ljkeane

I've been watching NRL to get my sports fix but it's good to see some rugby again. It's a bit strange to see sport with fans in the stadium too.

A Little Hatred is in the Amazon UK Kindle daily deal for 99p.

The call for that pattern of play actually is Exeter.

The laws have been changed so you can no longer score a try against the base of the post. Fuck's sake. Pick and goes till you get to the base of the post is my most productive try scoring area.

Adrian Tchaikovsky's excellent The Tiger and the Wolf is 99p on Amazon UK at the moment.

Mike Carey's Felix Castor books are pretty good.

Yeah, it's not inherently a bad idea and Pichot generally comes across quite well but I suspect most, if not all, of the major rugby unions are going to be seriously struggling with loss of revenue as a result of covid 19 related restrictions. I think the focus over the next few years is going to be sustaining the professionally game in the current rugby hotbeds rather than trying to expand to new territory. Honestly I don't think it's looking good for professional rugby. Beyond just the normal restrictions that are impacting on all sports international travel is a really important part of top level rugby and it's not a sport that's going to do well with the loss of revenue involved in playing behind closed doors (unlike, say, football which might be able to get by on tv money). There might have to be a lot of post lockdown restructuring.

Well sure, back when you used to just line up and smash into each other. People have some other issues with that though. That French back three was fun. Not exactly what you'd call reliable but fun.

That was a very French performance. Come into the game looking strong favourites to win a Grand Slam, start out of sorts, get back into the game with a brilliant try then one of the front row gets himself sent off reacting to provocation by throwing a punch. They certainly aren't afraid of conforming to stereotypes. In fairness I think France were a little unlucky with the yellow card and losing Ntamack early but they still didn't play particularly well. Scotland were good though. They were well in the game before the red card and they could have made hard work of it after France went down to 14 they could have made hard work of it but they managed the game really well.

So, England got the win. Just about. It was a pretty entertaining game overall and the Tipuric try was probably the best try I've seen live. One thing that is more noticeable at the game when you can see the whole pitch is how bad England are at restarting attacks off slow ball or playing off the cuff on turnovers etc. They play some good rugby off set piece or reliable possession when they can line up their ball carriers and distributors where they want them but as soon as attacks slow down they're looking to kick the ball away as a first option. I think some of that is deliberate, they back their defence as a weapon, but a lot of it is down to the team balance for me. Picking Ford/Farrell in midfield and only two backrows means there's a real lack of dynamic ball carriers to turn to on the fly with turnovers or scrappy ball. That's made worse when they lose a strike runner in May early and they bring on Slade, who actually played ok, but you don't really want a play maker style fullback when you're already playing two flyhalfs in midfield. They're probably going to get way with playing like this against a lot of teams, especially at home, but they need more to beat teams like South Africa when they aren't dominating the gainline in defence. I suppose the big incident in the game was the Tuilagi red card. I'm not a huge fan of that being a red card. He's flying over to try and make a cover tackle, North's tackled from behind so he's going down and there's a collision but there's no real malice in it. I don't think it's notably reckless by the standards of tackle in the corner in pretty much every match. It's just an unfortunate coming together. But, ok, if that's the way the rugby authorities want the game reffed then fair enough. My issue is why isn't the Parkes tackle direct to Tuilagi's head in the first half a red too?

So the England, Wales, Scotland and France teams have been announced for the weekend's games. I'm going to the England - Wales game with my Welsh stepdad which should be fun, so long as England don't lose. With that in mind it's good to see Wilson and Watson back in the team but Wilson's in for the injured Underhill at seven so England are still playing only two backrows with Curry out of position at 8 and with 5 second rows in the squad. Ffs. Wales have stuck with Biggar at 10 but there has to be a big question mark on how that's going to go given he came off injured in the Northampton game last weekend. They've also, a little surprisingly, dropped Faletau to the bench for Moriarty. France probably have their strongest team of the tournament so far for the game at Murrayfield with Penaud back from injury. It's going to be a tough game for Scotland.

The Ireland game's definitely off. The bloody Irish are always ruining everyone's fun just because there's a foot and mouth outbreak or a global coronavirus pandemic.

Fair enough, that's passed me by. Having said that he's clearly not an international class back row, if it was an emergency situation you could stick him on there but, by all appearances, deliberately picking him with intention of bringing him on the back row is still bizarre. I don't like Curry being there and ideally I'd bring in an actual 8 but Earl has played there a fair bit for Sarries and he's decent enough at it, just use him there if you refuse to pick an 8 in your squad. That's true to a degree, the injuries to O'Brien and Leavy have hurt them on that front, but in fairness there's not a huge amount of difference in the tight fives and, Tuilagi aside, they probably have the bigger backline. There's a couple of issues for me. There's no real surprise in how England played, they did the same thing last year. So picking Toner, who's a big man but he's never been particularly physical, O'Mahony and and Van der Flier in the same side is asking for trouble. They probably weren't going to match England they could have picked the likes of Dillane and Ruddock who were more likely to have an impact. The other thing is, ok, you aren't going to dominate England's pack so then you need to do something different to move them around and get running at the likes of Ford and Farrell. If you watch Ireland it's pretty clear who's getting the ball 90% of the time and with England's linespeed that's a big problem.

Good first half for England. I still don't particularly like the selection but Tuilagi in the side makes the backline look miles better and the forwards have been excellent in defence. There was a lot of talk before the game of the threat of the Irish kicking game with Joseph on the wing but it's actually been the Ireland backfield that's struggled. ETA: Going back to my issues with the selection; bringing Ewels on in the back row? Jesus Christ. Anyway, good performance from England but a bit of a familiar failing in that they really weren't clinical enough. Given the level of dominance they had in the match they really should have won more comfortably and come away with a bonus point win. For Ireland some of the same issues they've had for a while. They don't have the ability to dominate arm wrestles against the likes of England or, in all likelihood, France anymore and they don't seem to have the flexibility to move away from that. Farrell really needs to find a way of getting some dynamism into their attacking game. The fairly predicable safe forward carries followed by a Sexton loop out the back is making it easy for aggressive defences like England to just repeatedly fly off the line.

France look really good. Dupont in particular. All they need to do now is avoid a horrific second half collapse.

The Six Nations is back this weekend. The Scotland, Italy, Wales, France, England and Ireland teams. I really don't know what Jones is doing with his selections this year. It's not a team picked on form and it's not a team with young players brought in to develop for the next World Cup. It's not inspiring a lot of confidence.

Yeah, I understand why the SRU thought it might be a good idea at the time but with the benefit of hindsight I think it's pretty clear getting rid of Cotter to bring in Townsend was the wrong decision. It's a surprisingly good game in Paris so far. France have played some great rugby, Dupont really is excellent, but they've also been very French at times and gotten bored with doing the basics and given Italy some chances. Italy scored a pretty good try too.

Fair play to Ireland that was a good performance. They really controlled territory and possession well to not really give Wales much of chance to get themselves into the game. It's not looking great for Finn Russell's future with Scotland under Townsend. Apparently Russell thinks he doesn't have a personal relationship with Townsend which, considering Townsend's been his International coach for years ad was his coach at Glasgow before that, isn't ideal.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, considering I was travelling on a coach filled with rugby players between two rugby clubs, I didn't manage to avoid the score. It wasn't exactly a classic though. When I'd just seen the score I was going to complain about both sides being as wasteful in attack as last week but to be fair conditions really were awful. There wasn't a huge deal they could really do about it. England did really well with the three opensides in their backrow disrupting Scotland's ball in the first half while Scotland had the wind and then, eventually, were able to take a chance in the second half. That's pretty much the story of the game with the weather limiting both sides opportunity to play rugby so much.

It's a 50,000 Euro fine and Sarries keep their place in Europe. I'd guess that's the lower end of the scale. Seems fair enough to me. Annoyingly today with playing rugby and travelling back I'm not going to be able to watch either of the Six Nations games live. I'll just have to put my headphones in and try and avoid the scores.

If it's just down to his right to work rather than competition rules you're still able to work while in the process of applying for an extension of your work visa. He was registered for the competition (which is usually the problem) so I'd be fairly surprised if they're going to get kicked out.

It was the defence of both sides last year rather than the finishing that was the problem. So many ways for it to go wrong. Scotland have pretty much stuck with the same side. I suppose the notable thing about that is that they haven't gone straight back to Finn Russell but Hastings did reasonably well so there was no pressing reason to. England have rung the changes a bit. Good to see 3 actual backrows in the backrow. I'd rather have seen a real number 8 or at least a big blindside like Hill involved rather than 3 utility backrows but it's still an improvement on last week. Another ball carrier in the pack in Vunipola also makes sense. The backline still looks a bit lightweight but Heinz for Youngs is the right call from the squad Jones has picked. There still should be another scrumhalf in the squad though. The Ireland and Wales teams for Saturday's other game. That's a bit of a conservative selection again from Farrell. I suppose they did get the win last week but it's hard to see them really kicking on without taking a bit more of a gamble. Tompkins is into the centres for Wales. He was really good off the bench for last week, England might have missed a trick letting Wales poach him. I'm looking forward to seeing how the game in Dublin goes. If Pivac can get a win there I think Wales are really in business.

Not really a significant improvement from England in the second half. A couple of pieces of individual brilliance from May saved them from an embarrassing scoreline and, to be fair, the French try was great play from Dupont but England really created nothing from phase play from multiple visits to the French 22. The only real positive as a team was that they gave France a bit of a beasting in the scrum. From the French point of view it's important they managed the game well once they had a big lead, something they've been guilty of not doing fairly frequently in the past, and their new Shaun Edwards coached defence looked very solid. Good start to the Galthie era for them.