Six nations.

[G.F]

Originally Posted by suzublu

Where's that Irish bloke

Hahaha!

Great game eh andymc?

[stevestrat]

Originally Posted by trikey

Egg chasing... Never got it

Rugby kinda runs in the family. My father played for Hawick, was getting a trial for Scotland but a back injury ended his playing. I played but never got above the playing for the school level. A game would kill me now!

[jackatesme]

Got to say impressive display from England.

[stevestrat]

Originally Posted by jackatesme

Got to say impressive display from England.

Trouble is we'll never hear the end of it

[jackatesme]

Originally Posted by stevestrat

Trouble is we'll never hear the end of it

I take the Daily Mail: 6 Nations, England and 5 others.

[andymc]

Originally Posted by suzublu

Where's that Irish bloke

Ha!! Enjoy it, ya lig. I watched it in the pub, only home an hour or so. England fully deserved that, no question - I was saying to my mate after only half an hour that I didn't see us winning this one. England essentially brought Ireland's own game plan of accurate boxkicking, massive pressure and huge competitiveness at the ruck and delivered it better than we did. Thought you were lucky shortly before your second try not to have possession turned over when we had your ball carrier held up for ages, but it wouldn't have changed the result. Murray's passing was way below par (he missed the first three months of the season with a neck/shoulder issue and I hope it hasn't recurred) and that killed our momentum, at least 6 times by my count. The decision to return Henshaw to the 15 slot when he hadn't played there since his debut 5 years ago was clearly made with a view to getting him ready for Japan rather than this game, as there were at least two other candidates who would have been more capable and with much more recent experience there than him. For me, that's symptomatic of a reluctance to look beyond anyone but Kearney at full back that I've been banging on about for several years, and it came back to bite us today. Joe's a great coach, but has his blind spots as a selector!

Still and all, today will stand to the players and coaches. No harm to get a kick up the behind every now & then in case you start believing your own hype. Between us & yourselves it's honours even over the past 8 years, with one Grand Slam and two other championships between us - the leek-eaters will be hoping to catch up this year!

[jackatesme]

A GOOD win for Ireland,another scrappy win for Wales.

[jackatesme]

To all my Irish friends,see you next week.Hope you have a good game plan.

[andymc]

I think it'll be a fascinating game, the pick of the weekend for neutral observers. Ireland have finally rediscovered some of our cohesion and put in a phenomenal demonstration of patience, dominance and control yesterday against a French side which many people thought was finally starting to click. To be honest, we could and probably should have had a couple more tries and I really struggled to understand how the second French try was awarded when the ball couldn't be grounded ...! Still, it was a comfortable enough winning margin and a couple of younger/less experienced lads acquitted themselves admirably, especially the replacement halfbacks.

Wales have grown into the competition nicely thanks primarily to an increasingly mean defence, after fairly stuttering wins against France and Scotland. But like Ireland, you are steadily improving and certainly performed a lot better against England than we did. It remains to be seen how much the absence of Liam Williams will affect you in attack (Leigh Halfpenny isn't exactly what you'd call a weakness!) but your pack is like a well-oiled machine right now, a tight group who know each other very well and are very difficult to crack. Of course, with a grand slam on the line and a massive home advantage in the MillStad, it's hard to see past a win for the Daffy Taffs but I'll be delirious if Ireland actually manage to upset your applecart.

On another note, Ireland's U20 side managed to win that championship outright on Friday night with a game in hand, after another stonking performance against a physically massive French side, many of whom are already regularly playing Top14 rugby. It was a fantastic display and gives me great optimism for the future of Irish rugby. Hope we can manage our own grand slam in that competition against Wales U20 this Friday evening - we lost our scrumhalf, one of our best performers of the tournament and a key member of the side, to an ankle injury late in the game and he's unlikely to feature, so that will certainly make the job harder for us. Game will be broadcast on S4C in the UK - don't miss it!

[andymc]

Well, the first part of the mission has been accomplished - Ireland U20 are the Grand Slam Champions for 2019!!!


That's the outcome after a game in which we fell behind twice and had two first half tries disallowed, ending up 3 points behind with 5 minutes to go on 17-14 before finally turning over Welsh possession and scoring a try to pull back in front. The conversion for that one came off the post, so it was a fraught final few minutes, especially when Wales got a penalty which just sailed wide. Then in the dying moments Ireland scored once more to finish 17-26, with a try bonus point to boot. Credit to the Welsh boys, they made a real game of it and led 10-0 at one point in the first half. Their no. 14 would give Usain Bolt a run for his money, he tortured our defence all night.

So with the young lads having secured a Grand Slam, hopefully the seniors will be able to prevent one tomorrow. Still think the odds for that game are in Wales' favour as I reckon we're noticeably weaker at 7, 18 and especially 15, so I'm not exactly brimming with confidence. But hopefully we'll be able to bring our form from our game against France into Cardiff tomorrow.