6 Nations Round 1

[RugbyReg]

Starts this weekend.

Let's get the teams up to start with:

England (to play Italy): 15 Delon Armitage (London Irish), 14 Paul Sackey (London Wasps), 13 Mike Tindall (Gloucester Rugby), 12 Riki Flutey (London Wasps), 11 Mark Cueto (Sale Sharks), 10 Andy Goode (Brive), 9 Danny Care (Harlequins), 8 Nick Easter (Harlequins), 7 Steffon Armitage (London Irish), 6 James Haskell (London Wasps), 5 Nick Kennedy (London Irish), 4 Steve Borthwick (Saracens, captain), 3 Phil Vickery (London Wasps), 2 Lee Mears (Bath Rugby), 1 Andrew Sheridan (Sale Sharks).
Replacements: 16 Dylan Hartley (Northampton Saints), 17 Julian White (Leicester Tigers), 18 Tom Croft (Leicester Tigers), 19 Joe Worsley (London Wasps), 20 Ben Foden (Northampton Saints), 21 Shane Geraghty (London Irish), 22 Mathew Tait (Sale Sharks).

 

[RugbyReg]

And France for Ireland

France: 15 Clement Poitrenaud (Toulouse), 14 Julien Malzieu (Clermont-Auvergne), 13 Florian Fritz (Toulouse), 12 Yannick Jauzion (Toulouse), 11 Maxime Medard (Toulouse), 10 Lionel Beauxis (Stade Francais), 9 Sebastien Tillous-Borde (Castres), 8 Imanol Harinordoquy (Biarritz), 7 Fulgence Ouedraogo (Montpellier), 6 Thierry Dusautoir (Toulouse), 5 Lionel Nallet (Castres) (c), 4 Sebastien Chabal (Sale), 3 Benoit Lecouls (Toulouse), 2 Dimitri Szarzewski (Stade Francais), 1 Lionel Faure (Sale).
Replacements: 16 Benjamin Kayser (Leicester), 17 Nicolas Mas (Perpignan), 18 Romain Millo-Chluski (Toulouse), 19 Louis Picamoles (Montpellier), 20 Morgan Parra (Bourgoin), 21 Benoit Baby (Clermont-Auvergne), 22 Cedric Heymans (Toulouse).

 

[RugbyReg]

Ireland (15-1): Robert Kearney; Tommy Bowe, Brian O'Driscoll (capt.), Paddy Wallace, Luke Fitzgerald; Ronan O'Gara, Tomas O'Leary; Jamie Heaslip, David Wallace, Stephen Ferris; Paul O'Connell, Donncha O'Callaghan; John Hayes, Jerry Flannery, Marcus Horan. Replacements: Rory Best, Tom Court, Malcolm O'Kelly, Denis Leamy, Peter Stringer, Gordon D'Arcy, Geordan Murphy

 

[Lee Grant]

England

You look at their team and you can't come up with one player who would be certain to play in the run on squad for the Lions in the 1st test against the Boks - even their best player in the autumn tests, fullback Delon Armitage, because of the likely precedence of Lee Byrne.

Sackey would be the most likely but with Shane Williams guaranteed to get one wing spot, even his inclusion is moot.

Tindall will be a big improvement if he is sober for the first game, even though his club form is not that great. The Pom backline lacked leadership and experience in the autumn tests. He won't be making long linebreaks but neither did the ordinary Noone who he has replaced - and he can pass the golden ball every now and then to wingers and fullbacks.

Andy Goode is not much of an international player as we saw here the winter before last but he has experience too, and at least has a game that is suited to test matches. People said he was making a blunder by going to play club rugby in France but he now has the last laugh.

England are skinny here. In the last 3 years they have used different players who have played well in domestic rugby but flattered to deceive in test matches.

Cipriani blew his chance. He looked great against Ireland in the last game (IIRR) of 6N last year but hasn't lived up to that since despite the braying of Stephen Jones. He's an example of a young player being hyped too much before his time.

The kid will be back older, wiser and more selective - and perhaps better also at not getting kicks charged down all the time. As it stands he is not even the best flyhalf at Wasps.

Given his autumn form you can see that the selection of Sheridan shows the skinny prop depth that England have. If that was due to injury he shouldn't have been playing. I won't make the same comments about THP Vickery as I think he is in top notch form.

It's good to see Kennedy at lock - an athletic mobile 2nd rower who would be at home with the Super14 ELVs. He was overlooked for some of the autumn tests and you could see the difference.

8. Easter had better get his act together as his indiscipline at club level has been crap. 6 Haskell is a class player but the other backrower 7. Steffon Armitage (brother of Delon) is a real smokey.

I saw this bloke play a club game for Peter Hewat's team, London Irish, a few weeks back and I thought WTF is this guy? He's like the smaller kind of running backs used in the NFL these days - short and nuggety but with more moves than Bobby Fischer. I don't know that he's a strong on-baller but he's getting a chance as I read that Rees was injured.

Watch this space.

 

[Lee Grant]

Ireland

They've got the form Munster tight five starting and the incomparable Wallace at 7. Well, you could compare him I suppose to someone like Richard Hill, who was also capable of playing all 3 backrow positions at test level, but he's a pretty rare player in the modern game.

Arguably you could have also thrown in the Munster 6 Quinlan and 8 Leamy to make it a Munster full house, but Quinny has a few too many candles on his birthday cakes these days and Leamy is just back from injury. Besides, Heaslip and Ferris have earned their spots.

In effect, the Ireland backline has been retained from the autumn tests except that 12 Paddy Wallace replaces 15 Geordan Murphy, who is on the bench. But players have moved around.

15 Rob Kearney, who we remember getting the MOTM award in a losing team in Melbourne in our winter, gets to play in his best spot. He has been carving up in the last couple of weeks for Leinster from the back.

12 Paddy Wallace was out here last winter and has been one of the reasons why Ulster are causing so much cheek in the Magners league. It's good seeing a back from one of the lesser Ireland teams getting a run. He will be the flyhalf back up for ROG but his playing 12 means that young gun Fitzgerald has had to move to the wing vacated by Kearney.

Scrummie TOL has been in fine form but Deccie will hope that ROG wears his best goal kicking boots.

The retention of young guns Kearney and Fitzgerald means that another hotshot, Keith Earls, (15,13 wing) from Munster is overlooked, even for the bench. Munster fans will feel disgruntled but could not argue a case stronger than that for the Leinster pair.

I think that Ireland will be the big improvers this year, but I won't have to wait long to see if my theory is correct when they play against a good looking France team on the weekend. At least they will be able to start the tournament with a home game.

 

[RugbyReg]

Assuming he gets on, will this be Tom Court's first test cap?

 

[Lee Grant]

Yeah - 1st cap, though he's played for their A team before.

 

[fatprop]

Steffon Armitage (brother of Delon) is a real smokey.

Peter Hewat rated him very highly on a recent podcast, he said there was a lot of George Smith about him (looks a bit out of shape but is the business)

 

[RugbyReg]

Nick Mallet has been chatting to Eddie Jones. Check out the Number 9:

Italy: 15 Andrea Masi, 14 Kane Robertson, 13 Gonzalo Canale, 12 Gonzalo Garcia, 11 Mirco Bergamasco, 10 Andrea Marcatto, 9 Mauro Beragamasco, 8 Alessandro Zani, 7 Sergio Parisse (cap.), 6 Josh Sole, 5 Marco Bortolami, 4 Santiago Dellap?e, 3 Martin Castrogiovani, 2 Fabio Ongaro, 1 Salvatore Perugini.
Replacements: 16 Carlo Festuccia, 17 Carlos Nieto, 18 Tommaso Reato, 19 Jean-Francois Montauriol, 20 Giulio Toniolatti, 21 Luke McLean, 22 Matteo Pratichetti.

 

[RugbyReg]

Wales: 15 Lee Byrne, 14 Leigh Halfpenny, 13 Jamie Roberts, 12 Gavin Henson, 11 Shane Williams, 10 Stephen Jones, 9 Michael Phillips, 8 Andy Powell, 7 Martyn Williams, 6 Ryan Jones (captain), 5 Alun-Wyn Jones, 4 Ian Gough, 3 Adam Jones, 2 Matthew Rees, 1 Gethin Jenkins.
Replacements: 16 Huw Bennett, 17 John Yapp, 18 Luke Charteris, 19 Dafydd Jones, 20 Dwayne Peel, 21 James Hook, 22 Tom Shanklin.

 

[RugbyReg]

Scotland: 15 Hugo Southwell (Edinburgh), 14 Simon Webster (Edinburgh), 13 Ben Cairns (Edinburgh), 12 Graeme Morrison (Glasgow), 11 Sean Lamont (Northampton), 10 Phil Godman, 9 Mike Blair (capt), 8 Simon Taylor (Stade Francais), 7 John Barclay (Glasgow), 6 Ally Hogg (Edinburgh), 5 Jim Hamilton (Edinburgh), 4 Jason White (Sale), 3 Geoff Cross (Edinburgh), 2 Ross Ford (Edinburgh), 1 Allan Jacobsen (Edinburgh).
Replacements: 16 Dougie Hall (Glasgow), 17 Alastair Dickinson (Gloucester), 18 Kelly Brown (Glasgow), 19 Scott Gray (Northampton), 20 Chris Cusiter (Perpignan), 21 Chris Paterson (Edinburgh), 22 Max Evans (Glasgow).

 

[Ash]

What is Parisse doing at number 7?

 

[RugbyReg]

I assume these aren't on tv down here?

 

[formeropenside]

I assume these aren't on tv down here?

Setanta only I think.

 

[Thomond78]

Lee, I could certainly argue a stronger case for Earls than Bowe, but he's injured. He twisted his knee against Montauban and, while he's recovering fast, Deccie made the sensible decision not to risk screwing up a young player for the future. Rightly, in my opinion, as he'd get no thanks from anyone for breaking Earls.

O'Kelly is lucky as shit to be on the bench, and I wouldn't have had him there, to be honest. A lot of guys are off getting game time in the A game against England tomorrow night, so don't be surprised to see changes.

Heaslip's form has been iffy, albeit improved in the last game or so. Leamy has been storming, but has only played two games back from injury (both sensational, may I add). On balance, makes sense, but expect to see Leamy on early enough.

Why the fuck Lievremont picks Chabal as a second row, I simply don't know. He's a back-row, not a second row. He knows it, the Munster front five know it, and by God, after recent games, he knows the Munster front five know it. With a Sale prop in there, that's not the strongest French front five by a long chalk; that said, they may well be more than the sum of their parts.

As for the weather, it's fucking freezing here. Snow, and frozen solid for the last week. May well get down to -6 the night before the game.

 

[Lee Grant]

England 36, Italy 11

What a bloody awful game. The Poms won by a decent margin but they should have put their foot on the throat of a team without a real scrummie, but couldn't do it.

England scored 5 tries and that sounds like England is back on track to cause a bit of cheek in the 6N - and compared to the Wallabies effort against the Azzurri on the EOYT it was sweetness and light - but most of the tries were earned through unforced errors.

Typical was the try scored when backrower Mauro Bergamasco, playing scrummie, gave a up and under Burgess like pass back that bounced and was hacked through for a Pom try. Poor Bergamasco: he was answering the call of his coach, but, by comparison, he made AJ Gilbert look like Ken Catchpole.

Another was when he forgot he was the scrummie and got stuck into the ruck and when the ball squirted out his scrummie opponent, Ellis, picked up the pill and scored. Bergamasco was responsible for another try too.

Because of the blunders the game was over by half time and it was a pity because after they changed their "scrummie" after oranges Italy showed that, without gifting tries, they would have given the Poms a scare. Geez, Parisse from Stade Francais had a cracking game for them.

Harry Ellis, the Pom scrummie, kicked a bit too much but was the MOTM, which is quite a story. He had a bad injury and made his comeback in December IIRR, but as soon as he was back on the park he got red card and was suspended for 6 weeks. With Danny Care rampant in GP and the autumn tests Ellis looked long odds to get the Pom starting spot back for 6N, let alone be considered for the Lions tour.

His suspension over he got picked for the Poms, but as deputy for Care. Karma, Care slips on the ice outside the hotel going to training and Ellis is in - and MOTM. I don't know about you but I like those stories.

After talking Goode up for his good form for Brive, I gotta say that Goode was Bade. After starting well and scoring a try he kicked the ball away like a millionaire and looked like a typical cartoon Pom flyhalf.

The forwards weren't much better and Sheridan did nothing to retrieve his scrummaging reputation. But 2nd rower Nick Kennedy from London Irish had a top match and winger Cueto and 12 Flutey were decent. 6 Haskell would have got a tick too except for a yellow card.

Was interested to see Queenslander Luke McLean come on after half an hour to play flyhalf for Italy. The last time I saw him in action was at Forshaw park playing fullback for Queensland U/19s - and he did OK apart from a couple of crook kicks from hand.

 

[rugbywhisperer]

"If Wales do win this afternoon, I expect it to be by an extremely narrow margin", writes Stephen Jones
goodnes me this man is on a hiding to nothing lately

 

[Spook]

I'm not sure about Earls over Bowe. Earls defense is dodgy and he has been quiet lately. Bowe has been on fire for the O's....Earls is quicker though. I see Bowe becoming a handy 13.

 

[Lee Grant]

Ireland 30, France 21

This was a cracking match with some cracking tries and both sides tried to play attacking rugby when appropriate. The difference between this match and the England v Italy snorer was vast.

For a while it looked like same old shit, different day for Ireland as their backline couldn't crack a top defence and bonehead kicking prevailed. At the same time the French were counter attacking from turnover ball and the fluidity gained from the quick lineout ELV. They manufactured chaos to confound structure as their offloading scrambled the defenders.

But that changed as Ireland begun using the ball and attacking from deep too and the see-saw of scoring begun; the forwards meantime bashing each other with admirable dedication and the Irish crowd not knowing if their team would come through. Ebb and flow went right through the game in just about every rugby activity and it was riveting even for a neutral.

But Ireland, who have wavered at the money end of test matches in the past and especially against France, finished the game better and the turning point came in the last quarter after an Ireland maul near the line which was pulled down to a ruck. The ball was dished out wide to the right and centre D'Arcy from the bench, and from recent injury wilderness, stepped inside the drifters and stronged his way over. Stronged? It will do.

This was one of the best 6N games in recent years and there wouldn't have been too many demands for refunds.

The man of the match was 8 Heaslip for Ireland. He played the best game I ever saw him play and don't doubt that he loves the 5M scrum ELV as all 8's do.

But his brilliancy of the night came from expansive play. Before oranges a nice training move with the ball passed behind other players saw the admirable Kearney on the move; then Bowe had the French back pedalling but he was stopped; ruck ball was dished right and Heaslip finds two tight-fivers with blue jerseys in front of him so he runs between them and veers left to get inside the fullback Poitrenaud - no he doesn't - he props off the left leg and beats him the other way and strongs his way over to score.

Beautiful, then after half time the drifters weren't fast enough to nab BOD. French flyhalf Beauxis, who otherwise had a top game could only get an arm on Drico, who then stepped inside to score as in the good old days.

The French put on a couple of good tries themselves. Heaslip wasn't the only good 8 on the park and France's best, Harinordoquy, finished off a top movement to score the first try of the match. Another time he caught a lineout throw with a right hand like a baseball mitt and delivered it in one motion to his scrummie. He's back for sure now.

Their second try came in the 2nd half from an increasingly popular up-and-under, which was fluffed and followed by a Beauxis kick which bounced into the winger's hands to score.

With 8. Harinoroduy being a lineout expert, France could play Sea Bass as a running lock and run he did. He had one run along touch that had some of the greenbacks gasping to keep up with him. His best game for a while. The back three played well too, especially fullback Poitrenaud.

It's hard to pick who played the best for Ireland, Heaslip apart, because nobody had a bad game, but despite kicking too much early, Kearney threw another glove down to challenge Lee Byrne for the Lions fullback job. Have you ever seen two fellows who can field the high ball better than these two chaps are doing? Another young gun, Luke Fitzgerald, was doing his Denis Hickie impersonations on the wing and fizzing round the park on attack and defence. The old gun BOD had a top game too.

But it was the pigs up front that underwrote the whole victory and although the ebb and flow applied in all the forward contests too, the Irish flow was better with the Ireland captain and Assistant Referee Paul O'Connell leading the way as usual. Better lineouts helped too.

The French won't be looking in the mirror and asking themselves what went wrong. Better discipline would have helped but they would know two things: that they played well and that they were beaten by a very good team.

 

[PhucNgo]

Ireland 30, France 21

But Ireland, who have wavered at the money end of test matches in the past and especially against France, finished the game better and the turning point came in the last quarter after an Ireland maul near the line which was pulled down to a ruck. The ball was dished out wide to the right and centre D'Arcy from the bench, and from recent injury wilderness, stepped inside the drifters and stronged his way over. Stronged? It will do.

As recommended in Jack Gibson's "A Commentator's Guide to Sporting English" :lmao: