{"id":517,"date":"2012-03-17T23:42:00","date_gmt":"2012-03-17T23:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gentlemancyclist.co.uk\/?p=517"},"modified":"2024-01-29T23:43:03","modified_gmt":"2024-01-29T23:43:03","slug":"on-welsh-rugby","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gentlemancyclist.co.uk\/?p=517","title":{"rendered":"On Welsh rugby"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I\u2019m intrigued by Wales. Although they\u2019ve won a grand slam, and that gives the pundits the chance to talk their game up, all their games were close \u2013 just one score against England, Ireland &amp; France, a struggle against Italy, and Scotland just rolled over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Thinking back to the 70s team, and even their previous two grand slams (which as a Welsh supporter I regard as flashes in the pan) there were games in which they really cut loose. I\u2019m thinking of the 2005 matches against Scotland and Ireland, where, IIRC, Wales were completely out of sight by half-time in both matches but lost the second half of each. In 2008 they conceded only one try in the whole championship and, in the final game,&nbsp;against France, ground them down to the extent that they had the last 20 minutes to themselves \u2013 very much as England did to Ireland today. Well done to England!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There was one interesting set of statistics read out at the start of the match. Before today, Wales and France had met 89 times with 43 wins apiece and three draws. Wales had scored 1305 points, France 1304.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Possibly the highlight of today\u2019s game was the tackle by Dan Lydiate in which the crunch was picked up by the ref\u2019s microphone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019m intrigued by Wales. Although they\u2019ve won a grand slam, and that gives the pundits the chance to talk their game up, all their games were close \u2013 just one score against England, Ireland &amp; France, a struggle against Italy, and Scotland just rolled over. Thinking back to the 70s team, and even their previous [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gentlemancyclist.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gentlemancyclist.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gentlemancyclist.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gentlemancyclist.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gentlemancyclist.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=517"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gentlemancyclist.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":518,"href":"https:\/\/gentlemancyclist.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517\/revisions\/518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gentlemancyclist.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gentlemancyclist.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gentlemancyclist.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}