6 Nations Player Watch: Weekend 1

By · February 6, 2006 at 12:00 pm · No comments · Latest News · Report an error ·
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Following the explosive opening weekend of the 6 Nations tournament, how have London-based players fared so far?

On the up:

  • Coming out of international retirement, veteran ex-captain Lawrence Dallaglio (England, Wasps) proved himself a supremely useful impact player coming off England’s bench in the last quarter of their match against Wales. Five minutes later, he scored a trademark try, powering over the line from the base of the scrum (with some obstructive assistance from the referee).

  • Another England ex-captain, Matt Dawson (England, Wasps) came off the bench near the end of the match, and burst away from a pressurised Welsh scrum to score a try with his first touch of the ball (albeit under suspicion of a deliberate knock-on).

  • Playing for 60 minutes against Wales as a substitute for the stricken Josh Lewsey, Tom Voyce (England, Wasps) represented himself fairly well despite a couple of missed tackles, and scored an easy try in the match’s final minute.

    • Going nowhere:

    • Despite a couple of typically strong runs against Wales, Josh Lewsey (England, Wasps) left the field with a shoulder injury 20 minutes into the match. England’s first-choice full-back’s involvement in the rest of the tournament is currently uncertain.

  • Joe Worsley (England, Wasps) didn’t do too much wrong against Wales, but was hardly stellar either. With the huge competition for back-row places in the England team, his selection for future matches is under threat.

  • Coming off the bench for a token 8-minute jog at the end of the England-Wales match, Simon Shaw (England, Wasps) was largely anonymous.

  • Sentenced to watch Ireland’s flaky (and some might say unjust) victory over Italy from the bench, Johnny O’Connor and Eoin Reddan (both Ireland, Wasps) did not make the field at all.

    • Sadly, no London-based players featured in Scotland’s astonishing victory over France yesterday. We’re beginning to regret putting that tenner on France last week…

    Photo taken from by Random Things Entering My Field of Vision’s Flickr photostream under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.

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