honestly united

TMO desperate to chalk it off

It also didnt help that the home nations had a hissy fit and left the European u20 tournament when Scotland were due to get relegated from the top flight. Alot of these continental tournaments already exist. Japan already play in the Asian 5 nations, and there are 3 levels below. In Africa there is already a continent wide tournament but SA dont play in it, they occasional will send an U23 or amateur team. There are a couple of American touraments, Consur for SAm and also antoher involving US and Canada, Argentina usually sends their a team for these. There is a Pacific Nations cup with the Islanders and Japan (US and Canada have plaed in in in the past). In Europe there is a whole league system with the REC at the top which Georgia have won every year for the last decade. Italy played in it before joining 6 Nations, its been running since the 1930's. France were still playing in it up to the 80's. Whats not joined up is the Tier 1 teams who are sat doing their own thing and not letting anyone else join in.

The issue is that in a normal year Scotland play approx 11 or 12 internationals, Fiji, Samoa, Tonga etc play about the same number inbetween world cups. Look at their players and they are lucky if they finish a career with 25 / 30 caps yet someone like Kinghorn is at 50 already for Scotland. Inbetween World Cups Uruguay had 1 game vs Tier 1 opposition and that was against Italy. These teams are never going to progress unless they get the same time together as the Tier 1's and get constant game time vs top opposition. If you have a team like Scotland who have been together for probably 10/12 weeks over the 6 Nations, 5/6 weeks summer tour and 5/6 weeks for Autumn internationals, vs a team thrown together for a 4/5 days before a game beacuse their clubs wont release them your already on the back foot, before you add in your not used to playing at that level to know exactly what to expect. Spain, USA, Canada, Russia, Kenya is much of a muchness with Portugal, Chile, Uruguay etc so adding them in doesnt change much. If someone like Algeria or Poland for example got their act together / had financial backing they would be pushing Fiji, Tonga etc for the best of Teir 2, but again like Fiji etc getting players to commit / time off from clubs is the issue.

To be fair its the same number of weeks either way you are just giving 4 teams an extra week off

6 pools of 4 then a last 16 is actually a week less than the current 4 pools of 5. 2 groups of 12 may be OK assuming you have 4 seed bands, with 3 teams in each you either have a situation where the games are unequal as you are picking from 4 games and obviously the top seeds get an easier run of games the seed 2 or you do a cross pool and you play 1 team from seed band in the opposite pool but there is a lot more luck of the draw to qualifying. You could end up with something like this based on current rankings. Pool A Pool B Seed 1 Ireland France South Africa New Zealand Scotland England Seed 2 Wales Fiji Argentina Australia Italy Japan Seed 3 Georgia Samoa Tonga Portugal Uruguay USA Seed 4 Romania Spain Namibia Chile Canada Hong Kong Your still a week less for the group stages for 4 games than now, your probably still looking at needing to win 3 games to qualify, but its obviously a lot more confusing for the casual fan. It would mean still having to beat a 2nd, 3rd and 4th seeds to progress but again you could end up with lopsided or unfair groups. If you go to 6 groups of 4 teams are off home after 3 weeks and you have an awkward 4 best 3rd places. 4 groups of 6 may work but its the same length of tournament, just removes rest weeks. I know they have went to weekends only to maximise weekend TV time, but you could maybe look at doing 5 day or 6 day turn arounds for everyone to shorten things a bit.

I see Sexton could be in trouble due to taking what looks like some sort of energy gel during the SA game on the pitch which is against the current rules (which is water only i beleive) - cue 1 week ban rather than 1 game and him being available for our game

if SA only got no or 1 bp in losing to Tonga a draw would see both us and Ireland through (assuming we get a bp win vs Romania). Ireland would already be through so we would only need to win if SA picked up 2 bp in their lose. In fact depending on how many bp's SA picked up in losing we would just need to better their bp's if possible if we picked up the BP win this weekend although SA losing is not something I would be pinning my hopes on.

My take is that points difference only counts if all 3 are tied on 15 points, with the team with the highest points going through first, then 2nd place goes on head to head (ie whoever beat who in the pool matches). The permutations are a clusterf*ck but its a mute point if we dont beat Ireland. If SA beat Tonga with a try bp, we need a win with or without a try bonus, and no bp for Ireland and we are through (Both us and SA on 15, Ire 14, SA top group on head to head or SA15, us and Ireland on 14, we go through on head to head against Ire). If Ireland get 2 BP's in a high scoring shoot out then we are also out which would be the most Scottish thing ever so look out for a 40-37 win for Scotland. If we get a BP win and Ireland get a losing bp so we are all on 15 points, and Ireland have the best points difference we are out (SA get 2nd on head to head). So us or SA having a better points difference than Ireland, is the best outcome, if we beat Ireland. SA winning by 30/40 over Tonga would see them top Ireland if we win and at the moment we need 109 point turn around vs Ireland. The best probable out come is SA topping group on points diff with a big win. or we hope for a Tonga win over SA which is another set of permutations!

Harris making a mess of that

To be fair if we had been 3rd seeds in England or Wales group we would be over the moon as it would have been near enough (as the highest ranked team) guarenteed semi final

Potential for an upset here if the Italians arent properly switched on

FTFY

Updated for new seasons league & League Cup games matches Motherwell 1999/00 Celtic 2001/02 Lochee United 2008/09 Devronvale 2009/10 Sunnybank 2010/11 Clachnacludin 2012/13 Peterhead 2015/16 Cowdenbeath 2015/16 Brechin 2015/16 Aberdeen 2016/17 East Fife 2017/18 Forfar Athletic 2017/18 Dumbarton 2017/18 East Stirlingshire 2017/18 Banks of Dee 2017/18 Montrose 2017/18 Hibernian 2017/18 Rangers 2018/19 Beith 2018/19 Auchinleck Talbot 2018/19 Berwick Rangers 2019/20 Wrexham 2019/20 Ross County 2019/20 Hearts 2020/21 Stranraer 2020/21 Annan Athletic 2020/21 Clyde 2020/21 Albion Rovers 2021/22 Kilmarnock 2021/22 Edinburgh City 2021/22 St.Mirren 2021/22 QoS 2022/23 Hamilton 2022/23 Elgin City 2022/23 Annan Athletic 2022/23 Dundee 2022/23 Cove Rangers 2022/23 Pollok 2022/23 Queens Park 2023/24 Inverness CT 2023/24 Partick Thistle 2023/24 St.Johnstone 2023/24 Morton 2023/24 Arbroath 2023/24 Raith Rovers 2023/24 Dundee Utd 2023/24 Livingston 2023/24 Airdrie 2023/24 Alloa Athletic 2023/24 Stirling Albion 2023/24 Stenhousemuir 2023/24 Falkirk 2023/24 Dunfermline 2023/24 So played every league team outwtih Celtic and Motherwell, in the last 8 years Played more than half of all league teams in last 2 seasons, more than 75% in last 5 seasons

The lineout has been our biggest issue for years and we have done nothing to improve it. I get that the SA 2nd rows are big lumps so trying to go to the tail is an option normally, however with a slippery ball due to the heat - and just as big a lump in Grey, just keep it simple and win the ball. Its the lineout that cost us last time vs SA, when 5 points down and we had a 5m lineout we lost 2 on the bounce leading to a SA penalty in our half and we are 2 scores down. I thought defensively we were good, but off it in attack, due to SA's good defence. To often we were slow to the breakdown allowing SA to disrupt. On the rush defence, I dont remember ever seeing runners off of Finn, everyone was much wider - it was mentioned that we had a plan to deal with the rush defence then apart from the one break we looked clueless against it. To be positive, at least we didnt have Carley reffing our game, how he is allowed to ref internationals is beyond me. TMO was worse than Gardner. I have some smypathy for refs as the TMO's are butting in showing incidents in slow mo (or not as the case may be) that look innocuous at hte time and forcing ref's to make decisions based on 'player safety'. We lost to SA (currently the 2nd best team in the world) who have just dismantled NZ and not some dross like England or Wales, and not by a lot. Its fine tuning that is required and we have 4 weeks to get the plan right to beat Ireland. Im not saying we will, and have a track record of disappointing but there is hope, although that hope is probably resting more on a raft of red cards and injuries for Ireland over the next few weeks more than us being able to have a functioning lineout

Probably as it means we've beaten one of the teams ranked 1st or 2nd in the world. Oh and if we do its either France or NZ in the quarters. Although we get passed them the semi will be a doddle as one of Wales / England / Argentina / Australia / Fiji / Georgia so free pass to the final against one of NZ / SA / Ireland / France. It just shows our luck, if we had any we could be 3rd seeds looking forward to either Wales / Australia or England / Argentina as the top seeded teams in our group and playing one of the other 2 in quarters - and us being favourites to make the semi as the highest ranked team across groups C&D

Seemingly they are still lying empty, yet they are knocking down the Perry Barr Stadium to build more houses

Probably didnt word it well, meant it more that surely the buck lies with Bullen for the signings, rather than what scouting / profiles created on players by Glendinning.

I dont think its the recruitment thats the issue, more the management of the squad, and the squad building. It was glaringly obvious over that over the summer we needed to build a new attack to replace Dipo and 2 new full backs. Up front Rose is not a like for like replacement for Dipo (and anyone watching the 5 minute youtube video of his season at Weymouth could see that), and give the league cup games it did look like we were trying to change our style of play to suit, but that seems to have been abandoned after 2 league games. The issue is he's getting no support, being a target man isnt his game, and the only alternative is Bryden or Mckenzie On paper our wide players look decent in Murphy, Amartey, Chalmers and McGeady, but are not being utilized properly. As we have issues at fullback and in midfield there are having to drop deeper leaving Rose isolated. Centre mid is obviously an issue, last year it was obvious that Dempsey, Murdoch and Smith were all very similar players. Pendelbury at least looked like offering something different and more of an attacking threat in the brief appearances he had but that ship has sailed. We did nothing over the summer to counter that, and when Dempsey and Murdoch have got injured, we seem to have replaced with 3 players all exactly the same. I get it was late in the day and we need to replace 3 players but a 2 year deal seems insane for Sylla. CH and GK I think are ok, if we are playing McGinty just have him play a simple pass to however his CD partner is to play out and there isnt an issue. I dont know where to start with FB, RB especially. Surely before Bullen got shot of Houston and Hewitt he must have seen who the list of targets were and had an idea of what we were going to get. Either we have been knocked back / out bid on a huge list of players to end up with Ahui or something had gone terribly wrong somewhere.

So if the main character in arguably the best Star Wars movie is not worthy of a spin off then who is? BTW Im thinking Andor was the best thing on TV last year, its more star wars than star wars itself. Edit to add, aye Ahsoka's been pretty poor so far

Im thinking this with maybe Young in for Smith and if McGinty needs resting ahead of the league games McAlister in for him. Its as much as getting the new players match fitness and used to whatever our system is supposed to be

The actual transfer window never used to really apply to us as we dont tend to sign players direct from other clubs, although effects cross boarder loans. There is a separate loans window for domestic loans, and you can sign anyone that is out of contract at any time up to March. They only way it does affect us is that players have to be freed before the window shuts to be eligible to sign for someone else, but also the bigger clubs probably will be holding off on releasing / making available for loan players until there business is finished. So more interesting watching who is getting released than anything else

I watched the preshow and it was fairly clear from Perry, along the lines of cry me a river, thats real glass obviously directed at Punk after the comments about fake glass a few weeks back

Just comparing the current squad to last years, the defence looks slightly weaker at the moment as Houston at RB was probably a bit better than McAlister, and jury still out on Ahui, hopefully he comes good, but obviously both FB positions not properly addressed over the summer. If you take out the injuries to Dempsey and Murdoch, we have cleared out McGuire and McAleer and brought in Pendlebury, and Smith has been pushed so should be stronger but hasnt worked out that way. Same out wide in that we have cleared out Mullins, JML, Ashford and replaced with McGeady, Murphy and Amartey which is a huge upgrade. We were never replacing Dipo with anyone as good, but on paper Rose looks a good signing (Livi had him on trial so obviously other teams were aware of him) but as a different type of player we should have looked to change our style of play to suit. It looked like we had in the league cup but we have revereted to type as soon as the league started. I get a midfield 2 of Smith and Pendlebury would be lighweight, but surely given our squad going with a 4-3-3 / 4-5-1 would have been a better option than Musonda in midfield. The blame has to be squarely with Bullen now, I think he should get some time to turn things around, but as others have said surely he knew what players / types of players were coming in / being pursued so either something has broken down in communication or he's no idea what tactics would fit them

Scences when Fiji and Georgia top there group knocking Wales and Australia out

Vunipola on 2 games if he goes to tackling school https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/66585194