Wrecker, thanks. I suppose the distinction I am making is between an instinctive reaction, lashing out in anger if you will, and a deliberate attempt to injure. As you say, the Clark incident looks very much like the latter.

Neither are acceptable, but the former is, at least, understandable.

Richard Cockerill has commented that the whole squad is disappointed by how it happened, and it has cast a shadow over winning the cup.

He admits that that most have done some things they shouldn’t have done on the pitch, but that was as bad as anything he has seen.

CaptainFlashheart – Member

Throwing a punch in a game, if as a reaction to something (perceived or actual) is a visceral reaction that can be understood. It should, of course, be punished by the game appropriately. I don’t see a retaliation punch as being a criminal offence, however.

Deliberately just laying in to someone because you feel like it, however? Now that is a far more serious thing. Far more serious.

Breaking someone’s arm backwards is very much teetering on the edge of having to call the police in.

I agree with the punching comment but don’t know if involving police is the best thing in professional sport.

Glitcheroo!

I agree with the punching comment but don’t know if involving police is the best thing in professional sport.

I’d say that’s true as long as everyone behaves like professionals. In this case he acted like a yob and committed an unprovoked assault upon someone. I would hope the CPS are viewing the footage with a view to deciding whether to proceed with a case.

It’s no longer professional sport when you wait a second after the whistle and then take two attempts to break a bloke’s arm.

Cynical and cowardly thuggery. 12 month ban hopefully.

OK you’re in a pub

And you witness a scrap with a few punches getting thrown, you’d think what??…..

If one guy had the other pinned down on the floor and pulled his arm back with the intention of doing some damage, then what would you think??….

That’s really shocking.

There are a few players who should have very, very long bans and as a result i tend to want their teams to loose more than most. London Irish, for example.

Tell you what he needs out of rubgy altogether, what a tosser. Would like to see him try the headbutting with Jim Hamilton.

RFU confirmed he has been cited, hearing is on Monday 26th

Bloody hell, he is a complete tool, never ever ever should he see a pitch again in his life.

Let’s get back to something positive. Let’s see what a REAL number 6 does. Note the lack of arm-breaking…Just good old fashioned ankle biting! 🙂

Lydiate.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/rugby-union/17465020

Awesome display on Saturday, and worthy winner of the player of the tournament.

Agreed. Comes across as a nice bloke as well.

Nice one Flashman he seemed to beat France on his own 😀

I thought that they had cloned him on Sat,what a player.

Was looking at the summer tour down under fixtures for all the home unions.

What’s going on with Scotland? They were supposed to play one test with the Wallabies followed by games with Fiji and Samoa.

Now I see they still have the Australia game, on Tuesday 5th June, in Newcastle and then against The Cook Islands on 12th June(?). The Aussies have a three test series against Wales starting on 9th June so the Tuesday fixture is surely going to be a run out for the reserves?

Is this a refelection of Scotland’s poor standing – down to 12th in the IRB rankings? Wal/Ire/Eng have 3 test series against Aus/NZ/SA and Scotland get the Aussie mid-week side and the Cook Islands?

Dunno- can’t see anything elsewhere about fixtures.

Scotland summer tour was only ever supposed to be one tie against a big team.

One big team?

Australia 2nd Xv or the Cook Islands? Which is it? 😉

Aus seconds 🙂

I think it’s more a reflection of where they want to go on holiday, the ideal place to stop if you’re coming back to UK via the pacific route.
One of the nicest places in the world (in my biased opinion – had part of my honeymoon there) but still rugby mad. I know which summer tour I’d love to go on. 🙂
The national team’s more of a village side though, with total population of about 20000. I guess the Scots want to try to restore a bit of confidence, but I’ll definitely be wearing my CI Rugby shirt that day.
Maybe after seeing how Manu and Faletau have done they’re treating it as a bit of a scouting trip.

Do we have some Autum tests too?

At least we might have a chance against the Cook Islands!!

As long as its the Aussi under 18 team i might stick 20p on Scotland.

That fixtures list is nice, would be good to have a table of what channels will be showing what games..

Interview with Adam in Times

There are a couple of things about Adam Jones that you do not expect to hear from someone who has played 80 times for Wales as a tight-head prop, the most unforgiving of positions. This is a player, lest we forget, who has also won two caps for the Lions and, after the victory over France last Saturday, has become one of the select few to play his part in three grand-slam triumphs. 

For a start, although he is one of the finest tight-heads in the game, capable of absorbing a frightening amount of force as the cornerstone of the scrum, he says he is not actually that strong. 

“I’m quite strong maybe, but not much more than that,” he says. “Some of the backs are stronger than me.” 

Quite an admission, perhaps one you can make only when you have three grand slams under your belt. And Jones also feels that he would have been better equipped to take on the world’s finest front rows if he had inherited more of his mother’s confrontational character. 

“I’m not particularly aggressive,” he says. “If I’d got my mother’s aggression, I might not have been a bad player.” 

The importance of a top-class tight-head prop was illustrated vividly last weekend during England’s victory over Ireland, when Tom Court, normally a loose-head, was pressed into service as a replacement tight-head when Mike Ross was injured. The Ireland set-piece splintered as a result. 

Earlier that afternoon, Jones had been savouring the adulation of a euphoric home crowd and looking up to find his mother, June — “she’s mad as a hatter, I’d never watch a rugby match with her” — and his father, Alwyn, in the stands. Over the past ten months, since the birth of his daughter, Isla, Jones has paused to consider how his parents must have felt in the early stages of his career, when derision rather than delight rained down from the stands in his direction. 

In those days, Jones invariably was seen as unfit, overweight and, on occasions, he was humiliatingly replaced before half-time by Steve Hansen, the former head coach. 

“When I think how strongly I feel about my daughter now, and what I’d think if anybody said anything about her, I can’t imagine what it must have been like for my parents at the start of my career,” he said yesterday. “I know my mum is still a bit bitter about parts of it. But I’ve played for the Lions, I’ve won three grand slams, so thankfully it’s gone full circle now.” 

The battle against gaining weight is one that Jones, 31, continues to fight. An internet search for his vital statistics reveals several different weights, ranging from 18st 12lb to 20st. He is happy to provide the correct figure, a perfectly acceptable 19st 4lb, even after a night of suitably substantial celebration in Cardiff on Saturday night. While some of the other Wales players kept the party going on Sunday, Jones returned home to his wife, Nicole, for her first Mother’s Day with their daughter. Tomorrow, he plays for the Ospreys in their RaboDirect Pro12 game away to Leinster. 

But when he made his international debut, in 2003, rugby shirts were getting tighter and Jones did not suit the look. The criticism stung, but did not spur him on to improve his fitness. “It had the opposite effect,” he said. “I must have put a stone on, eating and drinking. I’m pretty sensitive and sometimes take things to heart too much. Ask my wife, she’s always telling me to man up.” 

The turning point, he says, came with the arrival in 2008 of Warren Gatland, as head coach, and Craig White, his conditioning coach. 

“I’d been plodding along, I was a big lump, but Warren told me that if I wasn’t a certain weight, I wouldn’t get picked,” Jones said. “Craig realised I was an emotional person. If I weighed myself and was a bit heavy, he wouldn’t speak to me. Because I classed him as a mate, that would annoy me. I wanted him to talk to me again.” 

Nowadays, Jones finds that he can keep the weight down when he is in camp with Wales, but not when he is left to his own devices. He has a sweet tooth and there has also been the beer, which was rather more integral to the development of a rugby player in Jones’s youth than it is to Sam Warburton and George North today. 

“When I was in the youth teams, you’d easily have ten or 15 beers after a game,” he said. Jones has witnessed the arrival in the Wales squad of “some freakishly talented athletes” produced by the regions’ academies, but remains thankful that, in his own formative years with Abercrave, in the upper Swansea valley, he benefited from a broader rugby education. 

“I remember my first game, we played Cwmafan, I’d turned 18 the day before,” he said. “I was scrumming against this old fella. First scrum, I got the hit and thought, ‘this isn’t too bad’. 

At the next scrum, as I hit him, he just let me go down and kneed me flat-out in the face. Back in the changing room after the game, I was putting my face back together and this guy walks through the door. He pulls out two cans of beer from behind his back, shakes my hand, we sat down and had a chat. He said, ‘I thought you’d bust my neck that first scrum’. I’m not sure the younger boys get to play these types of guys any more.” 

With a third grand slam to his credit, two goals remain for Jones — to reach 100 caps for Wales and to tour Australia with the Lions next summer. His competition at tight-head will include Dan Cole, of England. 

“I don’t think there’s been a tight-head as dominant as he’s been at the age of 24,” Jones said. “You learn a lot as you get older. I was speaking to Brendan Rodgers [the Swansea City manager] and he said that if they came across a wall, the younger boys in his squad would run through it, the older boys would look for a way around it.” 

Jones has been around the block a few times himself and, for a while yet, he looks likely to remain as the foundation stone of the Wales scrum.Reply With Quote
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Nice one a-a, don’t usually see the times ‘cos of the paywall thingy.
Comes across as a decent fella, like Lydiate did the other day. Good role models can only be good for the future of Welsh rugby.

Callum Clark suspended by Northampton

Sale on at the RFU store;
http://store.rfu.com/stores/rfu/products/product_browse.aspx?category|category_root|16547=Sale&category|cat_16547|28596=RBS+6+Nations+Sale&portal=NU52QSKK&DCMP=EMC-RFUNU52QSKK
Hmmm, a black england shirt may be on the cards.
No wales shirts though (for obvious reasons).

I see Danny Care is assisting in police enquiries into a sexual assault on the night he took a slash against a hotel.

I hope he screws the nut personally as it’s pretty sad to see a talented lad fall from grace. On that note there was an interesting piece on sky sports about andypowell return to form

RFU dumping Nike as kit sponsor and going with Canterbury.

Danny Care is going right off the rails hope someone can get hold of him and save his career.

RFU dumping Nike as kit sponsor and going with Canterbury.

Good news, I like Canterbury kit. The Wasps shirt is rather nice.

Re Callum Clark – He shouldn’t be in professional Rugby. Clearly a lunatic thug bringing disrepute into the game, with no remorse for his clearly deliberate actions.

Danny Care – run of the mill “starlet” – pumped up by the “support” and media, and unable to handle the attention/lack of following a fall from grace. Like Britney Spears, he needs help before he too exits Rugby.

Re Callum Clark – He shouldn’t be in professional any form of Rugby. Clearly a lunatic thug bringing disrepute into the game, with no remorse for his clearly deliberate actions.

FTFY.

Agree re Care as well. Hope he can get sorted.

Has Lancaster got the job then?

And is it really a conspiracy theory that Cipriani’s been brought back under the alledged best man-management management team in the league’s to see if he can be prepared for RWC 2015? or just a fact?

[Conspiracy theory]

BOD has retired, he’s not injured.

[/Conspiracy theory]

Bod looking fairly unretired playing tonight.

Was a wind up! Hoping to tempt Darcy back…! 😉

The Os are getting it handed to them by the ref, IMO. First half pens were certainly questionable.

First pen in second was a complete joke. Bloody irish refs.

Its painful watching Shitsgibbon ref this game.

Tip tackle? bit harsh.

Great news England going with Cantebury, great kit (I ride in their base layers) and a real rugby brand.

Henno Dirksen – Mentalist.

He looks for contact as if he’s a Samoan or something! A name to watch for the future…!