England 19-17 Wales ; France 30-27 Scotland
Derek Williams of this parish summed up the England performance well. I would add the inexperienced Georgian referee ( easier to call him that as I or predictive text would surely mis-spell his name! ) was a little too quick to brandish the cards. At one stage England only had 12.players on the pitch. Interesting whether after yet another wild tackle from Owen Farrell and not for the first time, Marcus Smith is recalled or George Ford. I predict it will be the latter with Manu Tuilagi and Ollie Lawrence or Joe Marchant as centres. Steve Borthwick is not in the Ben Stokes school of putting entertainment ahead of performance.
No one could accuse either Scotland or France of being dull . They served up a thriller with Scotland coming back in the final quarter only for France to grab the winner One of my favourite players is French winger Gabin Villière who after a silky run through the porous Scottish defence set up a a beauty of a try for Peraud With Villière, Charles Ollivon and Antoine dr Dupont back France are looking formidable and were it not for the All Blacks be firm favourites for the forthcoming World Cup . My Scotland do not travel well and need to improve their restarts but their expressive ,expansive play will win many friends. I have already blocked out my diary for Scotland v Ireland on October 17th in Paris and Scotland v South Africa in Marseilles on September 10th.
One problem I experienced on Saturday night was accessing Amazon Prime who had the rights to both matches It kept on reverting to the existing channel and you cannot watch it on more than one set My partner Jack is a Forest fan going back to the heady Brian Clough days and he texted from outside the Emirates Stadium of Arsenal moaning that with 35000 others he was still stuck outside at kick off time due to a glitch with mobile ticketing Tell the Rust readers that watching sport on tv is the best option continued his text. Mind you I had to explain to Jack that the analyst “Topsy” was Ojo of London Irish It’s all a bit cliquey for the otherwise sound Nick Mullins to use nicknames that not every viewer would know.
