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 
Ref’s forgotten they have to compete for not straight to matter now?
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“This may be a game between the weakest ABs and the weakest Wales team.”
It’s definitely not the worst ever Wales line-up as there have been times when we’ve put out what were more or less second XVs (notably in the 90s in SA, that RWC warm-up against England come to mind) that were definitely worse. Could well be the worst first choice team though there is still competition from the 90s on that front.
Obviously this is a weakened NZ team and their best side at the moment is not that good by historical standards. Hopefully they’ll still be putting weakened sides out against us when (if…) we get good again and we finally nick a win. Pretty sure this is the long term plan.
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Irritating thing in that half was the lineouts. NZ closed the gap every time, the touch judge insisted on Lake sticking to the mark with the entire NZ line right in front of him. Ref could have sorted this out right at the start but isn’t interested. Lake got away with moving once on the far side, but on the near side it was ridiculous.
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You don’t often see the ABs getting skinned like that! Lovely!
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Great start Wales! Get in!
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I could eat my words and see the first Welsh win vs the ABs since 1953!
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Tom Rogers seems to have been a good selection. Passing the ball to Llewellyn occasionally also seems to have helped.
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And then the colander-like defence….
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Is it me, or do NZ feel slightly…ponderous? At least compared to iterations in previous years? They don’t seem quite as dynamic as they used to.
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Such a shame the interception got called back even if it was fair enough.
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Oh, but there’s a knock-on!
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She’s found a penalty out of that though.
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Will Jordan’s quite good, isn’t he.
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DMac’s own team-mate giving him a shoulder-barge for the shit kick.
But there may have been a try anyway.
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No there fucking wasn’t!
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Well he was held up in the first place, we can see that.
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Justice 4 Wales!
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Fair play to Hollie for over-ruling herself.
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Ach, they get a try after all.
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Worried about how much that ten minutes will have taken out of us.
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Cool, the wife-beater is on for NZ. I thought they’d binned him off.
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Stupid penalty near half-way that has put us back under pressure, got to cut those sort of things out.
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I’d put a frowny-face on that comment if I could, Refit.
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That’s not going to help Wales.
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Fuck.
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Some unfriendly 100% kicking going on from McKenzie.
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Christie has been much better then Roigard, since he’s come on.
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Clearly Wales like the challenge and decided to keep the numbers down.
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Cool, two tries for the wife beater.
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In other rugby news…
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Penalty count has killed us. Partly just comes from their basics being better leading to them doing most of the attacking. A bit of us getting reffed as the weaker team thrown in.
Nice finish from LRZ there.
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Fuck. Again.
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Should have ground the clock down, could have kicked it out then and got back to full strength. Might have stopped them getting 50.
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Well done boys, much better.
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It may have been a bit of a hammering on paper, but Wales look like they are improving. Felt like a much more composed performance over last week, Plumtree being a plum aside.
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Some good stuff from Wales, very good when they got into the 22
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Refit, Roigard was not on the pitch, it was the ponderous Ratima. Mind you, he wasn’t helped by his forwards. They looked like they had just met.
You can’t fault Wales commitment but they were physically dominated in the 2nd half. Not sure they need that game next week vs SA.
Jordan is some player, isn’t he?
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@Flair – We don’t need next week’s game at all. This would actually (to my surprise and I know I’m not alone) have been a good way to finish.
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Flair – that explains it (doesn’t explain me not recognising Ratima for the entire match).
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I don’t think we have a hope in this match. It could be a complete humiliation.
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Kolisi singing in the tunnel before they run out is one of my favourite things in current rugby
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The wee girl being led out by Ireland onto the pitch: if her name isn’t Iseult, it ought to be, with gorgeous hair like that!
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First outing for new Irish president Catherine Connolly, a leftie from Galway. The commentators inform us that there is some viral video of her doing keepie-uppies that was so good that it was inspected for being a deepfake.
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Nerves kicking in.
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Well, this game has started at 100mph!
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Slick from SA
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Erm … no checking of the forward pass?
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Ringrose did not need to get involved there.
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WUT??!
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Very surprised that wasn’t a yellow.
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