How Franco Smith rationalised Glasgow's painful loss to Ulster

SA are building depth, but that isn't a choice they are making in order to build for bigger and better things, but a necessary response to having an extremely old squad.

We have advantages in Ireland and the home nations with retaining talent but they've the luxury of playing euro comps too either tier 1 or tier 2. The 4 Irish provinces are basically guaranteed European club rugby every season which can be a little unfair.

I think the ABs biggest problem is just their recent history. The cycle from 2011-2016/17 was just insane. 2015 was probably the best squad in the sports history. They were probably even the best team in professional sport. It's almost unfair to compare current teams with them.

They'll get there, chief. It's not like their starting in the gutter it's just fine tuning. They do need a proper 9-10 axis, quick. All the big guns have world class 9-10s now.

We've had their number in recent years (outside of world cups!!!) but it's just because we get to play them more often. I think it's 10 times in the last ten years. Whereas it took us decades to get our first run of 10 games against them. The game is just getting closer generally which has to be good.

Can't wait for the last weekend of fixtures. Six more sleeps!!!!

Be good bro, talk soon.

Add Sam Darry, who while not ready to start yet, is getting valuable experience off the bench and will be pushing hard for a starting spot in 2025.

I’m sure on the EOYT in November, there will be a couple more young players pushing for starting spots- Peter Lakai and Reuben Love.

That will be 7 young players under 24 in the first season of the 2027 RWC cycle introduced to test rugby which in fairness is a great start to regeneration.

Unfortunately that will probably be ALB, who with the exception of a brilliant test vs Fiji, has been mediocre coming off the bench and has noticeably lost pace.

I would love to see AJ Lam, Thomas Umaga-Jensen, or Levi Aumua called into the EOYT tour squad to provide a hard running, crashball 12 who can dominate.