REPORT: Five France players now ruled out as two more test positive

The really big problem though was cutting back community funding to pay for white elephants in AFL territory. They went from spending 15% of their income on the grassroots to 2.5% which reduced the talent pool. They'd have been better off focusing on their amateur programmes in Victoria and WA without ruining the local game in the heartlands.

Just the sole acts of Force and Rebels fighting so hard to remain in the competition would probably go down as their only real mistakes (discounting things like Folau situations etc).

Draw was very doctored towards letting the aussie teams look good for a bit, that’s also put some peoples opinions out of kilter.

The story of top flight rugby is that what won yesterday is not what wins today. The standards are improving and the margins are narrowing.

I don’t think the Irish provinces have regressed in quality, so much as the bar has been raised, and it keeps getting higher. A team needs to be really good in every department and to play to their potential in order not to be beaten by a mid-table team. Nobody takes Benetton lightly anymore. The Scottish teams are serious contenders. We're two games from the end of the regular season and there are 14 teams vying for the 8 playoff slots. And if it weren’t for the implosion in Welsh rugby administration in recent years, you’d have to believe that things would be even more competitive.

Also, independent of general trends, SA rugby is going from strength to strength. The Ireland teams lost all of their games this last weekend, but the SA teams won all of their games. That’s not going to happen every time, but its consistent with the overall reality that SA has been succeeding at national level, is supplying dozens of top players (and some coaches) to non-SA clubs, and has a rising tide of nextgen players that are increasingly in evidence. There could easily be 3 SA teams in the URC playoffs, and while none of them would be favorites against Leinster in a final, any of them would be legit contenders.

There is work to do in the non-Dublin Irish teams, but I would characterise it as needing to get ahead and stay ahead of the league, rather than a loss of quality per se.

There was a game a few years ago where England lost, not sure if it was Ireland or Wales, but Tom Curry spoke on camera after the game and was very impressive.