Italy V England

[WhiteKnightoftheWeld]

This match is guff. only good thing about it is the commentary team referring to craig gower's wikipedia entry - brought up because of andy powell's recent gaff!

Gower has been involved in a number of alcohol-related off-field incidents.

In 1999, Gower exposed himself to a female Irish tourist in a Coogee bar, blaming his behaviour on alcohol intoxication. He was dumped from the Kangaroos Squad and fined $2,500 by the NRL and a further $500 in court after pleading guilty to indecent exposure.[5]

Gower was fired as Panthers captain in December 2005,[6] after incidents at a charity golf event where he argued with several guests, groped the teenage daughter of former league player Wayne Pearce, chased Pearce's son with a bottle before vomiting on him, streaked around the resort, wrecked a golf cart, held a butter knife to the throat of a Sydney radio personality and threw the knife at resort guests before being kicked out of the function by security.[7] Gower was handed a "final warning" by the National Rugby League and fined $100,000, with $90,000 to be paid to an NRL programme encouraging the responsible use of alcohol by league players and $10,000 to replace the destroyed golf cart.[8] Gower was "deeply unhappy" that the Penrith Panthers club did not defend his reputation, and at one stage threatened to "walk" from the club.[9]

[Samstew]

England just holding on though, 2 points ahead with 7 minutes to go, 12-14.
Italy doing okay and will certainly be more than happy with this performance whatever the outcome.

[Jackie Brown]

Starting to wonder what ENgland really bring to this championship, just making up the numbers...

[Samstew]

12-17 to England.
Puts the results of the weekend back into perspective.
The next game at HQ will be very interesting indeed.

[AndyB]

To use one of Comic Book Guy's favourite sayings - Worst game ever!

I dozed off mid second half.

[againstthehead]

wow, I thought this would be a close game for 60 mins but expected england to kick on in the last 20 mins. Fair play to italy - they really stepped up from last week. England will be glad of a couple of weeks off to regroup. Very hard to guage where England are at the minute - last week they seemed to be turning the corner but they seem to have reverted to type.

[Setanta]

Possibly showing my Scots-Irish psyche but I have to admit that if Italy had won today it would almost have compensated for the disappointments of yesterday!!

[bogboy]

As stated previously England play Barge Ball and Kick but with a fairly large pack and a good defence a hard side to actually beat.

Very few trys will be scored against them but because of their big pack they keep possession well and due to their total lack of talent and or confidence every game is boringly the same.

if we think we have problems they have them in triplicate -- a Captain in the second row who would have trouble being selected for Ulster -- a full back who although he appears to have talent makes Earls appear experienced and a pack of forwards who consider the word pass must be preceeded by the word Kyber

[againstthehead]

I'd save the slagging until after the next game bogger...