honestly united

I thought eligibility was the same as normal, ie 5 years residence, grandparent etc - given Mercer has played u16 for Scotland that would be enough of a link, if he actually wants to play that is

I thought that, surely Edinburgh would have been the better move? Although they still have McInally and Cherry

Looks like London Scottish are going to be part of an expanded Super 6 (8) with the other new addition being a Glasgow based franchise

Graeme Murty is free now as well, although i doubt hes likely to end up with us

Did I imagine it or did Jay Lethal, after he did his mimicing of Macho man for a while in TNA, not then go on to do one different 80's/90's each week or did I dream that? Only just finished catching up on Full gear, cracking show, not seen any mention of the MJF v Darby match which i thought was a cracking opener and had me buzzing for the rest of the show - thought was better than Bryan Miro and the tag title match, although both were great. Also how big a grin did Junior Dos SAntos have on his face during the match, apart from the botch on Jericho's moonsault he looked fairly decent and could be a good addition if he was interested. I assume the plan was too have Moxley turn and go after the title, but they have had to change due to his issue, hopefully hangman holds on to the belt for a while, I wonder if they will go with MJF going over Punk with some sort of shenangins, then going after Page, they were dropping hints that he has already beaten Page.

Why has he gone with 6 forward v's Japan? And why Kinghorn? Starting 15 would have been better than what we had vs SA. Cummings coming back from injury is a boost (pity he wasnt ready last week), and I thought Turner was going to be out long term the way he went off. Will be interesting to see how Bayliss gets on at 8. Have never seen Sebastian play, and Richardson didnt stand out when playing for his club so will be hoping they look good additions, would have rather had Dobie, Thompson and Steyn on the bench as getting them used to full international rugby rather than Horne who's a good club player and no more, and Kinghorn.

When he came to us the Raith fans said he was better at RB, but could fill in in midfield if needed, so we just played him in midfield. TBF he did OK as a holding midfielder. Back when you could only have 3 or 5 subs he was ideal for the bench as he was OK at a lot of positions. Now its 7 not so much

Only got back from Edinburgh last night so didnt want to comment before watching the game back this morning but some take aways from me are. Before we play SA next we need to get the message across about how much SA time waste. Its over a minute between the whistle blowing and then SA restarting the game with a lineout or scrum, Scotland were watiing on them each time. At penalties its way over a minute - i noticed a few on the stadium clock and was noticeable watching it back. Cotter brings it up in the comentary and im hioping the refs start picking up on it and getting them to get a move on. If a ref gives a fk against them once for time wasting it would help sort it out. You can see when we started speeding the game up they start to struggle. Addtionally I love Toonies attention to detail and some of his innovative plays, but I hope he starts to realise that we are not going to win if we cant get the basics right, and by that I mean hitting lineouts when it matters. We were in the game at 15-21 then lost 3 lineouts in a row which took us from the SA 5m line and all the momentum with us, to SA knocking over another penalty and re-taking the momentum and the score extending out to 15-24. I did think the ref was ok yesterday, with 2 exceptions, in the scrum, the SA prop was getting under Fagerson and driving him up off his feet which I thought was illeagal yet Fagerson got penalised. Also I dont like the fact that as soon as SA were getting the scrum moving its immediately a penalty, normally for Scotland wheeling, however that is some skill for a Scottish prop to wheel a scrum while going backwards at a rate of knotts! Again after last week, where we didnt play that well yet won, again we didnt play well, yet only lost due to our errors rather than SA being so much better - im old enough to remember us getting hammered and being nowhere near good enough. We have players that are good enough to go up against SA, its silly mistakes and small margins - too many passes nowhere near the intended receiver, missed lineouts etc. Also on the 2nd Mapimpi try I still havent seen a decent replay as there was no TMO replay of the try but I was sure the last pass actually crossed the 22 going forward. WIll need to see if there is more replays of the try.

The general consensus seems to be if he inherits a good / decent squad, he can aget more out of them. If he is allowed to sign his own players he struggles.

Watson on the bench is probably as much to combat the boost SA get when they bring the bench on. Team should get a lift with Watson coming on, so hopefully we are in the game by then. SA always finish strong so we need to be in a good position at half time / 60 mins. I get kinghorn being a FB him being on the bench should make sense, but as he is pitiful it doesnt. Seems a waste of a bnech slot. Steyn must be gutted, he has done all the media, with his dad being one of Mandela's bodygaurds, parents over for the match and doesnt make the bench. I would rather have him than Kinghorn as Hasting would cover 10/12/15 and Steyn 13/wing.

Joker, Wonder Woman and Shazam are head and shoulders above any of the other movies, although the Joker is porbably not really appropriate for the kids depending on how old they are. The 2 Suicide Squad and Harley Quin are watchable at least, the rest are eyebleedingly bad and I would include the 2nd Wonder woman in that group. I've found the DC TV output has been, in the main, better than their movie output- Doom Patrol, Titans, Gotham (again those 3 probably not kid friendly) and Constantine I thought were all excellent, Arrow, Supergirl, Flash etc were all at least watchable before dragging and becoming repetitive.

I wasnt too convinced when he first signed, I'd never heard of him wrestle anywhere before and he just looked like some jobber form the 90's. But he's really grown on me over the months, again technically he's not anything special but puts on a good match, and he's a character you can buy in to.

I thought the scrum went well in before the subs came on against Oz, so hopefully we keep the penalty count done enough to keep them out. We seemed off the pace 2nd half once Kebble and Bhatti came on, but i dont think we have much option with Sutherland out, other than maybe pulling Nel onto the bench. We could do with maybe Cummings on the bench also, a 20 mins cameo from him would be a boost. I think the one concern would be Graham under the high ball, however he's in good form going forward, and will be a real tussle up against Mpimpi so would be more inclined to work out how to get him more support rather than drop him for Steyn or Mclean, and im not sure either would be better under the high ball anyway - its about now you could do with Sean Maitland but id also rather be looking forward rather than backwards

I didn't find it too bad tomorrow, as when the ball was in play it was 2 teams at least trying to play some rugby. Its going to be much worse next week when one team actively avoids trying to play any rugby

Pretty spot on - to be fair I think we will go the same vs SA barring injury / suspension / being woeful then changed round vs Japan to give some of the fringe players more meaningful game time Scotland (v Australia at the Murrayfield, Sunday 7th November @ 2.15pm British time): S Hogg©; D Graham, C Harris, S Johnson, D van der Merwe; F Russell, A Price (VC); P Schoeman, G Turner, Z Fagerson, S Skinner, G Gilchrist, J Ritchie (VC), H Watson, M Fagerson. Replacements: E Ashman, J Bhatti, O Kebble, J Hodgson, J Bayliss, G Horne, A Hastings, K Steyn.

Tagive's been anonymous for 3 odd seasons

I think that will be pretty close to how we go, we always do better against Oz than the other top teams, as they are so open, which plays into our hands more than of the other NH teams

Hope you enjoy your day out! Im there the week after for the SA game

The residency rule for uncapped players would have to apply as a close and credible link, as it would have to be the same rules that make you eligible if uncapped. This is all being done to fall in line with the Olympic eligibility rules, where you can change allegiance by playing in so many olympic qualifiers and as most props or 2nd rows aren't going to get into a 7's team to change nationality you cant be seen to be disadvantaging one group of players

Mercer does qualify through residency and I'm pretty sure played for Scotland at youth international level. Although given he's likely to be given a full cap by England this autumn it'll be irrelevant anyway. Mercer played U16 for Scotland I believe, so probably grounds to say he has enough of a link, so if he doesnt play for england again could be straight in if new law is passed. There seems to be a huge push to get this through to help out the PI's, however I can see it going the other way. I can see the bigger nations actively poaching young tier 2 players already capped knowing the can become eligible down the line. There are a huge number of Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Belgian, German, Georgian, Romania's etc playing in France on top of the PI's, whats to stop them jumping ship. Can you imagine if one of the European nations offers a huge contract to the next newly capped Dan Carter at 20 or 21 knowing the will be eligble to play for them at 23 or 24?

Sutherland and Darge both drop out injured from the Scotland squad, with Hoyland and Bradbury also both back at Edinburgh, and call ups for Nick Auterac, Robin Hislop and Javan Sebastian. Scot Cummings also called up to the squad but not fully recovered from injury yet. With Finn, Hastings and Thompson the only time we should see Kinghorn is on a summer tour if we are resting our main starters. Add in Savala and Chamberlain at Edinburgh and we have enough depth for him to never be needed at 10. Hopefully by the time the 6 Nations come round Forbes will be seen as the back up 15. I dont know what anyone saw in Tagive, but he's probably 5th Choice at best behind those 3 and Cancilliere

Havent got round to watching squid game yet, but would highly recomend Alice in Borderland

I like toonie as a coach, but fkn kinghorn at stand off....

I dont think he was that bad against Leinster, he just never had much of the ball to show what he can do, but agree we have plenty of options at Centre. The one Im suprised isnt in the squad, given he moved up to Edinburgh over the summer is Lang, as he gives more options as can also play 10, (edit to add, just noticed he is actually out injured also) ....which would also mean we would be subjected to Kinghorn in a Scotland top. He is so frusrating, as ball in hand he is actually really good, but without it he just wanders about aimlessly, and his pace is cut in half without the ball and chasing back to tackle, also the less said about his defence the better.

Im struggling to pull together a set of backs and subs for the Tonga game from that lot. My best guess for the team would be as follows (front row and the backrow could be swapped as decent depth) Hoyland, Graham, Tuipolotu, Johnson, Steyn, Thompson, Price, Fagerson, Ritchie, Watson, Gilchrist, Sykes, Bhatti, McInally, Fagerson Subs Schoeman, Turner, Kebble, Harley, Darge, Dobbie, Kinghorn, McLean We only have one 10 in Thompson so if he gets injured were bringing on Kinghorn, we only have 4 other backs that aren't starting, yet we dont replace Bennet when he gets injured? We are also really short on quality in the 2nd row