BONUS POINTS – The Bonus Points Edition

Yes, that’s a deliberately obtuse title. No, we don’t care.

 

Bonus Points

Never let it be said that we at B&M are not men, women and strange, large-headed hermaphrodites of our word. When we started this column we promised that we’d talk about bonus points after the Six Nations, so here we are talking about bonus points after the Six Nations.

Except that, frankly, there’s bugger all to talk about, because the bonus point system didn’t make a blind bit of difference to the final table. England won more games than anyone else, so would’ve won without it. Three teams finished with equal records, including bonus points achieved, and so were divided in the time honoured way of calculating the difference between points scored and points conceded. And Italy were so pants that they didn’t come close to picking up a single bonus of any kind.

In fact, the only remotely interesting thing to gain from this year’s table is that Wales were so lacklustre in attack that they were the only team not called Italy to fail to pick up a try scoring bonus point. But we sort of knew that, because Rob Howley…

We could, we suppose, do some detailed statistical analysis to find out if bonus points have ever really made a difference to anything, especially as Eddie Jones is always so dismissive of them. But, you know, we have lives and so on.

 

And Now, The News

• Matt O’Connor is the new Leicester coach, or will be once he gets a work permit. Aaron Mauger is apparently ‘devastated’ not to get the job full time. Richard Cockerill is still laughing his socks off.
• Quade Cooper has been handed a three match ban after his sending off at the weekend, despite the rumours that his team mates asked for it to be longer.
• Warren Gatland has already ruled Dylan Hartley out of contention for the Lions captaincy. Phew!
• Sean Lamont is retiring at the end of the season. No, we didn’t realise he was still playing, either.
• Huw Jones is out for five months, Alun Wyn Jones is out for five weeks. Only one of these has any impact upon the Lions’ selection.
• The Welsh Rugby Union announced that it will take control of Newport Gwent Dragons from 1 June. Expect an announcement that, henceforth, the international side can only be selected from players based at Rodney Parade.
• Jerome Garces, Jaco Peyper and Romain Poite will each take charge of one Lions Test this summer. This might be the most sensible announcement that the IRB will make this year. Which is a bit of a bummer, considering that there’s still nine months to go.

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