It’s that time of year again, where we stoke outrage in order to try and get our hits up, in order to try and hawk ourselves to the nearest advertiser willing to pay us in magic beans to tout the Simply Awesome Power of said beans. We’re bloody excited, so we’ve decided to return to traditional WoC values of irreverence. Watch us make a hash of our tournament predictions:

• The entire nation will take to the streets in #OUTRAGE when Conor Murray gets brushed by a bruising Scottish forward. How dare anyone purport to so much as look at our key players!
• Ian Madigan will kick 4/4 in a 15-9 eyesore against Castres and start another round of Pointless with Gavin Cummiskey on Newstalk
• Rob Kearney will catch a misplaced kick in the 22, welt it back into orbit, and be pronounced as complete justification for Schmidt’s non-selection of Keith Earls
• The backrow selection will cause #OUTRAGE because <provincial bias>
• Ireland will win 4 games
• Eddie Jones will say something provocative about Jonny Sexton to distract attention from England losing in Cardiff
• A Scottish replacement will be introduced with his team 2 points up with 6 minutes to go, and collapse a maul 4 minutes later resulting in another defeat snatched from the jaws of victory
• A high tackle will be dealt with according to the laws of the game, prompting much harrumphing about “the game gone soft” from those who retired before 2010.  The phrase “letter of the law” will be used by pundits
• A French forward will offload the ball to no-one in particular, and the opposition will go the length of the field and score
• The French front row will top 400kg at some point in a game – and one of them will miss a tackle resulting in a try
• “You never know which French team will show up”
• Wales will beat Ireland
• George Clancy will referee an awful game with a large number of scrums and mystifying penalties
• Nigel Owens will referee a fantastic game with lots of penalties awarded to the home side, with several quips that will make Twitter weak at the knees
• The quality of the rugby will be decried until the Ireland-England game when both teams cut loose to try and win a bonus point
• It will rain a lot, particularly at Murrayfield
• “Conor O’Shea’s Italy”