I can’t find a thread for International Rugby.
Congratulations to Ireland 
for winning the Six Nations Cup against a valiant Scotland side:scotland:. Commiserations 
, your time will come!
I hope I got the flag right, i always get confused with Ireland and Ivory Coast flags
I cannot see it - sadly…
They’ve got some big buggers in the French team…
Indeed but the English team have had their Weetabix also!
What is it with rugby players and weird moustaches…
There’s no equivalent in rugby to Liverpool and City winning every game like a couple of years ago. That’s why b2b grand slams has never been done. We were always gonna lose a game at some point and England deserved it last week.
Back to back 6Ns is a brilliant achievement in itself. No country has got 3 in a row……
Yep that’s Eire. Think Italian flag with carrots not Bolognese.
That’s a good analogy. I get confused with the Ivory Coast one and Irish one, their colours are reverse I think.
There’s plenty of folk here make that mistake!
I honestly hope not. Realistically though I’m not so sure. It’s been an odd championship with some unexpected results but I think the standard has been ok. Apart from France who have been off for sure. Not quite where teams were 12 months ago but still a decent way there.
Wales were poor today and credit to Italy they were not only good but looks as though they had figured out the patterns. That’s not good and when you compound that with a side that doesn’t have many powerful ball carriers we were in trouble from the off.
I don’t know where we go from here. To me the logical solution is to move the ball quicker but the players don’t appear to have the skill set for that.
On tour…
Hmm, not sure I agree with Warburton here. He ignores the elephant in the room which is the structure of the game in Wales. Investing in the top works if the structure is bang on in capturing and developing young players. It isn’t. The last 20 years the WRU has invested at the top and it’s created the hole we now find ourselves in.
I agree that Wales need to look at the squad and develop players or a method of getting more go forward ball but short term isn’t going to deliver anything right now.
I think this is basically an emotional reaction to Rees-Zammit walking away for a more lucrative sport.
The obvious fallacy he makes is comparing Arsenal, a single club, to a national federation. Would anyone seriously argue that England should be prioritizing their national team versus deepening the overall talent pool, improving the standards of coaching - and over the last 10 years or so, developing different types of players than they traditionally have?
The fundamental problem is that the return on investment into a national squad is often based on a very flat curve. They are players who are at or near the peak of their powers with not much scope for improvement.
100%. There’s hardly even a link between Arsenal or any other PL club and England.
I think it’s also a little ignorant to “forget” that every club in the league is looking for the next superstar. With transfer fees where they are it’s in everyone’s interest to develop their own.
Ordinarily I would agree, but I think the RZ issue cannot be ignored and treated as a one off, and people close enough to the senior group to know the perspectives of the players should be taken seriously.
I think the culture of rugby is so strong in Wales that you’ll always have a large group of young players involved, and the fact the game lacks a class component that it traditionally has in the other home nations means I would bet money that there is more overlap for the best 15 year olds in the country in football and rugby. I certainly experienced a considerable amount of that overlap on my path through both pipelines in my youth. When you ask what you need to do to give those players the best chance of making it to the top level there are undoubtedly structural issues to address, but you cannot overlook that in Wales a significant amount of that pool removes themselves because it just isnt as appealing. Rugby is never going to be able to compete with football’s riches, but they definitely need to think hard about what is on offer at the end of the path for those who choose rugby. You’re never going to be able to compete with the money football has and you cannot just throw money at the players at the top, but there are so many structural issues in the game in wales, ones where it is not necessarily money that is the limiting factor. I think it’s more a case of competing interests and lack of joined up thinking, the sort where adding money to it before working out those issues is going to be as beneficial to the senior game as just setting the money on fire.
This is bang on.
Might make things more interesting, perhaps, but will these changes improve the game?
Nope.
Reducing the number of substitutions? Yes that will help. It will stop mass change of forwards that have driven the game more into a power bracket. Players will need to last the 80 minutes. Scrum safety will need to be looked at though. You can’t have uncontested scrums.
Otherwise I’m not convinced. Currently, defenses are dominant to the point where kicking occurs because the speed of ball recycling has slowed considerably or the gain line is not being broken. Often both. I can’t think of anyway if changing that other than making players tired .
I don’t see speeding scrum half’s up making much of a change but the deep kick tennis needs rules changes.
I’m not convinced that big changes are needed from an entertainment perspective. The World Cup and 6N were full of brilliant games. Far more entertaining than the amateur era.
In relation to safety I think more change is welcome. My best memories of school were playing rugby but I do have some reluctance about encouraging my kids to play, given what we know now about the impact on the brain