Basically, this weekend is a last hurrah for Welsh rugby before it slides down the waste disposal chute and into the bin.

The regions are haemorraging cash at a level that simply isn't sustainable. Their survival will be at the expense of their best players moving into England or France and them ceasing to be competitive at Heineken Cup or Pro12 level.

Only the national team provides them with a glimmer of hope at the moment. A loss to England, particularly if it happens to be a poor performance, will drive another nail into the coffin of Wales as a rugby power.

The funniest thing is, the author writes for Wisden.

So he's used to sitting in a stadium for five consecutive days watching a game that still might not have a positive result to it.

Scrap that - this 2013 Ireland team are even WORSE. Italy have not exactly progressed since last year, so today's result speaks volumes.

TBF Ireland had 10 of their first 15 out injured today.

England collapse under pressure yet again.....and no tries scored...For 2 games on the bounce and 3 out of 5 games.

1 try for England in the last 4 games... on that basis alone Wales deserved it. So much for the new coaching team bringing positive rugby.

They've got a ru phone in on 5live now and one of the 1st callers is a knob who said the reason for Englands defeat is league players going to ru and not tackling properly the fact that there was only Ashton in the team who started in rl makes the statement laughable.

England are dire in attack.
With such as Ashton, the Young brothers and a host of fatties that can't scrum they will win nothing.

That is why he was no loss to RL and Wigan were happy to let him go

Exactly. At Wigan he got found by opposition coaches as soon as he broke into Wigan's 1st team and got targeted.

That its taken,what 4 years?, for the union supporters and experts to have suddenly discovered he can't defend is laughable...i thought it is supposed to be be the more intelligent code of rugby?

Ashton was a fine attacking player though, especially from fullback. He seems to have gone rapidly downhill in that aspect too.

This is a list of Irish players missing



Fergus McFadden and Eoin Reddan Paul O'Connell, Tommy Bowe and Stephen Ferris Simon Zebo, Gordon D'Arcy, Chris Henry, Craig Gilroy and Jonathan Sexton Darren Cave, and Dave McSharry and then during the game they lost Keith Earls and Luke Marshall and Luke Fitzgerald

Fair point about Ireland, wasn't aware of that. Then again, even when Italy's talisman Parisse was sin binned, they never looked like doing anything.