honestly united

we should only play 2nd halfs

Yeah because it is deemed foul play it over rules other penalty, if it was just a knock on of forward pass it would still been Welsh penalty

No the late hit overrules anything that comes before

How bad are Ireland when a ref actually penalises them.for coming in at the side and sealing the ball

The problem with all the talk of re-construction and pyramid structures is that far too many people are only looking at the here and now rather than looking at the potential and how things could look in the future. Granted you could start off with a HFL and the NCL/ North Juniors / EoS north of Tay feeding in, and any team (if they had a licence) may think thats a lot of travelling - however give it 5/10 years the league could be heavily East Coast biased and predominantly Aberdeen / Dundee clubs. Its the same argument in the west where the big junior clubs are whinging about not wanting in the LL as its unattractive to them and the clubs are all glorified boys clubs. Well if the west juniors are that good they will easily fill the LL and be the majority in a few years. A bit of forward planning and looking to see what could be possible is what is required. Any team at the edge of a boundary is not going to be happy about travelling to the other side but unfortunately there are always some winners and losers.

He was injured, but came back a few weeks ago for Toulouse, probably letting him concentrate on getting back in with his club after a lengthy absence, and having not been in the squad for about 2 years probably would struggle with calls, moves, game plan etc in a short space of time. But I would have had him called up.

Would probably have preferred Strauss at 8, shift Bradbury to blind side and Skinner to 2nd row dropping Toolis, but much of a muchness. Ideally Ireland beat wales denying them a grandslam, then we beat england denying them the title. But unlikely to happy - and on 2nd thoughts that would give Ireland the title so that wouldn't do. If wales win though the pressure is off England and they may run riot

If the boundary gets moved any further notth Oban and Fort William will be in the LL! The problem is having a straight line marking north and south, and also building a pyramid bottom up. Much better to start with local leagues at the bottom and wok up.

To be fair I never read the herald just saw the link on the BBC website down below the Steyn call up. Good to see our rugby journalist are as good as our football ones

Given how poor the DC universe movies have been lately (WW aside) the new universe of TV series seem to be hitting the spot. I thought Titans was excellent, and a few episodes into Doom Patrol im loving it so far. So big name actors and not taking itself too seriously makes it a lot of fun

https://www.heraldscotland.com/sport/rugby/17492974.is-steyn-selection-a-black-mark-for-scottish-rugby-administrators/ The Herald having a dig at the SRU over the Steyn call up and the whole SRU development team. Didn't realise it was quite that bad, but only 12 of the 60 / 70 odd scotland players in and around the squad come from outside the private school / borderers / developed abroad which makes pretty grim reading and just shows how far we still have to go development wise. There isn't much detail but would be interesting to see how this relates to numbers through the various levels of the fosroc academy structures as it looks like nothing much has changed in terms of getting average kids playing rugby (outside the borders)

Jackson and Steyn called up. Steyns only played 2 games for Glasgow and could be on the bench against England!

Kinghorn doesn't look interested in defending. We looked much better with Hastings at FB. I don't what's happened but we really miss Dunbar at centre. Watson was our best player yesterday and he played less than half the match. Forwards offered next to nothing, backs had the odd break but nothing to write home about. Tbf I feared the worst before the game so picking up a losing bonus point is more than I thought we would get

I'm actually being as positive as possible as I'm going to murrayfield tomorrow, lol the fact we are playing the 3rd choice inside and 2nd choice outside centres for Glasgow doesn't fill me with much hope.

The welsh with Tupiric and Navidi will be first to every break down , so any advantage of playing Price over Laidlaw will be nulified as we wont get quick ball. And if we do I dont really see Horne and Grigg being able to unlock the Welsh defence. Our only hope of winning is keeping the ball in the Welsh half, keeping it tight, dont try anything expanisive and hold onto the ball until the 2nd half in the hope that the Welsh panic as they need the win more than we do which opens up space for us to exploit. But I cant really see it happening

Is Johnson injured as he has been one of the few bright spots so far. Its all a bit meh to be fair. Also dont see the point in having Hastings on the bench, would have at least had a centre on the bench so we have an option to change things up a bit

I would assume if any new team was set up they would get a portion of players, internationals included, from both teams, as this would then lower the burden of losing players and mean both current teams could have smaller squads

It's been an utterly shambolic few days for the Welsh, which is nice. The whole thing seems to have stemmed from Ospreys being unsure of their future, both in financial terms and of their tenancy at the Liberty stadium. You would have thought that if any region needed replacing, it would be the consistently shite Dragons, Dragons are fully owned by the WRU (after they nearly went bust), Ospreays are part private hence why they are looking to merge with Scarlets (after Cardiff knocked them back)

Just as a quick example of players at Glasgow and Edinburgh who should / could be getting more game time as they are in and around the Scotland Squad (not an exhaustive list just my picks) Edinburgh Callum Hunter Hill 22, Scotland u18 & U20 - 2 years at Glasgow (1 game) (7 on loan at London Scottish) then moved to Edinburgh - 10 games in 2 years Lewis Carmichael 23, - Scotland u18 & U20 - 3 season 27 games (and 2 games for Scotland) Rory Sutherland 26, 5 seasons 53 games, (and 3 for Scotland) Chris Dean 25, 5 seasons 66 games Damian Hoyland 25, 5 seasons 48 games (1 Scotland) James Jonhstone 28, 18 games (spent 2012-2017 with the 7's squad) Darcy Graham 21, 18 games over 2 seasons Blair Kinghorn 22, 64 games over 5 seasons (9 Scotland) jamie ritchie 22, 48 games over 5 season for Edinburgh (4 Scotland) Magnus Bradbury is 23 and only played 47 game over 4 seasons, 4 for Scotland Glasgow Grant Stewart 24, 10 games over 2 seasons George Turner 26, 12 games in 5 seasons at Edinburgh, then 18 over 2 seasons at Glasgow plus 5 scotland caps Alex Allan 27, 1 game in a season at Sale, 5 games in 2 seasons at Edinburgh, then 86 games in 5 seasons at Glasgow Jamie Bhatti 25, 23 games in 3 seasons D'arcy Rae 24 - 49 games in 5 seasons Adam Ashe 25, 34 games in 8 season, 8 games for Scotland Matt Fagerson 20, 12 games in 3 seasons, 3 for Scotland Matt Smith 22, 17 games in 4 seasons George Horne, 23 - 36 games in 4 seasons, (15 for London Scottish on Loan) 4 for Scotland Ali Price 25, 42 games in 6 seasons 18 for Scotland Adam Hastings 22, 12 games for Bath, then 19 for Glasgow over 2 seasons Stafford McDowell 21, 5 games for Glasgow over 2 seasons. Rory Hughes 26, 38 games over 6 seasons Also they had the opportunity to set up a proper semi pro league but have instead came up with the abomination of the Super 6 where clubs are supposed to pay players yet are only going to have less than 10 home fixtures

We are bringing in foreign players as the hope is they will still be there during international weekends when they lose the majority of the starters. Dell is off to London Irish next season as he isn't first choice at Edinburgh and Dunbar has been punted to Newcastle as Glasgow have Johnson, Jones, Grigg, Horne and McDowell at centre. We are struggling at the position above as youngsters aren't getting a chance to play and develop as their is a bottleneck above them and only the exceptional players (Hogg, Grey, Russell, Fagerson) get game time at 19/20, most young players are coming in at 24/25 and hardly having played a game. It was also help Glasgow and Edinburgh if the Scottish internationals were spread around 3 teams so they would be losing 10/12 players rather than 15/18 every international.

because we only have 2 pro teams so only 30 players are starting every week. On SA teams in the Pro 14 the quote I saw was 2 from Bulls, Shark, Lions or possible 2 Currie Cup teams. More SA teams are most likely as they have the players and also can bring in money from TV deals, which at the end of the day any expansion is only about more money for the existing teams

Pro 14 will go through a another big shake up in a few years times (I think the TV deals have another 2 or 3 years to run i think) with talk of another 2 SA teams (SA to pull out of SA as they are propping up NZ and Aus with the TV deal and 4 best teams in Pro 14), a shuffle of the Welsh teams, an Italian team moving to Rome (if they are even still involved) and teams from tier 2 european countries (Georgia, Spain etc) all mooted. IMHO the SRU should be pitching for a 3rd Scottish team now so its on the radar in the upcoming reshuffle

Ok so big game coming up this week against Wales (and im over excited as I will be making the long trip up to Murrayfield for this one). Good to have Nel, Watson, Russell and Skinner back in the squad, so will be interesting to see what Townsend does. Im going with the following (thanks to the BBC....) One change to the above will be Price instead of Horne who i believe is still injured, with a bench of Fagerson, Brown, Allan, Gilchrist, Fagerson, Laidlaw, Hastings, Kinghorn. I actually like Grigg as a player for Glasgow but he falls into the Harley / Horne camp of being good at club level, but not quite having enough for international level, I have been quite impressed with McDowall when he has played for Glasgow so we may as well throw him in and see how he gets on. There's not many games now before the world cup so better to get him a run out now. Kinghorn on the bench as he covers the back 3, but dont trust him defensively for a full game. I think Townsend will play Skinner at 6 - but given Wales play 2 opensides (and Tipuric I rate as the best openside in the world since McCaw retired) we need more pace their.

Don't think he is saying anything everyone didn't already. Apart from maybe Gilchrist being ahead of Grey. Watson and Hardie both add a bit of bite when there playing, but agreed you dont see it from anyone else. I put it down to all the young players are stuck in the academy, not scrapping to get a game at club level

I think it will stay, its only the USA that would move the the rugby championship (Argentina use their B team mainly club players not with the Jaguares), so the US might do the same, or open up the competition for the next country down - either Paraguay or Columbia. The whole World League started out as a great idea - top 12 ranked teams in the world play each other once (11 games over the year) either as part of the 6N's or Rugby Championship and the Summer & Autumn test windows are used for inter tournament matches. 13-24 do the same (using ARC / Pacific tournament / REC matches) with the bottom club of 1-12 changing places with top club 13-24 every year. The problem was that the current top 12 includes Georgia, Fiji and Japan and Italy are down in 15. So for the tournament to work you would have to replace Italy with Georgia in the 6N (or expand to 7 teams) and include Japan and Fiji in the Rugby Championship. Japan are good to go as already in Super Rugby, but they dont want to include Fiji as they dont bring any money (the same argument that Georgia aren't included in the 6N's - if Spain or Germany were sitting above Italy you can be sure they would be included without question.) So to try and boost income the US are included over Fiji and the 6N's doesn't get touched to keep them happy - oh and there is no changes to the teams for 12 years!!! So the likes of Georgia, Romania, Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, Canada, Uruguay and Namibia miss out on playing the top teams outside of World Cups. At present the 2nd tier would be a revised REC (Italy, Romania, Spain, Russia, Belgium and Netherlands) and another 6 teams of USA, Canada, Uruguay, Namibia, Samoa and Tonga which would be an interesting tournament