Cymru am byth (and the Crusaders too)

Italy managed to squeak past Scotland. My only surprise? Scotland scored a couple of tries. England seemed to remember their forwards could play, Cipriani looked good with go-forward ball, Ashton is probably safe for a little while longer. The trouble being, changing Wilkinson to Cipriani didn't make the forwards play better and smarter. Why did they play this week and not last week? Without an answer to that, how safe is he? O'Sullivan might get the boot now... should have after the RWC.

And Wales... were glorious. The first half was quite tense, but Wales were really the only team that tried: the kudos has to go to France for stopping them scoring, but Wales made all the chances. In the second half it was probably the right two people to score, (Shane and Martyn Williams) and put the game, and the Six Nations, Grand Slam and all out of reach.

Even Brian Moore, English through and through, didn't sound like he begrudged Wales their Grand Slam, and to be honest, they played, consistently, the best rugby of the tournament, even if some (including me) would suggest their first victory of the campaign included a big slice of England self-destructing to help them along.

The Crusaders? This is really about ELVs again and how they are working. Imagine the scenario: you've yet to win in the competition, you're visiting the 6 times champions, and one of the two undefeated sides in the contest. Last week, against a strong side and on the road they ran in 5 tries. You might be forgiven for going out to play "negative rugby" and restrict the scoring however you can. This would, if you believe Stuart Barnes, include repeatedly giving away free kicks rather than penalties in the red zone. What actually happened? Well, the Crusaders scored some long range tries where that just wasn't an option. But they played quite a bit down in the Cheetah's half too, and it certainly was. Did it happen? No, basically. I'm not saying there weren't free kicks conceded, but it wasn't an endless stream of them at any point. In fact the most negative thing was much later on with a big off-the-ball tug on Dan Carter. By that point the Crusaders had scored 8 tries... it looked far more like frustration than really negative play. Roll the ELVs out up North! Except, of course, the close-minded, negative English will winge and moan and work out ways to use them to just kill the game. How dull for us all.