Scarlets Fever - The Connacht post mortem

The hosts of Scarlet's Fever discuss their recent activities and plans for the future. They talk about their upcoming holiday plans and their collection of swimming trunks. They also discuss recent rugby matches, including Thunder's impressive performance and the community game. They express their excitement for the women's game and the community game. They discuss the results of the semi-final matches and praise the winning teams. They also mention the curse that the Quinns had when Charlie Sitcom didn't play and are surprised by their recent victory. Welcome to Scarlet's Fever, the home of Suspense Central and Westerer is Besterer. Hello and welcome to this edition of Scarlet's Fever with me, Lee G, and joining me as always is the awesome crime-fighting duo of Big M and Catboy. Good evening, gents. We've just spent the last 10 minutes trying to work out who's got the worst signal this evening, me or Martin. So tonight may take a lot of editing and may not be out for a couple of days by the time we get through it, depending on whose signal drops how many times. You'll be able to pull the pen at the end, we can promise that. Yeah, yeah, can't promise the world's grand scheme. So how's your week been anyway, gents? What have you been up to? I haven't really done anything. I'm going on holiday on Wednesday, going to Marbella. Nice. Ooh, how long? Well, yeah, I should have told you this before we start recording, really, so I can't do next week. Okay, there we go then. That's next week sorted. So are you, right, on holiday, are you skin-tight Speedos or big floppy Bermudas? Big floppy Bermudas. Actually, I'm a bit cursed when it comes to swimming trunks. I always forget to pack them. So I've got swimming trunks from all over the world, because I always have to buy another pair when I get there, because I always forget them. And I keep telling my girlfriend, sell them on Vinted, because to sell them all on Vinted, I'll just keep buying another one, and you can keep selling them on Vinted. But apparently, she doesn't want to do that, so I've got a cupboard full of swimming trunks. Well, I don't think second-hand swimwear goes down very well in the world, but... No, Vinted, you can sell anything. I've only worn, like, twice. People do buy all sorts of shit on Vinted, I've been told that. So we've got touched-by-cat-by-twice trunks. Exactly. When I go on holiday, I always make a point of putting my mankini on top of the thing, just when the wife's doing the packing and all of that, and just go, have we got this, have we got this, have we got this? Go, yeah, yeah, all of my stuff's here. And I leave my mankini on top, just to see how long it's going to take it to wind her up, and you're not wearing that, are you? I've got a selection of them now, I've got a selection of mankinis. Genuinely, I've got a selection of mankinis. Neither of you say I'm not wearing one now. I've got a snow mankini, I've got an elf mankini, and I've got the classic Borat mankini as well. People just keep buying them for me, I don't know why. I think it's funny, when the mother-in-law comes round for Sunday lunch, and I'm just going to, you know, and then you come down in the mankini. I don't see an issue with that, but apparently everyone else does. Anyway, that was rugby on the weekend, few gents. Thunder was great. Go on, let's talk Thunder. Because I didn't see it, which is a bugbear of mine, that it's not on easy-to-access platforms. It was absolutely awesome. If you take the first game of the season, and just switch the team's jerseys, and that's more or less how it went. Thunder were on Thunder, it was unreal. They were fantastic. In the first half in particular, every time they got the ball, wherever it was on the pitch, you thought they were going to score. There were four first-half tries. The kicking from hand has come on leaps and bounds. In the first game, like Martin said, Lightning was shoving us backwards like nobody's business, completely the other way around this game. So that's credit to Ashley Beck. Who else was involved in the Thunder, who I didn't realise was involved in the under-18s as well? Phil Price. Really? Yeah, with being the waterboy and everything. So I think, were Phil Price to be made head coach of the Scars, he'd probably win the league, even from where we are in the table now. Yeah, he's not listed in anything. I've got the full backroom staff, but yeah, we've got Ashley Beck, Rodney Jones, Liza Burgess, Chris Thomas, Dan Lewis, Daryl Morgan, Olly Kitchen, no Phil Price mentioned. I think the best part of both games was about the 50th minute mark. What do you say, Eric? Oh yeah, with the drop goal. It was awesome. Absolutely sensational. It was squeaked as well, straight through the force. Yeah. The best thing is, it was planned. She literally kicked the ball past her head and said, I'm having the drop goal. It wasn't Phil Price, it was Phil John. Yeah, that's right. Phil John. Yeah, the prop. Yeah. Yeah. Phil Price is somebody very different. Yeah. Apologies. Well, they both lose heads. Yeah. Scarlet's props will fit. Yeah. Very different people. Anyway. All right. Well, Phil John was there. I met Paul John once in Tenby. Paul John, the Cardiff scrum half, who was doing... He was doing the Car-10, the cycle race, while he was coaching Cardiff. And he was cycling back up. It was on a Sunday morning. He was cycling back up to the Scarlet's Cardiff game, internationally. And I saw him there, because he came out of the hotel next door to me. And I went, oh, you're that rugby guy, Phil John. And he looked at me and he went, Paul John. I'm Paul John. I don't think he was as impressed as Phil John would have been. Well, on the subject of rugby names, our back line at the weekend was Jones, Jones, Evans, James, Williams, Lewis, Nicholas, kind of ruined it at the end. Could have got another Jones in there if we'd have tried. Anyway, back to talking about the Thunder, Phil John. Yeah, and Jonathan Harris, dropped goal to sign off a career. What a way to finish. Got a try as well. How many tries did we finish on? 30 points to five? Five. Five tries. Because it was buffeting down in the second half. Oh, it looked terrible on screen. But, you know, say that I'm going to kick it as a base kick, it isn't exactly the best. Well, no, none of them is. Like one conversion from five, no. Two of them were quite close to the post as well. But, you know, that's always something to work on. You've got something to improve. But one thing that has impressed me in the whole league is the fact that you go from third, fourth, fifth, they've all won the same amount of games. This is highly competitive. And second place was Reddenborough. You know, they had two draws. You know, they get that one extra point in both of those games. And their champions is so fine margins, which makes them more exciting. I just wish it was another set of fixtures. You know, eight years isn't enough. I got really into it now. I'm properly, like, emotionally invested as well. Like, when we were scoring against Goliath, I was like, yes, get in. So, yeah, I've really enjoyed it. And like Mark said, like, the difference across, what is it? Six, seven games? Seven games over eight rounds. But it's been a few dark weeks in there as well. Yeah, but the progression has just been absolutely sensational. Like, it's like watching a different team. Cool. Okay, well, we'll probably come back to the women's game at another point, because we've got quite a few followers this week. I mean, we do talk about the women's game a fair bit, but you made a big... We try. We try, yeah. But you put a couple of posts up on social media this week, and we've got quite a few followers who want to talk about the women's game, which is encouraging. So, now that we've done, you know, we've dangled the fish there for the, or dangled the worm for the women's game, Mark, let's talk about the community game. Let's go in a completely different direction, and you can do your community game rundown. Let's do that. Well, it's been a really, really happy week for me in the community, because as we know, this is a randomly podcast now. You know, we changed it a few weeks back. And obviously, they were in the semi-final of the WRU Premiership Cup. Stupid names, I add it all the time. Downs Aberavon against Erbw Vale. You know, they played each other twice in the league. Erbw won one, Drovers won one. This was the big game. This was the decider. And Drovers won it in, say, 20 minutes. I mean, they were 29-0 up, and the game was just dead and buried. They finished 43-7, so they're sailing through to the final. But, oh my God. Did they ever put a proper team in? Well, they're missing a lot of boys from the Wales under-20s. You know, Harry Thomas is a big one who's been starting all season over Taylor Davis. It is astounding to me that they're losing boys. Like, they lost a lot of boys to the Scarleths when they played Exeter, and they ran out and done exactly the same. There doesn't seem to be any drop in intensity or performance, regardless of what 20 or 23 goes out on the pitch. It's astounding to me how good they are, and they really have put every way of their play here, if I'm going to be honest, because they were the main contenders up to a point. Now, it's looking to be Newport, but you can't argue with that. I mean, 20 minutes to win a game. I mean, technically speaking, you could have said they'd second-try won the game, but that's not the point. It was dead and buried before that half-time whistle blew. So, 43-7 was the result in the end. And to our other favourite team in the championship, they were in league action to Marvin Quinns at home to Aberavon. Premiership. Premiership, my bad. See, it's so confusing, all these different names all the time. So, our favourite Premiership side, oh, I forgot to mention, Jack Davies, who's one of the academy boys with Van Der Rehe, he's gone two tries. It's not too bad. But back to the Quinns, and they've had a bit of a curse this season. Whenever Charlie Sitcom doesn't play, they lose. And that curse has been firmly thrown in the dirt, stamped on, had a fire lit on top of it, and then a few more things you couldn't really say. 56-17. I'm stumped for words. This is just an incredible performance. Aberavon, biggest loss of the season. And obviously, we're at the back end now, they've played everyone. I have no idea where this performance came from. I have no idea why it's taken so long to come through. But, come on, the Quinns, you keep this up, Christ, you'll be winning the EDC next year, you're trying to be at the top, and I'd love to see that. Only two of our boys involved, which was Ian Essing, William, and Lewis Morgan. We go down now into the championship, we had a few more boys involved from the academy. We had Harry Fuller with Newcastle Emlyn, Ollie Clause with Amundford, and we had Alfie Evans-Setchy and Justin Wood with Cremech. Now, on to the results. Cremech won 29-13 at home to Tardar Steel. Narbeth won 47-10 at home to Amundford. Now, a big result, you know, 37-point win. But I think it was 25 minutes before the first score went in. So, you know, well done to Amundford, they really put up one hell of a fight against, you know, the main juggernaut in this league. Newcastle Emlyn, they trickled over, they won 21-17 away to Trebanos, and Llangenech, as Llangenech do, they won 48-15 away to Ostalivera. Downing won West, Aberystwyth won 20-15 at home to Velenvolg, Sainan won 59-31 at home to Hendy. Kidwelly beat Whitland 29-21, and Barryport won away to Pencrow 33-19. Bryn Arfon had a game in one West Central, but it was postponed. Over into 2 West, Amunech did just lost out 11-17 at home to Mumbles. Carmarthen Athletic pulled out a bit of a shock, winning 26-19 at Glampeter. Lacha, as we all know, we hate Lacha, they were pushed right to the line by Fishguard. You know, 20-14 had finished, our game could have gone either way. Why? Why can't, you know, we just get a little, someone just give Lacha a punch in the teeth, we'll be right. St. Clair's won 20-11 at home to Pontyberym, and another good result for Pontyberym. They didn't pick up any bonus points, but you know, league leaders, they've been running away with it more or less. So to keep them within, you know, two scores is good for Pontyberym, because it's in the relegation places. Milford almost came up with another shock. Temby just beat Dinam at home 13-10. Final game to Croyce won 27-7 at home to Nantyreddig. Down into three-way, Cardigan won 25-5 at home to Pembroke. Pembroke dot Quinn won 11-5 at home to the Netherlands. St. David won 32-7 at home to Llanabada. Spina lost 18-27 at home to Llandudwig. Llandudwig, this one is just for you, no dot stars, 39 bonus, 16. Hooray! Hooray! The last game then, Betos won 15-9 away to Trimsaran. The final game was postponed, which was Tumble v Pemnigthen, proper Gwendrife Valley derby. So this game will now be the very last game at 3 West B, and just like the title, this just gets tastier and tastier, and I'm loving it. Into 5 West B, just a one-game pen-and-bank win in 27-10 at home to Pantyburnan. Now we're into the proper cup rugby. There's a lot to it at the moment. The Division 1 semi-final, Finesse won Dresden 7-5 against Backsteen 15 against Mount Dinash. The Division 3 cup quarter-final between Llanabringth and Athene was postponed. That's hopefully going to go ahead this Saturday. The final is fast approaching, and we've got to get through a quarter-final and a semi-final before that. Down into the Division 4. Conor beat me 28-26, but there was a bit of a scuffle after the fact. I don't know if any of you boys have seen, but I don't know whether it was fans or players, there was a bit of a fight after the fact, so I'm not sure exactly what was said or what went on, but someone wasn't happy. The other semi-final, Newport-Saracen 1-12-8 against Newpanteg. In Division 5, Contreras lost 28-29 against Dinash Powys. And Seven Sisters 4-3-1-10 against Ruthen Seconds. So congratulations to all their teams. They will be heading to the Principality Stadium for their final. Down into the youth section now. The Youth Cup semi-finals. Sandilo won 29-20 against Penn and Dunfermline. So we've got a team in the youth final after three days. In the play-off, we have Barguard winning 32-16 against Eddville. Carmarthen Athletic winning 28-0 against Ruthen. Well done to Athletic, they're through to the semis. And the bowl quarter-final, Carmarthen beat Abercan at 24-10. That is all my results. There are a lot, there's a full round of pictures coming this week. So I'll check them out. Pontypool against Llandudno is being televised on SBED-REC. So, I think that... Those are almost never on telly. Well, you know, they are now. So, where are they? Pontypool are just stacked all the way on, no, I'm thinking of Pontypool. Pontypool, yeah. Yeah, that's... We could talk about that, but, nah. We have posted all the pictures up. Well, I will, anyway. But, yeah, there's a massive full round. There's a few more cup matches to go to, especially Laon. Fingers crossed. You know, we could do with another team in a final. But here we've got Llandudno, VfL, actually one for us at the minute. But, you know, a third one would be nice. You know, I'd like to have a reason to go to both teams. So, yeah, I started a couple of weeks ago doing a brief scrub. And I forgot to do it. I wasn't here for a week, and then I forgot to do it last week. So, yeah. So, I just wanted to kind of complain about some stuff. Because I think it's good to get it off your chest. And so, I get stuff about, kind of like, people who think that rugby players are idiots and dickheads and all that kind of stuff. And I try and stand it, and I try and stand it for them. And then, I went, I took my daughter to Hottie last week. So, it was raining, it's wet. So, I look out onto my local pitch, and they haven't been able to train on that pitch for about three weeks. It's still standing water. It's still standing water on that pitch. Now, the other day, there were ducks on there. Now, the other day, there were ducks on there. That's genuinely, there's a puddle on the 22, and there were ducks in the puddle. Okay. So, train up on the AstroTurf, and they split it into rugby boys one side, hockey girls the other. Not a problem with that at all. Lovely, jubbly. So, before they start, and it's quite rainy, and you turn up, and you can see all the hockey people just slotting into parking spaces. Lovely, jubbly. And then, a bunch of arseholes turned up, and just decided, fuck that, I'm parking wherever I want. They were up on the grass. They were on the zebra crossing. They were covering like 203. So, instead of going in on a, you know, here's where the parking is. No, no, they were parking across. So, they had three, so they could watch their boy train. Under nines, under tens, whatever it was. They were only littling. I just thought, this is where the issue is. If you're that arrogant that you're not prepared to even just park in a parking space, because you want a better view of your under nines or under tens son messing around with a ball on the pitch. It really pissed me off, just the complete lack of consideration for other people. And there are quite a few dads in the hockey club that, you know, we used to play. We used to play against each other. We used to play with each other, all that kind of stuff. And so, we had a tournament on Sunday, and that was the topic of conversation. Was, you know, who, what a bunch of arseholes to park like that. And how inconsiderate. And this is ex-players, you know. And we're just, and there's an attitude problem with some people within the game that goes, well, I'm a rugby player in Wales. So, you know, you, you know, I hold a certain place. You don't. You have to win that. You have to earn that respect. You have to earn that, that right to say to people, you know, I play for my local club. And that's something that you earn by being a decent human being, not being a prized dickhead when it's pissing down and everybody's annoyed. And you go, you know what, up yours. I'm going to go and do what I wanted. It's not like it could have been one of two clubs, but everybody that was there was in their full training kit with the club logo on. Everybody knew who was training on that pitch. So it's not like, you know, you're there. You're representing the club. You're representing the game. You're not just representing the club anymore. You're representing the game and you're being a dickhead. So stop it. Because it pisses me off and it pisses off other people. And I'm very pro rugby apart from when people are being arseholes. And if you're an arsehole, I'll tell you, you're being an arsehole. So that's my grump of the week. I just needed to get it off my chest. Can I do a grump? Go on then. Griffin's grump. So I've had my say about the Scarlet's Twitter before, but I'm going to focus on one specific thing. And like I said before, if the Twitter admin is also the boot person, like, and it's not their only, if I got a main another job and they all see the Twitter on the side, I understand that it's fine. It's not the execution. It's the decision make that my issue is with. So I'm going to show the guys a picture. I put this on the WhatsApp before. You can see that I might not work with the, so this is the players arriving at the game to me. I feel qualified to say it. The worst rugby stash in all of rugby is the Castor Grey Scarlet's training kit. It is absolutely diabolical. It's an Osprey kit. So they posted us walking into Carnocks with it. The players couldn't look any more miserable. It's spitting. And I just posted it up and it's like, that's fans, what are we supposed to, how are we supposed to react to that? Are we supposed to be like, oh yeah, there they go. No, it's just depressing. And like the highlights they put on of the boys' training. I get other people send me them and go, is this your training? Is this why you're so bad? How come we can get someone sent down to the training thing to put together a highlight video, but we can't stream a game against the Barbarians? Anyway. So yes, I'm sorry, Twitter admin, if it's not your main job and you're doing your best, but I've had enough. Other fans, not even Welsh reasons, but it's like Irish clubs are messaging me going like, what is going on with your Twitter? It's not our Twitter. We get it from yours as well. We apparently got three people employed in the social media department. So it's like they know what they should be doing. It's because they're putting up the right kind of content. Like, oh, this is guys arriving at the game. Here's some training shots. It's all the right stuff. It's just, you know, maybe if they weren't wearing that horrible Castor kit, I wouldn't feel so bad about it. But maybe if they wrote something to get you engaged. Anyway, let's move swiftly on to, Mark, you were going to have a bit of a chat about the Wales 18s. Yeah, so Wales under 18s, if you didn't know, had a couple of games played this past week against Scotland. There were two games, a main under 18s and a development under 18s. And surprise, surprise, both won. You know, the mains won 43-10 and the development won 29-22. It was confusing that there were two games. They've done it for a couple of years. They play the reds and blacks and then they play what they call the Scottish ones, the Claymores or something like that. The Highlanders and the Claymores. But they've done it for a couple of years now. Yeah, it's a way to get more boys involved. I'm happy to see there are more boys involved in higher quality training, if it is higher quality training, that is. We know how good our 18s are. Maybe they could transfer that over. But no, we had quite a few boys involved. In the mains, we had Jack Richard, Sam Williams, Dom Cosseth. Dom, a kid-welly boy, and literally about 14 of his team-mates came down to watch the game of National Manhattan. They posted photos up. They got a mini bus in the morning and they all came down. Bloody awesome support to the boy. Dean Gwyn, Carowyn Jones were all in the starting lineup and we had Steph and Jack Jones on the bench. For the development, we had Osian Williams starting. We also had Nathan Davies and Alex Ridgeway on the bench. We didn't see Alex Ridgeway during the 18s this year. It is his first year of 18s, but I'm expecting he might have been injured because, obviously, he played last summer for the 18s and also he's playing now, so I'm assuming he's had a bit of an injury in between. But one thing I do want to pick up on is, obviously, four tight deads between the two games for Wales. Two of them, from man his mouth, Jack Pritchard and Nathan Davies. Fair play, they seem to be producing tight deads, and anyone who's watched for under 18s this year, they know how props can move and they're not little. You've heard me talk about them before. They're big boys, but they're mobile units, so, fair play, they are destructive. I want to see more of it. I want to see more of huge tight deads and loose heads just causing havoc around the place. Basically, I want a Reece Carey who can scrimmage. That's it, and I'm done. I just think you'd correct you on one bit, Matt. What have I done? Dejan Gwynn. Dejan. Dejan Gwynn. Yes, got the I in the middle, my bad. I haven't got his first name put on you, I just got Gwynn, so I can remember the D, my bad. De, Dejan. Oi, Dejan. Have we got anything else? Anything, like, actually from the games? You know what? There's been about 30 seconds of highlights put up, and that's literally all we've got to do, so there's not much else. We have asked if they're going to put some more highlights up, but we've literally got a line-out coming down and a pass going out, that's it. That's the only sort of... To be fair, that was played at Ystrad Mynydd, wasn't it? And it was played at Ystrad Mynydd over the last weekend, where Ystrad Mynydd is like a little bit of the polar circle moved and planted in the middle of Wales, because the place is absolutely frigging freezing. It was hot the day I was there, I've been there a couple of times, and the sun is out, and it's a lovely day, and you're, like, freezing your nuts off. Absolutely. So what it was like last weekend, I dread to think, because it's cold in the middle of summer there. What it was like last weekend, there must have been ice on the pitch, I'm telling you, because it was not pleasant. It's not a pleasant place to go. It's all artificial turf up there, but, you know, fair play. You know, it is a top-notch ground. They've got a lovely stand, they've got all the facilities around with a college, so everything is set up perfectly for the Dragon's Legion, and the college, I can't remember what college, I think it's College of Cymru, I'm not a hundred percent. Yeah, it's still cold. It's the best-used cafe in the whole place, because everyone goes here and goes, bugger me, I need a cup of tea. There's a new cafe opened by me. It's got joke opening hours. Basically, if you've got a job, you can't go. Really? Oh, my God. So the opening hours of this cafe, I took a picture. So Monday to Thursday, 7 a.m. to 2 p.m., so you could set your alarm and go, I suppose. Friday, 7.30 a.m. Well, it actually says 7.30 a.m. They haven't done their second zero. But 7.30 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, 8.30 a.m. to noon, Sunday closed. Well, that's handy. So if you wanted a cup of coffee, don't go there. I think they're obviously targeting a very niche audience. There must be a factory around or something that just popped up. Not in Leamington, there isn't. There might be somewhere opposite me, actually. But it's... Anyway. If you want highlights of the under-18 games, check SIU, because if a pigeon lands on a rubby ball in Scotland, the SIU probably live-streamed it on YouTube. Yeah, that is quite interesting. There was a game against Scotland a couple of years ago that my boy was playing in. And literally, so he came down on the bus four or five hours, and you could see everyone's family was there. And it's a big, real proud moment. You're putting the shirt on the first time. This is brilliant. This is fantastic. First kick-off, goes to the prop. He takes it into a ruck, and he busts his ankle. He's come all the way down from Scotland and all that kind of stuff. It was at first contact, he went over on his ankle. Am I lucky? The hospital is literally the other side of the road. But yeah, you do feel it from him. You're like, how pissed off would you be? Imagine missing the kick-off because you needed to go and get a cup of tea because you'd frozen. The time that you had a cup of tea, your boy's just started his first game for Scotland and then got substituted because he busted his ankle. That's all about ease, isn't it? No, that was a couple of years ago when my boy was playing. So that's what I mean. I know that they've done that for a couple of years against Scotland. But it is a long old track down because they do come down on a bus. They don't fly down. They come down on a bus. Anyway, do we want to talk about the women's game again? Was there anything more to talk about? Because I got it in my notes to talk about the women's game now. And I just thought, we've actually done the women's game. Should we talk about how much we love the women's game a bit more? And then move on? Or should we just move on and just accept that we all love the women's game? Shall we just talk about the fact that Britain have played seven games and won more games than the Scarlets? Oh, I didn't realise that. That is true. They even were against Glasgow. Mind you, I suppose the Scarlets are against Cardiff. So I suppose it adds up. Yeah, we've beaten two teams. So let's move back on to men's stuff then. So let's move on to the Connaught game. Because I'll tell you a little story about the Connaught game. But, well, first of all, I had the decorators in last week. Oh, you've got to see Thunder and Lightning! Back on the 8th one, boys! Go on, burn it. Do that one again. Do that one, just because I can't remember. What does... I think you have to go like that. Yeah, I think it was that, wasn't it? No, I think your fingers are up, I guess. Put your fingers in if that was in there. Yeah, not Spider-Man. There you go. There you go. That was the one. Now he looks like a god. This is for Britain. Yeah, so the decorators last week. So television came off the wall and all that kind of stuff. Went and put it back up on Friday night in time for the Oscars game. Plugged in the HDMI cable. Lovely job, Lee. We're good for five minutes. And then I moved the telly around and I bust the HDMI cable. HDMI cable. Oh, why'd you do that for? Well, it wasn't on purpose. I can assure you of that. Did your boy leave his Xbox before you went to Osprey? No, I happened to have a spare one in the cupboard somewhere. It took a while to find it. Luxury spare HDMI cables, ladies and gentlemen. At one point, I had a few left in there. They're all broke. Anyway, so I missed most of the Ospreys game. I had to do an emergency dash to Swansea on Saturday night. So I missed the whole of the first half of the Connacht game. Second half, I saw. So the second half. And then, yes, I didn't see any of the Cardiff game. Saw half of the Scarletts game. And then obviously the Dragons game wasn't on telly. So, yeah, four games over the weekend and I've seen 40 minutes. So you boys crack on and talk about the Connacht game. And when you get to halftime, I'll pitch in. Shall we see what the people were saying first? Yes, let's do that. OK, so three words. Oh, I know what we haven't talked about. We haven't talked about Johnny McNichol. We'll do that after this. Remind me. Oh, yeah. Write it down. Go on, yeah. So three word thoughts. I start on Facebook because that's where all the Scarletts fans are. Because on Twitter, you just get Ospreys and Cardiff fans. True. So, oh God. So, there's a theme which I'm going to come to in a bit. Need for improvement is one. Things getting desperate is another. Not there yet is another. We're sinking rapidly was one. We are sinking rapidly. That's not too many, but you can't include that. We're sinking rapidly is three words. I thought you said we are. You're not reciting the story. There's someone called M who's left a very negative comment. I saw that one. Naughty. Right. And then all the rest of the comments are about the referee. Yeah. Let's just get it out of the way first. Because it's a big talking point of the game, unfortunately. I don't think we'd have won if the decisions had gone the other way. Was this the same ref as we had against Munster? Yes. The one who was pinging Lousey offside for a ruck that didn't exist. And pinging him for... No, that was that game. We're coming round the side of a mall on a line-out. And perfectly entitled to be where he was. And then the player at the back of the mall detaches, stands there and goes, where shall I pass the ball? And Lousey goes, fucking have one of them, son. And he goes, penalty for offside. He wasn't offside, he was attached to the mall. And you're allowed to detach from the mall when the player at the back of the mall detaches. So when he detaches and that's it and done. It pissed me off because it was such a simple call and he got it wrong. But when it was the other way round, he got it right. I don't think, obviously, that there was any kind of a bias against it. As a, like, deliberate bias. I don't think it's a fix or anything. When you are the lesser team, and this is all sport. When you are the lesser team, like, 60-40s in your favour become 70-30s in the opposition's favour if the opposition are the biggest team. Like, if we played Leinster, what decisions are we getting against Leinster? Because in the referee's subconscious, it's like, Leinster are good, Scarlett's are bad, therefore I need decisions. Like, if Leinster do something, I'm not going to think twice about it. If we do something, like, if we took the lead against Leinster, referee's going, I'm going to TMO and checking this because Scarlett shouldn't be leading Leinster. And it's just subconscious. And it's not, I'm not picking out any referees or anything. It's just human nature. It's how it goes. But it shouldn't be. It shouldn't be. A referee is a referee and you have to remove yourself from it. This is my thing, is that I don't like, personally, my personal opinion. I don't like referees doing research on teams and talking to each other. Like, the URC would encourage them to talk to each other and go, what should I look out for when I'm reffing this team? And you just end up with massive confirmation bias. And it's just, you start seeing things that aren't there or anything marginal. I personally would rather referees know nothing about the teams that they're refereeing and just pick it as they see it. But so, yeah, so with the knock on, I mean, it's, you know, the videos out there and then the penalty try as well. I don't know. What do you guys thought? Because at the time I was absolutely raging. I was annoyed to hell and back because we had the advantage and it was less than a second that the ball was loose. You didn't see who regarded it. You know, in that situation, you have advantage, it's a player, whatever. You need to see what team regarded before you blow the whistle, but he didn't do that. So we scored the try naturally that way. But even if you take it back and he does blow up, you still need to look at that. That is a stone penalty try on the yellow card. There's no ifs, no buts. You know, I've got no problems with referees making, you know, wrong decisions in life play. If when the TMOs come in and you can physically see it on TV, I mean, you saw Jack Price's reaction to the try being awarded. He was mega pissed off. We had this, you know, at the beginning of the last, well, no big kidding, up to halfway from last season. There seemed to be a bit of an unconscious bias against Scarlet, but thankfully we managed to put a few wins together and that disappeared. So it goes back to what Hugh said. When a team is, you know, on a bit of form, you know, your mind thinks that way. And that's, you know, what referees shouldn't be. They should be the complete opposite. They should be going in with an absolute blank slate. You're right about the TMOs. I've been a ref and I know the pressure that you're under. And sometimes it can be a nightmare. Sometimes you've just got to say to the crowd, shut up, you know, it's not a great decision to make, but you do it kind of like, you know, I can't listen to what's going on over there because it's starting to affect what I'm seeing here. You know, you have to have that going through your head. So the TMO has got none of that. The TMO is sat in a little black box and they purposely put them away in the other end of the car park so nobody can influence them and all of this kind of stuff. And you can take as much time as you want as a TMO to get that. The purpose of bringing in the TMO was to make those decisions correct. It was to take away the whole idea of, you know, you can have a go at the ref. The purpose of the TMO was to protect the referee because, you know, if the referee wasn't sure about the decision, he could ask somebody else to look at something with TV angles and this, that and the other, and you could slow it up and you could go, ah, right, I've seen what happens there now. This is what it was. I thought it was a try. Actually, he knocked the ball on by three foot just in front of me and I missed that. Referees miss stuff. A TMO should not be missing those stuff. A TMO should not be getting those decisions wrong. Something nobody is talking about as well. Conor's second try, he didn't tap it. In the first half, there was a tap and go, he didn't tap it. Really? Well, it was the first half, so I can't comment because I didn't see it. Well, I didn't see that either. So that's tries of the years we need to rule out. One try of hours we need to put back in. So that is, what, 17.50 in our favour plus 10 minutes of the yellow? It's positive. Regardless of these decisions, we had more than enough opportunities to win this game. I mean, how many times will we be deeper than 22 and we botched the line-out? I don't see that as a negative, Mark. At the minute, I don't see that as a negative because at the start of the season, we weren't creating those opportunities. Do you know what I mean? Yes, in an ideal world, we should be clinically just executing those time after time after time. At the start of the season, we weren't even close to creating those opportunities. This is what we said changed around about Christmas time after the Black Lion game. But actually, the attacking mindset started to return. And from what I saw in the second half, yeah, even I was screaming, kick it. There were a couple of those penalties. Just take the points, boys, because you're on top. You're dominating a lot of stuff. Just take the points while they're there. Go back, do the same thing again. Rinse and repeat. Rinse and repeat. Kick it. Swap three. Come back. Do the same. Kick it. Swap it. Three points. Thank you very much. But I can see the style of game that we're trying to play now. I do. I see that trying to come out. I think some of the defensive stuff is starting to improve. We were more competitive. And I think the bit that you would like was we had a punch-up in the scrum. But doesn't that say, too, we've been saying all season, they don't care. They're not showing enough effort. They're not showing enough spirit. They don't care and all that kind of stuff. If you don't care and somebody's burrowing on you, not coming in on an angle, you just go, oh, I'll collapse the scrum. If you care, you stand them up and you give them a gob full and you start. And that's what they did. They took no shit. They went, right, you're having this back, son. And that was the impressive bit for me there, that they actually stood up and went, you're having some of this back. It was the best front row performance of the season. And Wyn Jones, to be fair, we've given some stick a couple of times. I'll let Mark talk about this mostly, but Wyn Jones' best game all season, comfortably. They were just cool with the stats. Well, props don't carry very much, but Sean Evans' stats were unbelievable. So I posted these on Twitter before. So Sean Evans, 72 minutes, five carries, 23 meters, 20 out of 21 tackles, two line breaks. He was our top line break with two. Three passes and an offload. Two defenders beaten and zero turnovers lost. That's part of 100% scrum as well. He's an open side. That's why he can't throw in the lineup. We're not going to add those stats in because it'd probably be a bit embarrassing. Yeah, someone when I posted the stats did reply, what about his lineup stats? And I'm thinking, why you gotta be like that? But Sam Wainwright as well, proving a few people wrong at the moment. Yeah, well, I've said for a while, Sam is a lot better off the ball than he is in the scrum. And fair play to the boy, he anchored that scrum really well. And he allowed Wyn Jones just to go to town. And like you said, it's not even Wyn Jones' best game this season. It's his best game since 2021. We haven't seen anything like that from him in a good few years. And after that little scuffle, and people might not like this, but re-watching it on the camera angles, you can see as they connect and that ball goes in, Wyn tucks his head straight under the tight end chest and pops him up. Perfect. Referee standing here, doesn't see a bloody thing. Oh, he just looked up like that. He was absolutely. But he was, he just threw him straight down, stuck it in straight in the sternum and then you know what? Fuck off. Have one of them. And that's what I mean. It's very easy to look at that game and say, oh, you know, there's negative points. Yes, there are negative points here. But if you're just going to look at the negatives, go watch England, because there's tons of them there, yeah. If we're going to watch a game, then we, yeah, you've almost got to dig for some of the negatives at some point, the positives at some point. But the more we talk about the positives, the more we talk about, you know, stuff's going right, the more we talk about so-and-so did something well, so-and-so did something else well. People respond to positive praise more than they respond to negative, yeah. If you tell someone they're shit, they'll go, oh, fuck you and walk off. If you tell them, do you know what? That scrum, there were like three scrums there, you had five scrums today, three of them absolutely ding-dong perfect. If we could have had those other two scrums, like those three, you were absolutely bang on top of the world, yeah. If you tell them you were shit in two scrums, they're not going to listen to you. And we have to kind of think about how people are, you know, when you're on the pitch and what you're saying to people and what is coming through matters. And when you're off the pitch, it probably matters more because they hear it more. So, yeah, if people want to go and be negative about the game, by all means. But for me, there were bits there that we could improve on, but actually, I've seen a lot of improvement from earlier in the season. That's my point. Fafita had another great game. The only reason I didn't do my stats post about Fafita is for variety. If Fafita was Welsh, he would be in the Six Nations squad starting every game for Wales. Yeah. Fafita could be any nationality, he'd be in every team bar in the All Blacks. That's literally it. That's how good he is at the minute. I think he'd be tearing up in Super Rugby. I don't know if anyone's watched any Super Rugby lately, but I think Fafita in that league was lucky. I mean, Rhys Patshaw has gone over there and he's looking like absolute God. Yeah, let's see what Jones has gone over there. Look what he's done to Moana. They were not with you last season. Yeah. I've got to be honest, Dan Jones hasn't really had the desired effect since he's come back. No. I'm glad you picked that up because I know we're big fans of Charlie Titcom. One thing that he possesses more than any of our other fly-offs, even Costello, is he has got a kicking game to rival the gods. That torpedo puts on was made for Galway weather. I don't know why he wasn't put in, even knowing that chances are we're going to be against the wind in one half. You know, stick him in there. You know, if he was on first half, when we were kicking into touch, we were getting, what, 15 metres max? You know, the way he kicks the ball, his style, they would have still gone 25, 30 metres easier. You know, his style of kicking is immaculate. I love it. You know, especially his Gary Owens. I love his proper Gary Owens, where he torpedoes it up and it just comes down. And he's so forceful. I think you probably wouldn't know, but Lee knows. You get a torpedo coming down at you, you're like, shit, how am I going to catch that? Because if you cast it even slightly open, you're like, shit, that's gone. You go, where's my fullback? This is not my job. This is what we have a fullback for. Why the fuck am I looking up at a ball? And if you're chasing it as a number eight, you're going, I'm having someone's ribs here. Someone's ribs are going as he catches it. This is great. The fact he came on in the 72nd minute when the game was lost. I think we need to be patient with them. I know it's frustrating, but they are the future. But this season is supposed to be about building the future. Everything, they always say every time we lose a game is through building, playing these kids for the future. Every time one of the kids plays well, they lose their place in the team. It just doesn't make sense. Like, we don't even know if Dinkie's going to be here next season. So how are we building if we let a player go in at 10 that's not going to be here? And that was going to be my point. That, you know, Dinkie, that's his, what, third game back from injury? Second. Second. Second. Yeah, so second competitive game. He played excellently. So why isn't he on the bench and Thickham starting? So, yeah, there's obviously something there somewhere that, you know, we need to. Because Thickham actually kicks the ball, which obviously Dwayne is allergic to. But that comes back to the type of game that we're, we're starting to play. We've changed our game plan, which we have done. Our territory has just gone. So at the beginning of the season, it was building, building, building. Now we've changed since Black Lion and our territory has just gone out the window. Yeah. But actually, we're playing a lot better and the games are getting closer and closer and closer. Yeah. So it may not be perfect, but the style of game that we're trying to play, that running, handling, open, free game is starting to pay off. The backs barely touched the ball in this game. I'm sorry, Lee, but I've got the, I've got the stats of the backs and they barely touched it. Tell me those three carries. We had two big centres who are used to crash ball in, who are used to breaking tackles. And we just did not use them whatsoever. You know, I think he's a good distributor. He's not the best in the world. We know that. He's a solid U of RC, you know, challenge cup level 10. We're not shipping the ball out as well as we should. We're not punching those holes. We're not creating those depth touches like Drew Roberts tried against Munster. You know, the deep coy crash ball pop-up, it does little things that we can't do. We're not, this has come down to the fact that we've got no set plays. Which means that we don't bring our best players into the game. So, like, if you look at all our highlights in the end of last year, Sam Lousey's in most of them. Do you know how many metres Sam Lousey made in this game? None. None. I didn't even know that. I just guessed because I barely saw him touch the ball. But then he's going to have games like that. He is going to have games like that. It's the same in the other games. He's captain. He is, yeah. Where are you captain? Can you be captain as a forward as he normally does? I don't think that being a captain is doing him any good. No, but we've got a leadership vacuum in the pack though. Who's the captain? Yeah, no, I agree with you. I just, I don't think, you know, with the type of game that Lousey plays, since he's been made captain in a couple of games, he does just seem to disappear and be quiet. And I don't know if the two are linked or it just happens to be that, you know, he's been taken out of the games in the last couple of games. Why is he not playing second row? I don't get it. We have a shortage of back row. I mean, Garrett Taylor, 40 metres of scar jersey injured. I mean, apparently hobbled off. Is Ben Williams injured? Ben Williams was on the bench, wasn't he? On the bench. Did he even get off? That's what I'm saying. No, he did, I think. I think he did. Sorry, go on. And you've got Tua Pallottu, who is fit because he played for the Quins, you know, and against Exeter. So we had Ben Williams, who could have gone in at six, Lousey dropped back into the row and we could have had Tua Pallottu on the bench. Jack Price had a great game, to be fair. Jack Price had a very good game. I'd come on to him now. Tua Pallottu should really be out starting eight by this point. You know, this was all built up for him. You know, he's a big lad, heavy boy. He's like 125 kg, something like that. He doesn't seem to have the mindset for contact, for aggression. It's just not there with him for whatever reason. And, you know, he had Talamafone with him for a good few years to learn. And it's just not worked. And as good as Peter is, his work rate and his skill set is more of a six than an eight. And everyone can agree with that. So what he's doing is brilliant, but we haven't got a person doing the job of a number eight. And I'm just thinking if he goes to Montpellier, we'll have lost Kisti and Talamafone and Peter in back-to-back-to-back seasons. Now, I'm sorry for being negative. I'm sorry for bringing it down. Eddie James was amazing again, because he's an amazing player. And he's got it. The sooner that he gets in the Welsh national team, the better. If everyone's the worst. No, let him have a good couple of seasons for us first to find his feet. We need to find, we need to come up with set plays to get the ball into the hands of our best players. And we're just not doing it at the moment. Like I said, the back's barely touchable. Now, another forward who just touched on, and like I said earlier, Jack Price was really pissed off with our team. I said, give him the captaincy based off that. And based off his performance, what did he make, like 24 tackles? His work rate... Yeah, 24 out of 26. His work rate has seemed to have gone through the roof, you know, in these last few weeks. And even Morgan Jones coming on made a big impact. You know, his carrying was, I don't know how many metres he made post-contact, but it looked effective. He was trying to go through everything. You know, and KV's boys were probably picked up a few years ago, their outfuture, blah, blah, blah. They seem to have stalled a bit for whatever reason. Now, this game, I'd happily say, if we had Morgan Jones and Jack Price, and they'd have started in, you know, locks around Epsom, and we've got Craig and Blousie and whatever, I wouldn't be bothered. I'd say, you know, those boys are on form. They play like they did against Connacht. We are happy. We're good. We're solid. We've definitely improved it. It's not at the rate that we want them to improve at, but there's improvement in areas that we needed to improve on. You know, I'd be happy if we just managed to defend around tight rocks at the minute. Something I would like to do is not concede a try in the first half. We've done that in 50% of our games this season, and that's not a hyperbolic stat. That's a fact. Yeah, well, we spoke two weeks ago about, you know, our defence against Munster, how for 60 minutes we were well in that game. After this game, we were just falling off tackles for fun, and they were one on... They were making, you know, massive breaks. I know they were a few tip-ons, which did cause us a lot of problems, but our first-half tackling in that first 20 minutes was woeful. You see, it's cool putting on good performances when you've already been two scores down. We need to stop being two scores down within 10 minutes, which seems to happen more often than not. I just want to quickly shout out the Scarlets fans who went to Galway, because we could hear you on telly, singing, in scenarios, etc. Fantastic. Galway's a great trip. If anyone hasn't been... Oops, fireworks from Mark. If anyone hasn't been to Galway, definitely go. Fantastic place. Anyway, I love Ireland, generally. I could happily live in Ireland. And, yeah, I just hope everyone had a great trip. And, you know, reports that we take more fans to away games than Osprey Springs to home games are unconcerned. I can't say whether that's definitely true. It doesn't sound true, but someone said it, OK? Yeah. Someone also said, without giving away free tickets, Cardiff can't sell a cap. No, no, no, no. They did sell it out. It's just the capacity was only 7,000. Oh, yeah, that was it. They reduced the capacity to however many people turned up. Right, let's not start going down that one. Let's finish on a Scarlett's positive with Jonny McNicol, and then we will talk about the Wales game very briefly. How was that a positive? Well... How was it a positive? The memories are positive. The fact, yeah. The memories, and, you know, if you ask any Ospreys fan, they'll sit there and quite happily slag him off for half an hour and all that kind of stuff. Because he's able to beat defenders and make line breaks, which they haven't seen back during the last 10 years. No, I know. They get confused when people run with the ball and don't kick it. So it's, yeah. I mean, for me, it was, it's just his ability to offload. He just seemed to, he didn't look like a particularly traditional fast player. Do you know what I mean? He's got a bit of a weird kind of gait to the way he runs. But he was quick. He was well nippy. And he just had this way of offloading really, really effectively into hands. Yeah. And I think that it's easy enough to offload and just throw the ball everywhere. He would offload two people. And I think that was the difference. So for me, yeah, I mean, the guy was some of the best memories you have over the last couple of years at the Scarlets involved Johnny McNichol every time. So for me, a big loss. He was a massive, big game player. And he came out in every big game we ever had. And okay, this one probably isn't one of the biggest games, but it was 2017-18 season. We drew with Leinster. It was quite early on in the season. I think it was around October-November time. I met him in the internationals. And he just played out of his skin. And he's one of my best. I know he scored a hat-trick in the final that year. But his all-around performance that game, I can still remember it. I just think, Jesus Christ, what a player we've got. What a player Wales will have. And I have no idea what happened there. He was a massive, he's a massive playmaker. He made Brian Briggs a fan. He should have been Wales' Matt Hanson. He's a typical Kiwi. He thinks two steps ahead. He's not, I'm going to beat this man so I've beaten him. He's like, I'm going to beat this man so that I... Like you said, he just came in and he just sort of... As soon as he arrived, people were like, how long until he's qualified for Wales? And he made that 15 jerseys of his own. No one begrudges him. Sanjay on the wing. He put Sanjay on the freaking wing. Liam Williams on the wing to put Johnny Manicol at fullback. Still crazy that we had Sanjay, Hilly Harpenny, and Johnny Manicol on the books all at the same time. Anyway, so yeah, I put up the highlight clips. My highlight clips were better than the Scarlett's highlight clips. I just want to say that. I put up the highlight clips for him in the final where he scored a hat-trick. Of course there was Ospreys fans in the comments. Of course there were. Ospreys fans spend more time on our feed than they do on their own feed. When the Ospreys pod puts up stuff, it gets nowhere near the amount of interaction or comments from Ospreys supporters that our comments do. You can go on some Ospreys fans' Twitter pages and it's all tweets about the Scarletts. They don't tweet about the Ospreys. They only tweet about the Scarletts. But you know what the best thing about Ospreys fans? If you tell them their team are good, they do not like it. No, they don't. They think you're taking their piss or something. You know why? We've all made calls saying, you know, okay, Ospreys raps are pretty good in that game, play play. And they rip the shit. What do you mean we were good? So anyway, so I put the clip up of Jonathan Nicholls' historic performance in the Pro 14 final over in Dublin against Leinster. The Leinster team that won the double that year, by the way. And yeah, European semi-final. Does anybody know much about that? Anyway, moving on. So we got, and he was fantastic. That Scott Williams try at the end, I remember when, no, sorry, the Scott Williams break that Jonny McNicholl finished off by between them, up the touchline. I remember there, like when I watched that thinking, you know, we lost, but I couldn't be prouder of this team. This is such a great team. And, you know, it all fell apart a season after that. But McNicholl was unplayable in that final. And like I said, put the highlights up and the numbers on it have been fantastic on TikTok, Twitter and YouTube. People have loved it. So I just hope, you know, nobody begrudges him leaving because we're all pretty sure we know where he's gone. And it's where he came from. And look, he's always at that age where he's thinking about where he wants him and his family to be. And look, if you get that opportunity, who's saying that? I'm just going to say the biggest disaster of Jonny McNicholl's career is how he was never at the World Cup. A player of his stature and his quality, he's a good ability. And Lee Harpenny has been brilliant throughout the years, but all he does is defend and kick a goal. There's no reason why Jonny McNicholl shouldn't have at least been involved in the training camp. And he would have forced his way through, no problem. I just don't understand why there was so much dislike for him. It's actually from PIVAC who brought him in. Who brought him over. There's a whole game around him. Yeah, he wanted to avoid the tag of, you know, you're only playing your own players and all that. Anyway, so... Who gives a shit? You were really good. You were playing well. I know. I don't know. I agree, but that was the mistake he made. So, Hugh put up a post saying, what are your favourite memories of Jonny McNicholl? So, Yohan Harris said, it has to be the hat-trick he tries in the Pro-14 final. Some guy called Carl was a dick. Delyth, Delyth Bevan said, good luck through future exploits. David Price wishes him good luck. Mark Thomas says he's a great player, great servant. Patty says, good luck. Thank you, Jonny. Rob Vaughan says he's a great servant. Like most Kiwi blacks, his attack-minded style was a joy to watch. Good luck to him. Should never have played for Wales, though. You were doing so well up to that point, Rob. I mean, anyway. And then Henry says, his consistency playing at such a high level all the time. He's been the only stand-out performer for the Scarlets this season. Wishing him well for the rest of his journey in the game. It's, yeah, and there's lots of— I'll raise you a Joe Roberts, but I appreciate the sentiment. Alex Craig. Alex Craig. But there's lots of other stuff on other places. The bit I say about not playing for your home country and all of that kind of stuff. Jonathan Davis was born in Manchester. Scott Williams was born just outside Manchester. Let's not get too picky about where players were born and where they choose to play their rugby. Eight years he played for us. Eight seasons. So let's not be too picky about that. And I can comment on this. I've got two Welsh parents. They've bloody lived— their families lived in the same street for about six generations, probably back to when they were first dealt. I was born in Germany. Did you? Oh, you know that? You listen to my accent. Would you say I'm no Welsh? No, but— It doesn't matter. But your eyes are too close together. I've always had my suspicions. Well, I've got a blonde and two white daughters, so what does that mean? Oh, dear, oh, dear. Oh, God. We're heading down a rabbit hole. I forgot what I was going to say now. You were talking about Johnny McTighe. Oh, yeah, and all I was going to say was when he's tearing it up down in Super Rugby and he's scoring strides with Funton, you'd better believe that we're claiming them as scarlet strides. Like we do with Tadburn. I know the chances are that he's going home to Canterbury and to Crusaders, but wouldn't it just be lovely if, for whatever reason, he ended up at the Highlanders? Imagine that. That would just be beautiful. He's already there with— well, we assume he's going to be there with Halfpenny in the physio room. The physio's busy. That's going to be funny as well, isn't it? Imagine Crusaders find Liam Williamson. That'll add to Scarlet's trifecta of wasted money. Before we get ourselves into any more trouble, let's finish on a little bit about the Wales game and just a couple of predictions and expectations for this weekend. Not going to be that much Scarlet involvement in it. Costolo— Costolo and Hardy, probably, and Elias on the bench. My point has been for the last two weeks that we need a pack that is going forward. I've got no idea what's going on with his line-out throwing, but we need to be able to scrummage because in that first half against— Am I the only one in Wales that wants to see Dab Jenkins and Teddy Williams together? Dab Jenkins and who? Teddy Williams. I like them both. They're both good. I've got nothing against them. I still think Will Rowlands is a better player than Dab Jenkins. Yeah, I've got no doubt about that, but I've always been of the mind that you finish the game with your best 15 rather than start it. That's just me, personally. I'd like to see those two put together because, I'll be honest, Adam Beard, he's just not doing anything. I don't know if you're watching these WRU snippets of in the dressing room. I think it was halftime, he gave a speech and it fell flatter than a pancake. He's supposed to be one of them. He does. Yeah, Ospreay's fans are really happy with that. Oh, look who's giving the halftime speech. Yeah, for me... He gave an hour-long seminar on line-out calling. How hard can it be? Well, I think this is... Throwing's quite difficult. You'd be surprised. You've got to know the heights of your lift and your jumper. You need to know exactly where they're going to be out in the line. It's not as simple as just throwing a ball, but they do spend enough time together. I'm talking more about calling it. Surely you have like five pre-arranged calls and go, that one. Oh, no, Christ, no. No, you have a series of numbers. At least five calls for front, middle and back and devolve with numbers and letters and whatever you're using, names even. It does sound complicated. Maybe that's why Welsh teams are so bad at it. Yeah, it's a bit like an NFL playbook where you'll have... You can jump at... I used to have a line-out call, you jump at number one. So number two was lifting and you'd literally throw him up that way. It was really bizarre. It worked. Really, really worked. My last time playing, it was a series of numbers and it was the third number in that is where we're going, you know, and we just had to work it out on the flight. So me and my other props, we'd literally... We'd probably start one at the front, one at the back. I was normally at the front. And then we'd just crash in wherever we were lifting. But if you jump... I know where the ball's going. For Wales, Wainwright's catching it. And for Scarlet, Srafiti's catching it. Yeah, there is a bit. But you can be, even as a middle jumper, you're jumping up, going forward, jumping up, going back, jumping straight. If you're a front line, you can jump forward and low. You can jump forward and high. You've got little crossover things as well. Before we do the line out, a guy goes over to the hooker and whispers something in his ear, like, you throw it, we'll catch it, right? And he goes, OK, good idea. And then they do another shout. I'm exposing the fact I've never played rugby. And then they do the line outs and then there's another shout between them then. The whole purpose of the delayed line is that you don't give the opposition an opportunity to see what you're doing. So you might put a jumper in at two. You might put a jumper in at three. You might put a jumper in at four. If you stand it, like we used to do back in the good old days, back when I was a little boy. But you stand in the same place. So I was either a number two jumper or I was a tail gunner. So if it was a front ball, that's a two jump. Middle ball, a four. Back of the line, six. Off the tail was seven. But you'd all be in the same place. And it came about by accident. Somebody was injured and they said, OK, well, Wales started it. Somebody went down injured and they said, right, well, there's a line out next. This is what we'll do. They went into the line out, didn't give the opposition a chance to, like, move around. Up, out, gone. They went, oh, that worked well. Did the same in the next line. I went, what can I list? They can't jump against us because they don't know who's going where. And that's where it came from. So the whole point of doing that is you go in, step up. Yeah, you shouldn't need that second call. The whole purpose is to go in, one, up. And as the line goes. Why is there a second call? There shouldn't be a second call. Because obviously, back in the day, people can switch off now. This is a different channel. Back in the day, it was just like, and I love seeing those old clips because they always look like they're concentrating with the two hands and things. I mean, it's go and just love it and see where it goes. But like when lifting come in, we did like one day, one team lift someone and everyone. Yeah, New Zealand. New Zealand started lifting. And it's like the next day rugby was changed forever. No, what it was, was you weren't allowed to lift. So what they used to do is they used to stand really, really close. Yeah, so you'd still stand up like you were. And then as they jumped, you kind of lean in and push like that. So when two of you lean in and push you, the natural thing is up like that. So you'd be on each other's shoulders. And then somebody went, that's real dangerous. Like, yeah, but he's six foot in the air. Look at that. And he's on my shoulder like that. So you're right. OK, you're allowed to hold the player. So then they went to holding the player. If the player is in the air, you're allowed to support the player. But he had to get there on his own. So then you went in even closer and literally lifted by his shoulder. Oh, yeah, I've got him. He's in the air like that. And then they just, you know what? There's no way on earth we're going to be able to do this. So then they went, right, OK, now you're allowed to lift. So it kind of evolved into this bit where you can lift. But we should be practicing that. It's not a difficult thing to practice. And I don't understand why. Yeah, it is a timing thing. It's, you know, the guy jumping has got to time it with a guy throwing. So, you know, pretty much by a Tuesday, Gatlin knows this is going to be my two line-out options. My two hookers on Saturday are going to be, or Sunday, are going to be these two. So they just spend time going, right, OK, front one, front two, front three, middle one, middle two. Do you know what I mean? It's not, you don't need to think too much about it. And you can put your fancy moves in and all of that kind of stuff. But it's just, but I win the ball in the right place at the right time. And we should be doing that in our sleep. And I don't get why we can't. So anyway, the point being, I don't know how we started on that, because I was going to make the point that we need a bit of... Still ask the question because of his lack of knowledge. Yeah. So anyway, let's get back to Wales versus France. And let's talk about line-out calling. Yeah, let's get some predictions for Wales, France, because I think we just need a bigger pack. And I've said countless number of times, George North is not a 13. He needs to come off a wing and relieve some of the pressure off a 10. And if Ospreay's fans don't like it, all well and good, because when George North said he was leaving the Ospreays, the Ospreays just fucking went through jugular, or might release a bag of shit, and nobody likes him anyway. He's got to go first, like most Ospreays players. Exactly. So my point is... I did say Ospreay's not going to win, didn't I? If you're going to put George North on the pitch, at least get him doing the stuff that he's good at, which is running at people with a ball in his hands. And that was my point. So I've gone for France by one, because it winds Jamie up on the rack for something chronic. When I go, someone's going to win by one. It's just... I don't know why it's a trigger point for Jamie. Now I've got to stick with it on here. So France by one is my prediction. I think it's because you say one, and he's not used to, you know... He's not used to the word. Hugh, your prediction? France are getting worse. France are on a decline, and Wales are getting better. So I think Wales are going to win. I think Wales... You two aren't going to like this. I think what Gatlin's been able to turn this rabble into in a very short space of time is quite impressive. Oh, I've frozen again. No. He didn't tell you that. Yeah, now you are. He's clever. Oh, let's just pretend that he's making that up. I'm back now, I'm back. So I was just saying, I think Wales are... I think Wales have improved, as they always do. And every campaign under Gatlin has always finished stronger than we started. So I think that this is going to be a bit of a moment for this team. And I think we'll win this by three. And it's going to be something like 19-16. I think it's going to be a close game. 16-9. We normally beat France 16-9 in Cardiff. Yeah, we've done that a couple of times. I just think it's going to be a really close game. So, Mark? I think it's going to be a bit more than how France have been. There's no words. I mean, DuPont's on fire in the Sevens. I mean, France have just won their first Seven Series Championship in 19 years. He's just turned up and just won everything. What's the France back line going to be? It's going to be either Luko or Legarek. Ramos at 10. Moabana at 12. Fikou at 13, obviously. And then at fullback... I don't know. Anyway, he's a winger. Martin, your prediction? Come on. I'll go Wales by 9, because I just think this France, I can't do anything. I think we're going to more kick them to death than actually run over the try line. But it is what it is. Okay, so I want to bring back something I started a couple of weeks ago. Because I said about doing my dad jokes. So I'm going to finish on a couple of dad jokes. I don't think you liked this last time. You laughed last time. So Martin, you get to pick one, right? So just pick one. Am I going to do it again? You're an arsehole. Right, Huw. When? All right, okay. So Huw's joke. I'm just going to... Because of the delay lag of the Wi-Fi, it doesn't really matter when I say when. Just as long as I say it. Okay, what do you call a fish wearing a bow tie? Hang on, we did this before. It's a... We've had this one. Did I have that one? What are the odds that that one would come up again? Yeah, have we done this twice? We've already had the same joke. How does a farmer... Hang on, I'm trying to think of more jokes in the internet. How does a farmer mend his overalls? That's cabbage patches on. Okay, right, that's that one. That's that one. Your faces have just... That's the funny bit for me. You know what? I can beat that one straight off the top of my head. Why did a farmer win the Nobel Prize? He was outstanding in his field. Right, Martin, say stop at some point. Stop. Right. I said stop earlier than that. Don't care. Why were the early days of history called the Dark Ages? Because there were so many knights. Right, I'm going to... If any historians listening, they'll be all angry because you don't call them Dark Ages anymore. James will be furious for his history degree. Right, I'm separating them out so that next week I can do that. I've got a whole pack of cards to get through, which is going to take some time. You need to pick a few favourites to do the top, because if we get a couple of shit ones like that, we need a good one to finish up on. No, that's the whole point of a damn joke, is to be dreadfully awful. I had a good joke the other week, but all I can remember is that I thought it was a good joke. I can't remember what the joke was. That helps you. That's really bloody helpful, that is, mate. You know, I hear good jokes all the time, but they're not very cheap. Right, we will be back next week. Okay, so I just wanted to let people know, if they wanted to have a little... I'll be in Spain. You'll be in Spain next week, in your Speedos. So if you're really dedicated to... Oh, fucking... Why do I put up with you? I love it. If you really want to get a march on everybody else, we'll release this. I'll edit this tonight, and it'll be published Monday night. Yeah, so it's out, it's available Monday night. But we don't tell anyone that it's out. It's just kind of there. So if you've got your wee little notification set up to say, let me know when this podcast is coming, then you'll get a little notification that says that this one is out. Then I won't be able to edit it. It's just going to take a lot of editing tonight, boys. But yeah, otherwise, it'll be out Tuesday. We'll be back next week. Me and Mark will be discussing the Wales game against France. Plenty of community stuff to look forward to. And we'll be looking forward to the Italy game. We'll be doing some more griff scrumps, and we'll be doing some more dad jokes. And in two weeks, who is coming on the show and speaking only Spanish? In his speedos. I'm looking forward to it. I'm thinking that's going to... Let me be clear. Just his speedos. Not even my dad. Well, while we're on that, then the other... I said about doing the Beyonce dance, which I have recorded. It is available. So I will publish that when we reach 200. We're on about 176 now. But I only said it on this podcast. I didn't say it on any of the others. And some of the other boys have heard it and have gone, well, you were keeping that quiet. So now they're starting to tell people as well. So 2024 subscribers to go to see Lee get naked. There's nothing naked about it. It's just the Beyonce. Have you seen the Beyonce? Oh, you said you're doing it naked. I'm not doing it naked, Martin. That would just be... I would crash the internet in a bad way. Anyway, I'll do the Beyonce. It would voluntarily self-destruct. For the sake of everyone's humanity, we're not going to work today. Right, gents, it's been a pleasure as always. We should be back and do this again next week. I have a good one. All the best. Ta-ra. 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.