6 Nations 2017 Predictions

First topic message reminder :

Some certainties:

IRELAND

1. The team will be hyped beyond belief.
2. Joe Schmidt will be described several times by commentators as "the best home nations coach".
3. John Inverdale will turn purple trying not to publicly disagree with 2.
4. Brian O'Driscoll will rock up in a commentary booth sounding very casual and slightly bewildered.
5. Simon Zebo will retain his status as 'Most Overrated Northern Hemisphere Player'.
6. Paddy Jackson's status as most accurate kicker in the tournament (which it was last year) will be completely ignored.
7. CJ Stander will actually snap an opposing player like a twig.
8. Jonny Sexton will continually do the same face as a toddler who has just dropped his ice cream on the floor.
9. Rory Best and his 'soft voice/concerned face' combination will talk referees out of awarding at least 4 tries against Ireland.
10. Beating the All Blacks will be mentioned 3,458,798 times by match commentators.
11. George Hook will no longer even try to hide his racism and general beligerance towards anyone non-Irish.
12. Connor Murray will stand on one leg like Ralph Macchio at the end of Karate Kid for extended periods of time and point frantically at anyone trying to touch him.

WALES

1. The team will be hyped beyond belief.
2. Jonathan 'Jiffy' Davies will look even more like a ferret who has just woken from a short nap in a barrel of strong cider.
3. Sam Warbuton will play every game. Nobody will be able to understand why.
4. Robert Howley will look more and more slumped until at the end of the tournament, his spine will be an actual 'S' shape.
5. The press will constantly ask for a player under 25 to be chosen. None will be.
6. Gethin Jenkins will actually bring his iron lung onto the field of play.
7. The 'Welsh Way' will STILL be an expression flung around like confetti.
8. Eddie Butler will be unable to get through a game without saying 'But what of England?'. Even though they aren't playing.
9. Shane Williams will be refused entry to a ground for looking under age.
10. Warren Gatland will be seen drunk after a Welsh defeat having a laugh with Andy Irvine.

ENGLAND

1. The team will be hyped beyond belief.
2. Eddie Jones will spontaneously combust with smugness.
3. John Inverdale will spend 90% of the time talking about England in the pre-match analysis. Even if they are not playing.
4. BBC Sport will run a 4 hour special called 'Maro Itoje Night' with in-depth interviews from family, friends, agents and anyone who once shook his hand.
5. Dylan Hartley will have a swear box in the dressing room. By the end of the tournament, he will have donated GBP 598,000 to a local charity.
6. All commentators will continue to ignore how good Chris Robshaw actually is.
7. Mike Brown will officially start a fight in an empty room.
8. Dan Cole will do his 'bewildered' face a lot.
9. Clive Woodward will pop up on commentary teams sounding increasing like a mad homeless man who shouts into bins and talks about 2003 like it was the time of the Great Enlightenment.
10. More and more Scotland fans will come round to the fact that Brian Moore is a great bloke and a hilarious commentator.  

FRANCE

1. In France, the team will be hyped beyond belief.
2. Thomas Castaignede will sit politely as a studio guest for 2 hours without Inverdale thinking to ask him a question.
3. Morgan Parra will be called 'a little general' 48 times without the whiff of racism ever entering the heads of the commentary team.
4. Guy Noves will attend a press conference in a stripy jumper wearing a beret and smoking a Gauloises wrapped inside a Gitanes.
5. Serge Blanco will finally reach 35 stones and start to block out the sun.
6. Jonathan Davies will pronounce Damien Chouly five different ways. All of them will be wrong.
7. Eddie Butler will constantly luxuriate in pronouncing the name 'Sebastien Vahaamahina'.
8. Everyone will try and utterly fail not to ask 'which French side will turn up' 24 times each during a game.
9. Ditto 'Gallic flair'.
10. Everyone in the studio will be an instant expert on Louis Picamole as they've actually seen him play more than twice this season.
11. Inverdale will mention that Jonny Wilkinson now coaches in France. This will have no bearing on any game or anything, ever.
12. Austin Healey will keep his largest and most flamboyant scarf for touchline punditry in Paris.
13. Someone in the commentary team will try an appalling French phrase. Everyone will laugh out of embarrassment. Thomas Castaignede will smile politely.
14. Sky will wheel out a tanned, happy and borderline inebriated Richard Cockerill to talk about how awesome being in France is.

ITALY

1. Sky commentators will continue to nominate Sergio Parisse as man of the match. Even though he is sitting next to them in the commentary booth. 
2. Cameramen will spend an uncomfortable amount of time finding attractive female Italian fans in the audience. 
3. Segment producers will contrast this with a shot immediately afterwards of the ugliest, fattest, oldest, most feral, most sh!tfaced, most tattooed and most ridiculously costumed home nations fans that they can find. Inevitably, the cameramen will be spoiled for choice. 
4. John Inverdale will try an Italian phrase and horribly mispronounce it. Everyone will laugh out of embarrassment. Thomas Castaignede and Sergio Parisse will smile politely.
5. Michele Campagnaro will score at least two astonishing tries. They will be completely ignored in favour of a new studio segment about what Maro Itoje thinks about the international refugee crisis.
6. Castro will come onto the pitch, tw@t someone, gesticulate wildly, look as through someone has shat in his salad and then be red carded. All in the space of 4 minutes or fewer.
7. Andy Nicholl will point out at least 5 times that Tommaso Allan could have played for Scotland. And then say, 'of course, now that we have Finn Russell, we don't really need him'.
8. Classical Italian folk songs will make up about 80% of the puns that the snickering home counties studio team will come out with. The other 20% will relate to food.
9. Lawrence Dallaglio will be asked at least once during the England match about which part of Italy he's from and if he can knock together a decent maranara sauce.
10. Simone Favaro will have at least one MoM performance (as he did against the Springboks). Andy Nicholl will have a stroke trying to ram it into the studio conversation that he plays for Glasgow.

SCOTLAND

1. The team will not be hyped in the slightest.
2. Stuart Hogg will score at least 3 tries that nobody else in the NH could hope to score and make more meters than any other backline player.
3. In one match, he will then miss one tackle in the 79th minute against a newly substituted lock forward and be immediately badged by the fans of all other nations as wholly unsuitable to tour with the Lions.
4. John Inverdale will behave like a smug, condescending **** and be wholly unaware that he is doing it.
5. Andrew Cotter will continue to sound like he's holding his nose and whispering through a toilet roll tube.
6. Jonny Gray will score at least once, make more tackles than any other player and guarantee his own line-out ball
7. In one match, he will then miss one tackle in the 79th minute against a newly substituted winger who has been given a 30m head start and be immediately badged by the fans of all other nations as wholly unsuitable to tour with the Lions. Inverdale will comment afterwards that Gray shouldn't be disheartened as he is very nearly as good as the England understudies to Kruis and Itoje.
8. Scotland will dominate most teams for an hour, fail to score and then lose agonisingly in the last minute against Ireland, England and Wales.
9. Vern Cotter's eyes will actually turn Austin Healey to stone on live television.
10. Tommy Seymour will score at least 3 fabulous tries. They will be completely ignored in favour of an extended studio segment about Maro Itoje's recent statement that Grigori Perelman solved the Poincare conjecture because he told him the answer over a couple of pints of wheatgrass juice. The BBC commentary team will report that this is true and demand that Perelmen be arrested.
11. We will all miss Bill McLaren very badly.
12. Greig Laidlaw will say "BT" before the word "Murrayfield" 38 separate times in interviews. On the one occasion he forgets, he will take a full page ad in the Telegraph apologising for his mistake.

No seriously you'll have to explain. My reaction to your racism wasn't fake by the way but still willing to move on even if you can't.

GunsGermsV2 wrote:

beshocked wrote:If teams want to be respected more than they need to win more.

Scotland haven't got a good record in the 6 nations. If the Scots win then they'll get the credit they deserve.

Scotland are a side that on so many times, show promise but haven't delivered. Maybe this year will be different. If they beat Ireland first up then they'll get kudos for it.

There are certainly signs that it could happen but doing it is another thing.

Underestimate a side too much and you could come unstuck though.

In 2005 Wales won a grand slam. They had been dog waste for a good few years before that. No one thought they would do that if I remember correctly. Strange things can happen.

I sometimes go back and watch that period of Rugby, for all sorts of obvious reasons, not least because it's a great spectacle of running rugby, and the game has changed so much. The difference between the Grand Slams of 2005 and 2008 are stark. There does feel like a lot less room to pull a surprise like that out of the hat. Everything about the game is so managed, so prepared for, the game a lot more structured, the players aware at every moment. It's the props I feel sorry for in the modern game, the role they're asked to play is mad.

Scotland do need to win more 6Ns games, but that has very little impact on their best players' chances for the Lions. It does mean those fringe players might suffer, not getting the exposure or limelight. Be wary of conflating a team's current success with individual pedigree beshocked, however happy you are that England did the GS last year for the first time in nearly a decade and a half.

I sense a big part of Scotland's 'problem' is going to be mental, aside from strength in depth issues perhaps. They've got out of the habit of being competitive and beating England, Wales, Ireland, and to a lesser extent France. The way you counter that is keeping as much of that Glasgow team together as you can, in the short term, yet Scotland play and control everything through their 9, Laidlaw, who disrupts that. I like Laidlaw, I think he's a good, useful player to Scotland, and someone who gives you structure. But is it time to pick Price and just see if Glasgow+ works? Have you got a good enough goalkicker to drop Laidlaw? Is J Gray ready to be the full time captain?

I'd say the answer to those is probably not, and we're more likely to see it under Townsend. For the Lions, Scottish form might be the difference between a centre, or a flanker, or a prop missing out, but Seymour, Gray etc. will all still tour regardless.

miaow wrote:

GunsGermsV2 wrote:

beshocked wrote:If teams want to be respected more than they need to win more.

Scotland haven't got a good record in the 6 nations. If the Scots win then they'll get the credit they deserve.

Scotland are a side that on so many times, show promise but haven't delivered. Maybe this year will be different. If they beat Ireland first up then they'll get kudos for it.

There are certainly signs that it could happen but doing it is another thing.

Underestimate a side too much and you could come unstuck though.

In 2005 Wales won a grand slam. They had been dog waste for a good few years before that. No one thought they would do that if I remember correctly. Strange things can happen.

I sometimes go back and watch that period of Rugby, for all sorts of obvious reasons, not least because it's a great spectacle of running rugby, and the game has changed so much. The difference between the Grand Slams of 2005 and 2008 are stark. There does feel like a lot less room to pull a surprise like that out of the hat. Everything about the game is so managed, so prepared for, the game a lot more structured, the players aware at every moment. It's the props I feel sorry for in the modern game, the role they're asked to play is mad.

Scotland do need to win more 6Ns games, but that has very little impact on their best players' chances for the Lions. It does mean those fringe players might suffer, not getting the exposure or limelight. Be wary of conflating a team's current success with individual pedigree beshocked, however happy you are that England did the GS last year for the first time in nearly a decade and a half.

I sense a big part of Scotland's 'problem' is going to be mental, aside from strength in depth issues perhaps. They've got out of the habit of being competitive and beating England, Wales, Ireland, and to a lesser extent France. The way you counter that is keeping as much of that Glasgow team together as you can, in the short term, yet Scotland play and control everything through their 9, Laidlaw, who disrupts that. I like Laidlaw, I think he's a good, useful player to Scotland, and someone who gives you structure. But is it time to pick Price and just see if Glasgow+ works? Have you got a good enough goalkicker to drop Laidlaw? Is J Gray ready to be the full time captain?

I'd say the answer to those is probably not, and we're more likely to see it under Townsend. For the Lions, Scottish form might be the difference between a centre, or a flanker, or a prop missing out, but Seymour, Gray etc. will all still tour regardless.

It's actually the opposite. We've become far more competitive but it's just that final nail we need to hammer in.

Last year:

v England     -6 points
v Wales        -3 points
v Italy          +16 points
v France       +11 points
v Ireland       -10 points

2015:

v France       -7 points
v Wales        -3 points
v Italy          -3 points
v England     -12 points
v Ireland      -30 points

Then the horror show in 2014:

v Ireland      -22 points
v England     -20 points (didn't score a point at MF which to me is an absolute disgrace)
v Italy          +1 point
v France        -2 points
v Wales        -48 points

Add to that two 1 point losses to Australia in the last year then I'd say we are competitive.

Yeah, I agree they're getting there, it's why I added in the word 'beating', too.

For instance, Scotland had a habit of beating Australia and SA in the AIs for a period of time, but then they were sporadically competitive in the 6Ns. You could also argue that- as good as those one off wins were- without actually being competitive elsewhere, they didn't do much good for the team's progression and development (though I'm sure great to experience as a fan, particularly that 9-8 victory where Giteau missed the kick if I remember correctly).

If they can maintain where they are competitive, and push on over that last hurdle and start beating teams (great opportunity first up, and against Wales) that they haven't for a while, then that'll be a big monkey off the back. I think Scotland have every chance of beating every team bar England, and whilst even that's not out of the realms of possibility, I don't think the mentality that comes from winning is there to do it just yet.

Against Wales last year, there was room there for you to win, but it genuinely never looked like you would, and eventhough the late try didn't flatter the scoreline as there wasn't too much between the teams in terms of display, it perhaps wasn't a reflection of actually how close Scotland were to winning, in my opinion. That's easy to shake off though, particularly when you have one of the best clubs in Europe to choose from.

One off wins aren't good enough, but equally just pushing teams close isn't enough either. You need both, consecutively, and then one off wins stop being one offs and become expectations.

Tattie true. That's why I said it's winning you need to do now. You don't win awards for narrowly losing.

You can use Glasgow as a springboard. Use that winning mentality, bring it into the Scottish side.

miaow disagree. If Russell,Hogg and Gray inspire Scotland to memorable victories I am sure their Lions chances will be enhanced.

Russell especially has a golden opportunity. His opposite number is now not Sexton.

I also predict that Wales will only sneak past Italy in the first game, causing Rob Howley to go into hiding as the mob stand with pitchforks and torches outside his two bedroom semi in Cardiff.

The experts* on the Beeb are predicting an Ireland championship win by 3 votes to 1.

All agree Italy will come bottom and the top two will be England and Ireland. As for Scotland, Wales and France it seems to be anyone's guess.

* former greats who need the money

Another predictable thing is how many people are now claiming that they correctly predicted the Scotland-Ireland result.

George. I do not think any one on here predicted Scotland would win that game. I know i certainly did not see that coming.

I did

George Carlin wrote:Another predictable thing is how many people are now claiming that they correctly predicted the Scotland-Ireland result.

To be fair there are a few of us who did.

Just need to look on the 6 nations predictions competition.

beshocked wrote:

George Carlin wrote:Another predictable thing is how many people are now claiming that they correctly predicted the Scotland-Ireland result.

To be fair there are a few of us who did.

Just need to look on the 6 nations predictions competition.

26-22! Well played.

Scottrf wrote:

beshocked wrote:

George Carlin wrote:Another predictable thing is how many people are now claiming that they correctly predicted the Scotland-Ireland result.

To be fair there are a few of us who did.

Just need to look on the 6 nations predictions competition.

26-22! Well played.

Thank you. I had a pretty good round. Don't think that will happen again!

Can I just say that I think most of my predictions have turned out to be fairly accurate.

lostinwales wrote:The experts* on the Beeb are predicting an Ireland championship win by 3 votes to 1.

All agree Italy will come bottom and the top two will be England and Ireland. As for Scotland, Wales and France it seems to be anyone's guess.

* former greats who need the money

This is looking pretty good to be a thing.

Wales fifth due to being the only team not to get the bonus point against Italy, and we're just as likely to lose all our remaining games anyway. It's a good thing long-term as hypothetically it should at last confirm to Gats and the WRU that Howley et al are well out of their depth.

mikey_dragon wrote:Wales fifth due to being the only team not to get the bonus point against Italy, and we're just as likely to lose all our remaining games anyway. It's a good thing long-term as hypothetically it should at last confirm to Gats and the WRU that Howley et al are well out of their depth.

Thats our glorious Lions head coach and attack coach you are talking about!!!!!!!

What I wouldn't give for the Lions bosses to say it's all been a big wind up, Schmidt is leading the team out with Cotter looking after the forwards and Townsend looking after the backs....

I predict that at least 1 Welsh P I tour player (in NZ ) will be co opted into the Lions set up for injury replacement. Its very handy that those Welsh players not going on the Lions tour will all be in country at the critical time, very handy indeed.