Andy Powell: 'We get to wear red next week!'Certificate 18! So there's no blood, sex and violence, but at least we've kept the foul-mouthed language. Trust us, what we've learned from planet rugby this week is NOT for the faint-hearted...
How to play your way out of a Lions jersey?Ah the fly-half debate rolls on. James Hook, dropped by Wales more times than a teabag, Ronan O'Gara, should stop reading World Cup Adventures of England's football team and Scotland, well they must find one first. And what about Danny Cipriani? Potential Media Spin Doctor perhaps? Thank god for Jonny Wilkinson...
England needs Martin Johnson...Oh to be a fly on the wall around rugby’s roundtable at Twickenham listening to the thoughts of the RFU bigwigs after England's overexuberant performance against Australia. Needless to say chitter-chatter surrounding severed public reputations, forking out gazillions of hard-earned pennies for a Monet or better still an original Da Vinci wouldn’t have been on the agenda. England needs leadership, pragmatism and above all, a lesson in the art of winning ugly. It's your specialty Johnno.
YUK!Forget Stade Francais' Parisian puke of an excuse at pop art, roll out the red carpet for America's new kids on the rugby block, Under Armour. OK, it doesn't a Harvard genius to work out Paris is the epicentre of the fashion world, but who sanctioned Wales' pathetic excuse for a second strip. Canary yellow? They look like a bunch of buttercups ready to take the stage for a primary school musical.
The RFU are taking lessons from Margot Wells...The sprinting guru behind Cipriani and Sackey is now training England's governing body, or at least it seems. As timely announcements go, plans for a new semi-professional National League One, ranks up there with news of John Prescott’s affair on the same day he is pictured in domestic harmony with his wife in Hull. As radical plans go, it makes the Experimental Law Variations appear more like Stalin's shrewd Five Year Plan.
Wales go Haka-crazy...Ireland marched forward in locked-arm formation in 1989, France decided to wear budget T-shirts from Poundland in Cardiff at last year's World Cup quarter-final, but now Wales are planning their own response to the famous Maori dance. The Welsh banished the ritual to New Zealand’s changing room in 2006, not for fear of x-rated material, but as a wind-up tactic. That worked?! What now, tapping their heads a la Gareth Thomas, or perhaps en masse spray-tans in celebration of Gavin Henson.
Thomond Park extravaganza...The Irish don't need any excuse for a drinkathon but turning on the Christmas lights on November 17th? Geeeesus! Thomond Park’s opening night threatens to boil into Ireland's frigging Oscars. They've roped in music's most annoying man, Bono, some bloke called 'The Edge,' Irish prancing pony, Michael Flatley, the golfer so famous seven blokes had to share his book-writing duties, Padraig Harrington, funny-guy Tommy Tiernan and folk singer Christy Moore. Puts the farewell to Stradey Park into perspective...
Team of the Week...Mils Muliana (New Zealand), Leigh Halfpenny (Wales), Conrad Smith (New Zealand), Stirling Mortlock (Australia), Cedric Heymans (France) Juan-Martin Hernandez (Argentina), Mike Blair (Scotland), Rodney So'oialo (New Zealand), George Smith (Australia), Tom Croft (England), Ali Williams (New Zealand), Nathan Sharpe (Australia), Euan Murray (Scotland), Stephen Moore (Australia), Benn Robinson (Australia)