Wales take extra summer game against England.

First topic message reminder :

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/34986033

Wales will play England at Twickenham before their summer tour of New Zealand in 2016.

The match will take place on 29 May, a day after the Pro12 and English Premiership finals.

Warren Gatland's side then face three Tests against the All Blacks and a midweek game against Chiefs in June.

Australia, Argentina and South Africa are confirmed as opponents for the autumn internationals, with one fixture on 19 November still to be finalised.

The fixture list means Wales will face two away matches against Eddie Jones' England in two and a half months, with their Six Nations meeting taking place on 12 March.

Wales fixtures

Summer 2016

Sunday 29 May: England, Twickenham Stadium

Saturday 11 June: New Zealand, Eden Park, Auckland

Tuesday 14 June: Chiefs, FMG Stadium, Waikato

Saturday 18 June: New Zealand, Westpac Stadium, Wellington

Saturday 25 June, New Zealand, Forsyth Barr Stadium, Dunedin

Autumn Series

Saturday 5 November, Australia, Principality Stadium

Saturday 12 November, Argentina, Principality Stadium

Saturday 19 November, TBC, Principality Stadium

Saturday 26 November, South Africa, Principality Stadium

BigTrevsbigmac wrote:

Shifty wrote:Wales beating Australia was the reason Eddie Jones got the sack as their national coach, maybe he wants to get as many chances as he possibly can to get revenge, lol.  

Maybe but....

If the reverse happened Wales would be on their 11th coach since Wales last win against Oz.

England 13 - 33 Australia and a ta-ra mate to Stu Lancaster.

It would have been nice if they had both organised a game against a tier 2 side. But if they've even specifically come out and said it's a money-spinner, what can you expect.

Hugely against this game as a concept, but as a spectacle it might not be too bad. The fiancee is Welsh as well, so could be a good day out without me sulking too bad if England lose.

The question I have though, is when is the RWC 2019 draw? The way some of our fixture lists are looking, we may have another pool of death scenario. I know they wanted to push the draw back, but apparently they want to get ticketing out the way to avoid a clash with Tokyo 2020 Olympic tickets, and therefore have to draw early.

Bloody hell Robbo. I hope not. It's ridiculous. If England get beat by Scotland they'll be tier2. That's awful. I'm not a fan but it just ain't right. I don't know why people are so anti the Wales game as I said earlier there's plenty of players to go round. And we'll relish another trip to Fortress HQ. £2m will do nicely for our grass roots rugby or help keep a few of our top players in Wales.

Utterly pointless game. I'd like to see England put out a Premiership Select XV from the teams not involved in semis or final of the AP. It would have been a good opportunity for a strong Saxons side to play a Tier 2 nation if there was to be a game at all. It's got about as much going for it as a Barbarians game.

It's just greed. The international game needs reining back (and to stop impinging on the club game too).

Dontheman2 wrote:In 1930. The then British lions played 28 games including 5 Tests against NZ and Australia in a 16 week period. . The squad consisted of 29 players. Given the recovery technologies we now have and the huge squads. Unions can call on I think it's a bit rich to go on about killing the game with an extra Test.  The game is still alive and kicking!

I get your point but I completely disagree, players then (and to an extent people in general) were smaller on average than today; given that the game is now professional and players spend so much time they are a completely different specimens to those taking part in 1930, the players in 1930 would have been talented rugby players whereas today's lot are virtually super human. Since 1987 alone backs have gained 6kg on average, they are bigger and they are faster these days. I've read somewhere that it takes the body on average around 10 days to recover from any rugby game, and this increases to about 6 weeks for a player to recover properly from an international game hence the injuries we see. It's also worth remembering that in 1930 rugby was very much a fifteen man game, a squad of 29 players effectively gave them two teams that could regularly rotate meaning most players probably played fewer than 20 games whereas today rugby is a twenty-three man, of course at some levels and in some eras it is and has been possible to play a lot more rugby than they do at professional and international level, teenagers can often play three games a week and train and be expected to go to the gym but they are much smaller and the risk of injury is much less.

My main issue with the game however is there's literally nothing special about it, it'll be the third time in twelve months England and Wales will have played each other, the players won't care, the fans won't really care but it will give the media another chance to dramatise England's world cup exit and talk of "revenge" or "counter-revenge" depending on what happens in the Six Nations forgetting the fact that for the last 120 odd years these teams have played year in year out and therefore revenge is not likely to come into it and the best team on the day will win and of course the guys who count the pennies probably will care, in fact when they said "money is no object" when they were looking for their new coach they probably calculated it in terms of how many meaningless friendlies can they play in order to pay for their new coach, and who else to find for a pointless injury-risking rugby game than Wales whose governing body clearly saw the injury crisis during the world cup and came to the conclusion that these players just needed more rugby, I get feeling that in 20 years time Wales will host some kind of celebratory dinner for this group of players, the players will arrive on crutches and stretchers and the WRU officials will arrive in supercars and designer suits.

Oh well, it looks like the main reason for Wales to play this game is for £££££££££££££'s.

It looks as though the WRU will rake in £2M big ones for this game.

http://www.therugbypaper.co.uk/featured-post/24627/twickenham-clash-worth-2m-for-welsh-rugby/

NDC top-ups .

The fourth AI is Japan. Interesting. Still disappointed with the fourth game. That's a lot of games the Regions will be without their players, particularly close to Europe time.

Also some news of a long(er) term deal with

Under Armour: