Did anyone see Middlesbrough vs Charlton yesterday?

That game yesterday was the pits. Luckily England were beating India in a thriller whilst the first half was on so I watched that instead. The cheers when Flintoff ran around with his shirt off echoed around the room for a good half hour.

France vs Italy was fairly dull on Saturday despite the odd fight. The ref seemed determined to sin-bin Italians for the most minor infractions. (A yellow card for an offside? A bit extreme, even if was a professional foul.) England-Scotland was good though. Wales- Ireland was just a joke. Anyone else got any 6 Nations thoughts? I reckon England, with Ireland close behind.

I watched all the 6N games. Not vintage by any means, as you say. England will of course win it followed by Ireland, France, Wales, Scotland and Italy in that order.

Wales, despite yesterday's debacle, will sack Henry and get it together enough to beat Sotland and Italy.

Ireland will be put in their place by England in a fortnight's time. France will underachieve, although to be fair they are trying to integrate some new players. Italy shouldn't be in the competition, as they're not even premier div club quality, never mind international. All the sin-bins were examples of players infringing in desparation to avoid conceding points. The fact that France kept over-elaborating or knocking-on is beside the point. A decent side would have put 50 points on Italy. The sin-bin for offside was for 'persistent offside' - and I think is usually justified if a team is running offside in order to prevent a try. It doesn't matter if that particular player wasn't responsible for all of the offences - he gets ten minutes to penalise the team as a whole.

Ireland - Wales was particularly gruesome, speaking as a Wales supporter. Yet again Wales find new ways to give away penalties - a FLANKER not binding for godsake, and got thoroughly humped in all the forward encounters even though Ireland were without 3 Lions in the pack (Wood, O'Kelly, Miller). However, Ireland's back play was magnificent. I'll be cheering them on against England.

In a moment of boredom, I saw the beginning of the American rebroadcast of the England/Scotland game late yesterday -- one of the commentators was the former captain of the US rugby team, and lemme tell ya: he needs more training in terms of how to talk to the camera properly.

Sky's coverage of the Superbowl was good. Following Mariah Carey's version of the anthem they went back to the studio and, to all intents and purposes, said she was rubbish.

similar comments were made by the channel 5 team after the baseball anthems in the world series, if i remember correctly. Wales were pretty dreadful and, although i'd like you to be wrong about the ireland match dr c, they were rather good yesterday, certainly will be england's main challengers but lack of woods particularly could be their stumbling block (he said yesterday he's unlikely to be back for the england match).

Steve, they did indeed say that Jewel was rubbish, but that also she was a fox, Mariah didn't even get that on Sunday night.

But yeah, (a day late) that Boro Charlton game was the dullest ever, in fact I can't remember a single bit of it, that might be because I was rather drunk at the time though.