That leaves him precious little time and opportunity to persuade Graham Henry, the Lions manager, that he is worth a second successive trip across the Equator.The Scots will miss every last strand of hair on his increasingly barren pate. With John Leslie, their senior inside centre, back to some sort of form – he showed glimpses of his 1999 brilliance against the French – there were high hopes that he and Townsend would inspire an imaginative and adventurous reawakening following last year’s defeats by Italy, France, Ireland and Scotland. The blue touchpaper is of little use without the naked flame, though. Townsend remains the vital spark in the Scotland side and without him, they look a lesser outfit.Ian McGeechan, the national coach, has two options: one of them bold, the other safe. He may decide to stick with Duncan Hodge, the percentage stand-off from Edinburgh Reivers who replaced Towns-end after just three minutes and 53 seconds of Sunday’s match. On the other hand, he may ask the exciting Chris Paterson, a live contender for the Lions’ full-back berth, to shoulder the burdens of life at No 10 and recall Glenn Metcalfe, whose recovery from a shattered knee-cap is now complete.

It is a difficult call.Alessandro Troncon, the former Italian captain, will appear before the hanging judges on Thursday after being dismissed in the closing stages of his country’s defeat by Ireland in Rome on Saturday. Troncon, outstanding at scrum-half until he lost his rag and belted his opposite number, Peter Stringer, in full view of all three officials, can expect a ban of at least a fortnight, which would rule him out of his country’s game with England at Twickenham on Saturday week The range of sentence runs from a week to three months. The accepted norm is 21 days.Leicester, reinforced by an England contingent in high good humour following the annihilation of Wales three days ago, will attempt to tighten their stranglehold on the Zurich Premiership against Bristol at Welford Road this evening. Both sides will be at or near full strength; only David Rees, the former England wing who turned in a vintage performance for the second-string A team in the draw with their Welsh counterparts at Wrexham on Friday night, is struggling Rees is suffering from a strained hamstring.. A friend of mine was recently outlining his theory of the relative decline of Welsh rugby. It was not, he said, due to the loss of coalmines, steel works or even grammar schools The cause, he went on, was the rise of the PE teacher This may seem a surprising conclusion to arrive at.

But my friend reasoned as follows:

A friend of mine was recently outlining his theory of the relative decline of Welsh rugby. It was not, he said, due to the loss of coalmines, steel works or even grammar schools The cause, he went on, was the rise of the PE teacher This may seem a surprising conclusion to arrive at. But my friend reasoned as follows:
In the great days – which were not, in fact, as frequent as mythology has it, but let that pass – there would be a master at the school, Mr Thomas (Latin) or Mr Jones (Physics), who would have turned out once or twice, perhaps more often, for Swansea or Llanelli He knew what the game was about. He was either in charge of rugby or in a position to pass on useful hints to the boys.

The gym master, as he was called, was then a fairly lowly figure in the school hierarchy.Then came the rise of PE, with degrees in sport science and what-have-you. The PE teacher claimed to be the controller of all sports in the school. He might have no knowledge of rugby at all, or even any interest in it. His emphasis was not so much on the elimination of competition – the standard complaint of the traditionalists – as on the provision of a greater choice of activities.It was reported a few years ago that Gwendrath Grammar School, now a comprehensive, nursery of such players as Gareth Davies, Carwyn James, Barry John and D Ken Jones no longer has a rugby team of any description.

The headmaster regretted it but said the boys had so many other things they could do with their spare time.I have no idea whether this theory is valid. If it were, one might have expected English rugby to suffer too, except that Welsh rugby has always benefited from the presence of teachers in academic subjects who had previously had some acquaintance with the game at first-class level.My own view is that the advent of professionalism bears a greater share of the blame. The leading clubs, Leicester, Gloucester, Bath and Saracens (who a decade ago were hardly taken seriously by anybody), are situated in England. The reason is that there is more money in England, as there always has been.Before last Saturday it was possible for us to delude ourselves that professionalism meant power – that in a mercenary age, power, even brutality, won international matches. The Welsh virtues of wit and invention remained in tact but were, alas, unsuited to the modern age unless supplemented by other qualities.This way of looking at things is no longer of any comfort, if it ever was. At Cardiff, as several people have already commented, England played like a Welsh side – specifically, like a Welsh side of the 1970s.