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2015 is not a great year to be blooding new players but it is what it is.

it will not all be bad news. The Boks will lose their Euro players too that weekend because it is outside the window, but the Boks would have planned for that and withheld some non-regular players for the Wales game. .

Different opinions - I like him - and he works well with Lenihan, but perhaps you don't like him either. I used to like Tony Ward also, and good luck to him now. Matthews is good as the third guy, as he was with Bruce-Ball and Nichol in Scotland v Argentina. One of our posters here mentioned...

If you are talking about who we will hear in commentary in Australia for Wales v NZ it may not be Eddie Butler and Jiffy Davies. Setanta uses it's own commentators mostly; and this game is available only through Setanta in Oz. It may be the excellent Ryle Nugent and Donal Lenihan who we...

They were doubting Thomas?

He was dropped because he missed a session. .

It was a good exercise for Shaggy to play his scrubbers against Scotland as he did with a lot of them in Chicago, but he wouldn't have been too happy with their performance, even taking this and that into consideration. The Kiwi scrubbers didn't look much better than scrubbers from other teams...

They were groaningly poor against Fiji and had only one good player, Liam Williams, who is starting to emerge from his embarrassment in Nelspruit. Most of the Wales players play in a the Pro12 which is not a high standard and their depth is not good - and they have a Kiwi coach. But all the...

A lot of people are talking about the locks and so they should: it's our weakest position, although there are serious technical issues outside of the position discussion which should be addressed more than they are. The double-whammy of the injury to Fardy (at least an option for the second...

Supposing all the Wobs get a run it will mean that only English and Godwin would not have got a test on tour - with one test to go. At least English got a mid-week game for the Baas, but it's a pity about Godwin. It's always a problem for specialist inside centres to be chosen for a test...

Wow - Horne and Horwill dropped. Schatz will be pleased to get another shot and so will Beale. Good luck to both of them. .

Nigel dropped? I doubt it - he's been in reasonable form in the second half of the year, except for in Mendoza when he came up with some whacko decisions—and they rotate them anyway. The November test appointments were made as a block and they rotate some of the referees so that a few...

Very droll Braveheart. .

Well done for Luke Jones to earn a start in a big match.

Top players these. The use of such youngsters is another benefit of the NRC. Adrian Thompson and his ARU colleagues would have had a good look at all these lads in the NRC and if they played OK they would have got a big tick for the 2015 Aussie Under 20 team. They would have known about all...

Also brother Willie. A lot of ethnic Islander lads from NZ and Oz play Under 20s for their PI country as Under 19s, and for NZ or Oz as Under 20s. If they haven't been selected for Oz or NZ it gives them exposure to the competition a year earlier, which serves their rugby well, which...

Not a bad player either Teddy - and a hat-trick in his first game last week. It was 1990 - yeah I remember Condom. If I remember right Bray also said about a lineout "…and Condom gives protection to a team mate ……I've been waiting to say that." It was a dirty series that: Benazzi, in his...

I hope that Owens referees as he did in Cape Town when the Wallabies played there, and lost, than when he refereed in Mendoza a week later and the Wallabies lost. I thought he had a great game in the first, but made some goofy decisions in the second. Mind you (and not to the point) but it...

Put all this stuff in the Reds thread please guys or even in some kind of RWC thread - it's getting boring.

That's the same starting team. They played pretty well in the last half-hour against Fiji , I thought, and new fullback Spedding, a muscular runner, had a cracking debut. New winger Teddy Thomas (what a name for a Frenchman) was also dynamic scoring a hat trick. But the real surprise for me...