Six Nations have announced that they are ringing the changes for next year’s tournament. OvallyBalls had an exclusive mole in the decision room.
Six Nations Clown Five: Listen, chaps, I’m awfully sorry we failed to get the Six Nations behind a paywall so that we could destroy the popularity of the only tournament that is broadly watched, but we’ll try again in a couple of years.
SNC2: I’m not a fookin’ chap.
SNC4: Ah, bellissima! Like me, you are wearing a molto clever disguise to our top-secret meeting in this luxury ristorante.
SNC2: Catch yerself on. I’m wearing what the boss told me to wear: blue.
SNC5: Can we just get back to our onions? We have a tournament to ruin here.
SNC6: Onions? Oignons? En France, we return to our moutons.
SNC3: We quite like our lovely sheep as well.
SNC1: Ach, can we knock the tired wee 70s jokes on the heid? We’ve two major things to discuss here: playing matches on a Thursday (a THURS-DEE!), and deep-sixing one rest weekend.
SNC3: Thursday matches! It was bad enough, look you, when the Friday ones started. Working people are not going to be able to get to these matches, or maybe even watch them on the telly.
SNC5: Surely they will just have their servants do anything necessary on those particular evenings?
SNC6: Bah, the British do not know how to live. They eat their dinner – and quelle horreur d’un repas – at a silly time. They are weaklings who cannot stay up to a reasonable hour.
SNC4: Sono d’accordo.
SNC1: I dinna like the Thursday match, but I’m a wee bit more concerned about losing the rest weekend. That’s 5 Test matches in six weeks. Do we not have a small concern about player welfare there?
SNC3: We’ve not got a huge squad to field from the valleys.
SNC4: È vero, this also concerns us.
SNC2: Agh, it’s all right, we’ll just call on Leinster’s academy if half the squad end up in the hospital.
SNC6: Eh ben oui, we have many teams in the Top14, and perhaps we can bend the rules on players being called up.
SNC5: No worries here either, chaps … heh, heh: and chapesses. So is it all settled, then?
SNCs 1, 3 and 4 (simultaneously): Fuck off / vaffanculo.
SNC5: Perhaps I have not yet properly explained the emoluments available to those who agree to these proposals.
[whispers]
All: Crack on!
Ovally Balls 
I think Galthié has chosen the best available squad. I’d rather have Serin on the bench, or even starting, rather than Jauneau but Serin is already 31 so I guess FG has an eye for the future.But then he keeps 35 yo Tao on the bench, so what do I know?
Keep an eye on Gourgues, the latest jewell unearthed by Toulouse.
France had very slow ball and a creaking scrum vs SA and Fiji but I expect them to be a bit more composed vs Oz.
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Flair, France should win this with ease. Aus peaked at Ellis Park after giving the Lions a good run, but since their tour to SA, it’s been pretty much downhill all the way. It wouldn’t surprise me to see France put 45+ on them.
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Backing up your prediction Deebee
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Grandad’s Army to get dusted in Dublin:
15 Damian Willemse, 14 Canan Moodie, 13 Jesse Kriel, 12 Damian de Allende, 11 Cheslin Kolbe, 10 Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu, 9 Cobus Reinach, 8 Jasper Wiese, 7 Pieter-Steph du Toit, 6 Siya Kolisi, 5 Ruan Nortje, 4 Eben Etzebeth, 3 Thomas du Toit, 2 Malcolm Marx, 1 Boan Venter.
Replacements: 16 Johan Grobbelaar, 17 Gerhard Steenekamp, 18 Wilco Louw, 19 RG Snyman, 20 Kwagga Smith, 21 Andre Esterhuizen, 22 Grant Williams, 23 Manie Libbok
The Boks come into the match in good form, and with the rotation they’ve used on tour and in the Rugby Championship, will be pretty fresh going into what is really the marquee match of the tour (along with France). It’s a very experienced pack, albeit slightly weaker on the LH side with Venter replacing the injured Ox Nche, whilst Ruan Nortje has the chance to show his burgeoning reputation at 5 lock in the absence of the only red card bloke not rescinded thus far. Pfft! Etzebeth and the loose trio are tough as teak, and the bench forwards a combination of the Bulls front row, Leinster’s RG (50th cap) and the energizer bunny with a sidestep, Kwagga Smith. Esterhuizen continues his hybrid role.The backs are largely first choice, with Willemsse rapidly regaining his form after a long layoff at the back, Moodie and Kolbe lethal on the wings, and a rock solid midfield of De Allende and Kriel outside the most exciting talent in world rugby, Sacha F-M. Reinach has been good this year, and Williams on in the last 20 can blitz any defence with his searing pace. Libbok too can unlock defences through his boot, passing or acceleration. This is a serious Bok side Rassie has picked – putting down a real marker if we win this one!
Who am I kidding? Ireland beat this rabble in South Africa last year, have won four of the last five against the Boks and haven’t lost at the Palindrome against the Boks since 2012. Ireland by 16, no matter who they pick.
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Deebee, I do expect a win for France but the Australian game is a bit of an anticlimax. Most players will already have an eye on the local competitions: The T14 is resuming on the same day and the H cup will start soon.
Too much rugby, at least here, devalue the international games. We may regret it but only the 6N and to a lesser degree the WC are on par with the T14.
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Deebee, this is shameless underdogging.
SA will win this at a canter. Ireland won’t be as undercooked as France but they’re weaker. And unless SA manage to play for 80 minutes with 15 players on the pitch, which would be too disturbing for the balance and the psyche of the team, there is no way Ireland can win this.
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Utterly shameless! And you’re right – the best way Ireland can win is to ensure teh Boks have 15 on the pitch. They’re dazed and confused with a full complement.
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Ireland (v South Africa):
15. Mack Hansen (Corinthians/Connacht)(29)
14. Tommy O’Brien (Blackrock College/Leinster)(5)
13. Garry Ringrose (UCD/Leinster)(68)
12. Bundee Aki (Galwegians/Connacht)(67)
11. James Lowe (Leinster)(42)
10. Sam Prendergast (Lansdowne/Leinster)(12)
9. Jamison Gibson-Park (Leinster)(45)
Replacements:
Not a single Ulsterman in the 23. What Flair said.
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Aki a bit of a surprise? Thought he was being sidelined? Always thought Jame Slowe had more caps than that too?
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McCloskey got injured last week.
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The inevitable red card ( there must be bets with the bookies, right? I wonder the odds?) will occur with the first garry owen aimed by the eating babies monster Boks at poor
Pendergast. He’ll be flattened by a flying missile, controversially late and possibly not low enough * what are poor locks supposed to do, uh?
The TMO pantomime villains better stay in their bunker long after the game!
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Wales: Murray; Rees-Zammit, Llewellyn, Hawkins, Rogers; Edwards, T Williams; Carre, Lake (capt), Assiratti, D Jenkins, Beard, Mann, Deaves, Wainwright.
So change at wing as Adams is presumably suspended though have to wonder if that might be it for him, one at centre, swapped the props around, change to the back row as Cracknell got injured. Murray remains at fullback (eeek!).
Setting the sights high: Keep NZ under a hundred, don’t get nilled, no red card.
Setting them higher: Keep NZ under 70, score more than the footballers got the other night.
So with my sunshine and smiles hat on I’ll go NZ to win 68-8 and we just get a couple of yellows for penalty offences that failed to stop tries anyway.
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The boys to turn it around from the bench: Coghlan (who he?), G Thomas, Griffin, F Thomas, Plumtree, Hardy, J Evans, Tompkins.
I don’t have strong opinions about how good a selection it is as I don’t watch the regions any more. And have no plans to do so to be honest.
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The mister doesn’t rate Adams even if he plays for Cardiff.
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Think Adams was mostly very good for Wales for about three or four years and a bit neither here nor there since. Obviously the team has declined over that time too which isn’t going to help, but it’s been too long now since he was at the top of his game and he’s always had it in him to do some pretty dull things. Lots of international wingers don’t last all that long though, think he’s done well overall but time to look elsewhere if we can.
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Flair, the Boks will target Prendergast, with PS du Toit specialising in (legally) mowing down 10s off the side of the scrum. No real weaknesses in that Ireland side, which has started to find its rhythm after the Shellacking in Chicago. Possibly the bench front row is weaker than the Bok one, ditto lock cover, but outside of that, good experience and cohesion. Is Aki still up to it? He’ll do a job. Should be a great game.
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From the French selection- 3. Montagne
An appropriate name for a 133kg tighthead prop.
Scotland always seem to wait until the very last moment to name the team, so it will be around two o’clock this afternoon.
Townsend might “rest” everyone responsible for last week’s collapse. Tonga apparently only brought 33 players in their squad and they only just beat a Scotland academy side by a single point on Monday.
I’d like to see a Scottish side made up mainly of players who did not feature in last week’s fiasco – I don’t care who the opposition is, no international side should squander a 21 – 0 lead after 55 minutes. We got there by playing intelligent rugby, the set piece was going well, the backs were making ground and the pack was in control. The defence which up until that point had stifled and suffocated Argentina suddenly went awol when Fin began throwing hail Mary passes when it just wasn’t on.
Townsend picked a team without a replacement lock and then left three players on the bench during a lung-bursting game. That is entirely on the coach, possibly the worst mistakes of his coaching career. We need to look elsewhere. Toonie is done.
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Zander’s back! Sione the only starter from last week left.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/articles/c4g4l737l3zo
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For once, I can recommend an article about French rugby in Planet Rugby. The writer seems to think we should prioritise the WC and international tests at the expense of the T14 but it won’t happen and probably shouldn’t.
I’d rather have brilliant local competitions (not just T14 but also ProD2 and Fédérale) enjoyed by thousands of fans. And played by tens of thousands. The 6N & a reduced and shortened Hcup would be enough for me.
Tests should be kept rare thus precious. I don’t care for the WC as it is too much of a lottery, but I’d love to see old fashioned tours every two or three years.
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The current snooker tournament in (spit) Riyadh has a cautionary message for DBWR. They have modified the normal tournament format in several ways to encourage players to go for broke, the main one being that there is an extra golden (!! was one D. Trump their advisor?) ball added to the table, and if any player makes a maximum 147 break, then if they also pot the golden ball, they will win $1,000,000.
As winning the actual tournament only garners you £250,000, of course the players, or at least the cleverer ones, have been going for that, making it a poor tournament. (And no, I have no idea why one prize is in dollars and the other in pounds.)
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And, as I write, Zhao Xintong has won the tournament by not really bothering to go after a 147, and just playing very well. No-one has won the million dollars.
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See the cricket went well….
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Some of the most brainless batting I’ve ever seen from a Test side. Makes the current feeble West Indies side look mature and capable.
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Sporting side rushes into lead, then collapses in the last part of the game.
That sounds vaguely familiar, I’m sure I’ve seen someone else do that recently…
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Collapsing in the first part of the game is a viable option too. Looking ahead to later this afternoon…
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Disappointing thing with the cricket to me at least is that if England are going to lose I would prefer it to be a victory for proper test match cricket over Bazball. Unfortunately what we got this time was the Aussies not being up to it when they tried to bat properly either and then a man who is not only called Travis Head but looks like he should be called Travis Head out-Bazballing the Bazballers. Urrrgh. Great innings though.
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Not 100% sure what ‘Bazball’ actually is. Looking on from the sidelines, it seems to mean that “England Have Re-invented Test Cricket – Except For Those Times They Haven’t”.
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@BB – In practice at least as far as the batting is concerned it more or less amounts to batting as though it’s a one-day game rather than a test match. And the whole team (give or take one player some of the time) doing it rather than just an individual having a thrash or having someone in your team who scores really fast just because they’re really good (Viv Richards for example).
The Aussies in the 90s brought one-day style running between the wickets into test cricket and a more aggressive approach which others emulated to varying degrees and have all stuck with to some extent, so this sort of thinking isn’t entirely new, but the extreme England have taken it to is new and they do score significantly faster than any team in history*. It produces erratic results though which may be better or worse overall than a more traditional approach depending on the abilities and deficiencies of the personnel available.
There’s an element of irritating psychobabble to it as well that we could all live without.
*You couldn’t have got away with it for most of test cricket’s history as worse bats, bigger boundaries and less reliable pitches would just have meant you’d have got out all the time. This reflects changes in one-day cricket over time as well.
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Good grief, the idiots have done it again. Was going to write a post on the graun about disrespecting the history of the Ashes, but realised that I did that last time in Aus too. Good job I hadn’t shelled out a fortune on a holiday of a lifetime to see a test in Perth. Did that in 95, and we got hammered, but at least we made it into day 5.
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They really shouldn’t use so much pyro, when the roof is closed.
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C’mon Wales!
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You can of course reinvent things badly. This game was statistically highly unusual for example – England batted very few overs (it’s very rare for a team to bat for so few) but scored quite a lot of runs in those overs (more than plenty of teams have while batting for much longer), just nowhere near enough to win the game so it can be said to have not worked at all on this occasion. It was definitely a different way of England losing in Australia though.
Think of Scotland reinventing rugby that time when Hogg got sent off in Cardiff and they decided to play the rest of the game without a fullback.
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Oh dear.
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Think Wales held out for about a minute longer than we did before the inevitable AB try.
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Collapsio.
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No stress Wales, Kiwis started fast last week too!
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Blair Murray has a terrible lid.
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G’wan Wales!
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What a try! C’mon Wales! Run them ragged!
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Well that was good.
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UnZud reduced to kicking penalties, we’ve got them rattled!
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Oooh, inches from going a try up.
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How that isn’t advantage over I will never know.
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Dan Edwards in ‘stronger than Will Jordan’ shock.
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Don’t remember such a poor 9 with the ABs.
This may be a game between the weakest ABs and the weakest Wales team. As much as I’d love to see a Welsh renaissance, I still expect the ABs to win this rather easily.
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Just a missed tackle really, shame.
Ref seems to be desperate to give us a yellow card despite NZ getting mostly quick ball even on one of the occasions when she penalised us. I imagine that will be when the scores start to really pile up if not before.
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Wales matching the ABs try for try!
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Bloody Hell!
Whatever happens from here on in this is massive progress.
Also we’ve scored more than the footballers so that’s something ticked off.
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Bollocks! What’s the Welsh bench look like?
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That was a bit soft. Never mind.
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