All my life I will be very grateful for that reception he said

“All my life I will be very grateful for that reception,” he said. “It has been a very difficult decision for me but over the last three or four years I seem to have been playing non stop.”France: T Castaignÿde (Castres); P Bernat-Salles (Biarritz), R Dourthe (Dax), E Ntamack (Toulouse), D Bory (Montferrand); A Penaud (Toulouse), A Hueber (Toulon); C Califano (Toulouse), M Dal Maso (Colomiers), F Tournaire (Toulouse), F Pelous (Toulouse, capt), O Brouzet (Bÿgles-Bordeaux), L Mallier (Brive), T Liévremont (Perpignan), O Magne (Montferrand). Replacements: D Venditti (Brive) for Bernat-Salles 25, R Ibanez (Perpignan) for Del Maso 40, A Benazzi (Agen) for Liévremont 40, H Miorin (Toulouse) for Brouzet 62, P De Villiers (Stade Français) for Tournaire 72, C Heymans (Agen) for Bory 72,Italy: M Pini (Narbonne); N Mazzucato (Treviso), L Martin (Bÿgles-Bordeaux), N Zisti (Roma), C Stoica (Narbonne); D Dominguez (Stade Français), A Troncon (Montferrand, capt); A Lo Cicero (Roma), M Moscardi (Treviso), T Paoletti (Piacenza), C Cecchinato (Treviso), A Gritti (Treviso), W Cristofoletto (Stade Montois), A De Rossi (Livorno). Replacements: D Dallan (Treviso) for Zisti 56, W Visser (Treviso) for de Rossi 56, S Perugini (L’Aquila) for Paoletti 67, A Persico (Viadana) for Bergamasco 79.Referee: P Deluca (Arg). Two Tries by the Queensland wing Nathan Williams sealed a 31-16 Super 12 victory for Queensland over their arch rivals New South Wales in Brisbane yesterday.

Two Tries by the Queensland wing Nathan Williams sealed a 31-16 Super 12 victory for Queensland over their arch rivals New South Wales in Brisbane yesterday.
The Reds were languishing third from the bottom of the Super 12 table before the game with only one win after five rounds – a victory against the Waikato Chiefs last weekend.New South Wales, who started the game in fifth position, had taken an early lead with a penalty from the Australian international full-back Matt Burke, but Queensland’s Elton Flatley tied the score and then team-mate Williams gave them a seven-point buffer with the first of his tries. Flatley extended the lead with two further penalties before Burke brought New South Wales back to 19-9 at half-time.But New South Wales failed to withstand heavy pressure early in the second half and victory was sealed when first Williams crashed over for his second try and then Damian Smith crossed for a brilliant score after Queensland had taken a quick tap penalty 30 metres out. Flatley’s missed conversion was his only blemish of the night.The Super 12 champions Canterbury Crusaders, 39-12 ahead early in the second half, squeezed out a 42-36 win over the Otago Highlanders to send them to the top of the table, overtaking their opponents in the process.Otago went ahead with a Tony Brown penalty in the fifth minute but the Crusaders hit back three minutes later with the first of their four first-half tries. Caleb Ralph ran on to a pass from Ron Cribb and went over near the posts. Andrew Mehrtens converted.Brown and Mehrtens exchanged penalties to make it 10-6 to the Crusaders but Brown re-established the Highlanders’ lead with a penalty and a superb 40-metre drop goal.That appeared to pique the Canterbury side and they totted up 22 points during the final 14 minutes of the half. Norm Berryman stormed through a non-existent defence for a try that was converted then the Fijiian Marika Vunibaka broke through a minute later to score.Mehrtens missed that conversion but he added the two points when Cribb crashed over in the 37th minute. Another Mehrtens penalty right on half-time stretched the Crusaders’ lead to 20 points.Cribb rubbed salt in the Highlanders’ wounds with a great little kick through for a touchdown within two minutes of the restart and Mehrtens converted to make it 39-12.The replacement winger Karl Te Nana launched the Highlanders’ fightback with a 60th minute try, followed closely by efforts from Kelvin Middleton and Rua Tipoki.

Mehrtens kicked a penalty to make it 42-31 but the Highlanders had the last word with a Pita Alatini try, earning them two bonus points.The ACT Brumbies equalled the biggest win in the history of the competition when they slaughtered South Africa’s Golden Cats 64-0 in Canberra. Australian Test backrow forward Owen Finegan scored three tries.. The build-up to today’s Grand Slam-Wooden Spoon Calcutta Cup decider has been like a Scottish version of Fawlty Towers. On both sides of the border, the chorus has been: “Don’t mention the war” – the 1990 Murrayfield war.

The build-up to today’s Grand Slam-Wooden Spoon Calcutta Cup decider has been like a Scottish version of Fawlty Towers. On both sides of the border, the chorus has been: “Don’t mention the war” – the 1990 Murrayfield war.
Whether they took part in, or simply watched, Scotland’s historic 13-7 victory over England 10 years ago, players such as David Sole, Tony Stanger and Matt Dawson have all played the predictable “that was then and this is now” card. Even Clive Woodward has had his say: “Let’s not talk about that game. It was 10 years ago – I was young – and most of the current squad were in short trousers,” explained the England coach. How boring.Only one man has been prepared to break the taboo and talk about England’s Murrayfield débâcle. “I think there are a lot of parallels,” says Geoff Cooke, England’s manager between 1987 and 1994.

“Like this England side, the 1990 crop had played very, very well; probably as well as we had done in a long time.”England’s impressive performances leading up to the 1990 Grand Slam decider in Edinburgh bear an uncanny resemblance to their seemingly unstoppable charge towards the inaugural Six Nations’ Championship in 2000. The sequence of matches is identical: Ireland at Twickenham, France away, Wales at home and Scotland away. England’s business-like trip to Rome a fortnight ago was the only change to the schedule.The danger now, as it was then, is that everybody expects England to win in Scotland “It’s a formality, we were told,” Cooke says. “The logic said we should have walked that game, but sport doesn’t alwaysfollow logic.”The thing that sticks in my mind about 1990 was that we went up there in confident mood – although we were trying to keep that confidence at a sensible level. We had a practice session at Peebles the day before the game which was outstanding – the perfect practice There wasn’t a ball dropped, not a single mistake made. Afterwards, a lot of Scots left shaking their heads and saying: ‘We’re going to get murdered’.”Even Bill McLaren came up to me and said that, in all the years he’d been covering rugby, that was the finest training session he’d ever seen.”By kick-off time, England’s steely resolve had melted in the Murrayfield cauldron. “The atmosphere was just incred-ible,” says Cooke, who no longer makes the biennial trip north because he deplores the “aggressive, nationalistic and xenophobic” nature of the occasion.