GAD

So it's ok to politicise the tiny amount of people who wish to change gender but not ok to politicise the people who murder them?

It was a funny interview, first time in a long time I've heard the interviewer so rattled rather than the politician. Either his researchers had badly let him down or Slater was lying.

It's only ok to speculate on the motives of people who want to change their gender, not the people who murder them.

Amazing how Alan McGregor has managed to come out of that looking both thick and shite.

Neither did I till last week!

Thing is, he's actually French born and raised and is eligible for Italy only through his grandparents. The English rugby dads haven't noticed though because he's got an Italiany sounding name and a tan.

Apart from that game during lockdown against Wales where Brace decided to give a marginal one against us on the first lineout, without taking into account the game was being played in a fucking hurricane. Not a single lineout got completed in the first half, then it was all quietly ignored in the second.

The player he penalised didn't change his mind either, and it all came from the ref failing to give Italy a clear penalty at the scrum before when England were able to gather the ball.

Watching Owen Farrell trying to play like Russell is physically painful. Ref gave Italy a bit of a break in the first 5 mins there and they scored so right back at it now.

Commentators slagging off Italy at half time there, but it's pretty hard to do much in a game where the opposition are offside at every breakdown, you get penalised on every turnover, legitimate or not, you get penalised at each scrum no matter what and the opposition are allowed to drop your mauls, but you aren't allowed to defend theirs. They had no chance in that half.

Italy not allowed to defend mauls, Itoje can collapse whatever he likes. Ref will yellow someone now, make sure England run in a couple before half time, job done.

Italy getting absolutely reffed off the park here.

Ref needs a lot of credit for that score, he was relentless and didn't give up till he'd got them over the line.

Italy maybe want to try putting at least one man into their attacking ruck. That was a horrendous bit of attacking play.

The game against France is really huge now. Not sure how much chance we really have, but if we can pull something out the hat over there then we've always got a punchers chance at home against anyone, even Ireland. Gutted we now have to wait two weeks though, most I've enjoyed the 6 nations in years, not just the Scotland games either.

Worth remembering that Dan Biggar went out and did a big shitey interview about how Scotland were fucking crap, then went and played absolutely shite and publicly blamed a 23 year old playing his 4th international for his own terrible play on more than one occasion before going off with the Welsh limp when the humiliation was on the cards, after being completely outplayed by his opposite number, who he has also slagged off several times in public. What a c**t.

One tiny little sliver of hope for Scotland here is that it does look like if we can get the ball in the hands of our big strike runners in open field we can cause them some problems.

Bloody hell, that was some proper Scotland stuff from France there. Suicidal.

Seriously though, if you don't think Zander Fagerson is getting a straight red and a 5 week ban for that exact same tackle later today then you are deluded. Barnes shat it.

There was a couple of extremely dodgy clear outs in that attack as well. Barnes is losing the plot a bit.

If the same thing happens in the Scotland game later it'll be red, no question.

This has to be a red, I'm no Ireland fan, but he goes in hard, tucks in his arm, hits the head with his shoulder. Barnes has bottled that.

This could be red.

What I loved most about that try was that it was mostly caused by Ireland being really Irish and just blasting the ball into the air and trying to put in snidey shots instead of defending properly.

The kicking was spectacularly bad, wasn't it? The wee scrum half who started actually hit a good one from about 30-40 meters in the first half, but the general kicking, both from the tee and from hand was pretty poor throughout. Some of the penalties to touch were lucky if the went 15 meters, and that was with the wind behind them. I knew the wind was behind them in the first half as the commentator mentioned it every 30 seconds.