I thinks it's a little disrespectful that the media are calling this the tournament decider. Both teams have got tough last games , France on their day could beat England if England are not on it and Italy have beaten Wales in the past . You would have to say Italy are playing better rugby than France at this moment
Given that the third favourites (France) are 50/1 and the fourth favourites (Scotland) are 150/1, it doesn't sound like too much of a stretch to me.
There's two ways for France to win it:
- If Wales beat England, they need to win against Scotland (as slight underdogs), beat England on home soil (again as underdogs in all likelihood) and Italy to win on Welsh soil. As an accumulator, I'm struggling to make the numbers come close to anything as short as 50/1.
- If England win, they will need to beat England by 40+ points (possibly more) at home.
Putting this together, 50/1 seems like a very mean price to me.
If you want to look for disrespectful, try going back to 1996 when "Le Crunch" was widely talked about as the tournament decider, despite being the tournament opener! It did produce the Champions, but it wasn't the decider as Scotland did the losers that day a favour by beating France allowing England to win on points difference.
If you disagree, I suggest you fill your boots on France and Scotland, but having done the maths (on France at least), the possibility pools remote enough to me that I wouldn't get to upset by what essentially boils down to semantics.
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If front rows don't cheat at the scrums then they're ****ing stupid.
You see what you can get away with and do it until you can't get away with it anymore
Semantics again, but are front rowers who contravene the laws really
cheating? They're not deliberately setting out to deceive anyone (a la Andy Haden or Richards, Williams, Brennan et al), anything that they are doing it in full view of the team of three, who for whatever reason aren't penalising them. Is a player who strays offside a cheat (thinking about the grief that Richie McCaw gets, I suppose many people would say yes)? To me they're just taking a calculated risk, understanding the consequences of getting caught. The problem comes if the laws don't offer sufficient disincentive to those who infringe or if the team of three aren't able to identifying it.
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Just to all fuel to the media bias fire, here's how the Telegraph rate today's starting XVs:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/rugby-un...ley-sam-warburton-and-the-six-nations-trophy/
A bit bullish on a couple of England players (Kruis 9/10 and Hartley 8/10) and rather middle of the road (no player scoring less than 6.10). Wales score three out of a hundred and fifty more than England.
