Think the Boks have wrapped it up now and completed another superpower clean sweep

36-27

Good set of phases started and finished by Peterson for an SA try. Plus some poor initial England defending.

36-27 , 76th minute.

And that completes the clean sweep for the so called Big 3 this week

At least the North put up a bit of a fight this week, even if it was fruitless

Silver lining for Welsh fans, we nick 4th in the world rankings on this occasion. The Scotland Australia result screwed my calculation last time (

Make that Big 4. Argentina have just beaten France 23-20.

Surprised that Australia and NZ have made made such heavy weather of things on their own ground in recent weeks. The game seems in decline.

I take no pleasure from that. I'd rather earn it than have it by default.

Scotland's summer tour

•Australia 6-9 Scotland, 5 June
•Fiji 25-37 Scotland, 16 June
•Samoa v Scotland, 23 June

I really, really hope that the IRB sorts out the scrums. I am now convinced there isn't a single referee on the elite list who actually knows the laws. Owens made an absolute shocker in the last scrum of the NZ/Ire game, which pretty much handed NZ the win, and then both Rollaind and Walsh failed spectacularly with the first SA try in the Boks/eng game. Two very crucial decision cost both teams. Ireland lost the game, England were put on the back foot after 3 minutes.

I thought Ireland were superb. NZ were handed a get-out-of-jail-free-card with that decision, Completely dominated in the scrum, losing at the breakdown, clattered in the tackle, they were a shadow of the side we saw last week. just goes to show that if you get in their faces and harrass them they crumble quite easily. Fair play to Carter though, he still had to nail that drop goal, even if it did take him two attempts.

I thought England were better,but you cant conded 12 points in 8 minutes and then seriously think you are going to win the match. If the scrum had been reffed right then that try wouldn't have stood, but there was an air of inevitability about the first 2 minutes,so I think they would have scored soon after anyway. 25-10 is not a halftime scoreline anyone is coming back from, regardless of how good the second half comeback is.

Thought we made some poor decisions at key times, and some things just didn't go our way. If Ben Foden's little chip had gone over Steyn's head and not straight to him, that could have put momentum truly on our side. as it happens 5 minutes later and they seal it.

Pieterson can go jump off a bridge as well, I hate arrogant showboating like that, it doesn't belong in the game.

New Zealand U20s gain revenge over Wales for the group stage defeat in the world cup final at that level. They won 30-6 but the score could've been closer IMHO , if not for some more rather bizarre (aka SH biased) reffing once again.

And how many times has that been proved re Wales?

Rather more often (and rather more justified) I'd say

Again, an inexperienced England team battle back really well.

Two early tries conceded - I hope the officials are spoken to about the 1st one, a serious error (and the 2nd one looked like the ball was dropped before the line) and an early battering but the comeback was excellent, including some pretty good play with ball in hand (they won't get much credit for that - or if they do it will be quickly forgotten). To come with one play of the lead - and if Foden's chip hadd come off who knows - was pretty good.

I'd love to see Lawes, Croft and one or two others back in.

I see some commenbtators shouting for 5 or 6 changes. As some of us realised years ago that (in all sports) is how you end up with bad teams.

I think England probably performed the worst over the weekend.
I am not overly concerned as long as they improve. The biggest improvement needs to be physicality. We need to impose ourselves through solid forward play. We were outplayed in the physical battles.

Wales have a mental problem as opposed to a technical one and need to find a way to kill teams off. I still dont think they have done enough smash up front agaisnt a fragile forward pack. They are probaly the one side that will come away from their tour and rue the fact they didnt win the series. I think they definatly could have done. That said Australias try by Horne was one of the best I have seen. Berrwick Barnes was amazing.

Ireland were pretty impressive and I am amazed at how good they were in putting on pressure. Not sure that the All Blacks wont come out and try and smash Ireland off the park on Saturday. I hope I am wrong. Donnaca Ryan looking like my favorite for Lions second row spot.

3rd tests in already lost series are always a bit meaningless and I can see wales winning thiers (probably then claiming they are brilliant). I cant see England winning and as I said Ireland may have played their best game already. That said I have been wrong about almost everything so pretty sure that will continue.

A quick note on the refs

We do far to much whining about referees, yeah there were errors but they were not the reason the teams lost. You have to learn quickly what a ref is looking at. If you don't you are stupid. You win some, you lose some and on the whole you have to look at the 80 mins of the game as opposed to the one penalty or missed scrum offence to find out how you lost a game.

I completely agree with this, in theory. However, when refereeing is so inconsistent that's pretty much impossible. Scrum time is an absolute joke, it's impossible to figure out what a referee wants when you're getting penalised one minute, then given the penalty the next.

And I'm not even over-exaggerating. I played in the front row, and I watch referees guess with their decisions. It appears they actually don't know the rules, not just that they aren't enforcing them properly, but that they've never actually read the laws. There isn't one single referee in the elite set who I would trust to get every scrum decision right. People like Owens and Rollaind appear to know what they're doing because they give an explanation and seem pretty confident. But most of the time it's rubbish, absolute rubbish. Ownes pretty much just made up a law on Saturday when he penalised Ireland in that final scrum.

One scrum will be reset when it should be a penalty, and others will be penalised when it should be re-set. The engage calls have gone from ridiculously short, to ridiculously long. See how many free kicks have been given so far in these tours for engaging early. And rather than fixing it on the pitch by shortening the calls, the referees blame the players and just keep repeating the same mistake.

It's a joke. In fact, it's embarrassing to watch. And I'm not just saying this in a "oh we wuz robbed and I'm English" perspective, I'm talking about all scrums and all refs.

That's just the scrum, sorry for the rant, it wasn't aimed at you directly, just getting some frustration off my chest.

Thats fine.

The scrum one is very difficult I think because so much has now built around the hit. If you go back to the early 90's the packs didnt engage like they do now. This static, low, set into an engagement at the elitle level makes the scrum so unstable.

As for the complexities of the scrum penatly it is very very difficult to find a guilty part in some cases. I came on for the last ten minutes of a cup final at the end of this season and played at loosehead which isn't my favored side of the scrum. I prefer to play tighthead. When we engaged I attacked the neck and sternum of my opposite number and he simply rolled his shoulder in and dropped the scrum. Now to be honest I was at fault because I was technically boaring in, and he was at fautl for deliberatly droppping the scrum. In that case which came first the chicken or the egg sort of thing. I decided that if he was going to drop it I would then go outside of his shoulder so was no longer boring in and he still dropped it. At this point the ref started to penalise him at every scrum.

I suppose the thing is, if you look at the scrums on tv: Castrogiovani is a prime example, he bores in so hard on the hooker but refs don't realy ping it. It looks destructive but it is illigal "The Beast" did the same from loosehead to Vickery in the Lions. It was totaly illigal scrummaging but it destroyed Vickery and looked from the outside to be a destructive scrum.

I still find it incomprehensible how South Africa persisted with John Smit at the last world cup with such a brilliant player as Bismarck Du Plessis on the sidelines.

That was very odd. He is the best hooker in the world by miles. He has been phenominal in this series against England and he is not as OTT aggressive as he uesed to be.

Can't argue with that, That's why I said that sometimes a scrum that should be reset is penalised. If there's no obvious player at fault, or it's just because the hit is too intense, a reset scrum is fine. This rubbish about players not being able to 'take the hit' is absolute rubbish, there's no law about that.

And I agree about the Beast. How Vickery was penalised when he was being lifted out of the scrum I'll never know. It goes to show how much that domination was down to poor reffing because the Beast was absolutely destroyed by Dan Cole on Saturday.

The problem with the engagement is that the hit is immediately followed by a push. The scrum half has absolutely no obligation to put the ball in until the scrum is steady, and the push shouldn't start until the ball is in, so again the referees who tell the scrum half to put the ball in straight away are just making laws up, without actually sorting out the real problem, which is an early push.

That's just the scrum, the breakdown is just as bad.

EDIT: I havent played rugby for 5 or 6 years, but I was often put at tighthead, despite preferring loosehead. I found it easier to drive at loosehead for the very reason that 9 scrums out of 10, at tighthead, my opposite number was boring in on me and the hooker. Front row players will cheat all game if they're getting away with it. The only time it used to stop was when the ref was on our side.

London Welsh appeal is put back..... again

hearing is now on June 28th

I feel sorry for fans of both LW and Newcastle Falcons, this is dragging on too long

I can't see how Welsh are going to win this.

As an aside a facebook friend posted a picture of herself at a function last night. I thought the guy she was pictured with was an old cricket pal I hadn't seen for 20 years, but no it was Stuart Lancaster

Are you sure ir wasn't Chris Barrie from Red Dwarf fame. He and Lancaster are the spitting image of each other

Could be . Although she appeared to claim it was last night when she was pictured with him , I assume Lancaster must be in South Africa. He had a bow tie on , probably taken a few weeks ago

Predictions for the weekend

Australia v Wales - Wales
New Zealand v Ireland - New Zealand
South Africa v England - England

Almost : I can't see England beating the Boks.

Incidentally, congrats to the Wales U20s who today beat Argentina 25-17 to win 3rd place at the JWC. Future's looking good.

Predictions for the weekend?

what the hell

Australia v Wales - Australia
New Zealand v Ireland - Ireland
South Africa v England - England

With Robshaw and Corbesiero missing I think England will struggle, Youngs isn't as big a loss as we have Care, but Marler has struggled so far, and Robshaw has been the best player on the tour. Haskell is a fantastic player, but he's never quite shown the same potential for England as he has for the clubs he's played for. I would love England to win, and perhaps we might, but it'll be very, very close.

Also, well done to the SA Under 20s for winning the Junior World Cup, that was a hell of a game, the future looks very bright for SA at the moment. Their forwards were a sight to behold, some awesome scrummage and mauling displays.