Magners League - Irish provinces riding high - apart from Leinster who stuff it up.

Glasgow 17 - 19 Connacht
Ulster 29 - 21 Edinburgh
Benetton Treviso 29 - 13 Leinster
Munster 22 - 10 Ospreys

Firstly to the bold boys of Irish rugby, Leinster in the corner wearing their dunces hats. They obviously packed their pulling gear instead of their playing gear for the trip to Italy, thinking they’d be chatting up hot Italian babes after slaughtering Treviso.
 
The Italians – and I use this term in the loosest meaning of the word, as to me only 8 of the starting 15 sound Italian (while in fairness some of the others may be qualified to play for Italy) – looked sharper, hungrier, but more worryingly also better organized and drilled. Just to finish with the ‘Italian’ composition of the team – we don’t want the Magners League, Heineken Cup etc to degenerate into‘Our South Africans are better than your South African’s’. Coach Retief Goosen (from SA) needs to pick a few more Italians for his national coach Nick Mallet (also from SA) (is there a pattern emerging here?). Maybe they can rent some South Africans to watch the matches as well.

Leinster haven’t looked right this season yet, I know there’s an issue with the internationals returning, but that’s the situation, manage it properly. They need to gird their loins, man up and seriously get their s**t together otherwise this is going to be a long, long season. If Sexton isn’t coming back soon , a decent back up kicker for Nacewa is a must because at the moment he has to catch all the catches, make all the tackles, score all the trys and kick all the kicks and there’s only so much one man can do.
Now I have that all off my chest – hats off the Italians for playing really well. Their number 8 Manoa Vosawai is one mean man.

Now time to dish out some plaudits. Amazingly, this is Connacht’s first win on the road – those in the know can fill me in on whether that’s in the whole Magners League or just out of Ireland. Anyway you look at it it’s a pretty decent result for the former whipping boys of the competition.

Ulster made it three from three , turning over hapless Edinburgh who have still to trouble the scorer. They are building a nice head of steam going in to the Heineken cup.

Munster are also three from three but mainly due to the kicking proficiency of Ronan O’Gara. For Ireland’s sake let’s hope he’s not planning to hang those boots up any time soon. This was a match best watched recorded and fast forwarded to the approx 10 minutes of decent play when they weren’t resetting the scrum, dropping the ball or generally faffing around. Munster still have a few guys out but the Ospreys looked to be pretty well at full strength and didn’t due themselves justice at all, where was all the awesome attacking play we get to hear about. It doesn’t look like either team is taking the Magners League very seriously.

Wasps did well to beat Leicester 37-30 – I didn’t catch the match but I’m not surprised, Wasps looked awesome when they played Leinster in a warm up a few weeks ago.