Rugby autumn internationals: week three predictions

Wales 23-29 New Zealand

After yet another narrow defeat to the Wallabies, followed by a hugely underwhelming (and even narrower) win against Fiji, Wales have to get their act together, and fast.

The All Blacks are on one of their worst runs for a long time – although that’s still only one defeat (27-25 vs South Africa in October) and a draw (12-12 vs Australia in August) in their last nine games against tier one opposition. Scotland could easily have snatched a famous win last weekend.

This is Wales’s penultimate chance to win a game against a top Southern Hemisphere team before the World Cup. I say it every time, but it’s true. Wales simply have to do what England and Ireland, and France, have done in the past and beat one of the old Tri Nations sides.

New Zealand is a daunting task in that context (in fact, in any context). But at least Wales have the advantage of not being favourite, for the first time this autumn. That might take some weight off their shoulders.

From my point of view, too, I’m not worried about the game tomorrow in the same way I was ahead of the Australia game. Instead I’m really looking forward to a high-octane encounter. The battle on the wings – George North and Alex Cuthbert vs Julian Savea and Ben Smith – could see sparks fly. Wales will be boosted by a few players returning from injury or rest, including Leigh Halfpenny, Dan Biggar, Richard Hibbard and captain Sam Warburton.

When you face the world champions you need all the margins to go your way. But let’s not rule out a first Welsh win over NZ for more than 60 years. In the words of Jonathan “Jiffy” Davies:

“The All Blacks, in their last four matches, have made more errors than they normally do and missed more tackles. Against Australia this year they turned it on when they needed to; they lost to the Springboks, and against England and Scotland they could conceivably have lost both.

“If the All Blacks subconsciously feel like it’s the last game of a long season, there’s an opportunity there. But you can’t simply try to contain them. Wales have to play rugby.”

Finally, a special shout out to the awesome Richie McCaw. To be captaining the All Blacks for the HUNDREDTH time is testament to a simply sensational career. I know the Millennium Stadium crowd will give him the respect he’s earned during his magnificent career.

Italy 13-39 South Africa

Scotland 27-10 Tonga

Ireland 28-30 Australia

England 31-13 Samoa

France 28-19 Argentina

Rugby autumn internationals: week one predictions

After a bit of a hiatus, the autumn internationals give me a chance to look foolish once again by getting my score predictions horrifically wrong. Still, it’s neck-on-the-line time, and here’s what I reckon for today’s encounters:

Wales 21-17 Australia

It looks as if the Millennium Stadium will have about 15,000 empty seats, which is a shame, but not altogether surprising given the cost of tickets.

Wales have lost their last NINE games against the Wallabies, with their last success coming in November 2008. Warren Gatland has denied it, but there seems to be no other explanation for those losses than some sort of mental block – particularly as Australia’s margin of victory has been within a score on six of those occasions. In fact, the last seven games between the two sides have seen Australia win by (from the most recent backwards) 4, 2, 1, 2, 8, 6 and 3.

And with Australia and Wales both in hosts England’s group at next year’s World Cup, both teams (but particularly Wales) know it is vital to take some sort of momentum and belief into the tournament.

For some reason I fancy Wales to win this one. It’s not just because I’m Welsh – I’m more often pessimistic than optimistic on that front. I like the look of Wales’s team, with more than half an eye on that World Cup. I like George North at centre, even if it’s only because the mighty Jonathan Davies is injured. And I like having Rhys Webb at scrum half rather than wannabe number 8 Mike Phillips.

England 22-31 New Zealand

Ireland 20-26 South Africa

Scotland 18-17 Argentina

Jambos win Hearts during thrashing of Cowdenbeath

In the last couple of years I’ve come to dread the start of the football season.

The relaxing off-season allows the focus to be switched on to the Commonwealth Games, World Athletics Championships, the Olympics, test cricket, Super Rugby – whatever. Come the start of August, though, and the sports pages are once again dominated by news of petty spats, crowd violence, referees taking a battering, obscene wages etc.

The view from the Roseburn Stand

On the other hand, I can’t wait for the football season, and it having gone off the boil for me over the last couple of years is probably not simply coincidental to me, a Newcastle United fan, having moved away from the North East of England.

After all, nothing quite catches the imagination like football. Even speaking as, predominantly, a rugby fan, I get swept away every Saturday by the round-ball game.

And so it was that, last Saturday, I found myself at a Scottish Championship game between Heart of Midlothian and Cowdenbeath at Tynecastle, arguably not one of the weekend’s glamour ties in British football. But, being in Edinburgh, I couldn’t not go and get my first taste of the Scottish leagues.

In any case, I’ve always had something of a soft spot for Hearts. After a bit of head-scratching, I’ve come up with three possible explanations: a career with them on Football Manager was one of my most successful ever; Tynecastle reminds me of Tyneside; and their nickname (the Jambos) makes me hungry for doughnuts. An alternative nickname is the Jam Tarts, which is even more explicit.

The football was, at times, dubious. The first 45 minutes, in particular, had quality in short supply, and I made my own entertainment by munching merrily on my Scotch pie. Behind me, the conversation soon turned to the Scottish independence referendum, held two days earlier.

The excitement levels ratcheted up after the break, though, with Hearts knocking in four to secure an emphatic 5-1 win and extend their lead at the top of the second tier (a league which also includes Rangers and Hearts’ city rivals Hibernian). After a turbulent decade which culminated in relegation last season, Hearts’ luck has perhaps changed since they exited administration over the summer.

These fans in the main stand were in no doubts as to whether they agreed with the No vote in the Scottish independence referendum

I hope that is the case, because, cheesily, the club won my Heart. The atmosphere at and outside the ground was excellent; the 17,529-seater stadium attracted almost 15,600 fans for a tie which can’t have jumped off the page when the fixtures were first released.

The crowd around me in the Roseburn Stand was friendly, knowledgeable and was at the opposite end of the spectrum to the reputation of the Old Firm clubs. Even 90 minutes was enough to make me feel at home.

Despite the at-times turgid first half, I walked back to Edinburgh trying to remember when it was the last time I enjoyed a football match this much. Great stuff, Jambos.

Rain fails to dampen Glasgow’s Commonwealth Games party

It’s only a week since the curtain fell on Glasgow 2014, although it feels like longer, with the sporting media having mercilessly moved on to the test match and the start of the new football season (groan!).

And although the Commonwealth Games was never going to compete with the London 2012 Olympics, for obvious reasons, the event surprised most people with how much it captured the imagination.

Hampden Park set up for the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games 400m hurdles

Of course, it helps that all four UK teams did so well – Wales, Scotland and England all secured record medal hauls, Northern Ireland got their second best total, and England triumphed over Australia to top the medals table for the first time since 1986.

It was a games which lacked quite a few top names – Mo Farah, Jess Ennis-Hill, Usain Bolt from the individual competition – but, thanks to a crop of Home Nations stars, did not miss them. Whether it was gymnasts Dan Keatings and Frankie Jones, swimmers Fran Halsall and Ross Murdoch or track and field’s Jodie Williams and Eilidh Child, fears the global stars’ absence would hamper the games proved unfounded.

Like in London two years ago, Glasgow also got fully behind the games, even if it wasn’t always blessed with the same glorious weather as the Olympics. Being in Scotland for a week was a brilliant experience – it’s such a great place anyway – but it was only enhanced by seeing Lesotho and Mozambique squad members mingling with the crowds in Buchanan Street or Aussies chucking around an inflatable kangaroo on the way to Ibrox. Usain Bolt’s reported comments that Glasgow was s**t were wide of the mark, although he did backtrack later.

Ibrox, which hosted the rugby sevens

I was fortunate to get tickets to swimming, the rugby sevens finals and the (very wet) David Rudisha v Nijel Amos evening of the athletics. In those three sessions there wasn’t a whole lot to cheer as a Welshman. A silver and a bronze were a decent return for my night at Tollcross watching the swimming (though I wasn’t there for Georgia Davies or Jazz Carlin’s golds), but I watched Wales lose in the final play of the sevens bowl final to England and there was only one Welsh representative at the athletics (Brett Morse, fifth in the discus).

But in that sense I was unlucky, because Wales had a brilliant 11 days. Rhythmic gymnast Frankie Jones (born in Kettering, incidentally) kicked it all off and crowned her personal success by winning the David Dixon Award for the outstanding competitor and for a sense of fair play winning a gold and five silvers. Geraint Thomas’ triumph in almost the last event of the games, the men’s road race, capped it all off nicely. It meant the absences of some of our world-class athletes – Becky James, Helen Jenkins, Non Stanford, Fred Evans – were not as keenly felt as I had feared. A return of five golds, 11 silvers and 20 bronzes put Wales in 13th in the medals table, the same as in Delhi – but on that occasion we got only 19 podium finishes (three, six and 10 of the respective medal colours).

A swimming medal ceremony at Tollcross, with the Welsh flag raised for Georgia Davies’ silver

What about the bigger picture? Some commentators have said Glasgow 2014 saved the concept of the Commonwealth Games following an underwhelming version in Delhi in 2010. I’m not sure I’m qualified to comment on that particular issue, but it certainly quelled any doubts I has about it.

I think Rick Broadbent in the Times at the start of the week had it just about right:

The athletes had little but praise for Glasgow. There was a buzz. And as for Usain Bolt, he came, he saw and, ultimately, he concurred.

Six Nations 2014: Brian O’Driscoll’s fairytale finish

It was a brilliant weekend in Paris, capping off a Six Nations which went down to the final play of a thriller between France and Ireland.

Brian O’Driscoll got the reward his career deserved, rounding off his career in the stadium where he first announced his arrival on the international scene.

France were a lot better than they had been against Wales and Scotland, and should possibly have won the game: they would have led with less than 10 minutes to go had Jean-Marc Doussain not hooked a straightforward penalty.

Sitting behind the posts, I also didn’t realise at the time how far forward the final pass of the 79th-minute French “try-scoring” move had gone, and thought Ireland had let another championship slip away in the last minute against France (the video below is of Vincent Clerc denying Ireland a Grand Slam in 2007).

At the Stade de France this time around, Les Bleus had done well to get themselves back into the match, having conceded three tries in the first 45 minutes or so, and Philippe Saint-Andre’s team, which has looked so shambolic in recent weeks, were guilty of pretty awful defence for all three. Just watch the lack of effort the French players make to get back and form a defensive line just before Jonny Sexton’s second.

France’s daily sports newspaper L’Equipe generally wasn’t impressed, awarding its players between 6.5 (Alexandre Lapandry) and 3 (Thomas Domingo) out of 10. Just think what they would have given as ratings for the Wales game! By contrast, three French players were rated as 8/10 by the Sunday Times.

Joe Schmidt’s Ireland certainly deserved the title, though, having been the most consistent team throughout the tournament, giving sport another fairytale ending – in the form of the illustrious career of Brian O’Driscoll – at which it excels.

The only way the game could have been even more exciting was if Triple Crown winners England had managed a couple more tries against Italy (and not conceding the interception score would have helped). If they had managed to bump their points difference ahead of Ireland, both sides in Paris would have been trying desperately to score in the closing stages of the tournament – that would have been epic.

Stuart Lancaster will be pleased with his side’s efforts this championship, and there is plenty to worry the rest of the Northern (and Southern) Hemisphere ahead of the 2015 Six Nations and World Cup. Luther Burrell, Mike Brown and Danny Care have all been excellent.

And, after back-to-back championships, Wales are finally knocked off their perch, thanks to the well-documented horror shows against Ireland and England. It was nice to see the 51-3 thumping of a 14-man Scotland, and a handful of highlight-reel tries, but clearly there is a lot of work to do ahead of the summer tour to South Africa. After Stuart Hogg was sent off, for a shocking bit of foul play, the game was effectively over, so the resulting big win doesn’t mean all is suddenly well, even if there are plenty of positive signs (not least the performance of Liam Williams). We’re still the reigning Grand Slam holders though!

But there can be no complaints that Brian O’Driscoll’s Irish side, scorers of 16 tries while conceding just four, are who Wales relinquish their tournament crown to, and that BOD hangs up his boots in a manner befitting his 141-cap career.

Six Nations predictions, week five

Written in haste, as I’m off to Paris for the championship decider!

The Stade de France is hosting the championship decider

 

Italy 10-38 England

England would have to trounce Italy to overtake a victorious Ireland on points difference. They have put 80 points on them in the past, but it just doesn’t happen any more.

Wales 21-15 Scotland

A jaded, sloppy Wales will be desperate for a win to clear some of last week’s horror show from their minds. Scotland, despite losing to France, should be confident of taking advantage of their misfiring hosts, but a fresher Wales should see them off.

France 13-23 Ireland

Ireland’s championship, or, as it will undoubtedly be reported, Brian O’Driscoll’s. France are in disarray, Ireland firing on all cylinders. Unless a different France turns up at home, surely Ireland can’t lose?