Eloise's Thoughts and Fancies

South Africa have named a hugely changed side from last week, Italy have to fancy their chances. Tandy et al will be hoping Wales can perform under new management, but missing Morgan thanks to a dislocated shoulder, and the disappointing Irish host the equally disappointing Australians. But some potentially exciting games too… Georgia v Canada Two relative minnows face off to start the weekend. However, Georgia are in 11th place, Canada in 24th, this is a huge mismatch. The commentators kept trying to big up the Canadians but, except for occasionally from set piece, and running empty metres after receiving a kick, they had the penetration of a wet noodle against a brick wall. The Georgian defence didn’t charge up fast by international standards, although faster than the Australians, concentrating on keeping their line straight, but the Canadians just bounced off it. The Georgian scrum was massively dominant, I’m not criticising the refereeing here, but a different referee could have...

This is the first week within the test window, when everyone has their full complement of overseas players. Even Japan. Who got Saito from Toulouse, benefitted from this. These comments are given in the order I watched the games, not the order they occurred. Several clashed and I caught up with them late, so they appear at the bottom of the list. Ireland v Japan The final score will suggest this was an easy win but watching the game says anything that it was but. At half time the Japanese were within a score, and until the last ten minutes or so they were in touch. Some of that was Saito keeping the Japanese attack much sharper than last week, to the surprise of the Irish, who went with a weaker team than last week and weren’t all over the breakdown in the same way that they usually are. But some of it was that the Irish were disjointed in attack as well. Now, in my comments on last week’s games I was forgiving of the AB looking disjointed with changes in personnel. I’m going to cut...

These internationals were played before the official test window began, hence calling it week 0. It made for some odd matchups, with really only New Zealand, Ireland and England playing with their full squads available (barring injuries and so forth), because they have agreements with their domestic leagues about releasing players (or in the case of NZ their domestic season is over) but overseas players do not get released. So Scotland played without Russell, Kinghorne and others, Australia were missing several of their regular starters too, and so on around all the teams. This is going to affect how detailed I go with my comments. Barbarians v All Blacks XV I’m not sure where an AB XV ranks compared to a NZ Māori team, but this was a lot of young kiwis, mostly names I didn’t recognise from the admittedly poor NPC coverage here in the UK this year, against a fun Barbarians team. Normally this wouldn’t get in here, but the AB XV were well outplayed at first then fought their way back ...