Hello, this is the Ruck, the journalist's rugby podcast from The Times and the Sunday Times coming to you after round two of the Six Nations over the weekend. As always, loads to get into and as always back in studio. I'm Alfie Reynolds with me in the building. Charlie Morgan once again. Hi Charlie. Hi, pal, thanks for having me. No, you don't need to say thank you. Always a pleasure, Charlie. Fresh from a trip to Edinburgh. We were both up there for the Calcutta Cup. A man that was in Cardiff for the Wales-France game

is Elgin Alderman. All right, Elgin? Very well, thank you. How are you? I'm very well, thank you. Loads to unpick. There's always loads to unpick. We know that. And also, down the line with us today, back on the Ruck, actually, for the first time in a long, long time.

Delighted to say that David Walsh is with us.

Hi, David.

Hi, Avi.

Look, lads, there's so much to try and unpick, I think, from any round in the Six Nations. I guess a really general one, first of all, what impact did the weekend have on the championship? and this links to a question that Will Keller her posed from the stands at Murray Field in the podcast we did postmatch after Scotland's win was, has this weekend revealed that you've got France that are so way out in front of everyone else, whales that are way down the bottom.

And then you've got those four middle teams that actually are really densely packed together. I think France certainly looks strong. I've always fancied that

England will go there on the final day with the plan. We now know what heights Scotland can

kind of raise themselves to. So them having France at home means I certainly think that there's

a hell of a lot on that game and potential for Scotland to kick on.

I think if I was going to take one lesson, it's potentially that this is a really, really kind of well-worn boxing kind of cliche.

But the styles make fights thing, the fact that Scotland can just so continually put together a game plan that gives England so many

issues, it's just a really, it's a really interesting wrinkle of this championship. And, yeah,

and I'd package that in with how impressed I was with Italy again, actually. Yeah, those two things.

Yeah, I think my main takeaway from the last weekend was that it was a great weekend for the neutral,

because you had Italy really giving Ireland a go in a way that we haven't seen them do in Dublin for almost 30 years.

Since before the Six Nations era, you had that Calcutta Cup match with Scotland winning.

I know a lot of people didn't predict that they would win, but there was always this inherent sense

that they might just pull something

out the bag after losing in Rome. And then Sunday was a very different joy for the neutral.

Obviously, it was just another galling defeat for Wales. But I think there was a lot of talk about

value for money in the stadium on Sunday. But if you just loved watching rugby, then watching that

...