Nothing to say, yet
Transcription
The podcast episode starts with the hosts discussing their Christmas gifts, including Lego sets and a new webcam. They then move on to discuss rugby news, specifically the results of the RAG 18s competition and upcoming matches for the Boys 18s and 16s teams. They also mention the community game, with highlights including the Drovers' win over Pontyprieth and Carmarthen Quin's victory over Bridgend. The standout player of the latter match was Charlie Titcombe, who scored all of Quin's points. Welcome to Scarlet's Fever, the home of Suspense Central and Westerer is Besterer. Hello and welcome to the Scarlet's Fever podcast the 1st of 2024 with me, Lee G. You can tell Martin's got a stable signal for Christmas because he's been a good boy and Santa's delivered him a stable signal. So I was about to say with me, Lee G and Martin and Huw, but everyone's heard Martin say hello. Evening, Huw, how are you? Evening, I'm very well, thank you. I'm excited to be back. Finally, going from doing three podcasts a week to zero for two weeks is a hard, it's a hard-hitting experience. Were you having, like, cold turkey? Yeah, I was like, I've got so many magic numbers to tell people, but I just can't. Nobody's listening to me without the podcast. You're just standing on the street corner shouting, I've got something to say. He was a town crier in a past life. So, Martin, were you a good boy for Christmas? Did Santa bring you lots of gifts and presents that are relevant? No, he brought me absolutely nothing. My kids brought me nothing. That's not fair. I know, it's terrible. If I ratioed what the kids had to me, they must have had 20 things for every one I had. It breaks my heart, man. What about Mrs Santa? What did Mrs Santa get you? Well, Mrs Santa, she got me socks as well, actually. I was going to say, you must have had socks, jocks and chocks. That's got to be the dad's triplet. Yeah, all in the same one. Hugh, what did Santa bring you, mate? I got a couple of things. I got my new webcam, which has got an inbuilt light, which I'm still trying to figure out. So the lighting might be a bit off for a few episodes before I figure this all out. And what else did I get? I got some Lego. Whenever people don't know what to get me, I'm always just like, just get me Lego. So Lego and alcohol and get him something to build with. Yeah, I got a really serious, I got a really grown up one. Normally I'm just like, oh, get me one of those Lego Star Wars kits for like seven quid, or it's like a figurine in a spaceship. I got like a Bugatti like this big off my girlfriend's sister this year, and it took me like six hours to build it. You need a Millennium Falcon. We're in, oh God, he's got the Millennium Falcon. Right, okay, if we're doing the next... A proper one, come on. That's a baby one. That's a decade Falcon. I got an X-Fighter as well, an X-Wing. Really? You look really proud of yourself, mate, well done. All the other opposition fans who are tuning in to hope to hear us losing our minds about our rugby team are all going to be sorely disappointed. Oh, it's a Thanos clone. This is more like... Oh, a giant man version, I think. Yep. That's what my boy is the same. We don't know what to get you for Christmas. So, yeah, it's like Lego. So, he's got the Eiffel Tower, Iron Man mask, loads of crap behind me, you can see that. That's like six foot tall, and there's bloody all sorts of stuff, there's ships. On top of the shelf over there, I got a Lego Ferrari, Aston, Porsche, Mercedes and Lotus. You realise you need to take photographs with you holding these now to prove it for everyone that's there. Why would I lie about this? Because it's the same as that you lie that your cat's actually alive and moved. I've never seen you just sitting there like a little fish in water wagging his tail, let's move his tail, move his tail. All right, okay, you're a photographic evidence of my Lego cars. I've got an F1 car downstairs, I've got a space shuttle, which I bought for myself. I'll just throw it on a shelf. Anyway, which shuttle? What the fuck? It's a space shuttle, are there different ones? Yeah, there was four of them. They're all the same, weren't they? They all look the same, but there's four of them. Well, there was four of them and then one blew up. There's a big thing on the side. All right, it's not a particular one. Anyway, my gift of the kids this year was, so I've just done the wrap podcast and to go with my, so you can see it's all backwards there, but that's it. That's poster, wrap podcast, very good. Yeah, and to go on that was a really, really nice glass with Dad's wrap podcast written on it as well, but it had the Scarlet's logo. But he doesn't care about the tail, that's what he can say. I do. They must have had that specially made then, because the Scarlet's don't sell. Exactly, and the amount of stuff that, you know, when people go, what do you want for Christmas? And then they go, can I get you something Scarlet's? And then you go, well, I'd like it to, but there's nothing there. But we have a solution for that coming at some point when I pull my fingers out. Anyway, I know, I know I've been saying it for God knows how long. I would have bought this in the Scarlet's shop, but it's on its way. Right, okay, let's do some rugby stuff. Have we got any Scarlet's news from this week, Martin? Okay, nothing main senior Scarlet's, but we do have a lot of academy news, specifically the RAG. The RAG 18s competition has started back up. The girls 18s were in action, or women's 18s, I should say, were in action yesterday. They were down at Astrid Mannach and they played RGC Poos, no name this year for them. They went down 36-22, so strong effort by all sorts, but again, losing effort, so we'll see another bit. They're back in action this Sunday at Northern Colwyn Bay Stadium CSM, I believe, and they're against the Dragons. That's a 1pm kickoff, so if you fancy travelling all the way up to Colwyn, it's for one o'clock on a Sunday, make sure you leave early. The boys 18s, their first fixture is Wednesday 17th, down at Camp against Cardiff. Their squad is due imminently. It's the 8th today. When I was speaking to Scott Smith, he said the 8th, 9th is the target to announce that squad, so I'm expecting an early day. And same with the 16s, East and West. Their squads and fixtures are to be confirmed and announced imminently. They've got the gates for the fixtures. They just haven't got who they're playing, or they haven't announced who they're playing and where yet. Can I ask a quick one? Why are the girls playing the Dragons in Colwyn Bay? Okay, it's the way they're doing it. They did it last year as well. Everyone goes to one ground each week, and it goes around each area, so three matches every Sunday. So if you go to watch the girls, you're not just watching one game, you're watching all three every time if you want. Right, okay. There we go. That answer there would be a bigger crowd, there'll be more people watching, there'll be a bit more of a... Yeah. Okay, good, good, good. I get that, I get that. Okay, sorry. Go on, carry on. What else have we got? That's literally it we've got from the Scarlets now. It's been a pretty, pretty quiet week. No games. You know, no games for a few weeks really, if you ask me. But, yeah, that... I can see him having a little dig already. We know what's coming. Yeah, that's literally it from the Scarlets this week. Okay, so me and Hugh are going to sit back for half an hour now. So you take us through the community game review, because you're going to do the community game review, Mark. So this may take... But you're only going to do last week, innit? Yeah, just last week. Jesus Christ. It could be forever. Well, I think when it's a youth week now, we're into quarterfinal. And so, you know, there's a lot more pictures to come in. I'm going through all of them, not just our boys. But what I will say is anyone that's interested in the community game, then they need to follow you on Twitter, because you do a load of cool stuff on Twitter. And they've got more stuff with that coming as well. See, it's a very exciting time. As soon as I finish my degree, I'll be on shit like gora. You won't know what. Anyway, Mark, you go do your community game, mate. Hugh, try to stay awake, fella. Yeah, let's community. As always, we start in the premiership, and we'll start with champions and league-leading drovers. They were at home to Ponte Prix. They've hosted a host of Scarlets Academy players in this squad. They had Ed Scragg, Gabriel McDonald, Max Page, Kian Abraham, Tommy Lewis, and they also had Harvey Thomas and Luca Giannini. First time I'd seen Luca Giannini back in the squad for a while, so great to see him back playing. They won 12-11, so another win for the drovers. But they're still winning, but their performances over the last few weeks, they're not winning in the same sort of manner as they have been. So they're still in a slump, but they're still winning. It was funny, wasn't it? Because it got to 12-11 by like an hour in, and then there was no scores for the last 20, something like that. Yeah, it was just an odd game all round. I do consider this a slump for Llanderby, especially compared to earlier results in the season. Not winning by enough. Exactly. You know, this is the drovers we're talking about. These are the standard wearers. So, tri-scorers were Lucia, Jamie Howes, and Taylor Davies. You know, we all know Taylor Davies. And one conversion by Fire, Jack Maynard. And the game I'm so happy, so happy to talk about. Is Bridgend 11, Carmarthen Quinns 16. Hooray! It's taken since round two, week bloody two of the Premiership, for them to pick up a second win. They had a couple of starlets as well. Sam O'Connor and Charlie Titcombe started. More on Titcombe in a minute. They also had Lewis Morgan, Alfie Everfetre, Jeskin Wood and Lucas Sotaro on the bench. And quite frankly, Carmarthen Quinns didn't win this game. Charlie Titcombe won this game. It was Bridgend 11, Charlie Titcombe 16. He scored them all. Tri, conversion, three pens. I was desperately looking to see if he got a drop goal, because that would have been perfect. But, you know, we can see from this result alone why the stars now brought him in from Loughborough. You know, I think he's 22 now. Is that his first game for Quinns? Is that the first time he's turned out for them? I don't think it's his first game. I think he played earlier in the season. I'd have to double check. Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised at that. I'm going to name drop here. Dave Rogers Clang, the commentator, exchanged a couple of DMs with him. And he said he didn't understand why the Scarlets weren't playing Titcombe. He said if we played him, we'd be better. And, you know, we've only seen a glimpse of him against Leinster. And then he's clearly shown that he is, well, it's a very small sample size, but if he continues like that, he might be too good for Welsh Premiership level. So it starts begging the question, what does he need to do to be getting game time for the Scarlets? Yeah, he seems to be a proper 10 whenever we've seen him. He's an all-rounder. You know, he can kick, he can pass, he can run. He's a stocky boy as well when you look at him. So he is pretty physical as well. Okay, well, we'll talk about the future in a bit more depth later. Just out of interest, where was that Bridgend game played? Was it at the... It was on the back of a lorry. No, sorry. In the lorry. You'll annoy some supporters now. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Oh, no, they won't like the banter on that one. The thing is, I imagine a lot of Bridgend people do support the Scarlets now. I mean, you know, they were obviously glory hunters with Celtic Warriors, and when they went down, where did they have to go? So what was the pitch like against Carmarthen then? They made a big deal on Twitter of posting pictures of it looking nice. Was it? Well, nicer than it looked for the URC. But then that's what I mean. It was after a couple of days of real heavy rain. I just wonder how the pitch... The Ospreys game was, again, after a couple of days of really heavy rain. Again, after a couple of days of really heavy rain. So I was just interested to see, you know, did the pitch recover? And was it playable a week later? It looked like it was to me, just from the photos that Bridgend themselves put out. So, yeah. OK, cool. Pictures this week then, Mark, for Premier Shift? Pictures, yeah. Carmarthen and Quinns are at home to Pontypool on Thursday night. So I believe that's the Ascot Red Games, or all two names you can. Llandudnoi were meant to be travelling to play Cardiff, but that game has been rearranged for sometime in February. And they've cited the Cardiff-Parlour-Quinns Champions Cup game as the reason why. But that game is an eight o'clock kick-off, so I'm kind of confused as to why they've postponed a half past two game when, you know, the match they're doing it for isn't until eight o'clock at night. I mean, that pitch is more than capable of taking on two or three matches in any one hit. But it's made of plastic, so you'd hope so. I mean, I kind of get it from setting up the stadium and all of that kind of malarkey. Because if it's an eight o'clock kick-off, you'd want it to be ready. You don't want to open the gate at five. Well, yeah, but you'd want it ready at five. So, but surely they must be... Could you get it earlier? Yeah, there'd be a solution to it. Or somebody needs to look at the scheduling a little bit earlier and go, oh, you know, maybe we could play this game on a Thursday, or we could play this game on a Sunday, or, you know. Anyway, there we go. Crack on with the championship, eh? Yeah, into the championship West, we had Amundford, 32-17 winners over Astalabera. Now, that was a really tight game. They went in 17-0, 17-all at half-time, I should say. And, you know, Amundford came out with a shutout in the second half. So, well done, Amundford, picking up another win. Brilliant for them. Crimmiff were at home to Bonn and Main, and they lost 13-22. And Crimmiff were actually hosts, had a Scarlet Academy tight-debt prop in Will Couch in their ranks. So, I'm still working the year that we got off on, got off. But always good to hear when our boys are playing, even if we're in the championship. Narva, away to Dunfermline, I guess. I think you can all know which way this one went. Dunfermline's 18, Narva's 48. I mean, they're just rolling. I mean, it's just Brecon is the only team they haven't, you know, beaten this season. That's because they haven't played them. And I'm still waiting for that game. I'm bonking for it, actually. That was the game. That Narva and Brecon game was the one where they rearranged the original one because somebody was getting married, wasn't it? Wasn't that the first one? They should have played them, by the way. It was one Trim Sauron game. And one Newcastle Emlyn game. So why haven't they played Brecon yet, then? I think it was reigned off the first game. What, a Narva now must have been above Brecon because a Narva game would have been... Anyway. It doesn't reign in Narva, does it not? It does. It's just they've got absolutely top-notch drainage. Isn't it hard calling over the field for when it happens? No, it is. Genuinely, they've spent a lot of money on the drainage because the top pitch at Narva used to be an absolute nightmare. And they've invested a lot of cash in the drainage at Narva. That's really good now. Like, really, really good. So, yeah. Anyway, I digress. Carry on. Sorry. The last result from Championship West, we had Newcastle Emlyn, who had a Salter Curry by themselves, and Harry Fuller. They won 33-18 away to Tata Steel. This week, we got Llangeneff at home to Tata Steel. Tata could not have picked a worse time to go to Llangeneff. I mean, they've really been on it. 69 points against Maesteg, beating Brecon in Brecon. 77 points against Cremeff. I mean, oh my God. I do not want to know what the scoreline's going to be. It's going to be hard. We've got a nice Pembrokeshire clash with Narva against Cremeff. Newcastle Emlyn, Horse Dunbant and Ammanford are away to Trevannos. We go down into Van West and Wycland. Wycland almost had another win, but they did pick up a bonus point. Barry Portman, 27-25 against Wycland. Benenball picked up a win off the bottom of the table. Well, not off level, so close enough. So, 21-20 against Van Eylid. Gowatun, Rompt, Hendy, 61-25. Teneffly Wanderers, 48-0 over Aberystwyth. Tough one to take, that is. Ankit Wellie won 33 points to 15-0. I saw some photos. Yeah, it is straddy. It's the same area, it's not the same pitch. Like, literally, the cricket field is there, you know, everything's all around, but it's not the same pitch. That's still a hell of a loss for Aberystwyth to lose 48-0. They haven't turned up this season. I don't know what's happened. They didn't play a lot. They haven't played a lot of games, to be fair. There weren't big chances of playing at all. And obviously, the travelling has never helped them. So, who really knows what's going on. I mean, they're doing better than Whitland, that's all we can say. It's not difficult. So, the last game is Kid Wellie winning 33-15 away to Pontardaulais. This week, we've got games. Our Aberystwyth at home to Pencloud. Hendy against Berynbwrl. Kid Wellie against Ballyport. First time these sides are meeting this season. Night 2 of the clash, that is. Both coming up together. Teneffly Wanderers are away to Van Eylid, and Whitland are at home to Gowatun. One West Central and our only team, the Greens, Bryn Arman, lost 31-46 at home to Tondi. Tondi are top, so that's not exactly a bad result. This week, Bryn Arman are away to Glynee. So, inter-division 2 West now. Carmarthen Athletic, 19. Pontarberyn, 19. The second time these sides have drawn this year. 22 all in the first fixture. I've contacted both teams, and Carmarthen win 4-3 on the try count over both games. So, a small applause for Carmarthen. Carmarthen win that one. Next, we had St Clair's, win 34-8 away to Fishguard. Lampeter, Peat and Mumbles, 21-10 at home. Big result here. Milford, 32. Loughborough, 28. Now, Loughborough were a team to be reckoned with at the start of the season, and Milford are picking off some good scouts this year. So, they get a bit of consistency. There's no reason why they can't really compete at the top. Plus, no-one likes Loughborough. No-one likes Loughborough. No-one likes Loughborough. We all hate Loughborough. I like the bridge. I'm not a Brit. I'm happy that I can get away from it. Go on, carry on. Nancarerrig, 33. Armagh United, 15. Ta'Crois, 13. Tenby, 23. Tenby's still recovering from their shock loss a few weeks ago. But, you know, they're back on the train. They're still going to be hunting down this type of... Next week, we've got Armagh United at home to Milford. Ta'Crois travel to Loughborough. Fishguard travel to Mumbles. Pontyberyn at home to Nancarerrig. St Clair's at home to Carmarthen Athletic. And Tenby at home to Lampeter. An off week for three West days. So, only some rearranged fixtures to talk about. Haverford West, 50. Llanaberry, nil. And St David's, 10. Aberaeron, 35. Is Rob Evans still playing for Haverford West? No, he's gone to America, hasn't he? I don't know if that's official yet. But I think everybody knows that he's gone to Miami. Yeah. Well, no, St David's have been doing pretty well this season. I'm quite disappointed with that result, as you know. No, we love St David's. We love Llandym and three West days. But there we go. We've got to take a loss every now and then. They will know. Aberaeron against Neyland this week. Cardigan at home to Flanders. St David's travel to Llandym. Llandym at home to Pembroke. And Pembroke dot Quinns at home to Haverford West. Into three West B now. And Betos at home to Binya. Betos, 173, nil at home to Binya. So, you know, top, bottom. It's going to be a big clash, but that's a heavy, heavy tanking. Kevin Nathan, 19. Llandylo, 35. Trimsaran, 137, 11 away to Burnish. Llandybi, 115, seven away to Tragaran. And Tumble, 128, 18 against Huw's team. The first time no rock stars have lost since Huw started supporting them. I'm really sorry, buddy. 28, 18. No heart, no passion, no desire. Sack the coach. I expect the CEO to resign first thing tomorrow morning. And yeah, just to be fair, they are traveling up from, you know, Seaside, actually, up to Gwendre. So it's a hard challenge. I'm calling for a fan boycott. We're not accepting this lovely performance from UW. OK, this weekend now we've got Binya at home to Tragaran. Llandylo at home to Furnish. Llandybi at home to Kevin Nathan. Llangadau travel to no rock stars. And Tumble travel to Trimsaran. It is a game in Division 3 Cup that's supposedly playing, which is Lland travelling to Adderpysig, but that was Putbelly's game against St David's off. So I still need clarification on which game is actually going ahead. I believe it's the Cup game, but don't quote me on that one. Last one now, we've got Division 5 West Central. Banwen winning 50-8 at home to Pen-y-Banc. Fulbury winning 35 against Pantyvannan. And Pen-Lan winning 24-0 against Pontgate. So a clean sweep for our boys in the league this week. Next week, well, this Saturday all at home. Pantyvannan at home to Cwmgrach. Pen-y-Banc at home to Fulbury. And Pontgate at home to Taibach. So it's a lot of rugby to get through, as always. And after this Saturday, which is the 13th, I believe, next week, the 20th, Cup rugby. Get them back on. Come on, knock out rugby. Bloody love it. Are you done now? I missed you, you see. I can't get any pause on that. Sorry, I had to nip out there for a minute. But are you done? You finished? Is it all? I'm just about done. I mean, I can go some more. I can look for some more results if you want. I can go into Australia. I've started touching one of your stuff now. I've not been poisoned yet. I've had my rant about New York Star's disgraceful defeat. Yeah, he's going to be part of their next game. OK, well, I'll tell you what we'll do. Before we start talking about Scarlett and all of that cannibalarchy, why don't we have a little chat about the women's game? Yes. We'll mix it up a bit. I know I said I was going to do it later. But so why don't we throw the women's game in there as well? So the women's game is the women's game. So the women's league, has it got an official title? It's called the Celtic Challenge. Celtic Challenge. That is, that's the official title now. It's not the women's URC. It's different. Yeah, because it's not got South African teams in, is it? Or Italian. I thought Italians. I know that they were trying to. No, OK. I know you want to talk about the Welsh teams in this. Gwalior Lightning and Britain Thunder. But I've got to say, the first game of the week, Edinburgh against Walthamstow. Bloody hell, what a game that was. It would put a lot of men's games to shame. Edinburgh lost 17-27. And I would back Edinburgh to beat the Scarletts at the minute. That's how complete the performances were from both teams. Cool. OK. Well, that kind of takes the next bit away, which was, Hugh, tell us about the game. OK. So for anybody who's not up to speed on what this is. So it's a bit like the URC. So it's two Welsh teams, two Scottish teams, two Irish teams. It's a women's tournament. And it's a normal league format. And then there's playoffs and things. The playoff structure makes no sense. So I'm not even going to try and explain it. But essentially. I can. No, you can't. No, if you did. I can, actually. No. All right. Well, let's not. So the Welsh teams are Brisson Thunder, not Brydon Thunder. Brisson Thunder, I'm reassured. And Gwalior Lightning. Now, this isn't official. But if you read between the lines, Gwalior Lightning are an amalgamation of Cardiff and Newport. As you can tell, because their kit is blue and yellow. And I'm afraid to say that Brisson Thunder is an amalgamation of the Scarlets and the Ospreys, because their kit, slash our kit, because they're our team. Can I oppose this? I really want to oppose this. But I don't like it. They just. OK, one team is based out of the Park of Scarlets, yes. One team is based at the Cardiff Arms Park. But the player pool was all together. And we've got players that were with Scarlets 18s last year playing for Gwalior, like Maisie Davis was on the bench. She's strategy for us fans. You know, I've watched her play for a few years. My girls have been in the under sixes, sevens and that. So, you know, it's not exactly Osprey, Scarlets versus Cardiff. It's the combination of the kits. One plays at the Park and one plays at Cats. But also, Thunder also are going to be playing games up in Cumwey. Because that's like the regional side of things. Yeah. Anyway, so Thunder and Lightning played each other in the first game, which was played before the Dragon Scarlets game at Rodney Parade. And Lightning won that game. I think it was 25-5 was the score. No, 25-5. 25-5, yeah. No, 20-5. Oh, 20-5. I'm sorry. So the star player for me from that game from Bridon was scrum half Meg Davis. I thought she was absolutely excellent. She didn't come out again in the second half. And then she was on the bench for the second game. So I'm not sure what that was, whether she picked up a knock or they're just rotating. So this is obviously brand new teams, brand new set up and things. And the whole point of this tournament is it's a development tournament. So it's all about bridging the gap between the existing women's tournaments and the internationals. So when we go to the Six Nations, obviously, we've got Welsh players playing in the Premier – well, it's not called the Premier 15s anymore – the women's premiership in England. And for the extra players who aren't playing at that level, I think even some premiership players have come and are playing in this. If they're not getting any game time in England, they're coming and playing for these teams. So it's fantastic. So like I said, Britain lost the derby over in Newport, and then they travelled to Ireland to play Clovers, which is a mix of Connacht and Munster, which is why they've got the red and green kits. And they lost that game. I think that was 20 points to five as well, 25-5. Six-balling, yeah. Yeah. So Britain love 20-5 lotters. Yeah. So in terms of the performances, it was kind of like in the first game, things were fixed, but then other things went wrong in the second game. So in the first game, the handling from Thunder was quite poor. There were a few dropped passes. Second game, it wasn't so bad. But then the defence was quite poor at times over in Ireland. But like I said, it's a brand new team, second ever game, and a lot of these players be their first experience travelling to another country to play a game of rugby. So we're giving it grace. The side is coached by Ashley Beck, former Worcester Warriors player, former Welsh international. Gwalior Lightning, on the other hand, played against Glasgow at home and absolutely tonked them. So Gwalior look like a proper decent side. They've got everything. They've got physical forwards. They've got great kicking. They've got really clinical backs. They're coached by some former Welsh internationals. Their name slipped my mind. I don't know, Marta, if you can remember. It's a long name. I've got it listed somewhere. Yeah. So Gwalior look like a very, very competent side, and I'm excited to see more of them. Brisson, obviously, are the team that we're backing. They're playing their next home game at Park East Garland next week against Edinburgh, I believe. Let me double check that for you. Looking forward to that. Adults tickets are 10 quid. I think kids and concessions get in for five quid. It's not covered on Scarlett season tickets. Neither are Gwalior games covered on Cardiff season tickets. So that might be something that I'd like to see changed in the future, because you would think that for the crowd, maybe they're expecting him for charging 10 quid a ticket. They're not going to be making any money on stage in these games, potentially. I would say just next time, chuck it on the season ticket. Get as many people in the stadium as possible. Create a bit of an atmosphere. Take a bit of money at the bar. Make it a nice day out. But yeah, if anybody's looking for a reason to get down the park and to cheer on a team, definitely Back Thunder. It's the start of a new journey. Hopefully this team is going to be either long in existence, or it's going to evolve into something bigger and better. And either way, we're here for it. What were you saying earlier, before we started, about the kit? Because it is a relevant point, and it is a first season, and also it's not about criticism. It's about what do we learn and how do we move forward. So what were you saying about the kit, Mark? Yeah, well, it was Clovers, who, like you said, play in red and green quarters, and Drithan, who play in 90% red with a little black slip across the front of the shoulders. Now, watching the game, close contact. I mean, the colours merge anyway. And I'm not colourblind, and I've been confirmed not colourblind. But I struggled to determine who was who during these tight moments, like in the mall, not on the scrim, but in the rack. It's quite hard to tell who was who. So for a colourblind person, who red and green blur anyway, so Clovers would have looked like one kit to them. And then Drithan, who were red, were in one kit. That would blur as well. So they'd be looking at 30 players essentially wearing the same kit. So that's got to be a hard watch for anyone who was colourblind. And it would obviously turn them off the game. Obviously, not a criticism. This is a fair go. We like this game. We like this idea. We want it to move forward. And the best way to do it is to listen to fans, make it as good as possible. And colourblind clashes are a massive one. I don't know how many colourblind rugby fans there are, but there's enough that would consider watching a game if they didn't have a kit clash like that. They should do what the men's teams do and have both teams play in light grey instead. But yeah, no, I agree with everything that Maia said there. If anybody's wondering how we watched it, so it's not on BBC, it's not on S4C, it's not on anything like that. You need to sign up for Rugby Pass TV. It's completely free. It's not perfect. So things like the clock doesn't always work. So you've got no idea how long of the game is left. They need to fix that. And it resets at half time. So if you're listening to Rugby Pass TV, fix that because it's confusing. And the scoreboard doesn't always update either. That's also confusing. No, it takes a while, doesn't it? Yeah. You know, they've taken the conversion and restarted and still nothing. But if you know any of these players or you want to support them and show their backing as part of the family, you can download the app on your phone. It is free. All you need to do is put your email address in and then you get all of the Celtic Challenge games. And then Rugby Pass TV has got all of the World Cup games, all replays on there, Men's World Cup and loads of other obscure games as well. So I watched Brazil versus USA on there a few weeks ago. So you can get... It's worth having because there are some games that are going to be well worth watching that you can only get on there. And the chances are it's only going to get bigger. So yeah, give it a look. Cool. Yeah, we can also add that the Scottish teams are covered by BBC Scotland. So, you know, if Britain, like we are this week, play in Edinburgh and when we come up against... Well, Gwalior came up against Glasgow last week. When we play the Scottish side, you can go on iPlayer and you can find these games. But it's the exact same problems they use the Rugby Pass link. So that is our option there for playing the Scottish team. Or you want to watch the Scottish teams, but if you want, go for it. The more we watch, the better. Cool. OK, let's... Before we move into Ospreys and Dragons games, then let's have a couple of Hughes magic numbers from the last couple of weeks. So you've been building this up, haven't you, Hughes? So I got some fun ones. First one is that RAP Beauty channel is now up over 100 subscribers. So thank you for everyone who is subscribed and is watching us on there. Scarlet's Fever, the most watched podcast on YouTube. By a long way. And my instant match reactions on there are now regularly getting 200-ish views each. But I think I'm only going to post them on YouTube from now on because it's not worth posting them on Twitter anymore. So yeah, if you want to see a slightly tipsy sad man, you're going to have to go to YouTube to watch me. Anyway, so that's the first one. I'm not kidding. I'm not going to YouTube looking for that. Send me a link when you do it. If you subscribe to RAP, it will come up anyway. Right, so in an attempt to do a bit of prep for the Claremont game, I figured I'd hop on the Top14Stats website and have a bit of a look at them. Now, the Top14Stats website is brilliant. It's got lots of detail on there. It's got lots of really niche stats on there as well. And if you put your email address in it, it unlocks even more stats. Slight drawback, it's in French. So, but fortunately, Safari's got, and Google Chrome as well, has got a feature where it can translate it into English for you. Literally. So it's not necessarily as straightforward as you might think. So there are some on here which, you know, how many points you scored and things. It's pretty straightforward. But some of the other translations are a little bit literal. So let's see if you can get these ones. So, better occupation of the land. Oh, territory. Yeah, building territory. Territory, yeah. I believe that one is average territory per game. La Rochelle at the top of that one. Number of yellow boxes. Yellow cards. Yellow cards, yeah. Yeah. We're now into offensive statistics. Marked tests. Is that a number of marks scored in a 23? Nope. That would be a niche stat. Yeah. No, I think that's tri-scored. Right, okay. One that I don't know what it is. Crossings. Well, surely that's a tri. No. No. I don't know what crossings is. No idea then. Broken plates. Uh, broken plates. Broken plates. Blank breaks. It's how many times somebody's tried to run at Sony Calamaphony. I believe it's broken tackles. Tackles evaded, maybe, I think. Now we're into defensive statistics. Right. Scratching balloons. I don't know what that is. What? Turn over. How did you get that? I had to message someone to learn what that is. How did you know what that is? Scratching balloons. Scratching balloons. Scratching balloons. That's got to be used more often in the in our game. You just know I'm the scratching balloon master. Now into player stats. Best director. Oh, well, captain or outside half or hooker? No. Coach? No. Points scored. Most points scored. See, French is just weird. They take a perfectly decent language that they've got and then they just mess it all up. Best test marker. Oh, what did we say marker was? Top try-scorer. Top try-scorer, yes. I don't know what this one is. Again? Best transfer rate. I can tell you that Melvin Jaminet is top with 120%. Is it like transition lane bricks? I've got no idea. I don't know how he's managed to get 120% either. I think it's 120% of anything. Also, Melvin Jaminet is down as Mr. Jaminet on the app, but none of the other players are down as Mr. It's only Jaminet who's down as Mr. Is he French royalty? I don't know, he must be. Number of boxes? Card, yeah. Number of cards. Cross things again, I don't know what that is. Broken plates is how many tackles you've broken. Best scraper? Oh, the scraper you just said, yeah. Jackal. Turnovers again. I think that's all of them. I can tell you that Clermont have scratched the most balloons, third most balloons in the top 14 so far this season. Well, I'm glad you're off the clock again. Yeah, how's your balloon scratching going? Anyway, so that's my magic numbers friend, isn't it? More like magic words than magic numbers. I can't get over the balloon scratching. Who would scratch a balloon? Surely if you'd scratched a balloon. How couldn't you get that straight away? I mean, you scratch a balloon to think about the action. It's not logical, mate. We're just little geniuses like you. If that comes to your head straight away, Mark, you need to seek help. Because Jesus, man. More than just that. Right, OK, let's have a chat about the festive derbies. So what I'm going to say before we start is there's a whole load of negativity, particularly on social media around Scarlets and stuff like that. But when you actually look at the people who are driving the negativity, a lot of the people that are driving the negativity are not Scarlet supporters. Yeah, they're people trying to stoke an argument. And yet there are Scarlet supporters making criticisms, and we've been some of them. But there's a difference between making a constructive criticism and just slagging somebody off to make your side look better. Because actually, you can't actually string a sentence together about your own side without slagging somebody else off. So we're just going to go with what Scarlets are doing. So we're going to focus on... Yeah, so you refer to the team from December as the Boxing Day team, and the team from January as the New Year's Day team. Well, we can do, but it's about focusing on the Scarlets. So Boxing Day game then, what did you make of the Boxing Day game? So Mark, you go first on this one. What did you make of that game? Frustrating, more than anything, you know, that first half. We had it all. I mean, we should have walked in 18-20 nil up, just simple as. We totally dominated that first half. And there's not much more I want to say about it. Because it's hard, especially where we sit in right now, where we've been coming back week after week after week. Like even last season, it was quite difficult. But, you know, we saw some signs of promise. And by this stage, we had actually won a couple of games. But no, it's really hard to criticise where we're going wrong, because you don't want to do it week on week. It was the forward that lost us in the end against the Boxing Day budgies. So, you know, that's where it ended up in the second half. We should have put it to bed early on. And we still could have won it, you know. Running it out from our own bloody 22 at the end of the game, it's always risky. So obviously, skill to score line. But, you know, those last two phases, you know, the last two runs we had, we actually looked like a decent team. So there are signs that we are a capable team. It's just getting it for more than five, ten minutes in a game. Huw, what did you make of Boxing Day? Yeah, a very poor quality game. As Mark said, we had the best of the first half. And then we didn't score until Gareth Davis got the intercept in the second half. Gareth Davis, I don't know where we'd be without him. This season, he's been probably on balance. Our best player since he's come back in. He's carried us at times. Yeah, it's always a bit concerning when the first score of the match is kind of like a bit of an accident, because it was a very weird intercept, ball up in the air, juggling thing. And our second half. Yeah. So, yeah, I found the end of the game very odd. The way that we were taking the kick, we were taking the kick at the goal with only a minute left. So the plan was that we were going to have to run it from our own half. And the opposition game plan is all about defense and not having the ball. And defensive pressure is how they score the majority of their tries. And lo and behold, that's how they got the last one. It's something I've noticed a little bit, is that there does appear to be a lot of debate on the pitch at the moment. When it comes to decision making or agreeing what to do, whether to go for touch or go for the post or scrum or whatever. There's always someone's making the call in the forward back and not everybody's buying into it. So you see players arguing with each other. You see players not look happy with the decision that's been made. But yeah, just disappointing. You know, I said in my instant match reaction that none of the players would have walked off that pitch tired. And what I meant by that was, because I don't think the players have got a clear understanding of what they're supposed to be doing at any one given time. They can't go out and give it 100%. They can't go and empty the tank because they're always second guessing. They're always like stood on their heels thinking, what's the guy next to me going to be doing next? So yeah, it was a frustrating game. It was a bit of a continuation of the Black Lion game really. So there wasn't much positive to take out of it, to be honest. You know, and this is me trying to be consistent because I've said all season, I'm looking at performances, not results. And that performance, again, as Mark said, you can't just come on here and talk about the same issues week after week after week after week because it's unfortunately the same issues that we've had every pod that we've done so far this season. We're all still there and not fixed. So for me, I almost disagree with that because the bit that I saw in that game is we actually started making chances again. We started creating opportunities and that's where we haven't been creating opportunities for a long time this season. So I watched the game on replay three or four times. First half, I counted four clear try scoring opportunities in the first half. We got held up over the line where we had a two-man overlap outside. We turned the ball over. We were trying to force a pass where if the ball had come back and out, we were running a three-to-one. It's like that. There's the Tom Rogers one in the second half. We cocked up two tries in the second half. That's six tries, six potential tries. We only needed to convert two of them and we were well ahead. The scrum in the first half, I've been very critical of the scrum so far this year. Inconsistencies in the scrum, I thought the scrum in the first half was absolutely superb. It shunted them into a reverse gear and kept them there for the whole of the first half. And this whole thing about their forwards-orientated side, well, what were we then? Well, that first half, if that's how we play and we're a particularly poor forward side, what do you make of that? Because we were outstanding in the first half. Since Fafita's come back, our line-out is pretty much untouchable, which is weird. So I guess that's one thing that has improved, although it is very much fair for Fafita to doing the vast majority of it. Maybe to your point, Nelly, maybe it's the amount of chances that we've blown. It talks about how we're really down on confidence at the moment. Yeah, and that was going to be my point, that if we'd have been playing like that consistently through the season, you develop the mindset that, actually, I can run a tight shoulder line because, chances are, there's going to be a ball being flicked up and I might catch one in three, but if I catch one in three, I'll run that line four times and I'm going to score a try at one of them. So it's a different mindset that comes from being in a positive game and a lot of what you've spoken about on social media, Hugh, about consistency of selection, where you kind of know where that player inside of you is looking to offload or you know if your outside half is going for a cross for your kick, it becomes a bit more instinctive and that builds your confidence and your confidence builds about play and all this kind of stuff. Yeah, I don't think it was as bad as people said on Boxing Day, simply because, you know, even with five minutes to go, we were seven points behind and we were in the game. That last play of the game, even that last play of the game, we're running it out from our own 22. If that ball goes to hand, we've got a three on one outside. Yeah, now I don't care where you're running a three on one from on the pitch, you can run a three on one from your own goal line. Yeah, they have very little cover coming across, possibly a full back. Yeah, and I think it was a second row that was coming across. Yeah, but we had, you know, Alexa Fafika and whatever, whoever it was coming across. So, you know, that ball goes to hand, that game's drawn. So, and then you're talking about a very different kind of mindset than going into the Dragons game. Yeah, I have to say though, watching that play back though, Johnny Williams, I felt, was very indecisive about what he was going to do because he was in the boot. And this is the kind of thing that we've seen with Johnny Williams this season is, I feel like he's not sure whether he's the crash ball or he's a distributor. Because we saw against Cardiff, he had a great game as a distributor, which we didn't think was a part of his game, but it played really well. And now he's finding himself in the boot behind the row of the three forwards. But he's not sure whether he's taking it into contact or he's passing. And I think part of the reason that that last play went wrong is because there was that hesitation of he wasn't. He kind of got into his head like, oh, I've got the ball and I've been running with it for a second now. I need to do something. And he just chucked it and it was obviously a poorly executed pass. So, yeah, again, just lacking a bit of structure in that play. Yeah. But that's the sort of stuff that comes with repetition, playing the same game, playing the same game consistently week on week. And I think that's the bit that we're missing is that consistency will build the confidence. For all the stuff about Peel must go and all of this kind of stuff. And if you think that's a good game, you need your head. But well, actually, go back and watch the game. Go back and watch the game. Turn the best thing you can do to watch a game in Wales at the minute is turn the sound off. Yeah. And actually watch the game, not listen to what the Cardiff and the Ospreys commentators are telling you what you should be interpreting and what you shouldn't be interpreting. What you should be interpreting on the game. Yeah. Watch the game and make your mind up for yourself. And then every now and then get the remote, pause and rewind there and then look at the wider picture. You know, what's happening? What's trying to happen? And we need to get better at a game plan. Definitely. Because the game plan against the Ospreys was working in the first half. There were just a couple of key bits in there that were poorly executed and we couldn't defense the topic around a driving line-up. Yeah. The only bit that we were really, really poor at in that game is defending a driving line-up and the Ospreys were really good at it, where we didn't have a clue. So, for me, that Boxing Day game wasn't as bad as everybody else said. I think the disappointing game for me was the New Year's Day game, where that game was there for the taking. And we did. And I'm not talking about San Costolo now. Yeah. I'm talking about there were other opportunities in that game that should have been taken before we got to that. But I just think that comes again from confidence, playing together and being in a position where you can throw an offload and somebody will catch it. Yeah, that's where we used to be. That's where we were playing well, where you didn't need to wait for a call to throw an offload off the ball inside. Yeah. You knew if you were being tackled and your arm was loose, you could flick that ball inside and one of our players would be there to catch it. Yeah. And we scored tonnes of tries. We broke the line constantly from doing that. We're not doing that at the minute because of confidence, isn't it? So, yeah, it's frustrating being a fan at the minute and I totally get that. But we've also got to look at it and go, actually, we'll support the good bits. Let's go out there and support the good bits. For me, they were good bits through the festive period. I just want to see, like you were saying, Mark, more than five minutes a game. Let's start stringing this together. Let's start going. Let's build on this because I didn't see a build-on in the New Year's Day game from Boxing Day. I think Boxing Day was probably the best that we've played. The first half, certainly, was the best we've played so far this season in Finland. We defended well. We created opportunities. All right, we didn't get the final execution right, but we were running a marathon. We were running the first 26 miles really well. Yeah, we just needed to finish it. And then none of that appeared on New Year's Day. And I take my hat off to the Dragons on that one. They'd obviously had a bit of a beating before. Yeah, they did. And they came at it with some real fire and we didn't have an answer. And I think we were the better team against the Dragons. Second half, we were, yeah. But this comes back to we didn't want it enough. Yeah, we didn't. We're missing people like Ken Owens. Yeah, and Tad Byrne and Rob Evans to a certain extent. Yeah, who with five minutes to go, 10 minutes to go in that Dragons game when they went back in front. Yeah, they would have got everybody to go, right, we are not losing this game. I don't care what we do. Come hell or high, we take that ball. They do not touch that ball for the next five minutes. Everybody here holds their finger out of their arse and we give everything we got for the next five minutes. We are not losing this game. Yeah, and I remember doing it. I was 16, 17, between 16 and 17, playing for the first. Just after the second half, right? Is that for the second World War? Yeah, yeah. But I was playing for the first in a local rugby and it was kind of a local derby, but not our closest ones. And somebody was going like, oh, they're going to come back. They always come back and beat us in the last five minutes. And I went, absolutely fucking no. Absolutely not. It was like our line out on our own line. Right, no, no. We take it in. We drive it forward. We take a rut. We go forward. We get to the edge of the 22 and then we clear the ball. That's what we're doing there. And people were looking at me like I was like some craze maniac. Yeah, but you need people like that. Yeah, well, I get that, to be honest. But you need people, you need somebody to go, no, right, fuck this. This is what we do. And almost what you were saying earlier, you know, who's making the decisions? Who's making the calls? Who's saying, right, OK, we turn the screw now. They don't touch the ball for the next five minutes. We go ruck, ruck, ruck, ruck, ruck. We put the ball in there 22. And when that ball is in there 22, we drive everything back. We don't give a single penalty and we force them to. Do you know what I mean? There isn't anybody on that pitch for that fire in that belly to go, this is what we do. And I think that's the bit we're missing, whether it's Lousey or whether it's McLeod or whoever it is, somebody's got to get hold of them and go, this is how it is. I'm the governor now. I'm in charge. When we're on this pitch, this is how it works. And I think if we had that, both of those games would have been won. Can I just talk about Costolo? Feel free. This is a safe space. Carry on. People hammering Costolo for his missed kick. What are you doing? We know Sam Costolo is a good goal kicker. He's missed a bad one. Fair enough. All kickers miss bad ones. But what are you going to do? First game back, two months no rugby. Yeah, what do you want? Do you want him dropped for that? So Costolo had a transformative effect on us when he came back in that game. The organisation and the structure of our backline with him pulling the strings and telling people where to stand and saying to Gareth Davies, no, I don't want the ball. You go through more phases with the forwards and I'll organise what we're going to do next. That is the fly half in him, the natural general, the game organiser. And Costolo made both of our tries with his passing. Like in the second one, he just hesitates. He just checks the defender and the defender goes, oh, and then he puts Lloyd over. Sam Costolo is an excellent international class fly half and I believe that we're going to see the best of him in the Six Nations coming up. And yeah, the only thing that makes me a little bit worried is that one player coming back who's not played any games and has had that much of an effect, whereas Yohan Lloyd, who has been in this role for the season so far, hasn't managed to add that to his game. And I think that maybe comes back to the fact that we don't have a fly half on the coaching team and we don't have an experienced fly half in the squad from him to learn from. So again, a player who's had almost no rugby has come in and is instantly made as better. So that again goes back to the point of the players who have had the most time in the team in camp are the ones who were performing lower, which again is a bit worrying. But yeah, in terms of just talking about Sam himself, I thought he was excellent all game against the Dragons. I do believe that we were the better team against the Dragons. And again, I'm looking at performances, not results. And that performance was, in my opinion, a step forward compared to the weeks that preceded it. So now we haven't seen the team at the time of recording for Clermont. Let's keep the consistency in the team so that going from the Boxing Day team to the New Year's team, that was the first time in seven weeks that we'd feel there's an unchanged sense of partnership. So we just need to keep sticking with that from there, and that's what I want to see. So the bit I want to point out with this now, right, is Hugh said something and I've said something and that's twice now we've both said, no, I don't think you're right. But then we're sitting there and we're not slagging each other off and we're not going, you're a complete fucking donkey because you think this and that. And I'm seeing that from Scarlett's fans or people claiming to be Scarlett's fans, yeah? And I don't think that's the way we move forward as a group of fans on that. Back to Hugh's point about consistency, yeah, we've all argued for consistency all season. We're in a really tricky spot at the minute. I mean, Europe is essentially gone because we're not, as much as I'm going to say we're going to beat Clermont, we're not going to beat Clermont and that means that qualifying for Europe is gone. So we've got two European games and our boys have gone to the Six Nations. So I'm wanting to see the boys that are going to be playing the three games for the Six Nations playing now. That's what I want to see. I forget what happened on Boxing Day and New Year's Day, but obviously, you know, who are the better players? Your Sam Costello, your Garth Davis who are more than likely going to be involved with Wales. They need to be in that team. I want to see a core 15, 23 of boys who are going to be here for our three games, Munster, I think Edinburgh and Benetton during the Six Nations, the two or four weeks and the week after. I want to see us build that team over the next two weeks. I'm not bothered by what's come beforehand. Cool. Well, let's move on then to what comes next, which is the European game. Clermont away. So what I will say on this is from what I've seen on social media, the people who were planning to go and watch this game are not going for the rugby. There's an awful lot of wine about to be drunk. There's a hell of a lot of French lager about to be drunk. And if people get to see the game, I think that's a bonus from what I was saying. I think they'll probably be in the ground physically, whether I think they'd probably be part. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of people just going for the experience, you know, and, you know, full respect to them. Let's make some noise. Let's make a bit of a song and dance about it. And let's enjoy it because what's the point of going if you're not going to enjoy it? You know, so what are you? Let's let's go with you first. What are you hoping for from the Claremont game? Like I've just said, I'm hoping to see a team that's going to see us through the next two or three months where we're without the internationals, but we're not going to see that. We're going to see a strong team, strong as possible. So internationals, etc. It's what you expect. It's just building game on game. You know, we want to see a game plan. That's the main thing. We don't want this indecisiveness. I mean, with Josh McLeod back, I'm hoping like what he was saying, who's the decision makers, etc., etc. I'm hoping that gets cut dead now because we have got a leader who's been a leader for several years, not captain previously, but he is proper club captain now. So this is his time to really take these boys by the scruff of the neck and say, you know, we band together. This is what we do. This is literally, I'm not expecting a win. I'm going to predict a win because that's what I do. But I'd like to see a solid performance. We need the performance to go on. And I mean, Edinburgh the week after, yeah, I'm happy to target that game. But, you know, Claremont, it's going to be a step too far at this point. I mean, if we do well, you won't see me. I'll be stuck naked running around the streets. Well, you did it here first. So if Scarlett's managed to sneak a win out in Claremont, are you wondering who that is streaking down the main street? If nobody looks, they won't raise the taxes. So, Hugh, what are you hoping for from the Claremont game? Well, I've continued progress. I'm hoping for, I'm saying the same thing every week. So everything that I've said in every previous part, I completely see what Martin's saying. And I absolutely see a logic to it. But on the other hand, the one thing I've wanted to see all season so far is a consistent team working on their cohesion. And it's not what we've seen for one reason or another so far. So I would like us to at least make a start on that and kind of treat this as our last block. Well, it is obviously our last block before we go into the Six Nations and be able to say to ourselves after the game, yes, we are starting to slowly move in the right direction now is what I'd like us to be able to say after this game. I think the way the selection has gone, it really tells me that we are really desperate for a result in that we appear to be rushing players back. Like we saw, they tried to bring Costello back for Boxing Day when he wasn't ready. And, you know, a question about whether Lousey was really ready when he came back as well. So you can tell that the pressure is kind of getting to the coaches a bit in terms of getting these players back. But I understand because they're getting absolute peltisms. You know, fans care about results. That's what fans are. You know, if we had won those last two games, we'd be completely, you know, we've had three very winnable games, Black Lion, Ospreys and Dragons. And if we had won all of those, no one would be saying half the stuff that they're saying now. Even if the performances had been poor, the result is what people take notice of. So, yeah. So in terms of what I'm hoping to see, just exactly what I've said, every part so far this season is a cohesive team moving in the right direction. On the injury front, not a word will be done by any means, but we all love him. I think he's back in training, so he might be fit for this game. I like that. But I think he is the game controller. He's the kick-in then. Yeah. And that's what we said previously. As flat as he makes the game, he also puts the game in the right place and allows other players to play off him. So, you know, it'd be interesting to see if he does come back because we're at that time of year where we're going, okay, contracts time. And, you know, through December and January is when the bulk of contracts are renegotiated and people stay and people go. And, you know, I would struggle to justify keeping Dinky here if he's not going to be fit and performing, you know, just because he doesn't have that staff. Especially having Castelo Lloyd and, you know, he's only young, you know, like we've already said earlier, but Ted Gomez putting We think he's got capability to be in more than one apprenticeship. So it's going to be hard decisions. Yeah. Really, really hard decisions. Okay. So for me, what I'm looking for in a Claremont game is defence. You know, I want to see us start defending, particularly around driving balls, driving rucks. I want to see our forwards front up and actually start to disrupt. I want to see us start turning these over. I think we've started to turn the corner on scrums. We've definitely turned the corner on line-outs. We need to start turning the corner on defence and start turning the ball over and then we can start going into a bit more positivity. I just want to see somebody take hold of the forwards and go, right, okay, this is what we're going to do. And, you know, people have been talking about trying to get messages onto the pitch and people ignoring them on the pitch. Do you know what, I'm fine with that if the people on the pitch are doing it with a, you know, we're doing this and we're doing this and we're doing this. Exactly. That's the point that I made in the last poll that we did before Christmas is if you disagree with the coach, you best have a better idea. Yeah. And it is your responsibility as a player to say... We're going to do it this way and we're going to make it count. Yeah. And that is absolutely where we need to... A coach should not be sitting in the stand going, you know, he needs to be doing this and he needs to be doing that and he needs to be doing this. You know, why aren't we doing... The coach should be sitting there and going, right, okay, I'm going to take notes from the first half and then we're going to have a chat about it at halftime and then we're going to play for 20 minutes and at 20 minutes, I want to make some changes. Do you know what I mean? If you're in that position where you need to control, micromanage everybody on that pitch, then you're doing it wrong. And either the players on the pitch are doing it wrong or you're doing it wrong as a coach. Either way, both of you need to change. So, yeah, for me, I just want to... That micromanaging, that comes pre-season, that comes before the game time. You know, you don't do that in mid-season. No, or you don't do it during the game. You know, you've got six days usually in between each game. Some weeks you've got more. So, you know, you've got plenty of time to go through the video analysis, to do the preparation, to talk through players, to run it through on the training pitch. You've got, okay, what happens here? Who goes where? What about this? Do you know what I mean? It's one of those things that really frustrates me where we try to over-coach what's happening on the pitch. And I know it's easy to say when you're not coaching now, but you have to sit back and have the confidence that you've done the work off the pitch. Yeah, you've done the work, so when they cross the line and you just go, right, this is you now, guys. This is, for the next 80 minutes, this is you, yeah? And when I was coaching, the best times that my players were playing was where we had a meeting as coaches and I lost my voice for one game. So I genuinely, I couldn't say anything, yeah? And I just sat there and I listened to what everyone was shouting. I went, right, okay, no wonder our kids, they're under 14s, under 15s, do you know what I mean? No wonder they're getting confused. Let's have one person giving one message and that person gives a message once every five minutes, or they only give a message at a breakdown or a scramble or a line-up, yeah? Not when players go in. And do you know what? Players just started playing the game and they started understanding the game and they started learning. For the first couple of weeks, they were standing there and looking at you and going, what do I do now? You can play the game, you know? And then it was under 14s, under 15s against men, but the principle is still the same. They walk over the whitewash, play the game, boys. So that's what I'm looking for, somebody to take control and say, do you know what? This is what we're doing. And I want to see Dwayne feel a smile. I want the players on the pitch, genuinely, yeah? Because I feel for him as a coach, but all of that shit is being thrown at him and there's nobody there. None of the players are there going, do you know what? I need to stand up and take responsibility for this. And do you know what I mean? Part of that is down to the club not letting players talk to the media, but players need to man up and go, okay, we got that wrong there. And yeah, the coach is telling us something. We're not turning that into what we need to on the pitch. We're going into it for the next game. So that's what I want to see. So let's quickly go around and do some predictions for Scarlett versus Claremont, or Claremont versus Scarlett. So I'm going to go with Scarlett's win by one point, which anybody that's watched or listened to any of our podcasts so far will know that's as close as I come to predicting a Scarlett's loss. Hugh, what's your thoughts? I'm going to go Claremont to take us too lightly and Lightning strikes the pitch and we win 23-16. Where does the lightning strike the pitch though? Metaphorical lightning. Okay. Or the saucepans. Yeah. It's not about pitch, we'll have to bring our own saucepans. Can I talk about the course study? Yeah, it's in Claremont, mate. It's in Claremont. Oh yeah, shit, sorry. Mark thought that every pitch, every rugby club has got a saucepan on the face. That's just the way they make posts. Got your predictions. You get some paper and you just pour water over it. You're going to get paper in three pours, that's what it is, isn't it? No, I'm going to go 25-22 Scarlett's because they're allowed to score every single point. Yes. And if nobody likes that, then tough. Yeah. All right. So to finish off tonight then, so something that we're going to bring in over the next couple of weeks. So Hugh's going to take over doing listeners' questions from next week and all of that kind of stuff. Martin will be going into a lot of depth on the community game and... Who doesn't love community? Who doesn't love the community game? And we'll be doing, hopefully, a bit more on the women's game as well. We'll see how that goes. And then I'm going to bring in something called Grist Grumble, which is like, it's kind of like a little bit of therapy for me, where we just get stuff off the chest. And not in a negative way, but I'm not going to slag anything, but I just need to get stuff off my chest and get it out there as a Grist Grumble. Yeah, we tried Martin's lawn, but we realised I'm more as angry as you. Yeah, Martin's just so positive, it didn't work. You were too nice. But what I will say tonight, yeah, Martin has stayed with us for the whole pod. Thank you. I want a gold medal. I want my badge right now. Martin lasted a whole hour or so without losing his signal. We need one of those boards that weeks since Martin's Wi-Fi sales. I was the first one in the room waiting to come in as well. You were super keen, weren't you? Super keen. So I've got a quick couple of messages for listeners about how they can help us on stuff that we've got coming and things like that. So if you can, great. If you can't, don't worry because we're doing okay as we are, but this is how we'd like to grow. We want to be better. Yeah. So first of all, on YouTube, if you haven't subscribed to us on YouTube, yeah, please do subscribe. And the reason for this is very, very simple. Okay, we're not allowed to earn any money off YouTube until we get 500 subscribers. Okay, so when you watch us on YouTube, there'll quite often be adverts at the start and all of that kind of stuff. And the money from those adverts goes directly to YouTube and they go, thank you very much. Back pocket. Lovely jubbly. Yeah, if we get to 500 subscribers, then some of that money, not a lot of it, tiny fraction of it, in all honesty, comes our way. Get pence for the pence for every minute and a half. It's one of those things that, you know, every penny kind of helps with our costs. Drops. Yeah, and all of these kind of things. So yeah, if you can, please subscribe. You don't have to put us on notification or anything like that. Just subscribe. So it just puts our numbers up. So the second thing, similar to that one. If you like our work and you want to help us, drop us a DM if you want to make a handy donation, you know, a pound or a ticket. We're happy to take any then. I am at least. Yeah, you are. Yeah, just because you need a haircut. Mark being the one who actually lives in the financial aid, he'll come round to your house and take your money. Yeah, he'll come round. You know why I'm growing this hair? Surely I've told you a hundred times. It's to save cancer kids. Be nice. Yeah, you just want to look like Shabalme. So my second bit on that is, if you're listening to the podcast. So if you listen to our podcast, so there's a couple of adverts at the start. And then when we say goodbye, most of you switch off and go, thank you very much. Yeah, I'm done. And whatever. If you could listen to those last two adverts, then our advertising revenue goes up through. You can put it on mute. You can put it on mute. It doesn't matter. Yeah. But if you can listen, then that kind of helps us as well. And the reason I say about all of those costs and all that kind of stuff is because I do want to set up a website for First of All for Scots. Well, yeah, I mean, we could have a community game blog. We could have the women's game blog. We could have Huw's blog about, you know, the numbers and all of this kind of stuff. I wouldn't be stuck on Twitter with my little paragraphs. I could do full depth. I could do form, last meetings, everything. Then you could just link it in. But the whole lot of it just takes money and time to set up and all that kind of stuff. If somebody is doing a university project and they want to set up websites or build websites or anything like that for us for free, then, yeah, please do get that for free. We're not expecting you to pay out. No, we're not expecting them to pay out, no. But those are the little bits that where somebody's watching two adverts at the end of the pod, you know, 50, 60-odd people do that. Then that's enough to, you know, pay for a month's stuff on a website. If 150, 200 people are doing it, then that starts to pay for Zoom. 500 people start doing it. Well, you know, I'm happy. I'll get a haircut. So, yes, that is my message to people. We have got loads of stuff coming. Stuff that we want to do includes messing around with videos, website, shop, all of these kind of things. All the stuff that you kind of go, oh, that might be a good idea. We're on it. It just takes time to do it. And if you want to help us, by all means, get in touch or just subscribe to YouTube or watch a video to the end because either of those are great on that. So, I wouldn't have grumbled. That was, I wouldn't have grist grumbled. That was a grist. That was a pre-closed mouth. Yeah. With that in mind, gents, I don't think any of us hold out any great hope of a victory against Claremont, but it would be nice to see. So, we shall come back next week. We shall discuss the Claremont game. And in the meantime... Did I just hear you said it'd be nice to see me running long-haired? I'm pretty sure I did. I've already seen those videos on YouTube. Once in a lifetime is enough for those videos. So, yeah. Those guys chasing with a harpoon after you... Or it's death. Or that's hard. Or... Honestly, when the... When that signal's gone. When the police come to me and go, have you seen this man and they show me a picture? I go, no, but I have. Right, gents, on that note, I shall bid you farewell and goodnight. I will catch up again next week and doodle again. All the best, gents. Goodnight. Thank you for listening to the Scarlet's Fever podcast. We hope you enjoyed the show. Please subscribe, rate and review wherever you listen to us as it really helps us spread the word. You can find us on all the usual social media channels or email us on welshregionalrugbypod at gmail.com And remember, whatever the question, rugby is always the answer.
