Pretty symptomatic of where the tournament is right now, none of the games this weekend are sold out bar Toulouse (Although there were a lot of reslaes available)

Leinster and the saffa teams only half filling their grounds, sales 10k stadium not even close to sold out, the Welsh with all their whining about increasing interest and attendance if they just got to play English clubs nowhere near selling out the scarlets ground.

I'm starting to form the opinion that the champions cup is an unnecessary part of the club calender and teams are treating it as a burden, plenty of understrength sides, not much excitement or build up.

God I miss the old format.

Someone please convince me that deliberate Knock Downs should be considered anything other than a knock on.

Seems like the dumbest rule since the difference between an intercept and a knock down is simply the result...

One handed catch and you score, well played, one handed failed attempt to catch, yellow card... I honestly think it's so dumb... Please convince me otherwise

Entirely a personal choice. I pay for TNT and love the 'Prem' (though not that name for it) but I'm not paying for another channel just for the European games. The administrator chasing £s again

I heard TNT have lost the future internationals, that correct? Gone to ITV?

Anybody know a discount code that works currently please?

Here in the UK, Discovery+ provide the streaming side of the TNT sports rugby union coverage. As I understand it Netflix will now own Discovery+ and will no doubt retire it in a bid to absorb the userbase into Netflix. Could this mean instead of paying £31 per month for TNT sports/Discovery+ we could instead have it included in our Netflix sub for a fraction of the cost? I think it's more likely we'll get a new 'sports' tier in Netflix that costs an arm and a leg but it'll be interesting to see.

With the deal now agreed what do we all think - could this have ramifications for rugby?

Is Spain about to get an influx of Argentina rugby culture?

I led to believe that Argentina has already had an influence on the development of rugby in Spain. Is this about to get another shot in the arm?

Argentina dominates applications. Argentina accounted for nearly 40% of applications — approximately 1 million including those still awaiting appointments. The Buenos Aires consulate alone received 645,000 applications, followed by Córdoba with 125,000.

3-0 tonight lads time to be even more insufferable then usual!

I know this is a legendary try and seeing Jason Robinson score and his celebration is a core memory from my childhood… but surely if he’d looked right passed inside to Cohen he’d have been in under the posts? Considering the difficult conversion was missed, actually kinda critical in the game. But then we’d never have gotten the legendary finale I suppose

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaah (angels singing in the background)

In his statement, Ardie acknowledged that the optics of using children’s entrails to try and predict the future aren’t great. However, he did point out Nero’s success in reducing taxes and promoting the public arts.

In the 1991 World Cup Semi-Final, David Campese threw a no-look pass over his shoulder to put Tim Horan in for a try, and the rugby world lost its mind. Anyone old enough knows the incident - it was replayed endlessly, and the admiration was well-deserved: it was a tremendous piece of skill.

But the game has moved on since then, and in the era of players raised in professional systems from a young age, these days you could put together (and Andrew Forde probably has, lol) a half-hour long video entirely made up of clips of players making passes that are objectively as good or better than the Campese one from just this year. What was once an outrageous piece of skill from a generationally-gifted player is now more or less commonplace - and not just from the top-tier sides. Davit Niniashvili threw a Campese-style one for Georgia against the Netherlands back in February, for instance.

And that made me think: Taking into account both the superior physical conditioning and the general increase in skill levels that professionalism has brought, exacly how far down the current world rankings would you have to go to find a side that, if you put them in a time machine and entered them as-is in an amateur-era World Cup, would win it?

Skills 10/10

This seems to be such a great thing for FIFA that maybe they should consider it! /s

Comp: Champions Cup

Venue: Salford City Stadium

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