L'Australien Michael Hooper sort de sa retraite pour jouer au Japon

If you make the pact you have to pay the price. Lesson of Faust.

Hopefully the Nations League, if successful, will dam the tide.

It's fine but you cannot have your cake and eat it, esp after the national side had been spefically engineered to win the RWC in 2023 at home, not in 2027 in Aussie.

And get away with it because they tail doesn't wag the dog.

That's exactly what happens. Woodward had the same problem with the English clubs back in the early noughties. He forced their cooperation before the 2003 RWC but he paid the ultimate price for it in 2004. One club owner actually said, 'Now it's our turn' - Woodward resigned and all the benefits of the 2003 triumph were lost to the game as a whole in England. The tail wagged the dog.

I don't think THIS team is like any french team I've ever seen before.

Just naive. Until you win away in places like SA and NZ nobody really takes any notice of pure NH success [ask Gatland]. The club game will have to give ground before it ever happens, and they ain't about to do it. Period.

Granted, screaming on the internet is a difficult and onerous task but our boy has proven himself a master in this regard. Just post "Rieko Ioane", sit back (with your noise cancelling headphones) and enjoy the show.

Or, if you like living on the edge, say "Rieko Ioane is a gentleman who respects his opponents". (This is just a suggestion. I accept no responsibility, should you choose to use it.)

Everyone knows that clubs in nearly every part of the NH especially have primacy of contract. In places like England and Wales that has weakened toward more reliance on the host Union. In Ireland there is a happy marriage of province and IRFU.

Only in France has the club game managed to dominate so much of the annual calendar, to the extent that the top players have to be withdrawn from what should be a peak-career tour of the SH.

May be WR should postpone by 2 weeks the start of these tours to allow the Top 14 best players to compete in summer tours as players need to rest. If not be prepared to miss the top players of French competition in June.

That summarizes your own naivete neatly. WR already pushed back the window from June into July in 2020. Now you want to eat into even more of the international window? That perfectly expresses the insatiable nature of the club game in France. It will just keep eating more of the calendar.

The league is successful but there needs to be a balance - imagine French outrage if SA or NZ decided to send B teams to France in November!

I won’t be so sure that the AB would easily get past a French B team.

There is nothing in the cards but 3-0. sorry.

As usual you blow a lot of hot air with nary a fact in sight. Of course your fragile ego won't allow you to either admit to a bit of hyperbole or, taking the mature route, simply move on.

It didn't happen, except in your imagination.

While I’m sure Finn Smith is going to take his opportunity - I can’t help but feel he’s going to have to play the game of his life now. Borthwick picks this game to make this change?

Good luck to him. I mean it.

If anything these players deserve a win for having to endure Borthwick’s folly.

1: The attacker does not have time to readjust and run over you (like Aki did to Smith)

2: The attacker comes down fast making a try scoring offload very difficult.

As you say the tackling ability of these players at the very top is usually not noticed until you see someone without this ability get exposed.

Ollie Sleightholme has a 69% tackle success rate for England. France can also exploit Slade in so many ways.