L'Italie sans Gallagher contre l'Irlande

Ted Hill and Tom Willis will get more opportunities, but were dropped for this game in order to really target wales at the breakdown. Neither have been especially hard done by.

Henry Pollock was arguably the best u20s player in the world last year, and has since gone on to be a really key player for Northampton this season. Timmins and James have had great u20 six nations this year, but neither have played a single minute of senior rugby. Pollock’s selection has nothing to do with the u20 6N, as evidenced by the fact that he was in the senior squad before the 6N kicked off. In fact, the fact that he’s mostly been in the senior squad explains his good but not outstanding performances for the u20s.

“Hopefully the Welsh can put us out of our misery and bring the shambolic Borthwick era to an end.”

I’m an England fan, so I want England to win. Thankfully they will.

The ONLY reason Ireland lost was because of the cruel draw which had them playing Scotland so shortly before the QF, while the AB’s had so mucĥ time that they could afford to go to the Seychelles for a week of R’nR and return to France playing against the oh so unfairly treated Irish!

And, please, don’t get me started on Ioane! Why, his actions post-game were surely more than enough reason for World Rugby to overturn the result and award the game to Ireland. No sane person can argue against that.

Now I know some of you think that this may be a bit farfetched but surely you must agree that turdflow has tirelessly educated us on these indisputable facts, since just after the final whistle on that Dark Day in France!

I, for one, thank him most sincerely for opening my eyes to the injustices done to not just the Irish team but to the Irish nation as a whole (and Andy Farrell, even if he’s a pom) and for the way that NZ and SA run World Rugby like their own little cabal! Shameful! Shameful, I say!

Believe it when I see it.

Interesting the idea of Fin Smith playing at 12 at some point. Would be cool to see how that goes, doesn't sound utterly ridiculous.

Lastly a stat i’d love to see is tries per line break in a match. Toulouse were above the 50% against Leicester. France are not far off that this year barring the outlier England match. What France/Toulouse are doing after a line break now ti achieve such a high conversion rate bears more looking at.