That filthy Scottish bastard who slam-dunked Elliot Daly on the ground after 90 seconds of yesterday’s match at Twickenham with a horrible, illegal and potentially neck-breaking ‘tip tackle’
was given a yellow card. 10 minutes in the ‘sin bin’. He should have been red-carded or more appropriately given 10 minutes in the pillories. Though if any of that proper ‘justice’ had been meted out, the game would have been even more one-sided than it already turned out to be. When I asked my sister-in-law last night if she’d, like me, swooned over the England match yesterday, she replied just that: ‘it was a bit one-sided’. Yeah, I explained, but when our side is the ‘one’, that can only be a good thing.

In fact it was a great thing. Even though it was never a competition, just a demonstration of what I will call ‘total rugby’. Like Barcleona invented ‘total football’ under Cruyff, so England under Eddie Jones are guilty of practising rugby near perfection. The ‘near’ only for two reasons. Firstly that Eddie would never want to stop improving, and secondly because Scotland, despite pretty good form of late, were fucking awful.

England dominated the game right from the start, in every part of the pitch, at every breakdown, certainly at the line-outs which produced the first 3 tries. Of the 7 they scored. In case you missed that. Seven.

And as always, rugby matches are won by the forwards, the backs just decide by how many. The England midfield was unplayably brilliant. George Ford, Owen Farrell and Jonathan Joseph were simply fantastic. Better together than any sum of the parts. The speed and accuracy of their passing and running simply blew the Scots away. Not that I’ll gloat. Any more than I have to or want to.

What a joy to watch. Unless you happen to be Scottish, in which case: sorry.

Spurs play Millwall today in the FA Cup semi-final. Which I’m gonna miss because Mel’s birthday celebrations start today. Birthday’s not (officially) til Tuesday but, like the Queen, the actually day is only a small part of the ongoing events. So we’re going for lunch with the gels and assorted others to the Ivy. The new one that they just opened for us in St Johns Wood because the old one is a bit too far away and parking there’s a bitch. Mountains, Mohammed, etc, etc, etc.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx