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Leinster trounce Scarlets to reclaim leadership of Pro12

Leinster scrum-half Luke McGrath

Leinster stormed back to the top of the Pro12 summit on Saturday with a 45-9 thrashing of Scarlets.

Ospreys had briefly taken over as leaders courtesy of their win at Edinburgh 24 hours earlier, but Leinster showed no sign of feeling the pressure as they romped to a bonus-point victory at the RDS.

Scrum-half Luke McGrath crossed twice inside the first quarter and, although three Dan Jones penalties initially kept the visitors in touch, Scarlets were blown away after the interval.

Rhys Ruddock and Ed Byrne each crossed either side of a brace for Joey Carbery as Leinster ran in four tries in 10 minutes. Jamison Gibson-Park added a seventh touchdown in the last minute.

Third-placed Munster left it late to secure a 23-13 win at Cardiff Blues.

Cardiff led by 10 points when Steve Shingler converted Aled Summerhill’s 48th-minute score, but tries from Francis Salli and Conor Oliver turned things around.

Oliver’s score came with three minutes remaining, just after Rory Scannell had booted a drop goal to put Munster ahead for the first time.

Glasgow Warriors thumped the struggling Dragons 47-17 at Scotstoun in Saturday’s other fixture.

The Scottish side fell behind to a Rynard Landman try and were only four points to the good at the interval, before running away with the game in the second half.

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J
JW 1 hour ago
Why England's defence of the realm has crumbled without Felix Jones

This piece is nothing more than the result of revisionist fancy of Northern Hemisphere rugby fans. Seeing what they want to see, helped but some surprisingly good results and a desire to get excited about doing something well.


I went back through the 6N highlights and sure enough in every English win I remembered seeing these exact holes on the inside, that are supposedly the fallout out of a Felix Jones system breaking down in the hands of some replacement. Every time the commentators mentioned England being targeted up the seam/around the ruck or whatever. Each game had a try scored on the inside of the blitz, no doubt it was a theme throughout all of their games. Will Jordan specifically says that Holland had design that move to target space he saw during their home series win.


Well I'm here to tell you they were the same holes in a Felix Jones system being built as well. This woe is now sentiment has got to stop. The game is on a high, these games have been fantastic! It is Englands attack that has seen their stocks increase this year, and no doubt that is what SB told him was the teams priority. Or it's simply science, with Englands elite players having worked towards a new player welfare and management system, as part of new partnership with the ERU, that's dictating what the players can and can't put their bodies through.


The only bit of truth in this article is that Felix is not there to work on fixing his defence. England threw away another good chance of winning in the weekend when they froze all enterprise under pressure when no longer playing attacking footy for the second half. That mindset helped (or not helped if you like) of course by all this knee jerk, red brained criticism.

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