In the exciting battle for the wooden spoon between Ireland, Wales, Italy and England, coaches have not learninged much from their previous selection errors. To be fair to Italy, they don’t have a huge range of players from which to select, and they have played brilliantly; they could and possibly should have beaten Ireland, so we’ll let Quesada off.
As for Ireland, it seems that Farrell has at least learninged that the Prendergast experiment has woefully failed after watching him splash around in the shallow part of the pitch in the first match, and create his own wadi in the second. While Crowley, like his other possible replacements, is dubious with the kicking tee (and by the way, kicking points is only HALF YOUR FUCKING JOB as a fly-half), he’s clearly much more effective on the pitch.
The inclusion of more Ulster players made a clear difference in the second match with Player of the Match being narrowed down to a choice between McCloskey, Baloucoune, Fischetti and Zuliani: two Ulstermen, and two Italians. So of course Farrell drops Izuchukwu, who also performed well, and Timoney remains on the bench.
As for England, the inclusion of Stewart continues to please ABE supporters, and Genge is always on a hair trigger for a card. Maro is looking less saint-like these days. Boris Johnson’s illegitimate son, the Pillock, provides a figure one loves to hate, sadly also because, like most super-villains, he’s pretty effective.
On to Wales. Well. Their set-pieces are functioning well, and I reckon they can beat Ireland. Also first-week Scotland, but not brilliant second-week Scotland. Probably not Italy either, especially if they keep kicking possession away, although possession is often coughed up anyway.
France obviously don’t need any learnings*.
*Have I mentioned how much I hate this horrendous evisceration of the English language?
Ovally Balls 
Italy sadly regressing back to being Italy.
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Balls. Just when England were getting into a rhythm.
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Was about to say the same myself,BB. They need a reset.
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Maybe thats it, looks like a shoulder good and proper, no wrap
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Love the ref just ignoring the attempted high tackle on Daly.
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Lucky boy.
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Oh FFS,
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Obviously I’ve given Italy a boost by saying that.
‘Mon Italy!!!
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Dumb by Maro. Two of his turnovers he put his hands down first as well.
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Wonder if Italy really BELIEVE if they can beat England.
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That’s a hell of an opportunistic try by Italy, well played.
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IIIIIIIIIIITTTTTTTTTTTTTAAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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GWAN Italy!!!!
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Maybe they do BELIEVE!!!!
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Show Pony’s on.
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Italy nearly there!
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JUST DON’T FUCK IT UP, ITALY!!!
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FORZA ITALIAAAAA!!!!!!
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Well played Italy. England had plenty of chances to win that and fucked it every time. Italy took the chances they were given and finally got their win.
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ITALY WIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Well, thank goodness for Wales (sorry) but that was the wooden spoon right there.
A completely different spectacle c/w Scotland-France
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….. there needs to be some knifery, now
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Slade – if Italy had just managed one more penalty or drop goal, England could’ve had the wooden spoon, if Wales beat Italy with a BPT next week.
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Well, fuck me. Is the Six Nations the best tournament out there? Probably. Has this been (with a week to go) the best one in years? Yip! Fuck yeah! (For a bit more emphasis). Brilliant bloody rugby!
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Hehehe. Well, sad to say, but I enjoyed that. Well done Italy. Didn’t really click as well as they can, but got over the line deservedly. England are really going to have issues against Bielle-Bari and Attisogbe next week.
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Slade, are you referring to coaching staff? I think that Borthwick and Wrigglesworth really aren’t up to the job. Elsewhere, Daly is often defensively suspect, Freeman looks like a wing playing centre, Maro looks like he needs a break, and he shouldn’t be captain, he has always been prone to brainfarts like slapping the ball down, Curry and Underhill are both looking old, and generally the team look stilted in attack and defensively fragile.
I would keep Atkinson at 12, with either Ojomoh or Lawrence if fit, and go with Freeman and Roebuck on the wings, probably Furbank at 15. Pack is OK, still think we need a bruiser in the back row, maybe Cunningham-South, Chessum and Coles to start, but they need so inspirational coaching more than anything else. I see Wilko wants some soul searching, bless him. Perhaps they do need a meditation retreat, hugs all round, and a shamanic cleansing, but I suspect a session locked in a room with Andy Farrell and Sean Edwards would probably be equally efficatious.
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efficacious.
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Sadly, SBT, it looks that, although coaches need replacing, the pool of players isn’t all that great – most look wooden – perhaps coaching can change that but not sure.
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Almost the perfect weekends rugby, altho Welsh granny would have appreciated a win in Dublin, but the level of performance was a moral victory. Hope next weekend can live up to this one. Would probably like Italy to win, I think a cracking game with Wales scoring a few tries and just losing would be OK for them, and it would be delightful for Scotland to win the thing, but I suspect that if England France had been first weekend, and England Wales the last weekend, England could have been staring down the barrels of a fully deserved no win wooden spoon.
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Good day for rugby, two teams coming out on top for whom winning still means pretty much unbridled joy. Much better than the ‘job done, things to work on’ stuff we get from the more regular winners, love to see it.
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Slade, something looks horribly wrong somewhere. I have been musing on an incident when we had an option to either kick for touch or take a penalty in the first half. We kicked for touch, and may even have got a try eventually, really not sure ( and can’t bring myself to watch it again ). The point was that there seemed total indecision over what to do, with about five players debating it. Maro seemed to be all in favour of kicking for the posts, but in the end, Fin Smith pointed to the corner, and Maro just shrugged and walked away. I may be wrong about the actual communications, but the gist of it was noone actually being in charge, or having the ability to make a firm decision, and if there is an obvious disagreement between Itoje,Earl, Smith, Spencer and George over what should be done, there are obviously multiple layers of mixed messages in the squad. Noone seems to have the strength of character or clear remit to galvanize the team into a unit, and that includes the coaches.
Lee Blackett might be the guy to ask, as he was lured in as a very successful attack coach, who was obviously very honored to take an England job while being at the time part of a hugely successful coaching set up at a well heeled and well run club.
Feel my earlier post may have been harsh on Murley, who did have a good game, but I think that currently our two best wings in the squad are Freeman and Roebuck.
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Apologies for multiple posts to, but need to say something into the ether, and the Guardian, bless it, has turned into the Daily Mail in the comments section.
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Tony Brown was interviewed about the evolution of the Boks this week into a more attack-minded side and his view is that SA players have always had the skills to play a more enterprising style, they needed to make the mental shift of playing as a team and expecting to have support runners etc. Surely England can do the same with the right coaching and belief?
On another note, before the tournament, you’d have looked at next weekend’s fixtures and said, yep – Ireland and Scotland playing for 3rd, Wales-Italy the wooden spoon affair and France-England the Championship. How a few weeks changes things!
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Crowley …. needs to practice off the tee a bit
Yeah, he was better a year or two back – but seems to have dropped off. 2024 vs France in Marseille he converted all 5 tries plus a pen, with 1 missed pen.
Rumour has it – he (and Prendergast) are using same technique Sexton used – with strange ball tilt. Meant to give a bigger sweet spot but less room for error in striking- which may well explain the nature of the misses (and it’s not as if Sexton wasn’t prone to awful misses – see NZ 2013, 2023)
Tadhg Furlong is one of my favourite props over the years, but he currently looks done
Been playing top level rugby since 2017 – with no real alternative TH appearing (John Ryan – a bit – in 2019-20, Porter – until the switch, Bealham is a year old and relies on gimmicks) – so need to either scaling down or scaling O’Toole/Clarkson up with Furlong as experienced finisher. But rumour has it – O’Toole will switch to LH, with Porter switching back to TH.
After the heights of the England game – this was back down to earth. Probably better than 1st half vs Italy though.
If the second try is allowed – we probably run away with it – but seemed to tighten up as the scores didn’t come.
Gibson Park was poor enough – Wales covered his snipes quite well and he ran himself into trouble a number of times. I thought we looked better in Doak’s (too) short interludes. Furlong and Baloucoune didn’t cover themselves in glory for the Carre try – Osborne needs to let Bob know that he’s covered the winger. Osborne wasn’t great either – maybe centre is his better position.
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@Deebee – It’s only really one team that has changed those expectations. And even then the championship will be decided in Paris if France win, one of Scotland and Ireland will very likely be third and Wales do already have the spoon.
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As to yesterday, crazy game between Scotland and France – I’d have had France as favourites. Thought the YC for Jalibert was somewhat harsh – that said Scotland didn’t profit from it. Dupont seemed off – France were better with Serin (albeit Scotland seemed a bit gassed / disrupted by subs by that stage)
Only caveat is that Scotland away don’t seem to be the same prospect as when playing at Murrayfield. Rotten record vs Ireland has to end soon and Ireland are blowing hot and cold.
I was delighted for Italy (and what was going through their heads just before half-time?) Get the ball into row Z
And who wouldn’t want Menoncello in their team?
As bad as the England/Ireland game was – and it fell apart in the 2nd quarter…start was ok, making this level of changes was bizarre. Probably a case for “letting lads play themselves back into form…” (with judicious changes)
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“And who wouldn’t want Menoncello in their team?”
Menoncello is getting a bit like 2000s BOD where the rest of them are looking like world beaters from playing alongside him. Not saying they aren’t good players (same with BOD’s teammates), but their backline would be a totally different beast without him and he was the difference between winning and losing yesterday.
Agree about too many changes from England. If you did that for the sake of rotation and came a cropper you’d be told you should have expected to. I get that they did it because of everyone playing crap for a bit, but still it was too much.
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the Guardian has turned into the Daily Mail in the comments section
Yeah, lot of trolls – the same few lads who go on about
– how league is better (league is different now not better or worse per se)
– “public schools” (most Irish players come through fee paying schools of one kind or another but that’s not who they’re taking about)
– “it were better in my day” – look I can see how when someone falls deliberately on the wrong side of ruck you’d think a good “shoeing” would discourage it – but it won’t attact participants.
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The other main difference between winning and losing in Italy-England was probably the England captain picking up a ridiculous yellow card when they already had one man in the bin. What did he do that for?
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England captain picking up a ridiculous yellow card
Very difficult to relate to what he might be thinking at that moment. The best you’re getting is a scrum for the knock forward
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“Osborne wasn’t great either – maybe centre is his better position.”
England and Wales also played people at fullback who are not especially good at it (England even had another one on the bench who they like to bring on to be a bad fullback). What’s going on? Once upon a time teams seemed to be full of fullbacks (well, England were anyway and Wales often had two).
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By ‘not especially good at it’ I mean they’re not really fullbacks at all and are better at other things.
Scotland also had a crack at it in the first game which is a good part of the reason they’re only on for an ‘old-fashioned’ grand slam rather than a ‘modern’ one.
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“Thought the YC for Jalibert was somewhat harsh”
Trisk, it was a team yellow for lots of penalties when France were in defence. Gardner had given a clear warning prior to issuing the yellow.
As usual I had a couple of gripes with the refereeing by full time but surprise surprise, yet again when I watched the full replay the decisions evened up for both sides.
The only one that didn’t even up was the “contact with the eye or eye area” as defined in the laws.
I’m talking about this because I don’t really know what to say about the game. I watched at our rugby club and beforehand everyone was talking about how “it will be a large score”, oh “it might be as much as fifty”. No one thought it would be Scotland scoring the half century.
The enormity of this cannot be over stated, I genuinely think this is one of the best teams I’ve seen come to Murrayfield and we put 50 on them. I thought we might give France a game if we could keep our discipline and match them up front, but I genuinely didn’t think we’d win.
We seemed to do well in the aerial battle, our scrum held up well and France didn’t challenge our lineout as much as I thought, or they did so ineffectually. We secured our ruck ball and held our discipline, ten penalties conceded by France, four by Scotland.
Now I’ve started I could go one, but I won’t. I’ll be disappointed if we can’t back this up next week in Dublin, but we have an awful record there since five became six.
The way things panned out yesterday it would be a major surprise if France didn’t take the title next Saturday evening, I’ll be applauding them if they do, but I also think it’s good that there will be no Grand Slam this year, that is a special thing in this special tournament.
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I mean they’re not really fullbacks at all and are better at other things
Seems to be “the thing” – switch lads around between wing and full back, centre and fullback, or 10 and fullback.
Ireland have done all three recently (vs France, Crowley came on at 15, and Osborne went to wing…cue puzzled looks from O’Brien when Crowley started gesturing at him to get off the pitch – I’d guess he expected a straight swap between Crowley and Prendergast/Osborne rather than musical chairs)
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Tom Jordan played 15 against Italy and England, Kinghorn came in for Wales and France. Jordan can also play 12, 10 and 13 (as he did when he came on against France). Kinghorn can also play wing, and 10 (but only in an emergency). Think the days of being only a fullback seem to be gone. Ramos can also be a 10, Capuozzo is often a winger, Daly is slow in many positions, LRZ should be a winger rather than a 15.
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back to the old England centres merry-go-round of beloved memory
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https://discord.com/channels/636911310533296128/1425944328987086909/1480485665606074410
(Don’t know if this’ll work – but for those you who like this kind of thing…. you’ll find this is the kind of thing you’ll like)
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ah sorry ignore that – wrong link
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@BB – I don’t think it’s been unusual for a long time (if ever) for players to be able to play a number of those positions, think most of them are still better in one (or two) rather than all the positions they can get away with playing at club level. From a Wales point of view Halfpenny was a converted wing though definitively a fullback once he started doing it, Liam Williams played mostly wing because Halfpenny was in the side but was absolutely a fullback. LRZ on the other hand whatever he does for Bristol is a wing at the moment, unfortunately we don’t have a lot of options and one or two of the likely ones are also really wingers who are decent under the high ball. Don’t know what Blair Murray is to be honest other than a very exciting runner.
I don’t think Scotland really want to be playing Jordan at fullback. Kinghorn I would say is a fullback who can play other positions. Not sure what the other options really are, only having two teams isn’t terribly helpful for them on that front.
I thought it was pretty odd that England went for Daly, has that ever been his best position? You’d think his efforts on the two Italy tries were enough for them not to do it again now. Could argue it was a bit odd that they were picking Steward before that as though he’s definitely a fullback it felt like he got dropped for things they must already have known about him in the first place. Smith is a ten who only seems to get played as a substitute fullback even when their starting tens stink the place out, think their selection is pretty confused at the moment. They don’t have the excuse of not having a lot of players though I don’t know enough about their other options to have an opinion on them other than that I would imagine Furbank should play if available.
Think Ramos is just a stupidly good rugby player who is really a fullback but is still good enough to be France’s third choice ten (if everyone’s fit) and the way they play means that those duties are shared quite a bit anyway.
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