The Irish are dropping like flies -. another one sent home today due to injury and ..... courtesy of the BBC

"63 mins: Simon Shaw on for O'Connell, Flutey for Roberts. BOD takes over as on-pitch skipper".

At last somebody has realised that O'Connell is not a leader.

Personally I think O'Gara is vastly over-rated - He is a typical Munster back, dull, no imagination, bad tackler, no drive. His good points are that he can kick (for goal) and that he - another typical Munster quality, can take a beating. Hopefully Hook will get the test spots.

It's interesting how the Welsh are beginning to dominate this tournament

The French manage to beat NZ in NZ.

"The game was there for the taking, maybe injuries and a sudden lack of depth underneath have really started to hit NZ." some SMS comment from the BBC website

IIRC NZ had this great master plan of being able to swap any player with impunity. That was, in my opinion unjustly, discredited when NZ lost to France in 2007. For some reason the NZ don't really impress the French and NZ can't handle Gallic flair - dosen't mean the strategy was fundamentally faulty.

I remember watching Ireland nearly lose to Argentina, also 2007 I think. The Irish back-line was taking a battering and was looking seriously unsteady. David Humphries was taken off and O'Gara put on and, just like in the Crimea, you could see the line steady and somehow IRL managed to limp through the game. Argentina play very much like Munster, head down and charge so O'Gara, although he didn't play any better than Humphries, wasn't likely to be too put off by that style of play.

At the time I thought that O'Sullivan (trainer) was blessed with having two out halves of different qualities and therefore, considering the out-half generally exerts a controlling effect on the game, could set up a team with two distinct playing characteristics depending on the type of opposition one was likely to meet.

Of course that was a concept too high for an Irish trainer, Humphries, a seriously talanted player and imo far better than ROG got the boot and spent the rest of his international career on the bench. Meanwhile ROG learnt to play rugby in an international shirt.

Recently Stringer, who has been playing with ROG since U12, has been dropped from the Irish team. He came on a couple of times during the recent grand slam and you could see that ROG was immediately under less decision making pressure because, again my opinion, Stringer is such a little egoist that he decides which balls ROG gets meaning, ROG has less influence on the game - which as you can surmise, is, imo, a good thing.

In sport there are many variables but I would have thought one could expect from professional players and a professional trainer, that two distinct styles of back-play could be upheld by the same team.

Is this about the cricket that I had to watch with me Irish mate on Thursday?

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The worm has turned.........