Shadow is like a parasite that lays dormant waiting for a willing apologist host to innocently wander past that he can cling to.

That's a little harsh

You've made me feel guilty now.

Rugby Union is not a global game by any stretch of imagination, still at least they are increasing the amount of games for the smaller nations against the giants of world rugby. They can only get better that way. League is very shoddy when it comes to this, take PNG for example, how many tests have they played since WC 2000, about 6/7 at most. They should have made the 4 Nations tournament scuedled for 2009 a 5 Nations tournament. PNG is the only country in the world where Rugby League is the national sport, at least the RU bodies look after the smaller nations.

couldn't agree more

It's actually made up of the best Romanian players from their own league, not just the Romanian players as that would just be the Romanian side. The argument used was that Georgias top players mainly play elsewhere, but I thought Romanias did as well

Me too.

1- PNG can only join the 3/4 Nations if it is financially viable. ATM it is barely financially viable without them.
2- I reffer the honourable gentleman to the RFU's treatment of Tonga in the last two world cups, and would suggest that RU bodies do, in fact, not look after the smaller nations.

And what treatment would that be?
The RFU have nothing to do with running the RWC.

Best game of the Heineken Cup so far today at the Millennium Stadium.
Looks like the gamble to switch grounds paid off with 27000 attending.

Excellent game & well worth the £15.00 I paid for me & my son to go. the Glawsterr fans certainly did their bit to crank up the atmoshere, although only opening the middle & lower tiers helped. Vainokolo was pertty anonymous when he came on I thought

With Sale selling out Edgeley Park for the first time (IIRC) for the visit of Munster, is the Heineken Cup finally starting to capture the imagination and interest of English and Welsh fans in the same way it has the Irish and the French in recent years?

Possibly, although I think the pricing helped with the Blues game, I'll reserve judgement until after I've seen the crowd for the Biarritz game at the Arms Park in December.

With maximum points from 2 games, that should also help boost the crowd. From memory its about a 12,500 capacity, so really anything under 10,000 would be a disaster.

Be interesting how much they get against Leicester in the EDF today.

9815, according to be BBC. I suspect that it'll be much higher for the visit of Bath on Friday night, I remember going to to see them play in a friendly about 10 years ago & we ended up building our own terracing out of a pile of breeze blocks under the hospitality boxes at the River Taff end, there were that many in the ground. Victor Obugu got sent off that night for being chopsy, so that dates it.

he was not anonymouse this weekend in [url=http://www.sportinglife.com/rugbyunion/news/story_get.cgi?STORY_NAME=rugby/08/10/28/manual_104943.htmlBath[/url

aussie's wallaby's play italy today

[urlhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/rugby_union/welsh/7709020.stm[/url

The thing that gets me thinking here is that the same day England are playing New Zealand. What are England going to do if the clubs refuse to release the players because it falls outside of the international window.

On the BBC news today at teatime the Rugby Union international friendlies Wales v South Africa and England v Pacific Islanders got a mention but nothing about Englands Rugby League World Cup game in Australia so i was told earlier on.

Probably because the RL world cup is a joke

aussie wallabys beat italy

Wasn't quite as easy as you thought it was going to be though, was it?

not as easy as this weekends wallaby's game

Promising from England, taking into account the scratch nature of the opposition.

A real willingness to run ball from deep when it was on (and sometimes when it wasn't) as evidenced by Cipriani's try and some real youth, pace and exuberance added to the side from the likes of Care and Armitage.

Good to see them finally embracing the Southern Hemisphere approach to the game, just hope they don't retreat back into their shell against stiffer opposition over the next three weeks.