Hello, this is the Ruck, the journalist's rugby podcast from the Times and the Sunday Times. Welcome back. What a weekend. What a weekend of Six Nations action. And in studio with me, Alfie Reynolds, to review it all is Stuart Barnes, fresh from the Wiltshire Express. Morning, Barnsey. Good morning. Good to see you again. Trains were on time today as well. Trains were fast.

Which is noteworthy because that doesn't often happen. Also with us, Elgin Alderman, who got back the last Euro star. You came back from Leal yesterday, Elgin. I did indeed, yes. It was a strange moment this morning. I had to let Stuart Barnes into the building. If a childhood Elgin had been told that that man commentating rugby games one day, I'd be letting him into the building. Who'd have thought that would happen? I've been working here 20 odd years and I still don't have a pass. Yeah. Never had one. Never had one. That always makes me laugh every time that you join us in person Barnes, which is always good, but I have to book you in as a guest, which makes no sense to me. These there we are. These Maverick England fly halves. You never can trust them with a pass to a building. So look, round three of the six nations. Brilliant round. We're going to come on to England. I know there's still loads in the paper this morning on Monday morning about the England Ireland game. We'll come on to that because we had the pod from Saturday from the stands at Twickenham. Maybe a couple of general ones. Then we'll start with

the Wales Scotland game. But generally, into the Fallow Week now, who's the Fallow Week

come at a good time for? Who's the Fallow Week come at a bad time for? I think it's probably

coming at a good time for Scotland. They turned around

their poor start with a wonder performance against England and then they performed with an

English degree of complacency against Wales and they got away with it. That was the key. The key is if you don't play well, you get away with it.

And Scotland did, and they can just reset a little bit now

and prepare themselves for their next match.

And, you know, they're in a good situation at the moment.

I think for England and Wales is coming a good time,

just because with these five matches, it does feel a bit like a five test cricket series and if you just keep on losing

week to week then it can just get on top of you. So at least England now after two, you know,

galling defeats, they can perhaps reset a bit and try and have that extra week to focus on what went

wrong. But equally, Wales after the efforts of that Scotland game, an extra week of building on that, hopefully a week of recovery from that, hopefully it'll do them good stead as well before Ireland and Italy in the last two rounds. It's funny, as I was planning to ask you both that question, I was thinking, I'm not actually sure there's anyone that it's a bad time for. I think you can make the case for everyone that is quite a good good time. And maybe that's because there's only one rest week this time around. So everyone for

whether you're England and have been humiliated at home or whether your sides that have picked up

good results, it's quite a good time to take stock and have a week off.

Ten years or so ago, when you had a few teams with massively powerful squads and teams with weak squads,

that extra week was crucial. What I'm talking about really is Italy here. Italy were a hard

team, first couple of games. As the tournament went on, they became weaker. They got two or three

injuries, whereas France or England or Ireland or Wales at that time could live with those injuries.

Italy couldn't.

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