Welcome back to The Ruck, The Journalist's Rugby podcast from The Times and the Sunday Times.

I'm Alfie Reynolds back with

Alex Lowe and Will Keller her the first time all three of us are together since Sydney. Bands back together, yeah. Good to see you boys. How are you? Yeah, good. Thank you. We've just had half an hour talking about strictly and traitors. So I like the celebrity traitors in your not so sure. No, it's not the same. Not the same. Not the same. Not the same. That is our hot take but we'll leave that there. I was thinking surely we've been all three have been together since

Sydney but I think in your not so sure. No, it's not the same. Not the same. Not the same. That is our hot take, but we'll leave that there.

I was thinking, surely we've been, all three have been together since Sydney, but I think because we've popped up on various different episodes that actually now is the first time. Yeah, me and you did Twickenham. Yeah. Then me and Alex did Simon Massey Taylor and Simon Gillum. Mm-hmm. and then you've done some

we did last week

with Barnsey

and Elgin

and I was on my own

last time everyone listened and then you've done some we did last week with barnsey yeah exactly and elgin and i was on my own

last time everyone listened to the pod for the northampton episode which do go back and have a listen

some really interesting chats will had in particular i think with fin smith his new contract

and how he performed on the line saw there's quite a lot of interesting things he came out with

and maybe this is a nice segue into the marcus smith chat will have later on the pod, but this England fly half debate is not going away, is it? Like, that's going to be an endless perhaps debate through November 6 Nations, everything else this season. Yeah, it's certainly going to build. I think maybe even today, we'll look at the whole England back line. Once you start at 10, you get into the centres, you speak about the back three with some of how the players are playing at the moment

over the first three with some of how the players are playing at the moment over the

first three weeks of the season which i think is really interesting Alex last week you teed up that

you were off to exeter to watch the yeah the play terrific good it's really good so it's based upon

the book from rob kitson friend and colleague yeah so rob I'd recommend the book as well, X-Men, telling the story of Exeter's rise from the fourth division to Champions of Europe, basically.

And there's so many characters involved in.

Rob's book has so much depth and detail.

It's brilliant.

And then about a year or so ago, he got a call from the theatre in Exeter, and they wanted to turn it into a play. It did just do it really cleverly, and it's maybe a help that I was sitting just across the hour from Rob Baxter. So in all these scenes, I was just kind of keeping an eye on Rob and what his reactions were and how he remembered certain things and just the smile on his face when

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