Egg Chasing
As a fan of the oval ball game as well as the round, I thought I' blog about the six-nations whilst it is on. Over the course of a fairly scrappy weekend of rugby, I felt that Scotland were robbed by bad refereeing decisions, which allowed France to get out of jail; Wales deserved to win having thoroughly outplayed England; and Ireland came through a very tough encounter in Rome with injury worries over their star centres.

Obviously, being an Englishman married to a Welshwoman, whose in-laws were in Cardiff on Saturday I won't be dwelling on the non-performance of my countrymen.

In anticipation of the forthcoming British Lions tour to New Zealand, and seeing as the Six Nations started on Saturday, I'd like to present what I believe will be the starting XV for the first Test based on the first round of six nations matches:

15 Jason Robinson (Eng)
14 Josh Lewsey (Eng)
13 Brian O'Driscoll (captain) (Ire)
12 Gavin Henson (Wal)
11 Shane Williams (Wal)
10 Jonny Wilkinson (Eng)
9 Chris Cussiter (Sco)

1 Tom Smith (Sco)
2 Shane Byrne (Ire)
3 Julian White (Eng)
4 Malcolm O'Kelly (Ire)
5 Paul O'Connell (Ire)
6 Richard Hill (Eng)
7 Lewis Moody (Eng)
8 Simon Taylor (Sco)

I accept that there are fitness doubts over Hill, Taylor and Wilkinson and that Lewis Moody missed Saturday's game through injury, but I still think that if fit they will all start and I've yet to see a convincing argument for an alternative.

At the moment, players like Hickie and O'Connor are pushing hard to be included, but in my opinion haven’t quite done enough, yet.

Obviously I'll be reviewing the team as the Six Nations progresses, so I'm sure things will change as the weeks go by.

- posted by Paul @ 1:34 pm