theboy

was wondering if Zebre could go on a brief undefeated run. Turns out i was paying attention to the wrong italian team :D

looks like he’s confirmed as skipping the 6N, so should be fine.

Arrhur Vincent, Sekou Macalou and one of Penaud or Bielle-Biarrey also likely to feature for the 7s.

Thought it was mad England sacking Jones, and I was one of the people that maintained England had been underperforming for about 18 months. Couple of million quid buying out contracts just to get to where they would be right now anyways.

But sacking Rennie was absolutely batshit. If you look at the win % he wasn’t doing brilliantly, but a lot of those losses were very narrow, for eg single point (iirc) loss to France in Paris etc, and in circumstances that were less than ideal. The administrators basically YOLO’d it, and there should be heads rolling higher up imo.

Missed this because reasons, but at least it was closer than last time.

Tbh though, part of me would much rather teams in these games just had fun like it was a barbarians game, rather than worrying about who wins. Nobody remembers who wins these matches anyway (he says after making a comment about who won the third place play off in 2007).

Tbf, they won the same match in 2007.

Once took a recently turned three year old on a two hour flight without too much issue. Obvs at that age an extra year is a huge difference, but he was genuinely loving the take off and once you’re up it’s basically a big ol’ white noise machine. We had a tablet and books handy for him, though he still got restless towards then end

I imagine with yours being younger and the haul being longer it might be more problematic, but I would treat it like any other boring-for-kids situation. Books, activities, hey duggee on the tablet. Hopefully they’ll sleep at some point.

Other than that, just be aware that the people on the plane will be furiously twittering about parents and children and planes. But they’re probably cunts, so fuck ‘em.

On a side note, what is it with teams spending 70 minutes kicking the ball to Freddie Steward and expecting to get anything from it?

We are all Etzebeth now.

Or something.

Great game for drama, but that was really some pretty terrible rugby all round, with the occasional flash.

England playing ten man rugby, as they’ve largely done throughout with the exception of drubbings against the minnows. Given the turmoil in the set up over the last year,and the conditions on the night you can’t hold that against them but it doesn’t make for a great spectacle from a neutral point of view (drama aside, obvs).

South Africa were clearly hungover after last week. It was telling how the game shifted with the subs later on. I’m sure a lot of the discourse around that will be around the depth of the Saffa squad, but it looked to me more like a knackered starting fifteen playing a relatively fresh one. Ox and Kwagga the point of difference for the second week in a row imo.

Suspect the ABs win number four next week, but that way this tournament is going it’ll probably be England with a chair off the top rope.

The French love to boo. It’s all pantomime, but it’s the same in pretty much every sport. Heck, even the fancy pants Rolland Garros crowd will cheer/jeer based on basically the following order:

• Locals

• Underdogs

• Pantomime villains based on a historic sleight that nobody even really remembers anymore.

Based on the above, I don’t find it strange that England were the fan favourites for the local crowd.