Castres hold off Racing to book Top 14 final berth

I do have a bit of a vested interest in RWC 25 being a success, because one of my daughters wants to play professionally and if it becomes (as hoped) a springboard for the growth of the women’s game, she has a higher chance of being able to make a living from it.

Edit: since RWC

SA have won 85% matches

Ireland 76%

France 74%

NZ 73%

No worries, mate, we still love you.

And yes, Tupou is no more what he could have been, and it would be wildly ironic if the Parisians would cure him. Wouldn’t it?

In one of the line breaks by the ABs, both France flankers Fischer and Tixeront were both on the blind side, a very small perimeter, which means a brain like Beauden’s, Jordie’s and Cam’s saw these things and used that on the other side of the line.

As NB stated, changing a team with no automatisms is risky, and quite a few French errors seemed to come from the lack of cohesion, which is understandable for such a team. It doesn’t change the fact that you still need to exploit that lack of cohesion, as not all the teams can do it, so praise the ABs for that.

The period of May-June is the crux of their entire season for those playing the play off in Top 14 and the Champions Cup. As you probably know, it’s very difficult to come down from there (or your “credentials” as a rugby analyst were certainly usurped). It’s also in contradiction with your main point of comparison between the English tour of 2014 and the French one of 2025 (and all those before since a couple of decade).

And this is the truly ridiculous part. Teams only get better by developing connections and understandings in their sub-units and that means familiarity. Playing in the company of the same bloke next to you.

Part of the job for an “analyst” is to analyse, right? Not to look at stuff like if there was only one way of proceeding and to discard anything else with a lot of arrogance. You probably weren’t very succesfull at this job, I guess.

Then you should have certainly already analysed that, from the start of his tenure, Galthié always used both “Test” windows to test as many players and as many things as he likes; there is no pressure put on him to win during those “friendlies”. The November serie is a test bed for the future 6 Nations team and the summer serie was always used for keeping fringe players involved with the main group (old and new ones). Lots of good things for the main team came from this way of operating. Maybe he’ll finally be rewarded one day at the WC, or his successor in the future. I don’t mind waiting.

He already gave us many good games to watch and there is a lot of talent comming thru the system.

You just rent a house next to the training grounds, a camera, a telescopic lens…