Eloise's Thoughts and Fancies

The middle weekend, and this time the weekend when all the home nations play each other, leaving those pesky foreigners to play. A nice bit of xenophobia in the scheduling put the two home nations matches on the same day and left France v Italy to the Sunday. Match Reports Ireland v Wales There is no doubt that Ireland are the class team of this tournament, and they’re going to win at a canter unless there’s a huge upset. Wales, by contrast, are not really in rebuilding so much as building phase. Loads of their players are on fewer than 10 caps. Some on less than 10 senior appearances! Last week, I suggested that it would be a success for Wales if they kept Ireland from scoring a bonus point try, scored some nice tries of their own and kept their penalty count under five. Sadly none of those came to pass. However, Ireland’s bonus point try came with the clock turned red, Wales mounted a number of good attacks, and although they got pinged off the park in the first few minutes, they a...

I’m going to start with a criticism that won’t matter to anyone who isn’t British, but if Eloise (Ellie) grew up anywhere near Redruth, or Jocasta near Manchester, then I’m a virgin fresher. (Wikipedia tells me they’re from New Zealand and Glasgow respectively and clearly they need to do more accent work. Although there’s one scene where I almost fell out of my chair because, having just given up on it, Ellie suddenly sounded at least authentically West Country, if not Cornish.) Having bitched about that, I don’t know if the girl playing Cilla Black was lip-syncing or singing live, but she looked and sounded good. Equally, I don’t remember Jack's (Matt Smith) accent slipping. Sandie (Anya Taylor-Joy) doesn’t say where she’s from, and to me her accent reads like faux-cockney on top of something (I can’t quite place what), but that’s not unreasonable for the time and someone trying to fit in, in London, sound cool, and while her accent meanders a little but stays in that territory wh...

After last week when, arguably, only Ireland put in an 80 minute performance - I’d argue that Italy didn’t so much decline as they were shut down, defensively they kept England in check, but England suddenly stopped their attack - there are lots of questions this week about how each of the others will react. The Matches Scotland v France Last week Scotland showed up for the first half, and the last few minutes. France only showed up for about five minutes. This week, thankfully, both teams turned up, more or less, for most of the 80 minutes. Scotland were probably the better side. Certainly at lineouts they were, but they appeared to make fewer errors and give away fewer penalties as well (the stats support this but it’s not quite as one-sided as I felt it was from watching it. I think the French back row snaffled a lot of turnovers and penalties that didn’t have the same feel but brought the count close). I also wonder just how annoyed the French coaches will be about what seemed to ...

This is an adult fantasy trilogy from Australian author Jay Kristoff. For some reason Australian and New Zealand authors don’t seem to penetrate into the British market all that well so I haven’t come across his work before but this series was recommended to me for its queer content. Across the trilogy we follow Mia Corvere and, to touch on the queer content first, the loves of her life. In book one, that’s a boy but in books two and three it’s a woman. (The books follow her across a few years from age 11 to about 20, her relationship track across young adult into full adulthood so the “boy” is not a child, but another young adult.) Mia is portrayed as loving them both, not necessarily equally but genuinely. She doesn’t label herself with modern labels in her fantasy world, but bi or pan seem to be the likeliest. Her girlfriend seems to only like women so maybe lesbian? But certainly plenty of queer content. As for the setting, this is not quite, but recognisably the Roman Empire. Th...

As is always the case after a World Cup, there’s lots of talk about who has retired (Sexton, Lawes, Atonio - but he unretired, Halfpenny, Williams, Biggar and the list goes on). This year we have some extra fun, with Dupont defecting to 7’s for a year to try and win an Olympic medal, LRZ chasing his NFL dream, and Farrell withdrawing from international rugby to protect his family and then signing for Racing 92 (much to the surprise of most French fans who look at how he plays, how they play and think ‘never the twain shall meet’. Except next year they will.) Every team has it’s injury woes but Wales, in particular, seems extremely hard hit: Jac Morgan, the inspirational captain from the World Cup run is out, but you could put together an arguably better squad from injured players AND a squad from those unavailable for selection due to the ‘playing outside of Wales’ policy that Gatland introduced but now wants to abolish. Match Reports France v Ireland   It’s very tempting to look a...