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 
We get into their half and Gareth Thomas gives away a dull penalty having tried to get himself sent off a moment before.
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SCRUM COMPLETED ALERT!
Could abandon this happily now.
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Well played Wales, tricking SA into collapsing their own maul.
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Poor game of rugby.
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That was an expression of sympathy for the game of rugby as well as a description of this particular example.
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Plumbtree manages to take Wainwright out of the game, then get a yellow as SA score. Well done that lad 🙄.
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Damn!
42/0 after barely 45 minutes.
Should be watching T14.
SA will aim at 100 points now.
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Wainwright comes back with a shiner and then leaves again, for shouldering Sacha in the head. I don’t think he’ll be coming back from that – he drove upwards into an already upright player.
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@Flair – It was 21-0 after 39, Wales managed the last couple of minutes of the first half (with a bit of an unlucky call thrown in) and the first couple of minutes of the second very badly indeed. SA made quite a lot of mistakes themselves in the first half and it was a very boring game of box-kicks and scrums, but no stopping them now.
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I’m wrong, somehow they found mitigation and Wainwright will be coming back on. I’m sure he’s thrilled.
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Ooh, Eben just stuck his thumb in a Welsh player’s eye. Will be interesting how they mitigate this down to a yellow.
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Straight red for Etzebeth. That is a proper red card. No excuses. Should be his last Test. You simply can’t do that.
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Last few minutes has been niggly. Really not needed. And that’s it. A sour, shitty end to a mismatch. It wasn’t also all about the Bok scrum, it was more about Wales simply not having the depth the Boks have. Mind you, in ’98, the Boks put 96 points on Wales and lost the next match against them. Where does Welsh rugby go from here? It desperately needs new management and structures. Surely a nation with such a glorious history can’t just fade away?
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Shame Etzebeth did that. We can’t know if he meant to go for his eye in the first place, but he did end up there and stuck at it and that’s really not on.
Disappointing from Wales – not in terms of losing heavily, getting overpowered, struggling in the scrums etc More the needless penalties that put us back in the 22 so much which is a recurring theme and is one of the main things that has to stop if we’re going to get back to losing vaguely competitively.
Not too bothered with the scoreline, I think in terms of keeping it down the boys didn’t help themselves by overplaying when down to 14, but I guess they had to try to give the crowd something with the little ball they had. Rugby is an unforgiving game, especially when the opposition play most of it with penalty advantage or the likelihood of getting a penalty at whatever the next stoppage turns out to be.
Didn’t think SA looked very polished at all in the first half and even at times in the second despite all the points they scored, not surprising with all the changes and them knowing there was no possibility of it even being a close game from the word go.
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@Deebee – We won’t be winning the next one. Although both this game and the ’98 one featured something approaching second teams we had much better players to come back in in ’99 than we have now.
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CMW, I don’t think you’ll win the next one either, bu most sides get humped badly and recover over time – Boks in 2002-2004, when the Kiwis wrote SA off as a past-power, again in the era just before Rassie took over, with many of the same players losing to Japan and Italy and getting pasted by the Kiwis.
Wales has too proud a heritage to continue down this path, I think much of it needs to be laid squarely at the door of the blazers, although good luck trying to convince them that they’re the problem! I, for one, am willing on the resurgence of the Welsh!
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@Deebee – I think we’ll probably be back at some point. We may well even win the 6N again before Scotland or Italy ever do – I hope not as I would like Scotland to take advantage of having the good team they’ve had for a while, but it’s more likely that they won’t be able to. It’s possible that professional rugby is a losing battle for the smaller countries though and even if Wales and others are able to have good periods it could be that over time that just becomes less and less the case and doing anything much beyond making up the numbers becomes mostly impossible. Time will tell of course.
I don’t think rugby in Wales has always been managed well, but there has been change at the top and we will have to see what comes of it. Any major changes will probably not realise results in the time that those responsible for making them remain in their jobs. People like to just ‘blame the blazers’, but there are factors outside their control which may well prove insurmountable.
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Bloody hell, Bristol are dismantling Saints. Saints didn’t help the,selves with a 20min red at the very start of the game, for taking a player out in the air with a bad landing. But Bristol have now scored 5 unanswered tries. 35-0 at half time.
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Saints came back a bit in the second half and scored two tries, but Bristol were too strong. Bristol ended the game with a 50-22 and then driving over for a 6th try. Final score 46-12.
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I have to say, LRZ was about as effective for Bristol today, as he was for Wales over the last month.
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@Refit – Can I assume he scored a try, maybe set one up, beat a few defenders, missed the odd tackle and tried to do too much himself a couple of times perhaps kicking ahead when it wasn’t on?
Can’t speak for Bristol, but he’s the least of our worries.
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Scarlets are somewhat perversely beating Glasgow 20-0. Still time for them to lose it though.
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Now they may well still go on to win (no chicken-counting here), but at 20-0 up when you haven’t won all season and have a kickable penalty I think I’d be taking the 3 points. If you insist on kicking to the corner then once you’re on penalty advantage again it might be better not to get that reversed with foul play…
Glasgow look like they can get outside the Scarlets defence every time they have the ball, but don’t make anything of it. Could make up that gap pretty quickly if they start getting it right.
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Scarlets get another penalty and take my advice. 23-0. Confidence dial moved slightly.
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Scarlets get a yellow for persistent offside. Still 9 minutes left. Confidence-meter has switched itself off for some reason.
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Glasgow get close to the line, but can’t get the ball out of the maul. Scarlets scrum is upgraded to a penalty for some pretty vehement moaning at the ref. Nice to see even if they did have a case.
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Max Douglas, a man who looks like he should be called Travis Head, gets man of the match. The only try since I switched on was scored by another Max who turns out to be a Macs, determined to demonstrate the lack of an ‘x’ mine in Wales.
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Mae cloc yn goch and Glasgow cough up a penalty to finish the game. Weegies went out of their way to nil themselves in righteous sympathy for all Welsh people everywhere. Good lads.
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Having watched it back all the Etzebeth incident does for me (other than that I find it pretty disgusting) is confirm my view that Victor Matfield was head and shoulders above the other two ‘greatest’ South African locks of the professional era (and there are of course lots of other very good ones, pretty much all of them that played for any length of time). Best skills by some way and hard as nails without disgracing himself. Thought Etzebeth was dirty without necessarily being beyond the pale before this game.
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The thing about Etzebeth, is that most of his ‘hard man’ schtick is just that – lots of panto eye-and-muscle-bulging fury, fire and brimstone, but I can’t remember (without Google) Bakkies Botha type thuggery. It mostly involves pushing and shoving and as he’s matured, he’s generally had a good record. I’m not excusing his behaviour at all – it was disgusting and deserves a lengthy ban. His reputation, however, is a bit overblown.
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@Deebee – Yes on reflection I was unfair with ‘dirty’ as you can’t really be a properly dirty player any more. He certainly likes to be at the centre of any nonsense though – and again you’re right that that probably doesn’t really matter. Until it does as in this case.
He definitely has the air about him of someone who would have gone further back in the day, but of course we can’t know that he would have done.
All a great shame anyway. I’m sure he’ll be forgiven though, great players usually are.
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CMW, I think forgiveness may take a while down here. There is, outside of the happily shrinking lunatic fringe, near universal condemnation and anger at Etzebeth. A minority claiming he must have provoked (so what?), but generally condemning him, no strings attached. As it should be.
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Etzebeth has a very clean record for a 32 (?) yo lock. I wonder what went in his head, when you win 70/0 with 2 minutes left and you’ve had total domination for 78 minutes?
As a foot note, I wish the blazers could find a way to ban players for games that really matter to them, not with some blanket weeks filled with meaningless training runs.
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Emotional game last night in Toulouse. Last game for Pita Akhi who was released mid season to return home, after a terrific career with Les Rouges et Noirs ( 7 finals in as many years).
Also Dupont played 20 minutes from the bench for the first time since January. And my, did he play well! Very happy for him.
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Good match between Saracens & Bath. Sarries on top in the first half, but Bath came back in the second. They were all square with about 10 mins to play. Elliot Daly was this 🤏 close to kicking a penalty from dead on half way, but Bath took it with an Arundall try in the last 5 mins. 29-36. Bath at the top of the table.
It was nice to see Faz and Russell having a chat and a laugh together, after the match.
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Flair, it’s great to hear Dupont was back and sharp. Lights up any rugby match when he’s playing. Unfortunately, the hotel I’m now in, in Lusaka seems to have restricted bandwidth (or something, thought that sounded impressive) so I can’t log into Supersport for the next week. Rugby and cricket not so big here in Zambia, so ot on the bouquet of channels on offer.
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Deebee, if you’re back home next Sunday, you might enjoy the Hcup game between Toulouse and the Sharks. Am pretty sure Dupont will play.
Around 4pm, French time.
Also if you want to see a brain fart on par with Etzebeth’s, look up for the totally uncalled for head butt by Janik Tarik, with Racing vs Toulouse, after the whistle was blown for HT . Huge consequences…
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Munster’s unbeaten start finally ran out of road on Saturday. Good first half – led 21-6 at the break but delivered a dud second half. Got badly found out at the scrum – and an intercept killed us.
Even then had a “winning” try chalked off for a knock forward
Lots to like about 1st half – less so 2nd half.
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10 minutes of pure filth
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Like how they got the Ulster one out of the way first.
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Ulster had one?
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@Debee – I see Robin Smith has died. Easily my favourite of the South African Englishmen to play test cricket and someone who would certainly be a contender for my all-time favourite side. Clearly a very troubled individual after he finished playing which is very sad. Don’t think anyone hit the ball harder through the offside and he always made fast bowling look so spectacular, both because he could play it so well and because of his method of swaying out of the way rather than ducking.
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Very sad, CMW, I liked him a lot too. Ironically, saw more of him playing for England than domestically in SA.
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I wonder if that swaying put the way was something that SA players in the 70s and 80s did more than others? Jimmy Cook used to do it, with a cap, ot helmet until Sylvester Clarke almost took his head off! Best exponent of the hook – alao with a cap – was Kevin McKenzie.
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Cook was obviously a very good player too though I only saw him bat once or twice, for Somerset I think. I know nothing of McKenzie I’m afraid other than I remember his son playing for SA.
Not sure where Smith got that method from though I feel like I remember him talking about it as a South African thing. He had Mike Procter and Barry Richards playing in the net in his back garden (and a bowling machine, his father must have been absolutely loaded) when he was a teenager so he got a chance to learn from the best. I think there were advantages and disadvantages to doing it – it meant he was watching the ball all the way, but if it followed him, especially if it cut back off the seam then he was at some risk of getting hit. Of course you can duck and the ball not get up and get hit that way instead. He did duck some of course, but the ones where he ended up bending backwards almost like a limbo dancer or taking off and jerking his head back dramatically at the last moment were a sight to behold.
Smith had some great battles with Walsh and Ambrose and with Merv Hughes, watched a bit today on Youtube and he hit the ball every bit as hard as I remembered.
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Sitting in the back of a Zambia Immigration Services pick up truck, with chicken bones, empty cold drink bottles and dirty rags for company, whilst they do a slow sweep of areas with predominantly Asian businesses looking for illegal migrants. Despite having my passport on my phone, they claimed there was no record of entry and I would have to pay for a temporary entry permit. A bribe by any other name.
Now, over two hours later, my bald head baked to perfection, they will allow me to get my passport from the hotel where it’s locked away for safekeeping, as one does.
Been coming to Zambia for over 25 years and never been asked for my passport until this visit – once in the Copperbelt last week (they’re much more security conscious up there because of the mines and proximity to Congo) and now. In the Copperbelt you carry your passport for access to the mines, but in Lusaka, I’ve never done so. Same in most other countries anywhere in the world. What a complete fucking waste of a morning because either their system doesn’t work, or because they’re looking for a bribe. I’m a little ratty.
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So, the Fitba’ World Cup draw takes place on Saturday, 6 months before it starts, taking place in 3 countries with 48 teams involved.
The RWC draw takes place today, 20 months before it starts, in one country, with 24 teams involved.
Why so early, RWC? Could easily have taken place this time next year.
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Pool A:
New Zealand
Australia
Chile
Hong Kong China
Pool B:
South Africa
Italy
Georgia
Romania
Pool C:
Argentina
Fiji
Spain
Canada
Pool D:
Ireland
Scotland
Uruguay
Portugal
Pool E:
France
Japan
USA
Samoa
Pool F:
England
Wales
Tonga
Zimbabwe
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We get Feckin’ Ireland again.
England vs Wales.
Australia may start against NZ.
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