The writing is very much on the wall for Scots Rugby coach, Frank Hadden. If Scotland lose to Italy at Murrayfield this Saturday then Hadden’s days as the Scotland boss will be short. Despite glimpses of promise of what this Scotland team can produce, it’s results that matter. With the 2011 Rugby World Cup creeping ever closer, Scotland need to feel that they have the right man for the job in place. Scottish rugby needs victories, not promises of what-might-be, and Hadden needs to deliver.

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Martin Johnson, now past his honeymoon period as England Rugby Union manager, is struggling to field a team of any great promise for the Six nations tournament which commences this weekend at Twickenham with an opening match against, thankfully, Wooden-Spoon contenders, Italy. Mind you, with the Italians reputedly having the best scrum in Europe and three games in Rome, it could be the Lions who find themselves at the bottom of the heap in three weeks time.

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To the dismay of rugby union betting fans, the Bath and England prop, Matt Stevens, has tested positive for a recreational drug and is likely to be banned from playing for two years. In that time he will miss the Lions tour of South Africa, his native country, and lose the opportunity to gain over twenty Rugby Union England caps. The substance, believed to be cocaine, is deemed by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) to infringe each of the three criteria used to determine whether or not a drug should be on the banned list. These are that it is shown to be performance enhancing, that it goes against the spirit of sport and that it damages the health of the athlete. If any two of these are met then the substance is banned. On that basis, it is difficult to understand how smoking gets through the net. Perhaps it’s because it is legal.

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Martin Johnson, the England Rugby Union team manager, is said to be denying that our team has been handed a fairly kind draw for the 2011 Rugby Union World Cup in New Zealand. Argentina could be a threat and the encounter with Scotland will be ‘hell of a game’, he says. Nice to see you expressing such confidence, Martin. Rugby Union betting fans take note – even if England ends up top of their group, they face New Zealand in their quarter-final where they will doubtless be used for floor cleaning purposes.

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It’s a good job the England football team are back on track and Ricky Hatton retained his world title in Las Vegas because, for rugby fans, the cricket results from India and the rugby results from everywhere are nothing short of terminally embarrassing for English sport. We can mutter about the gruesome tortures we would visit upon Messrs Duckworth and Lewis and grumble about the lack of experienced England rugby caps but, at the end of the day, we might just have to concede that we’ve gone the same way as the Australians and that it’s a struggle for us to be good at sport any more.

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Danny Cipriano has been in a spat with team mate Josh Lewsey and received a few cuts and bruises. It’s all part of the game, we’re told and not to make too much fuss about it. Now I wasn’t part of that training session and I haven’t interviewed either party but that doesn’t stop me speculating that the ugly culture of celebrity has played a role in this disharmony. In one newspaper report I saw both players described as celebrities and it got me thinking about the true nature of this artificial state of being, so revered in our society yet so reviled by those with intelligence and taste.

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Dropping of Cipriani from the Scotland v. England Match on Sat 8 March rugby union betting buffs might have reacted with dismay to hear that Danny Cipriani, the Wasps fly-half was sensationally dropped from the England team for their match with Scotland at Murrayfield on Saturday. Cipriani had been photographed leaving a London Nightclub in the early hours of Thursday morning, a clear breach of the rules for the team prior to a major game.

Arguably, the expulsion weakened the team and caused a dip in team morale which may have had some bearing on the woeful result with England losing 15-9 to a side widely predicted to be a contender for the wooden spoon prior to the series. On the face of it, a major error on the part of coach and manager Brian Ashton, as former coach, Sir Clive Woodward, former captain, Laurence Dallaglio and others have been quick to claim.

The bigger picture, though, may reveal that Ashton’s drastic action is exactly what English team sport needs if it is to wake up and be able to meet the challenges posed by world-class teams which train and perform in a different world to our own. On Saturday, the England Rugby team buckled under the onslaught of the Scots, on Sunday the England Test cricket team crashed to ignominious defeat in New Zealand. In the last West Indies test series, drunken loutishness was evident among some team members.

The online betting fan is tired of seeing his team capitulate at the first sign of serious demand on talent and preparation. Fed up with seeing overweight bowlers trundling down the wicket in the blazing heat, under-practiced fielders going through a random phase of dropping the ball at every opportunity or first-order batsmen succumbing to a lazy stroke, then blaming the pitch while the number 10 bat gets 45 runs.

It’s got to end somewhere down the line and perhaps Ashton’s action in imposing boundaries and sticking to them is the sort of measure which brings short term problems but, in the end will, at last, bring long-term gains.

Saturday 23rd February is a critical moment for England in the RBS Six Nations tournament this Saturday. Up against top-of-the-table France, England will need to shake off the second–half decline that has characterised their last two appearances against Wales, where they lost, and Italy where a comfortable first-half lead was squandered in a display of headless chickenry that has left commentators, coaches, six nations betting enthusiasts and players dumbfounded about where to go from here.

Captain, Paul Vickery, in an admirable address to his players, has called an end to blaming everyone else and declared that ‘It’s time to take ownership and responsibility for our own performance’. Sports betting fans will join me in feeling how true this and how refreshing to it is to hear. 

Vickery was the man whose inspirational pre-match words roused the troops into battle at the Stade de France just four months ago when the English crushed the French team during one of the most memorable and satisfying periods of English Rugby in a long time. Vickery and England need to find this resolve again to pick themselves up from their disappointing performances thus far to take on a France which will undoubtedly be seeking revenge for the England triumph over them in the semi-final of World Cup 2007. It’s another daunting fact that the last time England beat France in the Six Nations, at the Stade de France, was in the year 2000.

Wales have yet to be beaten in the competition and should dominate in their home encounter with Italy. Rugby Union betting buffs should note that a win from them, earlier in the day, will put further pressure on England who have a late, 20.00 GMT, start in France.

Ireland against Scotland… well, you’d have to go with Ireland here. Apart from a brief flourish in the World Cup qualifying rounds last year, Scotland seem to succumb to defeat at every opportunity these days and the team should, perhaps, be forced to watch ‘Braveheart’ before the match. Either that or hurry up and opt for an independent Scotland and start building a new national identity and thus a stronger self-belief.

Six Nations Free Bets abound this weekend and rugby union betting enthusiasts will have spotted that things didn’t go quite according to plan last week. Well, England’s plan anyway. A smooth and expected early lead was achieved over the Welsh and England sauntered into the half-time dressing room with a comfortable 16-6 margin in the bag. Then, with depressing predictability, in the second half the English malaise kicked in and Wales calmly ended a twenty year wait to put the Hoorays in their place. Under the pounding of the Welsh attack, England succumbed to a total breakdown of confidence and were reduced to a pack of headless chickens.
 
Online betting fans will look at the table and see only two of the expected three teams nestling comfortably at the top. After last year’s World Cup, it was always going to be an England/France thing with Wales snapping at their ankles while Ireland, Scotland and Italy scuffled to avoid the Wooden Spoon. This Saturday and Sunday should see France and Wales with comfortable wins and, thankfully, England have the chance to work through problems with their Italy encounter.
 
Much wringing of hands has occurred since last Saturday and calls for Wilkinson to be replaced by Cipriani resound in the press . . .  youth must be brought in to counter the arrogant presumption that England will always rule etc etc. There’s some truth in this but, for me, watching the England display was reminiscent of Greg Norman in the 1996 Masters when he broke down on the back nine on the last day.
 
Analysts need to look into the reasons why our nation produces teams and individuals who crack under any sign of strain. Football, tennis, cricket – whatever the sport we watch and wait for the collapse. Until we grasp the implications of that, it is not a new manager or coach that’s needed in the dressing room but perhaps rather Paul McKenna; sports betting devotees will continue to suffer a peculiarly English disappointment.

So it’s England against South Africa for world cup rugby betting fans. We blogged they could do it and now they are there – in the final – against a formidable opposition. Rugby free bets need to be ready this week for you to get the best betting odds for this titanic match.

After Saturday’s victory against France, England showed how they have improved in every area during this tournament and especially since the 36-0 thrashing at the hands of South Africa in the qualifying stages. This is a very special group fo guys who are able to dissect their game and improve each area in turn. Against the Aussies, we showed that our attacking options were coming together and we can provide a real threat, particularly up front. But, the slight downside to that performance was some of our first up tackling which let the Aussies punish us territorially. On Saturday though, this was the area where we had really lifted our game. Our defensive lines were superb against a fantastic french side and to keep them from crossing our try line was a massive effort that affords the utmost praise.

So with England now seemingly having improved beyond comparison to their previous encounter against the Boks, the final shapes up to be a game that will be up there with the classics. My feeling is that England’s forwards will take it the South Africans and our defence won’t let them through.

South Africa made hard work of a victory against Fiji and the scoreline against Argentina flattered them as the Argies looked nervous and lost their cool to give an uncharacteristic error-strewn performance.

I state for the record that I can see England winning comfortably.