Wounded France axe 3 players from matchday squad after Italy draw

LAR-Munster was great wasn’t it? Piece on that later this week. Jean Kleyn makes big diff!

The Reds obv have to set up their maul off lineout, and that didn’t work v the Force. It functioned ok v the Chiefs but the maul was stifled instead! Cannot have one without the other and that’s the besetting problem for the Reds atm.

Having Kleyn back behind Oli Jager makes huge diff to set-piece while releasing Tadhg Berine to play the 4/6 hybrid role he is so good at.

That pack will really test UBB.

The one random interesting point that you always trying to look for when talking to someone behaving like this (you’re always trying to move on politely while using someone else as the focus of you’re observation), is the idea of which player is likely to have the required miles in his legs, Ardiea Savea, or Scott Barrett?

Personally I had always assumed it would be Scott Barrett, so I’d say to someone else in the group “there’s no way Ardie can continue playing as long as Scott with the amount of miles he puts on his legs, or the number of South Africans greatest locks he’s dumped on there arse hahahaha (you get the picture)!”, and Ardie is an extreme workhorse, but it was also the fact he’d been a key figure, for both the All Blacks and Hurricanes, for longer than Scott, but maybe it was Barrett that because the starter first?

While I’d be on the topic of whos been number one for longer, and played more minutes, I’d bring up that Barrett was the lock that had the more dynamic performances around the park, and I’d actually think those would be far easier for him to pull of when playing as a blindside flanker, as he.. you know.. well lets just say I can remember a game were both were thought to be ‘must’ starters in the side..

So it’s bizarre that Hamish champions Savea as the new captain after Savea is coming off a pretty underwhelming 2024. Just as Barrett will never go down in All Black lore as the same calibre of lock as Whitelock or Retallick, Savea is never going to be put on the same pedestal as McCaw, Kaino, or Read.