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No English or Welsh players in unofficial Six Nations XV

By PA
Finn Russell and Jack Dempsey celebrate during a Guinness Six Nations match between Scotland and Wales at BT Murrayfield, on February 11, 2023, in Edinburgh, Scotland. (Photo by Ross Parker/SNS Group via Getty Images)

The PA news agency have compiled their Guinness Six Nations team of the tournament. It includes sevens Irish Grand Slammers, as well as four Frenchmen, three Scots and an Italian.

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Full-back: Hugo Keenan (Ireland): Edges his rivals in a highly competitive position. Excels in defence and attack.

Right wing: Damian Penaud (France): Finished as the highest try-scorer with five and oozes class with the ball in hand.

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Outside centre: Huw Jones (Scotland): Most dangerous centre in the tournament, possessing the athleticism to capitalise on his sharp lines.

Inside centre: Gael Fickou (France): Played at 13 but equally comfortable at 12. So influential on both sides of the ball.

Left wing: Mack Hansen (Ireland): Named man of the match twice. Not the biggest but his rugby instincts are so sharp.

Fly-half: Finn Russell (Scotland): Missed the last game through injury but had already demonstrated his genius.

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Scrum-half: Antoine Dupont (France): The world’s best player finished the tournament with a bang and at times was unplayable against England.

Loosehead prop: Pierre Schoeman (Scotland): A relentless carrier for Scotland and the cornerstone of their pack.

Hooker: Dan Sheehan (Ireland): Dynamic hooker whose two ties against England sealed his world class status.

Tighthead prop: Finlay Bealham (Ireland): Deputised for Tadhg Furlong and covered himself in glory.

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Second row: James Ryan (Ireland): The complete lock forward just keeps getting better – and he is still only 26.

Second row: Thibaud Flament (France): Les Bleus hardly missed the brilliant Cameron Woki thanks to Flament’s blockbuster form.

Blindside flanker: Sebastian Negri (Italy): In a position that demands high work rate, no one grafts harder than Negri.

Openside flanker: Josh Van der Flier (Ireland): Even with a target on his back the world player of the year excelled.

Number eight: Caelan Doris (Ireland): Gregory Alldritt finished strongly but Doris had already taken the Six Nations by storm.

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J
JW 2 hours ago
Does South Africa have a future in European competition?

I rated Lowe well enough to be an AB. Remember we were picking the likes of George Bridge above such players so theres no disputing a lot of bad decisions have been made by those last two coaches. Does a team like the ABs need a finicky winger who you have to adapt and change a lot of your style with to get benefit from? No, not really. But he still would have been a basic improvement on players like even Savea at the tail of his career, Bridge, and could even have converted into the answer of replacing Beauden at the back. Instead we persisted with NMS, Naholo, Havili, Reece, all players we would have cared even less about losing and all because Rieko had Lowe's number 11 jersey nailed down.


He was of course only 23 when he decided to leave, it was back in the beggining of the period they had started retaining players (from 2018 onwards I think, they came out saying theyre going to be more aggressive at some point). So he might, all of them, only just missed out.


The main point that Ed made is that situations like Lowe's, Aki's, JGP's, aren't going to happen in future. That's a bit of a "NZ" only problem, because those players need to reach such a high standard to be chosen by the All Blacks, were as a country like Ireland wants them a lot earlier like that. This is basically the 'ready in 3 years' concept Ireland relied on, versus the '5 years and they've left' concept' were that player is now ready to be chosen by the All Blacks (given a contract to play Super, ala SBW, and hopefully Manu).


The 'mercenary' thing that will take longer to expire, and which I was referring to, is the grandparents rule. The new kids coming through now aren't going to have as many gp born overseas, so the amount of players that can leave with a prospect of International rugby offer are going to drop dramatically at some point. All these kiwi fellas playing for a PI, is going to stop sadly.


The new era problem that will replace those old concerns is now French and Japanese clubs (doing the same as NRL teams have done for decades by) picking kids out of school. The problem here is not so much a national identity one, than it is a farm system where 9 in 10 players are left with nothing. A stunted education and no support in a foreign country (well they'll get kicked out of those countries were they don't in Australia).


It's the same sort of situation were NZ would be the big guy, but there weren't many downsides with it. The only one I can think was brought up but a poster on this site, I can't recall who it was, but he seemed to know a lot of kids coming from the Islands weren't really given the capability to fly back home during school xms holidays etc. That is probably something that should be fixed by the union. Otherwise getting someone like Fakatava over here for his last year of school definitely results in NZ being able to pick the cherries off the top but it also allows that player to develop and be able to represent Tonga and under age and possibly even later in his career. Where as a kid being taken from NZ is arguably going to be worse off in every respect other than perhaps money. Not going to develop as a person, not going to develop as a player as much, so I have a lotof sympathy for NZs case that I don't include them in that group but I certainly see where you're coming from and it encourages other countries to think they can do the same while not realising they're making a much worse experience/situation.

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