"Ulster are close to winning the race to sign Tommy Bowe, with the Ireland winger poised to return to his native province next season. Although no deal is believed to have been signed as yet, sources claim contract talks are at “an advanced stage” with Ulster set to recapture the player who played for them between 2003 and ’08. Bowe scored a try in Ireland’s 23-21 Six Nations loss to Wales on Sunday last and is due back in the Ireland camp today ahead of this weekend’s trip to Paris to face France."

"One of the tracks that blared out every time someone went down injured at Murrayfield on Saturday was called, appropriately enough, Insomnia. Fat chance of ever getting to sleep with that racket ringing in the ears. Fat chance, too, of being able to turn to your neighbour, who might have been a Scot or an Englishman, for these are convivial events, and saying, ‘That was a good bit’ or perhaps, ‘Fancy a pint?’ for there was no lull into which intelligent thought might be allowed to enter. Crass, dispiriting, unnecessary and deeply troubling, this desperate desire to cram noise into any hiatus, as if one of the oldest sporting events in the entire planet were some jumped-up bit of modern tomfoolery such as darts or T20 cricket, where gimmicks and contrived audience participation are seen as part of the action itself, has become all too prevalent."

"Should David Beckham stumble accidentally into what was once his very own football academy either side of lunchtime today, he might find himself in danger of wrecking his fragile metatarsal for good and causing terminal damage to his hairstyle. England's rugby players, in high good humour following their unexpected Calcutta Cup victory over Scotland at Murrayfield, will be training at the London Soccerdome next to the O2 Arena because of the wintry conditions at their base in Surrey. They will not be messing around, either. According to the coaching staff, they will be knocking seven bells out of each other. "I place as much importance on how players conduct themselves in training during the week as on what they do at the weekend," said Stuart Lancaster, the caretaker coach, in confirming that the 32-man squad for Saturday's meeting with Italy in Rome, bolstered by the return of the World Cup midfielder Toby Flood, would be encouraged to engage in a full and frank exchange of views. "When we do a 15 v 15 session, I try to ensure that the people on the fringes of the team get a genuine opportunity, rather than just give them a bib and tell them to defend. Everyone has to train well. It's the way you develop a high-performance culture."

"When England escape the snow on Tuesday with a training trip to a former David Beckham football academy next to the O2 Arena, Ben Morgan will go head to head with Phil Dowson in a 15-a-side contest, with the No 8 shirt up for grabs. Stuart Lancaster is taking his squad to the indoor facility at Greenwich, now known as the London Soccerdome, as the freezing conditions have played havoc with England’s preparations at their HQ in Surrey. This will be the only full day of training prior to departure for Rome and the next instalment of the RBS Six Nations campaign, against Italy at the Stadio Olimpico on Saturday, and for Morgan in particular, the stakes have just been raised."

"When you throw in last year's illegal winning score by Mike Phillips in Cardiff (not to mention Wales' voodoo-like depowering of Ireland in the Wellington quarter-final) you could justifiably claim that Wales' hex over the Irish has assumed Biddy Early proportions. But the bottom line is that Wales were allowed to score three tries that were all eminently preventable. "There is no case for the defence. True, Wales had a leviathan backline on show that would have done justice to most packs, but missing front-up tackles at this level is unacceptable and, following on from the soft scores conceded in Wellington, it can be categorically concluded that Ireland's defensive game has regressed hugely from the miserly operation which underpinned their Grand Slam in 2009. "When you are faced with a backline carrying as much power and menace as Wales', it is essential that you close down their time on the ball, but Ireland's line-speed was non-existent and there were no shooters to get in Welsh faces."

"The game ended in controversy, and there’s little doubt the officials wrongly adjudged two so-called tip tackles – the game’s two tipping points you could say. But despite the harsh call on Stephen Ferris for his tackle on Ian Evans, which resulted in Leigh Halfpenny’s 80th minute penalty steering Wales to a 23-21 win, there’s little doubt the better team won. "It looked a hasty call by Wayne Barnes, and Ferris’s yellow card appeared like a justification for the decision. For at no point did Evans’ left foot leave the ground and he landed sideways-on before getting to his feet and smiling as he patted Ferris on the head. "It wasn’t in the same universe as the Bradley Davies’ tip tackle on Donnacha Ryan, which had also been off the ball, in the 65th minute, for which touch judge Dave Pearson adjudicated a yellow card. Only Pearson, referee for the France-Ireland game next Saturday, will know how he came up with that one."

"There is no escaping the tide of déjà vu that engulfed Scottish rugby at the weekend, but it is of no use to the sport, the players nor coaches to submit to it. "There has to be improvement and, more precisely, tries when Scotland take on Wales in Cardiff if the game is to retain the optimism generated by the new SRU leadership, and Edinburgh’s Heineken Cup and Glasgow’s league drives are to signal a corner turned. Otherwise, with France to come to Murrayfield and then Ireland away Andy Robinson’s side could be heading to Italy for another wooden spoon decider and the peg holding his coat wobbling. "So, after four tryless games in a row, where do Scottish five-pointers come from? Tactics and coaching help to hide weaknesses and improve strengths, but it cannot produce something that is not there. Players, ultimately, fashion tries, through rugby intelligence and skills."

"Zero tolerance of the tip tackle is no obstacle to full-on entertainment. Bradley Davies had to look aggrieved – innocence is the default look of the penalised player – when he saw yellow for his off-the-ball tackle on Donnacha Ryan but he must have felt a tinge of relief it was not red. Wales conceded the try that might have cost them the game but then Stephen Ferris picked up Ian Evans by one leg, thumped him down and the tables were turned. Rugby remains a sport of physical contact where you have to tackle with care, not an easy combination to master. Still, it brought a cracking game to a rousing finale. "Shane Williams was not the biggest wing in the world but he survived by avoiding tacklers and ducking under limbs. Now he has gone, Wales have Alex Cuthbert and George North, two players who duck out of nothing. The way North went through Fergus McFadden in the buildup to Jonathan Davies's second try was to underline the effect of power, although his backhanded pass to the centre was a nostalgic flash of subtler skills. North was immense but he dominates the rugby field in a different way, a monstrous 19-year-old who combines the size Williams never had with arts he did."

"We are not talking about them beating the world; we are talking about being able to demonstrate essential skills on more than a casual basis. "If these failures continue there is a good chance that Robinson will go of his own accord, frustrated at his inability to rectify Scotland’s chronic malaise. "You have to sympathise with him because he is in the classically invidious position of the coach. He may be doing all he can and doing it well, but when 15 other people go out and stuff it up he is the one that is in line to get sacked. Short of running on to the field and making the passes and kicks for his team it is hard to see what more he can do."

"1 - England have a short-term result but it was difficult to see what is the long‑term strategy All week the talk was of long-term strategies. England's interim coach, Stuart Lancaster, would have slept soundly on Saturday night because this was a dogged victory in what was always going to be a difficult match. But he and England's supporters won't be under any illusions because there wasn't a lot to worry their Six Nations rivals. France were not at their best in Paris but they picked up the pace of the tournament. It was cold at Murrayfield and England and Scotland both spluttered like an old banger on a winter morning for the first 40 minutes. When England did get opportunities we did see them attempt to play a wider game but in the cold light of day it has to be said that the two wings, Chris Ashton and David Strettle, hardly received a pass and Ben Foden only really counterattacked because Dan Parks kicked the ball down his throat. We never truly saw Lancaster's vision of a second receiver bringing into play the back three. The only glimpses we did get were undermined by a lack of precision. It was a good result for England but I think if they had played like that under Martin Johnson then Johnson would have been castigated and we would still be at a loss to work out what they were trying to do."

"Given the disappointment of the World Cup, it is great to get our Six Nations campaign off to a winning start to eradicate some of the memories of New Zealand. We previously hadn’t won at Murrayfield since 2004, and while there is of course a lot for us to work on, I think we showed a lot of determination and grit from a group of guys who have only been together for a couple of weeks. The mood in the dressing room afterwards was very upbeat. A lot of people had written us off but we had a massive belief that we could get the right result. With the amount of new caps in the side, it was always going to be a tough assignment but as the coaching team have already said, we are here to win games."

"The day after the Wales win over Ireland in the World Cup we were back at the Cake Tin, as the Wellingtonians call their stadium, for the South Africa versus Australia match. For some of us, it felt like a long trek across town, lengthened by the events of the day before. Up until kick-off we had been chasing flights and remortgaging to cover accommodation in Auckland for the semifinal. Long before the final whistle we were in home mode. As we entered the media centre, there was a gaggle of Welsh hacks gathered around a table, deep in conversation about the previous afternoon and how they would cover what happened next. There were lots of angles to measure, and fields of quotes to be harvested. They looked well pleased."

"I will settle for that. No win over Scotland at Murrayfield is easy, let alone when you have a new coaching team, new captain and a raft of new players. Perhaps it wasn’t pretty but I am delighted for all the new guys that coach Stuart Lancaster showed trust in. Good defence and discipline at important stages of the game was the key, that and poor Scottish handling and decision making under pressure. Scotland coach Andy Robinson must despair. They play with good intent, have one or two line-breakers but are completely unable to finish the job at this level. Glasgow and Edinburgh have been scoring tries for fun this season but those same players just can’t repeat it at international level."

"Ireland in the Six Nations will have to cope without their most visible player of the last decade, Brian O'Driscoll. Wales have to manage without their often unseen flanker, Danny Lydiate. Ireland are trying to replace a player everyone can see; Wales have to wrap somebody else up in Lydiate's cloak of invisibility. Lydiate is not hard to see in the flesh. Not so long ago the tales of what Stephen Ferris was throwing around in the weights room seemed to confirm that once again Wales were going to yield on the strength front. The arrival of Sean O'Brien and his bursting runs through tackles underlined Ireland's advantage in raw power. But then Lydiate arrived. Or rather he reappeared, without fanfare but with question marks over whether he should be playing at all after a serious neck injury playing for the Dragons in Perpignan in November 2007. It soon appeared he was more than back merely on his feet. To stand next to the son of sheep-farming stock from Llandrindod Wells in Mid Wales was to be reassured that here were arms the size of Powys."

"An outbreak of booing during a rugby match is always an ugly sound, the more so when it is directed at a young man, only a few months out of his teens and in the early stages of his international debut, doing nothing more discreditable than attempting a kick at goal. Perhaps this sort of thing is only to be expected nowadays in the heat of Six Nations competition. It happens at the Stade de France, it happens in Cardiff, and it is occasionally the subject of stern warnings to the Twickenham crowd. Somehow, though, it is not what one expects from Murrayfield, even at a time when a desire to escape English rule is at the forefront of national debate. So the Scottish crowd brought no honour on itself when Owen Farrell stepped up to take the first penalty kick of the match in the 12th minute. Ben Foden had run Dan Parks's poor kick back across the halfway line, prompting Richie Gray to enter a ruck by the side door. Farrell's attempt from 47 metres had the length, but drifted just wide of the right-hand post."