It’s the second weekend of the Six Nations, and this is where things get (even more) interesting!
Following on from his (unexpected, even by him) success last week, Predict-A-Bear is back! This time in full Technicolor! And with lots of exclamation marks!!!!
First up is Italy vs Wales. Italy looked decent in places last week despite losing. They’ll be hoping that being back home will give them a boost. Although they haven’t beaten Wales in Rome since 2007, but that was a very different Wales. Wales have Faletau back (again) and yet another centre partnership facing up to one of the best partnerships in the tournament in Brexoncello (sorry, not sorry). Predict-A-Bear is going for:
‘Second game on Saturday is England vs France. The Big One! Le Crunch! Even though it isn’t. Not this weekend. Anyway, England have an abundance of Smiths, plus a Willis (but perhaps not the correct one) and a large number of Saints in the backline. France have added a Jalibert and some guy called Penaud on the wing. England will have a good first half and not so good second half. France will have a good first half and a better second half.
Predict-A-Bear is going for:
And that’s it for this weekend!
What do you mean there’s a game on Sunday!? You mean I’ve got to preview it too?
Bugger.
Here goes then (and this is being AI’d before the teams come out). Scotland HAVE to beat Ireland. We haven’t since 2017. Ireland were (slightly) sub-par in Autumn. They have rather annoyingly got better since then (but they did only play England last week). Scotland have lost our captain (and all-round genius) Sione, plus the very underestimated Scott Cummings for the whole tournament. Toonie’s Tombola came up with Dave Cherry last week, and he actually played well! So expect him to be out of the 23 or something weird. Injuries permitting, the only change I would make is Jordan in for McDowall. Sadly, I think the James Lowe Smirk will be in evidence a lot come Sunday evening. Can’t even do the “heart says one thing, head says the other” result – mainly because P-A-B doesn’t have a heart….
Still, Predict-A-Bear is going for:
Predict-A-Bear’s prognostications transcribed by BorderBoy.
Onna telly this weekend
Showing matches that are televised in the UK and Ireland or on popular subscription services. Bold indicates that it’s on a free to view channel. Times are in the UK zone, so adjust as necessary.
Friday 7th February
| Italy v Wales (U20s) | 19:15 | S4C, iPlayer |
| England v France (U20s) | 20:00 | iPlayer |
Saturday 8th February
| Stormers v Bulls | 12:00 | Premier Sports 2 |
| Italy v Wales | 14:15 | ITV1, S4C, STV |
| England v France | 16:45 | STV, ITV1 |
| Scotland v Ireland (U20s) | 19:45 | iPlayer, RTÉ2 |
Sunday 9th February
| Scotland v Ireland | 15:00 | BBC1, iPlayer, RTÉ2 |
Ovally Balls 
Scruffy Glasgow win, but we’ll take it. Think that means we have (at least) a home quarter final?
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Main talking point from Munster vs Bulls is Munster having to play with 14 for 14 mins (probably 20 elapsed time) due to another Piardi master class.
Jager (th) went off early with HIA. Replacement Archer when off injured after 50. Barron (replacement hooker) came on but Piardi insisted as this meant uncontested scrums, Munster had to go down to 14.
Took a quarter of an hour to persuade the 4th official that given that scenario – we stay at 15.
There’s a lookup table in the laws to show what should happen….
(Oh, and Bulls try scored from a tap that wasn’t correctly taken, and Bulls 9 dummied from a scrum causing Wycherly to jump offside and from that position block the kick – Piardi gave a scrum with Blues put in – correct sanction for dummying is free kick)
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Bristol number 13 Ravouvou just provided the flithiest assist ever! On the attack, he goes into the tackle and, with both knees and one hand on the floor he flips out the back to Ibitoye on the wing to score!
Then Ibitoye does a really stupid pass which is interecpted for a Leicester try!
Johnny will be in tears at all this ‘flashy’ rugby. Everyone else enjoys it.
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This is a baffling, horrible game, from a Bristol fan’s perspective. Yellow card for Tiger’s 3, for head contact in a tackle. Saved Bristol from conceding another try. Hope we calm down a little now?
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They’ve been unbelievably slpooy Refit. (Just lik my spelllling….)
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Tigers will all but finish the game with 14, Kata getting a yellow for head contact on 69min.
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Tigers win 19-36.
It would be nice if Bristol approached their next match with a game plan more detailed than “go on lads, chuck it about a bit”. Somehow we’re still 3rd in the table!?!
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Trisk, it’s infuriating that the officials don’t know the laws of the game – uncontested scrums don’t happen often but you’d think that it’s such an outlier of an event that the officials will all know what’s what, and if they don’t I found it on Google in seconds.
The law on this is pretty fair imo, if an HIA is the cause of any front row player leaving the field then the team does not go down to 14. It’s the same if it’s a blood injury or if the player had to live the field due to foul play – simple & straight forward.
The more complicated ones are when a yellow or red card is the cause of a player leaving the field or if there is a simple contact injury, but surely they can look this up quickly if they don’t know it off by heart?
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Bugger, bugger and thrice bugger.
Zander ‘might’ miss the end of the season and Lions tour, Matt is definitely out for the rest of the season. Hope to get some names back before the Bulls game on Friday, which is vital. Win that and we may be more or less secure in second.
https://www.theoffsideline.com/zander-fagerson-in-race-against-clock-for-lions-tour-after-sustaining-calf-injury/
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@ticht
At root is the lack of officials – so anyone even partly promising is rapidly promoted way beyond their experience or ability far too quickly
I see it all the time at age grade. Refs who should be still doing U14 and the occasional “unimportant” U16, get thrown in to ref U18 – where is it faster, more physical, and more complex than they’ve ever experienced.
Yeah, they need to get experience but knock out phase of tournaments isn’t the place.
What I see is a tendency to ref certain things – eg breakdown but in an effort to appear authoritative they pull the trigger too fast.
An ex-ref I know says “after a tackle, I’m looking has the tackler released, has the tackled player released, what direction is the first man coming from and what’s he trying to do… ? Then I make my decision”.
Age grade refs get all sorts wrong – a few I’ve experienced recently
– giving a goal line drop out after a kick off ran dead
– giving a not releasing pen after tackled player rolled into the jackaller
– being too slow to see a grounding and arriving to see 10 pairs of hands on the ball**
– allowing play on when a kick off failed to go 10
I’ll excuse missing knock ons or forward passes.
** loss of the scrum 5 for this is important where you’ve no TMO and can’t take the word of the TJ (me) because I’m not an affiliate ref anymore (age stops me)
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Bottom line is they’re over promoted and there’s no pressure from below to get better
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I think I wrote about the one league game Dunbar lost this season where the referee was like nothing else I’ve seen in 50 years being involved as a player, player coach, supporter. He penalised our very dominant tighthead for being too dominant, then binned him for offside and kept him off for 17 minutes. This was only a very small part of it. At the end of the game he joined the opposition and celebrated with them in their club song. We reported him and he counter reported a couple of our players and supporters when he heard this. The SRU drew a veil over the whole thing.
He was refereeing at a sevens tournament Dunbar were playing at yesterday. When our captain was chatting with one of the officials in between games, the referee above walked past and said, “Be careful what you say, they’ll report you to the SRU”.
Luckily we didn’t have him in any of our games. We won the plate competition, beating the hosts in the final. Musselburgh, a Premiership side won the main cup.
Even if we’d made it to the final of the main cup (we lost our first game, so went into the consolation trophy after winning the nest two first round games) Musselburgh were a different class – they are 5 league above us and looked very good.
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Soz, for the sake of accuracy – six leagues between East 2 and the Premiership
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Mikey Lowry is apparently okay, you’ll all be glad to know.
Ticht – that sounds like an excellent premise for a crime novel.
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This is not a sketch. This is an actual news report!
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“Be careful what you say, they’ll report you to the SRU”
I’ve heard similar – where they close ranks. if you complain about X, you’re whistled off the field in the next match.
The branch structure here means it’s Munster rather than IRFU.
It’s difficult – how we do recruit and retain good refs, but get rid of incomptent, biased, and control freaks?
We’ve a ref we come up against regularly – I know he means well, but within seconds of the match starting he antagonises the players with a series of lectures – made worse by an awful stammer – so noone has the faintest what the problem is going to be….
My own feeling – from the few games I reffed – is you need to “plamás” them (“plamás is what we’d call “blarney” ‘as gaeilge’) , and most of the top refs seem to try this – “I can’t let you do that”, “you know that’s not on”.
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Been in Djibouti for a few days now. What a charming country! It’s not beautiful in the sense of rivers, forests and lakes etc, but had a stark, almost Biblical beauty, with those barren rolling hills that Charlton Heston and company (including Monty Python) used to gaze out over.
The people are charming too – some of the nicest and most accommodating I’ve met. Did a trip on a high-powered speed boat yesterday across the bay (about an hour each way) to the second ‘city’ of Tadjourah: a few thousand residents at most, with camels, goats, dogs and cattle wandering the streets and kids swimming off the port jetty! The water is a stunning emerald green and warm and inviting.
Really hope I can get back here soon! Tomorrow it’s off to Addis Ababa and the world’s best coffee.
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Is it wrong that I visited a port this morning wearing Titanic socks?* or that I’m drinking $13 glasses of wine on Saudi state’s account? Especially when the wine costs less by the bottle back home. In fact, they’re charging 10 times the price here at the hotel.
*long story.
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You can wear your Titanic socks to the docks in Belfast. (She was fine when she left there….)
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For anyone who thinks Mark Robson is an irritating commentator, I invite you to listen to John Virgo on the snooker, who not only talks far too much, but is almost always WRONG about every shot.
And never says anything funny.
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Also, for those of you who think that Rob Kearney is good-looking, check out Mark Selby, who is good-looking in a similar fashion. :-)
Although his style of play isn’t half boring.
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And he’s sadly just crashed out of the World Championship.
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Spent too much time glancing at himself in the mirror. Decided I’m going to do a coffee tour of Addis Ababa tomorrow. Then finish it off with beer sampling at the beerhouse behind my hotel. Rugby isn’t big in these parts, so will watch on my laptop inbetween the various tastings.
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Although his style of play isn’t half boring
I’m old enough to recall when that was the standard method of playing snooker pot a few loose balls, lay a snooker, wait for opponent error, pot a few more, lay another snooker – rinse and repeat…
Nowadays, better cues, better eyesight, younger players, better tables – they pot almost anything from anywhere. – you’re amazed when they miss rather than impressed at the skill and accuracy in some of the pots…
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I’m going to do a coffee tour of Addis Ababa tomorrow. Then finish it off with beer sampling at the beerhouse behind my hotel
Jeez – it’s a hard life for some…. a coffee tour then a beer sampling…
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who not only talks far too much
Less is more – it’s tv so we can see for ourselves. What we want to understand is why option x is preferred to option y
“he’s got too much left/right hand side” – explains a miss or why cue ball ended up in some daft place. I don’t really want to hear -“he’s missed it” or “he’ll be disappointed with where the cue ball has landed”
It’s a general issue across sports – I get that they’re “afraid” of dead. I suppose I listened to Richie Benaud too much in my youth….
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Trying to write “they’re “afraid” of dead AIR”
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Driving around Addis today, I saw quite a few Ladas still on the roads. More than the MAGAmobiles Stump and Skum are trying to flog to the beleaguered US consumer. In fact, a few BYD EVs, not one Tesla. Other than a couple of military bases in the broader Red Sea, the USA has little influence or credibility here, and I think they’re clueless about it. Considering around US$1 trillion in annual trade passes through the Suez and Red Sea, you’d think they’d pay a bit more attention!
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Cardiff-Munster, Zebre-Edinburgh, and Glasgow-Bulls all knife edge matches for the log standings. For me, Cardiff to sneak it at home, just, Edinburgh to win in Italy after a scrap, and the Bulls to bump back to earth after completing the clean sweep against Irish sides last weekend.
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Mon ra Weedge!
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Shot, Brace is the ref.
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Shot? No-one has shot him. Yet…
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Sale are all over Saracens. They score their 3rd try on 28mins, Aaron Reed running 2/3 the length of the pitch for a try. 22-0
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Brace doesn’t chalk off Glasgow try shock!
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Tight match so far. Bulls 6 up, although I don’t think they’ll nil the Weege like Leinster did. Weege with the lineout 5m out and a man up (140kg of Wilco Louw in the bin). Glasgow in! But forward? Nope! Off a Bulls player. 7-5 Weege with the extras!
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7-6.
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Bulls back in front with another Goosen penalty. And that’s the break. Glasgow better ball in hand, Bulls battering them in the scrums and just about in the collisions.
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7-9 at HT.
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12-14 in Cardiff at HT. Another tight one!
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Bloody hell. Cheerleaders are bad enough, but the music is BLOODY AWFUL!!!!!
Plus it takes away from the poor kids doing their games of Touch rugby at half time.
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Bulls barge over! Bulls extend their lead to nine. 7-16 as Grobelaar goes over from the maul. George Horn manages to high tackle a bloke a foot taller than him. A couple of mistakes early on this half from Glasgow is putting them under pressure. And then a silly blocking penalty and Goosen extends the lead to 12. Still plenty of time left.
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Bugger. That’s our season done. Just been so flat tonight. Atmosphere is as quiet as I can remember it.
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Bulls defence is suffocating and forces the Weege to go for the crossfield kick, but the Bulls gather, hoof it downfield and Kriel scores a crucial try. 7-26 into the last quarter. Glasgow looking rattled and after a few loose phases and speculative kicks from both sides, the Weege hoof it out over the dead ball line. Scrum Bulls on the Glasgow 22.
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BB, the atmosphere in my hotel room is rocking! But then as a Lions fan a crowd of one is pretty special.
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Getting a bit scrappy and desperate, but it’s actually working for thr Bulls, funilly enough. I think it was Darge with a fabulous break, but left his support trailing. Weege get through some phases, but Bulls defence is excellent and Glasgow end up with a Hail Mary into touch. Bulls thunder forward, but Cancillieri hoofs it downfield. Weege can’t control, again.
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Kyle Steyn rounds off a good, slick move out wide for the try. Simple score, we’ll taken and the first time they’ve got it right tonight. Extras missed. 12-26. And McDowell is in for another! They slice through the Bulls and have a chance now! Conversion over! 19-26 with one last play to come!
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Been watching the snooker and forgot about rugby!
Sadly, Mark Allen unexpectedly crashed out to Chris Wakelin (no, me neither), but not before scoring possibly the most brilliant 147 ever executed. That alone earned him something like 40K. He was quite close to getting a second one, which would have got him 147K, but missed a black at around 82 points..
So, thanks for reminding us! Cardiff now up 26-21 with the BP secured, and ten minutes to go.
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Oh dear! A penalty from the kick off against Glasgow and Wilkie le Roux kicks it into touch. Think he should’ve gone for posts – a Bulls win and denying the Weege a bonus point would’ve put them above Glasgow on matches won.
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Arms Park is full! This is a first within living memory.
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Wilkie le Roux? Do you mean Winnie the Poux?
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