll crash out in the group stage or the next stage where we’d face either France or NZ,
It’s like this song says, coincidentally called Landslide:
Well, I’ve been afraid of changing
‘Cause I’ve built my life around you
The ‘you’ being Sexton.
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Congrats to Ireland, well deserved Grand Slam. Glad England made a game of it, but never really looked like scoring a try, and Ireland must have had seven or eight half chances/breaks that could have been 5 pointers on another day.
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Can’t see a group stage failure (sorry Scotland) – main issue is flogging key players or players who can ,”change up”
Sheehan ( Leinster as guilty since with Kelleher injured they don’t trust backups),
Keenan – found him by accident but no replacement – lightning rarely strikes twice
Sexton – OK today and Byrne comes on to steer the boat home. What if we’re 7pts down with 15 left…. ?
Furlong – only ok today – rushed back from injury having played no rugby since start of December – O’Toole was an improvement
Porter… Healy comes on when match is won….
I could go on but what I potentially see is the Welsh scenario – national team doing great but underneath clubs sides struggling…. it’s all great until it suddenly isn’t….
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Chuffed. Finished second in the Super Bru AoD pool.
Not bad until I realised Flanker finished ahead of me, very much like Ireland ahead of France. Something will have to change in September.
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Some excellent underdogging from the Irish posters today. You guys are no1 in the world, 6ns grand slam champions, have beaten the ABs at home and won a series there.
You guys are favourites, and the team is a bunch of bastards too. Embrace it 😀
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Good to see that some things never change though.
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Credit Suisse made me redundant in 2012. Pass the Welsh whisky please.
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Really miss Sags reaction to this kind of thing…
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@craigs
My mate left Credit Suisse to join UBS. It would be quite ironic if CS caused UBS to go under, a bit like what happened with the likes of Lloyds-TSB with HBOS
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I was given a Christmas present of a half season ticket to some classical music concerts which are held out at the university campus once a month on a Sunday, 11am till 1pm. It’s a lovely park campus.
Today was the final one for this season. It was a series of pieces for String quartet/Piano quintet and it was beautiful. I absolutely loved it.
However, the demographic of the audience worries me a little. It was sold out, but at 57 years old I was very much at the younger end of the audience.
I just started wondering what happens to this music in 20 years when these people are no longer with us?
The musicians are all young enough, but who will they play for?
I had no access to this music when I was growing up and it was only when I turned about 40 that I started to seek it out because I was a bit bored with the music that was being played on radio.
Anyway, when I came out of the concert at the Uni I headed for the bus and it just so happened that Brighton and Hove Albion had a home game in the FA Cup. The stadium is just across the way and season ticket holders can use the university carparks, plus the bus stop and train station for the Uni are all just there.
The difference in the demographic was startling. Everyone I saw was younger than me and there were hundreds and hundreds in the few minutes I was walking to the bus stop. Many families as well taking their pre-teens to the match, some of the kids are around six or seven years old.
Football is probably safe for a long while yet in terms of having an audience.
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At one point today I thought, “It’s like they’ve been summoned to play for the village elders”
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Ticht – without being a dick about this, generally people get old and then start liking classical music rather than the other way round.
As you point out, you’re a young gun on the scene. Soon you’ll be ‘middle aged’ and looking at the 57yo whipper snappers coming through reminding them about how different things were when you were a lad discovering classical music.
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OT – I worked at UBS shortly after CS (although I had a shit job in between) and tried to get a promotion. Apparently my boss ‘didn’t know’ how to get me a promotion despite getting himself promoted later that year*. He’s since been promoted again which saved ubs some head count. I’m pretty sure he knew everything in advance.
Anyway, his bonus and stock options are tied to performance so fingers crossed.
* I’m a contractor now and it’s bliss.
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Somewhere in the Netherlands (or Turkey?) a guitar gently weeps as Ireland storm to the Slam. Having dispatched of France in the earlier rounds, there can be no doubt about who the top dogs are in the 6N, and with the number one ranking in the world, top dogs overall. Congrats to Ireland!
France will be there or thereabouts on home soil later in the year, with some fantastic players, excellent coaching staff and a nation in support. Excellent depth in both forwards and backs, with intelligence and structure to underpin the dazzling ability of the backs and the grizzly bastards in the pack. Will be difficult to stop if they get up a head of steam. I’m not sure the Kiwis will relish facing France in that opening match.
Scotland, you feel, will throw everything including the kitchen sink, baby, bathwater and maybe a tantrum at the Boks in that opening match of the group: it’s probably their best chance of progressing, rather than having to beat Ireland in the last match when injuries may have depleted a squad with growing depth, but not the best depth – and certainly not Irish level depth.
England may have looked better against Ireland, but it doesn’t mask the brittle (and soft, if it can be both) underbelly of the side: lacking in a really mean pack of forwards and without the gamebreakers behind the pack to make up for it, like Scotland have. Easier side of the draw, but they’ll need to be on their toes in the opening match against Argentina to guarantee topping the group (can’t see them blowing it against Japan).
Wales, well, they’ll be feisty, they’ll be hard to break down most of the time, but do they really have enough – to get out of the group, never mind go much further? You’d fancy them to lose to Australia (who have shown limited signs of rebirth), but Fiji and Georgia could both be banana skins. Traditionally, you’d fancy Welsh structure and fitness and nous to be enough to win those, but this side is mentally brittle, so nothing taken for granted.
Italy, well, they’ve shown that they’re not far off. but just not doing enough to close out games at the moment. Maybe they’ll be in contention half way through their group, but finishing with matches against New Zealand and France is just far too much for them to cope with at the moment.
So, before the 4N kicks off, I’d suggest that both of Ireland and France could contest the final (if that’s possible, from the draw?), England to get through the easier side to a semi, Scotland could get the QF, and depending who they end up with there, maybe even a semi?
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Weekend in the bush was magnificent! A two hour drive from Joburg, into a reserve with the Big 5 and plenty, plenty more was soul food. Didn’t sees lions or leopards (we were less than 20m from a leopard at one point, but it was lying in deep cover and impossible to see), but saw rhino, elephants, Sable antelope, nyalas, Oryx (predominantly a desert antelope from the Namib region), black wildebeest, impalas, zebras, black-backed jackal, bat-eared fox, hippos, warthogs, buffaloes, ground hornbill (a huge bird, thick as a brick, that walks in danger more often than not and will be extinct in a a couple of decades if not actively saved), and a myriad other small creatures, snakes, birds, spiders, scorpions and insects – including dung beetles rolling their shit. Weather was sublime, we had our own open-top game vehicle (Toyota Landcruiser) and our mates are both qualified rangers, so no end of learning about the animals, their habits and habitats etc.
The night sky is also breathtaking – no light pollution, as the nearest town is 60km away and nearest city well over 100km away. You get the see the Milky Way in all its glory on a massive ink-black canvas that is the African night sky. On Saturday night, the elephants paid our house a visit as well, which is both exhilarating and scary: I was only about 10m from them at one stage (granted, with a lot of thick bush between us, but that would count for nothing if they charged) with a torch to try to see where they were going, because if they actually come into the house area, they can do huge damage to the house (thatch roofs), vehicles, if they’re in the way of a snack like the wild figs or the plumbing, which they sometimes destroy to get to the fresh water they can small through the pipes, which are buried underground. Fortunately, they just ate and left, although the destruction to the trees the next morning was plainly visible.
Had a blowout on the way home and spent an hour changing the tyre on the Defender, because of the camber of the road (the affected tyre was on the lower side and so couldn’t be removed because of the angle of the wheel) and having left the high-lift jack at home, I spent 30 minutes in blistering heat digging out enough space to change the tyres. All part of the experience though, and something (not the burst tyre) I would recommend to everyone if you have the chance: bush safaris in Africa are magnificent; they repair your soul and give you perspective on life. Therapy for the soul!
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@craigs
Apparently UBS have bought CS for ~4% of book value. This is no liquidity problem, that bank must have a lot of toxic crap on its books. Banks usually aren’t alone in doing daft things so the problem is almost certainly wider spread than this. I expect bigger problems ahead.
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Craigs,
“generally people get old and then start liking classical music rather than the other way round.”
That’s pretty much what my wife said and I’ve read an article in the NYT saying the same thing about the audience in New York, so hopefully that will continue.
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OT – I think it’s more to with poor performance and scandal:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/ariannajohnson/2023/03/16/whats-happening-with-credit-suisse-explained-embattled-bank-rattles-stock-market-as-banking-crisis-deepens/
KEY BACKGROUND
Though the collapse of SVB and Signature put a spotlight on Credit Suisse, the three’s problems aren’t connected. Credit Suisse has been involved in multiple scandals that have rattled investors in recent years, including the mismanagement of funds, which was uncovered in its 2022 financial report. The bank closed the 2022 fiscal year with a loss of nearly $8 billion, its biggest loss since the 2008 global financial crisis. The bank was convicted in June 2022 of failing to prevent money laundering by a Bulgarian cocaine trafficking gang. The Swiss government claimed the gang washed millions of dollars through the bank and fined Credit Suisse $2.1 million and ordered it to pay the Swiss government $20 million. In March 2022, a Bermuda court ruled the bank owed former Georgian Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili and his family around $500 million in damages from Credit Suisse’s local life insurance company. The court decided former Credit Suisse adviser, Pascale Lescaudron, committed a long-running fraud against the family. Though Credit Suisse appealed the decision, it believes the case will cost around $600 million. In 2020, Credit Suisse’s Chief Executive Tidjane Thiam was forced to resign after it was unveiled the bank hired private detectives to spy on its former head of wealth management once he left to join a rival bank. Other scandals also contributed to what Peter Boockvar, chief investment officer of Bleakley Financial Group, told CNN was Credit Suisse’s “slowing-moving car crash.”
So it’s unrelated to SVB which had a different business model. What’s more concerning is that Switzerland is basically tied to UBS/CS. Given the government actually changed the rules to allow the sale you have to wonder what’s happening behind the scenes.
The material weakness thing is interesting to me as my role at UBS was in the SOX team. Maybe someone will actually go to prison this time.
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Deebs – sounds like the Kentish savannah.
https://www.aspinallfoundation.org/port-lympne/
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Deebs – that trip sounds fantastic! I take it the temperature didn’t go over 20° to make it perfect?
So you think Scotland are going to knock out your Boks? Interesting!
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@craigs
Exactly my point. Apparently there are certain assets (not specified) that if they go on to make a loss (amount unspecified) that the Swiss government have agreed to absorb. Sounds like there’s some nasty stuff in there.
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OT – That’s true as the Swiss economy is heavily reliant on CS and if it fails then Switzerland is fucked. So I wonder how far that can go.
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More stories of Deebee rolling his shit on the way to a blowout. Pleased for his soul anyway.
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Sounds great really of course. Would love to see a heffalump in the wild.
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You guys are favourites, and the team is a bunch of bastards too. Embrace it
@craigs
Fair comment – we should.
I suppose having lived through the 90s when the one bright shining light was Geoghegan – it sometimes seems too good to be true or to last (and for various reasons we’ve imploded at RWCs and now come to expect it -2007 was especially bad, I’ve never heard any gossip why) . 2011 – got out-thought tactically … no shame in that, 2015 – ran out of test class players – again that looks fixed (mainly); 2019 – stale game plan got busted.
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“both of Ireland and France could contest the final (if that’s possible, from the draw?)”
It is.
“England to get through the easier side to a semi”
Seems likely – I think they’re more likely than not to top their group which in all probability means Wales or Fiji in the QF. Wales are anything from out in the group to a SF as the combination of being crap, improving, easy draw if they were any good and England being a bit shit means anything is possible up to the point where we would have to play one of the best four teams. I guess we’re slightly more likely than not to make the quarters and if so then outsiders but not no-hopers to beat Eng/Arg.
“Scotland could get the QF”
Unlikely.
“and depending who they end up with there, maybe even a semi?”
The winner of France-NZ? Can’t see it. Think Scotland are probably the hardest done to team by the draw as their outcome is almost certainly out in the group when their level is probably falling slightly short against a top team in a QF or getting to a SF with a ‘good’ draw.
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Wales’ true level is currently getting hammered in a QF by anyone good or definitely out in the group if they had a ‘bad’ draw. But you know, might find a bit of momentum leads to something respectable, might not.
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