Welcome back to The Ruck, the journalist's rugby podcast from The Times and the Sunday Times Monday morning. We're in studio and a mad old

weekend of rugby to look back on. I'm Alfie Reynolds to my right as I go around the table. Alex Lowe. How are you? Hello, good morning. Yeah, very well. I had a trip to Dublin, trip to Twickenham. That was good. It was good. Stuart Barnes as well. It was back with us, Barnsey. Yeah, pleased to be back. A fascinating weekend, and England made it for, but it wasn't the greatest of games. No, we'll get into that. We'll get into the fallout from it as well with Felipe Contraponi, deciding to tee off in his post-match press conference. We'll come on to the Argentina reaction. And also back once again, Will Keller, right? Hello, yeah, good. Oh, some of our autumns are over. There's still games to be played, though.

It is the end of November except for Wales and South Africa, which I said on our Thursday, or Friday preview it was. I said the last weekend of November we're looking ahead to, except if you're Wales or South Africa, so I thought I wouldn't say it again. But yeah, there is still one game to go. But it feels like the end of the international rugby year, really, doesn't it? It does, yeah. That's not really an international. On the box record, they've got 25 players left once they've sent all the players back to the various clubs that have to go back. Wales can only feel half of their first team, because they've all got to go go back and apparently only 30,000 tickets have been sold, which is no surprise for a non-game. Yeah, well there might be some green shoots for Wales when we get onto them later and we chat about that game against New Zealand. Funny old one that one, but we'll get onto that because with the greatest respect to Wales, they weren't the story of the weekend. weekend. You could argue it's England when you look at the back page of the Times this morning. But I think in terms of the rugby, in terms of the match, in terms of the utter chaos, Alex, where you were at on Saturday, Dublin, Ireland, South

Africa, Andy Farrell described it as a, it'd never seen a game like it. Have you seen a game like

that? No, I haven't. And in loads of ways, five cards, one red, four yellows, all of which I think were justified. But a game that lasted over two hours, 20 scrums, but also what was so fascinating and compelling for me, and a lot of people didn't enjoy it, David Walsh didn't enjoy it. I was engrossed in it.

And actually, I think the Vivisadium crowd were because it got to a point where every defensive

scrum was being, Ireland were being roared on by their home fans, which doesn't usually happen

for scrums. So the compelling thing about it was South Africa's mentality in this game.

They displayed their, they're all caught brilliance to create the first try, just a wonderful

try, brilliant finish from Davian Valemza.

They were, but the power that they brought to the game, actually laid the foundations

for James Ryan, almost panicky flying in, he got his red card because Ireland had been in that

same position 10 minutes earlier, had been in that same position,

ten minutes earlier, had been turned over by Thomas Du Toyt, and I think a sense of panic that

they were losing that breakdown. Ryan flies in. That goes from being seven all, to Ireland

being down to 14 men, and then it was 13, and then it was 12, because South Africa's focus

became about making a statement in the scrum.

Now, we all know how good the box scrum is, but this was a game where they almost decided to spurn

points in order to make a point about their scrum.

They could have won that game by a lot more.

But if you think just before half time, Andrew Porter's on a warning,

and so Razzie Erasmus hooks off his starting props and brings on two fresh props to

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