The Silver Fern

Will be interesting to see how Ireland front up against Australia this weekend. This week kind of feels like that period last year when Ireland played France and then Argentina back-to-back in the World Cup. Once again several key players are shorn through injury and you'd imagine those fit to go will be a bit drained from last week's encounter. Can they raise it to match Aus? I'm going so I hope for a good game!

Conference A and Conference B, eh? Very inspiring!
I read somewhere that this move basically solves a problem for SARU re what to do with the two franchises tipped overboard from Super Rugby and also gets a bit of Saffer cash into the Pro12 TV deal, thus helping the Celts to try and keep their better players away from English and French clubs. They need to be careful though: Super Rugby has shown us that if you dick around with competitions too much, eventually the public might start to lose interest. Which might mean less rather than more in the TV deal.