'This sport is shrinking': England prop Marler pens magazine letter

‘While his involvements are incredibly high, rarely does Blackadder win collisions against other international-level forwards with the ball in hand, even losing his side momentum with his carries when propelled backward.’

I would love to see Ardie at 7. I think right now he’s the only 7 we’ve got who is at or above the level of the best 7s internationally, guys like McWreight and Morgan. With Sititi as our first choice 8, that leaves our perennial post-Kaino problem - who’s going to play at 6? If Sititi is a genuine line out option (he was used that way last year), could we get away with a shorter, defensive oriented, breakdown savvy 6, like Papali’i, or maybe Jacobson? Or do we keep looking for a tight/loose beast with genuine line out ability? I would like to see Barrett (particularly with the quality of genuinely big locks coming through, like Holland and Darry and Lord) given some extended time there, and also Ah Kuoi, but Super Rugby is not conducive to that - you can get away with small locks.

Great greed reference, Rassie has his hands on South Africa’s rugby revival, or is leading it, and is not willing to let it stop or become complacent.

There is no doubt that Rassie is working his magic and I’d say you’re bang on the money that you’ve identified a coherent plan centred on delivering Bok success in ‘27. That said, I suspect the details around Jones and Walters England departures weren’t planned in quite the way they unfolded. Still much water to flow under the bridge but you wouldn’t bet against Rassie and the Boks with confidence, even at this early stage!

Listening to you, ireland and their fans are sainted angels who can do no wrong. I don’t think so. And neither does anyone else on here, apart from a couple of other one eyed Irish fans ofc.

Acceptance is the first step, and always the toughest. Enjoy the ride!

But it is a ‘boardroom’ metric rather than a fan centric concept like BIP!

And FYI ‘clock ticking when there’s no action’ is not included in BIP time

Are you saying a team is not counted as being in ‘possession’ of the ball unless say, lets come up with another random concept to clarify their term, there is also a risk of that ‘possession’ being turned over?

The difference here obviously a team has possession of the ball when they have advantage and play needs to be stopped, but theres obviously no ‘risk’ to that possession being lost until, you know, play starts again!

But seriously when it comes to the differentiation being made, and what I’d been saying for years now, I actually think that yes, both games would be classified as high temp. 6N and SR alike. That these two on the show don’t want to admit that isn’t a reason to say neither is high tempo just because one isn’t faster than the other.

You forgot Bulls v Glasgow? I have a certain ‘fog’ around missing RWC years as well..

I like your solutions, especially considering that if body type can revert back to what it was even a decade ago, it’s going to remove a lot of the ‘safety’ problems from some of those key positional areas.

Something that I would really like to see test, theoretically or otherwise, is the impact of speeding up the game by making interchanges unlimiited. If the current trend of not allowing medical evalutations to take place live on the field can continue, then this solution would be unnecessary of course.