Intriguingly, Ireland scored 8 votes in the first round, but England, Scotland and Wales had 9 to allocate, so evidently, one of the three reneged on us, despite May's invocations.
Which May?
Peter Jackson on Twitter is saying England voted for Ireland to host but Scotland and Wales did not (which seems par for the course with regard to Celtic unity) which did for them in the first round of voting.
Wales make 14 changes to the starting XV for the visit of Georgia on Saturday. I've made a last minute decision to take the boy as I realised his mum had double-booked him for the All Blacks game a week later, could be a difficult one :
15. Liam Williams (Saracens) (44 Caps)
14. Alex Cuthbert (Cardiff Blues) (46 Caps)
13. Scott Williams (Scarlets) (48 Caps)
12. Owen Watkin (Ospreys) (1 Cap)
11. Hallam Amos (Dragons) (12 Caps)
10. Rhys Priestland (Bath) (48 Caps)
9. Rhys Webb (Ospreys) (28 Caps);
1. Nicky Smith (Ospreys) (15 Caps)
2. Kristian Dacey (Cardiff Blues) (5 Caps)
3. Leon Brown (Dragons) (1 Cap)
4. Adam Beard (Ospreys) (1 Cap)
5. Cory Hill (Dragons) (7 Caps)
6. Dan Lydiate (CAPT - Ospreys) (60 Caps)
7. Sam Cross (Ospreys) (1 Cap)
8. Seb Davies (Blues) (2 Caps)
REPLACEMENTS:
16. Elliot Dee (Dragons) (*UNCAPPED)
17. Wyn Jones (Scarlets) (2 Caps)
18. Tomas Francis (Exeter Chiefs) (24 Caps)
19. Josh Navidi (Cardiff Blues) (4 Caps)
20. Taulupe Faletau (Bath) (67 Caps)
21. Aled Davies (Scarlets) (3 Caps)
22. Dan Biggar (Ospreys) (57 Caps)
23. Owen Williams (Gloucester) (2 Caps)
Tom Francis decides to drive into the side of a ruck and gets a yellow card. Wales have to defend a scrum a player down as Leon Brown comes on. Madness.
Coincidentally hosting a hurling exhibition at Fenway Park this weekend. Agree with AE, surely Georgia are at least worthy of a relegation/promotion game against Italy at this stage?
Originally posted by Vicarious ThrillseekerView Post
I still don't get why we picked such an inexperienced pack against a very big unit - we played to Georgia's strengths
Part of me often worries that certain coaches who get regularly criticised for their conservatism may sometimes send out wildly experimental (and suicidal) sides to deliberately show people "they should be careful what they wish for". Today may have been Gatland doing this.
To be honest, as much as it was clearly a desperate scraped win against opponents who deserved at least a draw I was relatively happy with it as I was genuinely concerned that our kids/reserve side would lose.
The stupid chicanery from both sides with regard to the prospect of scrums after Francis’s yellow card soured the end of the match (Georgia faked an injury to get original tight head Chilachava back on the pitch and we responded in kind by pretending our subbed props were injured) and made it almost as farcical a climax as against France in the 6N.
That said, we could (and possibly should, I need to see the video to judge some officiating that seemed perverse in the stadium) have been 20-0 or so up at half time before we decided we would play the game Georgia wanted after the break.
Terrible, terrible, appalling crowd in today. The only consistent vocal support came from a big block of army cadets sat behind one set of posts but mostly it was a huge amount of daytrippers, stag & hen nights and event junkies. Four of the latter in front of me spent the entire second half looking at Halfpenny in a box ten rows behind rather than the thirty players on the pitch. The WRU needs to start setting people rugby exams before they’ll sell them a ticket.
Stade Francais v Oyonnax this morning was an unexpectedly compelling 39-35 thrillfest and excellent fun to watch. A pity that there weren’t more people in the stadium watching it, a Sunday 12:30pm kick off on an international weekend against the bottom side from 500km away must be a hard enough sell even before you factor in Stade’s poor form this season.
I must have missed it being announced yesterday but Liam Williams joined Jonathan Davies on the injured list for the remaining Autumn Tests meaning our two best backs are out for the All Blacks game (Williams would have missed the extra match against SA a week later anyway as it’s outside the window where foreign clubs have to release players). Cuthbert’s out too, the poor unlucky dab.
Shaun Edwards is mooting a return to midfield for Jamie Roberts in an attempt to negate Sonny Bill which makes me think that won’t really happen. Tipuric may go straight in to the side on his return from injury if he has proved his fitness in training this week. Side announced tomorrow morning, I presume.
In other news, George North is returning to Welsh club rugby next season and Mike Phillips is making a comeback for the Scarlets’ next two games in South Africa as they only have one for scrum half.
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