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”

Huzzah! Leinster have a new “senior coach”! Who’ll report to the “head coach” – Leo Cullen. And it’s none other than … drum roll … Stuart Lancaster, last seen sloping off the rugger scene after England’s disastrous RWC15. Which is interesting. In the Steve Davis sense.

Thing is, Nucifora has taken a few public pops at everyone Leo Cullen, making it pretty clear he thinks Leinster should have appointed a bigger, more experienced name – so the fact he is getting some external help isn’t really that much of a surprise. Indeed, Graham Henry popped by to look sullen in a long training jacket for two weeks this summer – and was impressed by the ruck-hitting ability of Leinster’s wingers Joey Carbery, for one. So a more experienced name coming in was to be expected.

But, taking a broader view of Leinster in the post-Schmidt era, the best word to describe their football would be: muddled. They don’t seem to know how they want to play, and have seemingly lost the ability to catch and pass the football. Matt O’Connor put big emphasis on empowering the players after years of Cheika and Schmidt micro-strategising, but that didn’t work out. Cullen came in last season, at least one season before planned, and had a steep learning curve. The squad is deep and stacked, but it feels like the team don’t really know what they are doing, and haven’t (yet) bought into Cullen’s vision. They just don’t seem to be able to get it done (except against Ulster).

If you were to make an argument for what Leinster actually needed, you would say a strong technical coach, someone to work on their skills and give them the tools to execute on-field. What you would say they don’t need is a delegator to come in and talk in broad brushes about culture or whatever. England under Lancaster seemed to change tactics annually and centre partnership by series and were an utter dogs dinner by the time the big gig came around. It’s hard to actually define what Lancaster brings to the table. And for a group that feels like it is begging for clarity and a mission, that’s a bit worrying.

Lancaster’s main contribution to English rugby was a much heralded change to the culture within the squad, creating a jolly-hockeysticks-upstanding-chaps atmosphere where previously they were a dwarf-throwing shambles.  Or so it seemed at the time, but that’s been largely discredited since Eddie Jones came in and named Dylan Hartley as captain and reverted to a no-one likes us, we don’t care mentality.

Since the England shindig fell apart Lancaster has had stints with Atlanta Falcons, British Cycling’s world-class performance programme, the English FA and Counties Manukau.  Make of that what you will.  Soaking up experience at the sharp end of sports science or running out to get coffees for Brailsford et al?  Who really knows?

That said, when Gregor Townsend was attack coach for Scotland, they hadn’t scored a try in about a year when he left the setup. He got the top job at Glasgae, set about creating an exciting and dynamic attacking unit and is now going back as big kahuna next summer. So maybe Lancaster will show us insights we didn’t know he possessed in the deadening corporate chatshow that was his England team. Here’s hoping.

A new season is here.  Hello everyone!  Let’s all start with an essay entitled ‘What we did on our Holidays’.

While a look at the upcoming season (Which non-scoring wings will Leinster start this year?  Who are the latest pairing to be tried in the centres for Munster? Is Robbie Diack still on the bench? Can Connacht do it again?) is in order, the first dramatic talking point looks to be the non-renewal of Ruan Pienaar’s contract.  It’s a staggering bit of decision-making from the IRFU and to these eyes, totally wrongheaded.

It’s borne of the directives on recruitment of foreign players, rolled out to great fanfare (and bemusement) back in 2013, and which have been selectively enforced ever since. The non-scoring Zane Kirchner has (mystifyingly) been allowed to keep Irish non-scoring wings kicking their heels while doing very little to justify paying him, and we lost count of the number of extensions BJ Botha managed to winkle out. Yet the IRFU say they cannot give Pienaar another contract because Ulster now have to fill the 9 shirt with an Irishman.

It looks a wrong decision on so  many levels.  For a start, simply vacating the number 9 shirt is not going to elevate the indigenous scrum halves at Ulster to a higher level.  The player who is next in line at the province is Paul Marshall, who is clearly not in the picture for test recognition, ranking number 5 in the depth chart on his best days, and mostly lower.  He’s a decent Pro12 player, but that’s just not good enough for Ireland, and never will be, no matter how much gametime he gets. After that, its Dave Shanahan and Angus Lloyd – now it’s possible that one of this pair will improve to such an extent that will be better than (a then 35 year old) Pienaar in three years, but it’s far less likely if Pienaar is half heartedly flinging passes to a deep-lying Lionel Beauxis to welt into orbit than working with them every day.

Furthermore, it’s easy to argue that Pienaar’s presence has benefitted Irish rugby, and would continue to do so, through his stewarding of Paddy Jackson.  On this year’s summer tour, much was made of Jackson’s emergence as a player of test quality, finally giving us a reliable replacement for Jonny Sexton.  But how much does Jackson’s development owe to playing alongside so assured and consummate a performer as Ruan Pienaar? Put it this way, would Jackson be at his current performance level if Pienaar left for Toulon two years ago when offered a blank cheque? Jackson has now reached maturity, and no longer requires a scrum half to take pressure off him, as might have been the case in the past, and any 10 will tell you that the better the passes they receive from the 9, the better they are likely to play.

A look at the bigger picture also reveals the rules that have dictated Pienaar must leave to be somewhat anachronistic – and have only been half applied in the past anyway.  They were devised when Ireland had three strong provinces and one extra; Connacht were exempt.  The idea was that across the three provinces we would have two Irish players playing regularly in each position.  But with Connacht no longer an add-on and now winning trophies and contributing players to the national team, the rules don’t really make sense any more, at least in their old form.  I make it that there are three scrum halves vying for the vacant spot as Conor Murray’s deputy for Ireland; Luke McGrath, John Cooney and Kieran Marmion.  Two of those are playing with Connacht, the other with Leinster.  It’s hard to see what Ruan Pienaar’s presence at Ulster can possibly be doing to hamper their development.

But worst of all, it just feels like shabby treatment of a great player and person.  There does not appear to be any consideration for the fact that, after seven years, Pienaar and his family have laid down roots here, and wanted to stay (was willing to for less than he could have earned on the open market) and ultimately move into coaching.  It feels like he’s been treated as a commodity, a tick in the box marked ‘non-indigenous player’ and nothing more.  When those Top 5 Foreign Imports lists are drawn up in future years you can guarantee that Pienaar’s name will be up there with the Doug Howletts and Felipe Contepomis.  He has been world class for Ulster, a lynchpin.  He deserves better treatment than this, and it’s a decision that is unlikely to benefit Irish rugby either.

Gerry thinks it’s down to the presence of Jamison Gibson-Park in D4, and it’s probably a factor. But, as hass been said, if the IRFU are prioritising an opportunistic free agent as a potential Irish cap in 3 years over a man and a player like Ruan Pienaar, it’s a great shame, and doesn’t say much for them.

Wasn’t there a reason it was last weekend Leinster and Munster tried to lose to one another in the Aviva? Isn’t there some important driver as to why they always play just after the Six Nations? There is some reason why we have to endure forests of self-congratulatory articles about the “biggest rivalry in rugby” and such at this time of year, but we just can’t put our fingers on it.

Anyway, it was pretty important in the context of the Pro12, and that’s absolutely the only competition happening right now. Yes sir, nothing else of note going on. Except of course the European Challenge Cup, which for some reason only Connacht get to play in – which seems a bit unfair on Ulster, Munster and Leinster, but there you go. Connacht are going to Grenoble this weekend, and, in truth, are in a bit of a pickle.

Grenoble are about the only French team who bother their hole about this competition, which can surely only be down to the Irish connection – just like Clermont fans had never thought of wearing the team’s colours before playing Munster (right Gerry?), French teams had never thought they could win away until Birch turned up. Montpellier made a fatal error by qualifying for the knockout stages this season, but they won’t over-estimate Cardiff again in a hurry.

If Connacht do win, they get to play a “glamour” (everything is relative) semi-final at the dog track against Quins (or Reading Samoa), but for all the nice pats on the head about O’Shea or Biiiiiiiiiig Bob going back to Ireland, that would be a darn tough game – English clubs are dominating Europe this year. And after that it would be a final against another bunch of proud yeoman – Glaws or Sale probably. Tough run in.

It’s worth asking if, given Connacht’s injury list, particularly in the halves, whether a more plausible route to a trophy is not going through the Premiership’s midtable fillers but through .. um .. Leinster and co in the Pro12.

Still, that path is a little tricky too. There are 3 rounds to go, and a lot of games between the top six still to come, but Leinster, Connacht and Glasgae look pretty much guaranteed playoff slots, with Ulster, Scarlets and Munster in for the final place. You can easily see a scenario where Connacht end up with a home playoff game; this probably hinges on them beating Munster at home.

Pat Lam has delivered an incredible season so far for Connacht, and a trophy would be a fine way to top it off – it’s a measure of how sure-footed they have been and how fantastic their rugby has been that not getting one would feel like a minor disappointment. The major target at the beginning of the year was qualification for something called the “European Champions Cup”, which we’ve never heard of, but it’s been sealed.

After spending hours delving through tinterwebs researching this competition, it appears there are also quarter finals this weekend in it – the English clubs look in the driving seat, and in spite of the confusing semi-final permutations, Saracens are our bet to de-throne Toulon and give Stephen Jones a big smile on his face.

Anyway, getting back to the important stuff – if Lam wants to bring some silverware to Galway, maybe he should think about throwing the kids in on Saturday. Sure, it would prompt a bout of hand-wringing about “integrity of the competition” but it’s not like the French care about it, and when the big clubs change the rules to suit themselves, integrity is a damaged concept anyway. Time to take a dive, Connacht.

Leinster edged Munster out at the Palindrome at the weekend.  It was a hard-fought, but low-quality affair and rather than both sides looking for the killer blow, in the last 10 minutes it felt as if each was diving to the canvas offering the other the victory. If it were boxing, you’d be asking about suspicious betting patterns.

For all the hype that accompanies these matches, they aren’t always all that great, and you have to go back to 2011 when Ronan O’Gara landed a last-minute touchline penalty to secure a thrilling 24-23 win for the last classic match between the sides.  This content of this one will be quickly forgotten, but the result was important.

Munster really, really needed the win to keep in the hunt for the semi-finals and having come up short, they appear condemned to finishing outside the top four and, worryingly, finishing fourth of the Irish provinces and finding themselves scratching around for European rugby next year.  For Leinster, and for all the handwringing over their performance level, they find themselves at the top of the Pro12.  Top of the world Ma!

Still, don’t let that mask their failings here.  Leinster tried to play a bit, but their exiting from their own half was dreadful, relying on a malfunctioning box-kicking game which tended to give the ball back to Munster no more than 15 metres away from where Leinster had it.  It was feeble stuff.  As for the lineouts; simply awful.  And what of Cian Healy, or at least the imposter who has replaced him; a player who shows little familiarity with the game of rugby?  Whatever about competing with Jack McGrath, soon he will be under pressure from Michael Bent.  Something has gone badly wrong.

Leinster were ultimately saved by the surehanded Jonny Sexton, who gave a streetwise performance and found impressive distance with his line-kicking, and Jamie Heaslip who frequently gave examples of textbook tackling technique.  At this stage in his career, it occurs to me that his durability is a result of his technical excellence, allowing him to take collisions on his terms.  Rhys Ruddock also put up a good show, and won the match-winning penalty with a trademark breakdown turnover.  With Leinster running out of ideas in attack, they were content to live off Munster’s mistakes to eke out the winning scores. And there were plenty of them.

Munster’s leading light was Conor Murray, who, like Sexton, looks like his old self after a post-World Cup slump, and Johnny Holland performed pretty well for a rookie at this level – helped by Murray in a Pienaar/Jackson 2012/13 type of way.  He was certainly better than his replacement Ian Keatley, who appears to have had a total crisis of confidence, leaving his game in a shambolic state. Foley, in a rather mealy-mouthed fashion, talked about him being “experienced” and “an international” in the aftermath, both of which are true, but at this point he looks behind a guy with about 144 minutes of Pro12 experience in the pecking order. He needs a fresh start, be it a new DOR (Mick Bradley – honk!) or a new team.

Time was that in the aftermath of these matches, an online bloodbath would take place between the two sets of fans, nitpicking over refereeing decisions (which were appalling in many cases) and what-ifs, but nowadays each group turns inwards to lament the rubbishness of their performance.  Leinster fans knew they got out of jail in the final 10 minutes, when they were truly totally lacking in composure, while Munster fans continued to grieve over a wretched season.

They must surely have watched through their fingers as David Kilcoyne butchered a three-man overlap to run into the nearest tackler.  If ever one moment encapsulated the failings of a team this was it!  It’s next to or near impossible imagining a Connacht player, let alone an Argentinian or an All-Black, making the same appalling decision.  Being able to fix the defender and pass to the man outside in a two (or four!) on one situation should be a basic minimum for a professional player, regardless of shirt number.  Sad to say it, but the team as a whole does not have anything like the required skill level, and it does not appear that management are interested in fostering a culture where skill is highly valued.  It’s all ‘contact’, ‘passion’ and ‘manning up’.  Pat Lam speaks an entirely different language.

That’s why they’re sixth in the league, with a huge game to come on the dog track in 10 days – huge for next season and huge to arrest a decline that seems never-ending. On one hand, you have a Connacht team shorn of half backs and think this is an opportunity for Munster, but then, every time you think Munster can’t do any worse they go off and shoot themselves in the foot once again. With Munster these days, they are hoping against hope in spite of the coaching ticket. Connacht seem to be like Wales, where Rhys Webb and Leigh Halfpenny can get crocked and the newbies come in to a well-coached and slick setup with very little impact on performance. It’s increasingly difficult to see how Munster conjure up a winning performance – which would leave them with a high-stakes ERC playoff in Musgrave Park against Embra. Surely that can’t be lost too?

So that’s that for another year.  England won, Ireland fell to third with just two wins and the world has finally stopped believing that France are unpredictable, maverick or even remotely decent.  Wales gave Ireland and England too big a headstart, and Scotland again flattered to deceive.  Italy were wretched.

All in all, it was a modest enough championship.  The business of deciding a winner was wrapped up a week in advance and the only drama in the last week was seeing whether England could secure a grand slam.  France were game, but ultimately not good enough, and the result was never really in doubt.

The rugby wasn’t as bad as feared.  The early rounds were diabolical, certainly.  The Ireland v France match was one of the most boring test matches on record, and it seemed appropriate that it should be effectively decided by a 10 minute scrum.  Wales v France wasn’t much better, and Scotland v England also stank the house out.  But thereafter, things improved.  England and Ireland played out an entertaining match, and Ireland looked to vary their game a bit more in the final two rounds, while England’s tussles with Wales and France weren’t too hard on the eye either.  It wasn’t quite the spirit of the World Cup, but it was better than in many recent seasons.

It can’t be entirely coincidental that the better games took place in March when the weather was a bit better.  February tends to be a dire month weather-wise, and if a single tweak was to be made to the rugby calendar, we would suggest a bold move in pushing back the start of the Six Nations by four weeks.  We don’t expect any such thing to happen, of course, as the tournament seems to be a commercial lock-down no matter how turgid the spectacle on offer, and the powers that be tend to be reluctant to change anything.

The Guardian surmised that with the ‘emergence’ of Billy Vunipola and a collection of high quality halfbacks, the Lions in 2017 will fancy they can beat New Zealand, but such expectations appear laughable.  The summer tour will reveal much.  There has been no new evidence that the Northern Hemisphere have come close to bridging the divide to the far more dynamic southern nations, and no amount of Eddie Jones talking up a 3-0 whitewash of Australia will change that.  Jones bullishness is great in so far as it goes, but talk is cheap, actions will be required, and such an outcome looks unlikely.  Last we checked Michael Cheika was still in situ down under.

Indeed, the fact that England could turn their World Cup disaster on its head with such apparent smoothness almost degrades the competition.  From laughing stock to European champions?  They didn’t even change much on the pitch, as the squad was still largely the same as that over which Lancaster presided.  Come on down Chris Robshaw and James Haskell, the tournament’s pre-eminent six-and-a-halves.  Who needs Armitage anyway?  But it’s worth remembering that Lancaster’s tenure wasn’t a total waste of time, and that his England team had gone close to winning the championship twice in his tenure.  They just lost their way in the big one.  All they needed was a bit of clarity of purpose – which they entirely lacked in the World Cup – and an injection of a bit of the old dog to set them back on the right path.

And what about Ireland?  Well, it was a middling championship in every sense of the word.  Third place, two wins, two losses and a draw.  Beating England in Twickenham always looked a tall order, but they must surely regret the game in Paris.  Even Scotland beat this utterly abject French side, and Ireland had enough chances to put them away, but couldn’t land the killer blow.  It was a performance symptomatic of their worst ills under Schmidt; lacking imagination, trying to barrage their way over the line using one out rumbles, and unwilling to pass out of the tackle.  It was a rubbish performance in a rubbish match.

Some of the selections were a bit iffy, and while it might be churlish to complain after a campaign in which five Irish players debuted, the sight of Fergus McFadden trundling into the fray instead of Stuart McCloskey was dispiriting.  It appears that for all McCloskey’s superb Ulster form, Schmidt doesn’t quite trust him.

Oddly enough, the last two games, from which he left out the country’s best offloader out of the panel altogether, were the ones in which Ireland did look to offload the ball, at least more than usual (i.e. at least once).  But it’s all well and good playing that way against Scotland and Italy when the championship is over, and quite another doing it when the games are clutch and against better opponents.  It feels a bit like Schmidt has wrung as much as he can out of his current template and a major evolution is required to get Ireland back to the pointy end of things.  It would be foolish to underestimate his ability to deliver the goods.  At Leinster, he changed the team from being an offloading side in his first season to one which didn’t offload but passed aggressively on the gainline in his second.  He won the Heineken Cup on both occasions.

One such advancement is surely on the way on the defensive side of things.  Ireland have become leaky without the ball, frequently too narrow and prone to soaking metres and tries out wide, and Andy Farrell’s arrival cannot come soon enough.  With Farrell comes the possibility that Ireland will completely change how they defend – possibly bringing something more like England and Wales’ hard-up approach to defending.  It has got to be worth a look.  The tour to South Africa is daunting but they have problems of their own.  They lack a coach and a fly half – two pretty important things – and while the summer tour is often a ‘last men standing’ affair, the prospect of Henderson, O’Brien, O’Mahony and others returning from injury means Ireland could be heading down there in better health than was the case in either the World Cup or the Six Nations.