Six Nations: Kieran Crowley has named the Italy team to host France

France are still awaiting their Webb Ellis.

England's - and the NHs - only RWC success wasn't necessarily on the strength of the English club game.

I really don’t like the halves, especially the two 9s that have constantly let Australia down over the years with their antics, I’d have one at a pinch, probably Gordon on the basis of early SR season form, so it’s really a lottery. Not very sold on Ben or James either, but then I was looking at the Lions team and they also seemed fairly average when you break them down player by player.

That’s really what Joe has excelled at though, knitting a team together, lets hope that Farrell is hopeless at it.

Joe did talk about investing in the younger fly halves…but surely there is nothing wrong with holding 1 of them back to give JOC a crack in an important series.

My midfielders would be

12 J. Barrett, Tavatavanawai, Tupaea

13 Proctor, Ioane

Hopefully qld and RA can work together despite this.

However, the URC is never going to prepare the Springboks for the skill and speed of playing the All Blacks and Australia either.

The Springboks who won in 2019 and 2023 were overwhelming players who were brought through the Springboks during the Super Rugby days. We will see in 2027 (or maybe 2031) when the new generation of Springboks who have only played in the URC whether they are as prepared as the previous Springbok generations.

URC surely has not prepared Ireland, Scotland, or Wales to win any World Cups.

Then again, maybe ike is on the money (for once!) and it would fall flat on its arse. Anyway, as it stands it doesn’t look like we’ll get to find out!

It's brilliant to watch but it does seem to be its own brand of rugby, somewhere inbetween union and league. Some of it even looks like a higher intensity 7’s.

Always interesting to see how it feeds into the ABs in what will be a huge second season for Razors.

What were you expecting from Hotham, a mere 22 year old playing his first finals?

Look back at previously successful Ulster teams and they had great coaches with deep squads full of quality overseas players.

Up to 2006 they had Alan Solomons and Mak McCall coaching them, during the revival after 2012 they had David Humphreys as DoR and a very deep squad featuring NZers like John Afoa and Jared Payne, and Saffers like Muller, Wannenberg and Pienaar.

Just looking at their centres they had quality operators like Darren Cave, Luke Marshall, Ian Whitten [who had such a successful career at Exeter], Chris Farrell and Stuart Olding. That’s a very deep group.

If a club has already enjoyed two major cycles of success in the pro era they have the infrastructure to do it again.

Atm their squad only has two non-international overseas players in it [Werner Kok and Juarno Augustus] and their coaching looks to be a notch down on what it was. That change has nothing to do with junior pathways so better coaching and signings ought to be the priority.