Dragons lock down Pumas' nine Bertranou

I’d still take Saints over Bath with both on their best day Ed. Bath are good but they are not that good - c.f their result v Leinster compared to Saints.

Needs a season or two solely at club level to learn how to play the sportl as he struggles in almost every aspect of the game.

Shouldn’t be anywhere near the Irish squad, much less the Lions.

Can’t lace Crowley's boots at this stage and pretty much the sole reason Ireland lost the Grand Slam.

To be fair to him though - it is a common problem of the D4 player. Never as good as their thicko supporters tell you they are. They love to spew inordinate amounts of ignorant 💩 - much like the Saffas and the other SH thickos

Purely impressionistically (I do not have your data or powers of analysis NB!), the Reds under Kiss seem to have some of the attacking hallmarks of a JS coached team (i.e., attacking mindset, good set plays, seem to build a lot of attacking rucks?), but I fear they are lacking the discipline/control/mindset which JS seemed to be building with the Wallabies at the end of last year. I hope JS has enough time with the Wallabies, irrespective of his ongoing role, to instil that control/discipline before Kiss comes in.

At risk of flattering the Reds/Wallabies too much, I fear they are at risk of potentially turning into a Scotland-esque team under LK - i.e., attack-oriented, great set plays - but lacking the killer physicality/X factor to beat the top teams? IMO, Australia does not suffer from the same problem Scotland seems to - i.e., lacking the athletes to compete notwithstanding the team being a well-oiled machine. It would be a shame to see our physical ‘resources’ not used properly (e.g. Big will, Tupou, LSL, JAS, Bell, Bobbie V)

You talk about not being in SRP impacting competitiveness, but have no facts to base it off. You only keep highlighting SRP as being far superior and URC being low quality. Based on what? Any metrics or data? No just opinion and an article written by bias journo out to smear rugby teams that aren't NZ. To say URC is worse than SRP because of how the teams fair in the Champions cups when there is no direct comparison to SRP, is opinion not fact. Just because you like watching your team play in the SRP doesn't make it a better comp.

‘but the SA teams couldn't even win the SR back in the day’ yes and? They aren't the same teams as they were in the day, SA’s rugby pathways and development structures have all come along way since the SR (something I wish AU would emulate) and it's not even the same game anymore constant rule changes. Saying they suck because they lost 5 years ago ignores the fact teams can get better and the part that really irks me is that it ignores that there may be a small chance NZ and AU got worse during that time, as all teams do naturally ebb and flow.