Happy Ulsterman tonight. We were outstanding but Toulouse were poor at the same time.

Lets hope that Begle-Bordeaux continue that theme later on…

Dan Carter’s Racing debut today against Northampton, 14-0 after 20 mins

Carter’s playing alongside the best player in the world? 😆

Glad someone else spotted that! One day, just one day, I’d love to see a ref look at a player doing that and, without uttering a word, just slap them around the chops. Then say, “Shut up. I’m the ref here!”. Clive Norling would have done that.

😀

Also – Chuckles…[/url]

Clive Norling ran the line in one if the first games with a miked up ref. Ref walks over to him to ask about something and the TV commentary filled with something like “Well that *®°¥* in the yellow &$()ing punched him in $!/:+ing gob and he ]«%\ing lamped ‘im back. °¥{¡ing send the `·|]er off and we can all_[«]ing well carry on with this =[<\ing game….” to stunned silence in the studio followed by abject apologies. 😆

Glasgow more like the team they were last year,Scarlets are as well!

Jones has had a complete clear-out. I feel for Mike Catt but I cannot believe there was talk Farrel might stay for a year for “continuity” 😯 what continuity of lidicrous selection and protecting daddies boy ?

TOUL v LEI is an odd match. TOL should be cruising here esp with LEI stupid yellow cards. Given the TOUL quality and home advantage, the should have put this beyond LEI reach. LEI doing well do stay in this!!

Sexton having a bit of a cuachmar!

Rowntree, Catt & Farrell gone, Borthwick (Forwards/Line out) and Gustard (Defense) in.

http://www.skysports.com/rugby-union/news/12504/10100091/andy-farrell-mike-catt-and-graham-rowntree-leave-england

*shrug* The implication at least is there.

Nah, he’ll go. All contracts have a break clause. One coach won’t be tied up for more than the RFU can afford.

Eddie Jones is a decent backs coach, but a decent, proven attack coach would be a good idea. No idea where to get one though, Will Greenwood doesn’t have any experience does he?

Not sure Alex King is a better choice than Catt who is a world cup winner and has club coaching and international experience (and I have a bias as King is ex Britol Uni). From what I read Jone’s speciality is attack so perhaps he wants to run that himself. Will Greenwood was a great player and is now a TV pundit, not a candidate IMHO.

Sadly Rob “Mr Teflon” Andrew is still raking in his £500k 😐

You mean he was part of a world cup winning team? My memories of Catt is of individualism that went slight awry – the “right” kicks that never quite worked, being steamrollered by Lomu and so on, never of individual brilliance that made scores for others or himself, such as the Conrad Smiths and Gitaeu’s of this world bring to their teams. He never unequivocally brought that to the England setup IMO.

Quite. He had some ideas and took some risks. Like I said though, apart from an excellent period of kicking in a vs Wales game, a big break for England (cant remember the game) within which he didn’t pass then fluffed the attempted release, what is there? Certainly he’d be in the “nearlyman” rather than “all star” crowd for me.

FWIW his fault or theirs, in the main the current/prior set England backs play just he did – slightly beyond thier ability to do anything with any stardom quality.

From what I’d read Catt lost the players a bit over his tiff with Cipriani, which is saying something! Apparently the players defended Cips and I think it’s game over from a coaches point of view if youve lost the players.

I’d also heard about Alex King but then heard conflicting stuff about Eddie wanting to be a bit more hands on with regards to attack. Saints attack isn’t anything to write home about at the moment though but I imagine Eddie will have a very good idea of how he wants to do and if King is attack coach he’ll have to finf a game to fit that.

Be interesting to see what Eddie does with regards to the squad, as far as I’m aware the EPS agreement means he can’t have a wholesale clear out but we’ve not got many retirees to replace either. 12 still seems a bit of an issue with quite a few decent EQ players knocking about in the AP but not many actually demanding selection.

Jones stated early on that the gameplan will be selected to fit the players talents. It won’t be a cookie cutter approach.

If Daly doesn’t make the EPS it’ll be a travesty. Maybe Eastmond, but why play a bath backline? It’s no better than Saints at present, to borrow ekuls’ logic. In fact, the most potent player in the bath backs at present is bananaman.
I reckon there will be some surprises, which will undoubtedly be met with howling derision until game time.

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