Italy come to town this weekend and they’ve decided to rest their best player. Surely every manager in The Irish Times Fantasy Rugby League should be putting their eggs in Ireland’s basket, right?
All the evidence certainly points to that theory, especially after Joe Schmidt was able to name a team featuring only one enforced change from the narrow defeat to England, with Iain Henderson coming into the back-row instead of Peter O’Mahony.
Italy may have defeated Ireland for the first time in the Six Nations last season, but the tables have been almost completely turned this time around. The Azzurri are bottom of the table after three consecutive losses, they have conceded 74 points (just short of an average of 25 a game) and seem to be saving themselves for the final game against England, with the likes of Parisse and Zanni left out of the side for Saturday afternoon’s encounter at the Aviva Stadium.
As a result, the focus of many a manager in The Irish Times Fantasy Rugby League should be on Ireland and well it might be for a team who have scored the most points, conceded the least and look likely to set up a tilt at the title with a victory this weekend.
Having been passed fit, Jonathan Sexton should be a pretty popular choice as kicker and who would put it past Brian O’Driscoll to touch down on what will be *sniff* his last ever international appearance on home soil.
Rob Kearney has been so good this season that he looks a decent bet to add to the try he scored against England and with the rolling maul proving such an effective tactic so far, Iain Henderson, Chris Henry and Jamie Heaslip (the latter two having already scored tries via that route in the tournament) could benefit once more this weekend.
While a draw would be a perfect result for Ireland, if a team has to win it would be better as far as we’re concerned if it was Wales in the game of the weekend at Twickenham on Sunday. We don’t want to read too much into the France game as France were so terrible, but there were signs of a Welsh revival of sorts, personified by usual suspects like try scorers George North and Sam Warburton, Alex Cuthbert and kicking machine Leigh Halfpenny.
Pity for them they’ll be coming up against a defence that looked nigh on impenetrable against Ireland and as we expect a similarly miserly approach by Stuart Lancaster’s men, points for players from both sides might be at a premium.
Credit where it's due, Brown has been excellent in the tournament so far
Still, if anyone is likely to stand out from the crowd, the aforementioned Welsh quartet are certainly capable, while from an English point of view, Mike Brown’s form to date must be considered, Danny Care is hard to ignore in more ways than one and the second-row partnership of Courtney Lawes and Joe Launchbury have arguably been the best second row-pairing in the tournament to date.
Finally, to Murrayfield on Saturday and after they failed to score in their last outing on home soil, it’s hard to big up the virtues of the 15 players who will line out for Scotland this weekend.
That said, they did win their last game (just) thanks to two tries from Alan Dunbar and Stuart Hogg will no doubt fancy breaking through a French defence that was as flaky as hell against Wales last time out.
As for Les Bleus, it’s really hard to gauge how they might perform considering that Philippe Saint-André has taken the guillotine to his team and made seven changes from the mauling in the Millennium Stadium.
Out go injured trio Wesley Fofana, Yannick Nyanga and Dmitri Szarzewski and Louis Picamoles has been given the weekend off after disrespecting the referee in Cardiff.
In terms of consistency, Yoann Huget has been a constant threat and Maxime Machenaud’s introduction at scrum-half could have a positive effect, but despite their Jekyll and Hyde-like performances so far, we still expect the visitors to take something away from Murrayfield and set up what could be a titanic encounter in Paris on Paddy’s weekend.
