Hello, this is the Ruck, the journalist's rugby podcast from the Times and the Sunday Times.

Welcome along as we're in studio on Monday following the opening round of the 2026 Six Nations.

I'm Alfie Reynolds.

Pleasure to have your company coming up.

We'll look back on all the action and we'll preview some huge fixtures in round two as well.

Alongside me this week, Owen Slott, back on the pod.

How are you, Slotty?

Pretty good, thanks. Very good to be here with our great news signing.

And that person is Charlie Morgan, who is joining the times. Charlie, it's brilliant to have you with us.

Thank you for having me. No, it's a pleasure to get started.

Have we got canned applause now? Would you do that, candiplaws?

Do you want canned applause? I'll see what I can do. I'll speak to the effects department.

We don't have an effects department, but I'll see what I can do in getting Charlie some candor applause. But Charlie, welcome to the team. First day today on the Monday. What can readers expect? I know you've already been writing that you were at Twickenham about Olly Chessam, England's second row options. Yeah, we can get into it later, but I think England, what you'll probably hear from me a lot over the next few weeks is that England, I'm not sure England get too much credit for making sides play badly.

And obviously Wales aren't particularly strong side to start with, but I thought Olly Chesson was just integral to how they took away any sort of platform for Wales with that line-out variety,

and he showed sort of flashes of what makes him really special elsewhere.

He's a phenomenal athlete.

He's got shades of Tom Croft about him, and we saw him stretch his legs, which was quite

cool.

And I think he's just a very valuable player for England.

You were mentioning that earlier, that phrase of England almost don't get enough credit for making teams play badly. And you often hear people say, oh, my team lost to England, but we played really terribly. Whereas actually the flip side of that, I suppose, is that England do a lot of things to, as you say, take away strengths or make things difficult for teams. Yeah, a lot of their performances over this run have just stunk of really, really diligent preparation, as you'd expect from. Steve Borthwick is a disciple of Eddie Jones, and that was, you know, one of Eddie Jones is calling cards as a coach, just really diligent preparation, zeroing in on strengths and taking them away and really frustrating an opponent. And you're right. Sort of you speak to opposing fans about England. You're going,

yeah, you didn't rock up. Didn't rock up in that area. Didn't rock up in that area. And you go, England have had something to do with that. And, you know, there's building, clearly building hype about this England side as there would be over any side who've won 12 tests in a row. But that is a strength that I think potentially gets overlooked a little bit. And, Slaughter, you were in Paris on Thursday for the opener.

You were at Twickenham as well.

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