Pass the Smelling Salts

France v England, Six Nations, Saturday 20 March.

I think I'm hallucinating.

England coach Martin Johnson has just named his team to face France in this weekend's Six Nations' finale.

The unbelieveable highlights are:

Ben Foden is named at fullback.

Chris Ashton replaces Ugo "I can only run in a straight line" Monye on the left wing.

Super Jonny Wilkinson has been dropped and is replaced by Toby Flood.

Jimmy Haskell, aka Mr Invisible, has been relegated to the bench.

The changes might be too little, too late in the tournament, but at least Johnson is FINALLY opening his eyes and picking the players who are actually performing.

Is this a step towards a more dynamic England team?

Maybe.  A big disappointment is that Courtney Lawes has been sent back to Northampton.  58-year old Simon Shaw starts at lock and the ever dynamic dull Louis Deacon is on the bench.

I suppose Johnson has to dig his stubborn little heels in somewhere...

Still, I'm off for a little lie down to recover from this shocking news.


England Team

15 Ben Foden (Northampton Saints)
14 Mark Cueto (Sale Sharks)
13 Mike Tindall (Gloucester Rugby)
12 Riki Flutey (CA Brive)
11 Chris Ashton (Northampton Saints)
10 Toby Flood (Leicester Tigers)
9 Danny Care (Harlequins)
1 Tim Payne (London Wasps)
2 Dylan Hartley (Northampton Saints)
3 Dan Cole (Leicester Tigers)
4 Simon Shaw (London Wasps)
5 Steve Borthwick (Saracens, captain)
6 Joe Worsley (London Wasps)
7 Lewis Moody (Leicester Tigers)
8 Nick Easter (Harlequins)

REPLACEMENTS

16 Steve Thompson (CA Brive)
17 David Wilson (Bath Rugby)
18 Louis Deacon (Leicester Tigers)
19 James Haskell (Stade Francais)
20 Ben Youngs (Leicester Tigers)
21 Jonny Wilkinson (RC Toulon)
22 Mathew Tait (Sale Sharks)

Squad Switcheroo

So it's time for the obligatory squad shake-ups before the next round of autumn international test matches. 

Whilst the Scotland team that will face Australia is unchanged from the side that got the better of Fiji in a dour encounter last weekend, Martin Johnson is getting good use of the revolving door that he had especially fitted in the home changing room at Twickenham prior to the start of this test series. 

Across the Irish sea there are a few changes in the Ireland starting fifteen, and over in Cardiff, the Wales side that narrowly lost to New Zealand is fully reformed like a slab of Spam after a week's break - well, with one new ingredient, and hopefully a little bit more meat than they showed against Samoa.

So who's in and who's out?

England

IN: 
Simon Shaw (lock), Mathew Tait (full back/wing/centre)

OUT: 
Andy Goode (part time fly-half/full time hair model), Courtney Lawes (lock)

RELEASED: 
Ben Foden (full back), Jordan Crane (number 8), George Chuter (hooker), Steffon Armitage (flanker), Ben Kay (lock), Paul Sackey (wing), Richard Wigglesworth (scrum half), David Flatman (prop)

Interesting. 
Andy Goode is going back to Brive.  See ya.
Monye hasn't been released, so is he going to switch to the wing so that either Cueto or Tait can start at full back?  With Steve Borthwick stubbornly clutching on to the captaincy and therefore guaranteeing his place in the side, it looks like Lions hero, man-mountain and the old experienced hands of Simon Shaw might push Louis Deacon on to the bench, which can only be a good thing.

All will be revealed at 12pm GMT tomorrow...


Ireland

IN:
Jonny Sexton (fly-half), Eoin Reddan (scrum half), Gordon D'Arcy (centre), Keith Earls (wing), Shane Horgan (wing), Tom Court (loosehead), Leo Cullen (lock), Denis Leamy (flanker)
New Replacements: Sean Cronin (hooker), Sean O'Brian (flanker).

OUT:
Tommy Bowe (wing), Ronan O'Gara (fly-half), Luke Fitzgerald (wing, injured), David Wallace (flanker), Cian Healy (loosehead, injured)

Hurrah!  The pretender to the O'Gara throne, Leinster's young gun Jonny Sexton is winning his first cap for Ireland.  I like Jonny Sexton a lot.  Last year he demonstrated a cool presence on the pitch in the pressurized environment of the Heineken Cup after playing second fiddle to Felipe Contepomi for such a long time, and he has shown the world that he has a calm head on his young shoulders.  Also, I like him because he looks quite sweet and a bit like an oversized toddler.  Bless.

Mansize toddler: Jonny Sexton (on the left)

Along with Jonny, the two Seans on the bench are also uncapped with Declan Kidney keen to give a few more young guns a shot against Fiji at Dublin's RDS.


Wales

IN:
Jonathan Davies (centre), Shane Williams (wing), Matthew Rees (hooker), Stephen Jones (fly-half), Martyn Williams (flanker), Gareth Cooper (scrum half),
New replacements: Andrew Bishop (centre), Dan Lydiate (flanker)

OUT:
Tom Shanklin (centre, injured), Martin Roberts (scrum half), Dan Biggar (fly-half), Dan Warburton (flanker),

Big news for Wales is that Jonathan Davies is BACK.

Soft focus really takes off the years

No, not that Jonathan Davies. 

21 year old Jonathan Davies plays in the centre (for the Scarlets) and not at fly-half like his legendary bouffant-haired namesake.  This weekend the new Jonathan Davies will make his first start at the Millennium stadium after impressing when he replaced injured Tom Shanklin off the bench in the game against Samoa last weekend.


Scotland

IN:
No-one.

OUT:
No-one.

Nice bit of consistency there Mr Robinson.  Good luck against Australia though.

Any excuse to include a picture of curly-haired Scotland captain, Chris Cusiter

What do I think?

It's good to see that Wales and Ireland are willing to give some of their hot up and coming talent some time on the pitch - unlike England. 

As much as I welcome the return of Simon Shaw and Mathew Tait into the England squad I'm still disappointed that Lawes and Foden have both been sent back to Northampton.  What was the point in hyping up Lawes so much if it was only in the mythical (and possibly non-existent) game plan for him to play approximately ten seconds of rugby in the two games where he was selected? 

With Monye hopefully not being allowed to continue pleasuring us with his erratic displays at full back and being switched to the wing (where he can ably demonstrate his sole skill of running fast in a straight line), Tait can step in to add some composure and threat from deep and Banahan can be relegated to the bench where he can hone his sprinting skills and try to out run an IKEA wardrobe for the first time in his life.

My predictions for this weekend?

New Zealand to beat England by 30 points.  At least.
Ireland to beat Fiji by 20 points.
Wales to beat Argentina by 10 points.
Australia to beat Scotland by about 1000 points.

Place your bets.

A Broken Duck - or should that be Wasp?

London Wasps 9 - 15 Leeds Carnegie

Wow.  I mean, wow.  I can't believe what I've just seen, let alone had time for it to sink in yet. 

Leeds Carnegie have not only won their first Guinness Premiership game of the season, they've also won their first Premiership away game since November 2005 and beaten London Wasps for the very first time.  Not a bad afternoon for my beloved team of "Premiership Whipping boys" and guaranteed yo-yo relegation fodder.  It's also three very good reasons to help explain why I'm sitting typing this in a state of mild shock and am contemplating taking a couple of headache tablets and having a little lie down.

It's true that today's game down in High Wycombe wasn't the prettiest game of rugby that you will ever see.  There were no tries, no twinkle-toed side steps or freeflowing champagne rugby on display.  Instead there was plenty of grit, determination and a solid performance of all the basics by the Leeds side, although Wasps minus the might of Phil Vickery seemed to fly around rather aimlessly, much like a bunch of dozy wasps intent on repeatedly smacking their faces against a window.

Wasps failed to get a solid platform from the scrum and this stopped them from successfully feeding the ball to their mouthwatering selection of backs.  Sackey, Lemi and Van Gisbergen barely saw the ball all day and instead spent most of the afternoon in B&Q, trying to find some elbow grease to help lubricate the creaking Wasps' scrum. Nippy half-back Joe Simpson made a couple of rapid breaks, but time and again any minor threat was dampened by Leeds who had invested in a job lot of insect repellent.

Danger: High Voltage

In contrast, the Leeds forwards all had an excellent day in the scrum and they completely owned the line-out.  Amusingly, the camera kept panning to an increasingly irritated looking Wasps coach Shaun Edwards on the bench, who seemed ready to implode as Leeds stole ball after ball.  Oh how it made me laugh. 

However, it was at the breakdown where Leeds won this game.  Hendre Fourie aka Shrek had yet another excellent game, although I hope the powers that be down at Twickenham HQ aren't tempted to look any closer at the South African who now qualifies for England due to residency, as he is a key element in the Leeds pack.

The evergreen Andy Gommersall also had an exceptional game, and he used the difficult swirling wind to his advantage in the first half, by peppering spaces in the Wasps half with well placed box kicks.  And to think, I really didn't like him when he was at Gloucester.  Well Andy, I take it all back, I think you're alright.

Leeds went in at half time with a 12-6 lead, all thanks to the boot of Ceiron Thomas.  Paul Walder kicked all of Wasps points in a rather scrappy performance for the London outfit, whose only plus point of the game was the emergence from the bench of man mountain Simon Shaw who has been out with a long term foot injury.  Thomas kept his cool and traded penalties with Walder to end the game 9-15 and prompt all the Leeds squad to leap with joy and start a good few minutes of well deserved back-slapping.

Woo!  Milky Bars are on me!

If Saracens can top the league by playing 'boring' gritty rugby, then I don't see why this won't do the trick in helping Leeds peel themselves off the bottom.  The gap to next placed Bath has been cut to two points with these two teams set to face each other in their first match of the new year at Headingley Carnegie on Saturday 2nd January.  Unfortunately I'm going to miss this game as I'll be dragging my decrepit body back from a New Year's Eve blowout in Brussels.  Mmm, chocolate.

Anyway, as the season progresses, Leeds will need to find the ability to turn periods of pressure into points and score tries rather than relying on the boot of their number ten to kick them to victory.  However if they can keep on getting the basics right like they did in the game today then they will definitely build a platform that will hopefully help them to avoid the pain of relegation.  Fingers crossed.