Five Scotland players flown home from Americas tour

So alligned with b) the only real option is to complain to those in control. I suspect that’s why weve seen France reneging on the practice, and you can only be left to think that if they hadn’t reneged, WR would have done something more drastic about it. Which of course would mean not just telling them to bugger off when they want to tour, it’s no one playing them (from t1 at least) at all (assuming they have no interest in scheduling match’s outside the windows, like Ireland and NZ are doing).

Then of course that means no involvement of France in the Nations Championship. Which means they are automatically the last ranked team in 6N to qualify, so the actual worst team in 6N gets to compete in it, making a mockery of the promotion and relegation WR wanted to happen between T1 and T2 for qualifying purposes. Yup, b) is just something nobody wants to happen. Well done FFR and LNR for making the tour work instead (how well is yet to be seen).

The right use of stats really depends on far into the essence of the game you’ve penetrated - any game. You can get some guidelines, but nobody [not even Opta] can really tell you what they are. That’s where the fun starts.

You can download it on Kindle to save time. Or buy it cheap second hand on Az.

Really commendable that theyre doing it with the non French players now too. Kinghorn in particular is going to want to be firing come a month after the T14 final.

LOL I cant really working what “reaction by orthodoxy to Moneyball principles” means but if just a fancy way of saying a movie about the good ole days of true art that no fancy numbers can beat, didn’t Clint the tip the hat to it by defecting to his um disciples club and use moneyball to find a no name curve ball pitcher to beat his club with?

Ohh so its really all off one batting principle, and I suppose they questioned others once they first were able to run the numbers. Bit of a wait at the library but I booked it in, will see if it can hold me. Cricket > Baseball after all so it better not sound too american.

Williams is fighting it out with Ben White for 3rd slot behind JGP and Mitchell.

Morgan is up against JVDF, Earl, Curry, Curry, Willis for 4 flanker slots. Morgan is a fantastic player but a huge call to leave any of those boys at home given how much Wales struggled at the breakdown against England. He's by no means solely responsible for that but it will be fresh in the minds of the selectors. Given the amount of hybrid players emerging and the inclination for a 6-2 split, they may be able to find room for a 5th flanker in the squad. In which case may be Ben Curry who misses out or Willis might be excluded given we have such depth in the players who have chosen to play for clubs this side of the channel.

Lake and Faletau are good enough but I'd be surprised if Faletau gets picked over Conan and Lake would be up against Cowan-Dickie which I can't see happening. Blair Murray is probably 4th in the 15 pecking order behind Kinghorn, Heenan, Marcus Smith. He may be a better 15 than Smith but Smith brings versatility so would be ahead of him. Since Smith may go on tour as a 10/15 hybrid, they would already have 3 fullbacks in the squad so Murray won't make it, good player though.

Nicky Smith and Dafydd Jenkins clutching at straws.

If I had to put money on either side, it wouldn’t be for the RFU record making a decision like that. Tough one though.