Six Nations Rugby

Hi, I wonder how many English-Man will be willing Scotland to a win today? It's tight just now 21-18 Scotland have to believe in themselves again to get over the line.:british:
Jim
 
Good for Scotland. It's a better competition with a Scotland team that can compete, something we really haven't seen for a bit until recently. Although the French are going fast in the opposite direction. The French are a bit of an enigma, the usual phrase is that you are never sure which team is going to turn up, but these days, it seems to be only the bad one. It's obviously an organisational thing, they seem to have players in depth. I wonder if the big money in the clubs in France overshadows their national team too much these days.
 
Well at last England have managed to get over the line. I know the slam is important and going to France is always a risky encounter. If England stick to their game plan and Dan Cole grows a brain I see England winning.
 
Very true.

It's a worry when losing one player (Cole) makes that much difference. Hopefully that will provide a wake-up call for England.

It also left Wales somewhat flattered by the result, as they were pretty ineffectual for 70 minutes until they utilised the bench. Without those two tries the inquest into their performance would have been harrowing.

Today's game should be interesting - I do hope Scotland prevail.
It could have been worse for England, George North was not in touch when he threw the pass back in with a minute or so to go. Who knows what might have happened but it at the least it should have been Welsh possession a few yards out and all that was needed was an unconverted try. Having said that England were the better side over the full 80 minutes but if I were English I'd worry about yet again losing or nearly losing a game from a strong position.

Whilst deliberate foul play has no place in the game I am getting concerned about the level of attention given to pretty innocuous incidents, often initiated by the TMO. In this game Marler's "racial" comments to Lee need to be dealt with but his alleged elbowing of a Welsh player for which he has been cited was nothing really and I'm not convinced there was any intent in Francis' alleged gouging on Cole.
 
It could have been worse for England, George North was not in touch when he threw the pass back in with a minute or so to go. Who knows what might have happened but it would have been Welsh possession a few yards out and all that was needed was an unconverted try. Having said that England were the better side over the full 80 minutes but if I were English I'd worry about yet again losing or nearly losing a game from a strong position.

Whilst deliberate foul play has no place in the game I am getting concerned about the level of attention given to pretty innocuous incidents, often initiated by the TMO. In this game Marler's "racial" comments to Lee need to be dealt with but his alleged elbowing of a Welsh player for which he has been cited was nothing really and I'm not convinced there was any intent in Francis' alleged gouging on Cole.

I agree - the English disease of "snatching defeat from the jaws of victory" was a clear and present danger in the last 10 minutes.

Outside of North being in/out of touch there were plenty of decisions in that game that could have gone either way - England's disallowed tries, some passes that were on the edge of being forwards, and inconsistent penalties being awarded at scrums. That's rugby. What annoys me is the apparent growing tendency to "ask the TMO" on more and more occasions, as a lot of the fluidity of the game then disappears. We are in danger of ending up with games of rugby that may be judged technically perfect but are unappealing from a spectator's perspective.

Francis' alleged gouging certainly seemed no more intentional than Mike Brown's boot in Conor Murray's face during the England v Ireland game the previous week. Showing these type of incidents in slow motion tends to make them look far worse than they are - see, for example, Laidlaw's grabbing of Lauret's shirt in the Scotland v France game.

It will be interesting to see just how much of an example they make of Marler and just how much sledging then gets reported in the future.
 
Vast improvement by England under Eddy. He certainly knows how to get the best out of a team. To get a grand slam is never easy and you could well argue that there isn't too much between the top teams in Europe on their day.

But I think that England still have a bit of a way to go to make the All Blacks start to worry. It'll be interesting to see how they go against Australia.
 
I think this year has been a strange tournament, with Ireland not performing as expected, Wales having a on/ off day, Scotland showing what they can do, France , well France are France , turned up today, but literally threw it away at the line outs. Italy struggled with injuries. England played well and were the best team, but how they will perform against the Southern Hemisphere is another thing.
hoping to get tickets for NZ v Wales, although NZ are in transition at the moment, watching the standard of rugby played weekly, Wales had better be ready for some tough matches
 
Back
Top