Bring on the Weekend!

As much as I feel the French will be fired up, I can't look past this Welsh side that impress me more each game I watch them. Against England they were under the cosh, and we through everything we had at them, but they had enough in the tank to ride it out, and while the French can be devastating when they click, I feel the men in red will simply be to aggressive in the forwards, and much more decisive in the backs, and while I do expect les Blues to be backed by a very partisan crowd I think Wales will stay in control, and edge this by 7 points.

The big one for me this weekend is Ireland vs. England at the 82,000 capacity fortress that is Croke Park, last time we went there we got handed a 43-13 ass whooping, but this time, although I don't think we will be good enough to hand the Irish the first defeat of the tournament, I do feel that if we raise our levels of aggression and passion like we did against the Welsh it will be one hell of a game. This is a transitional time for England, if you look at how this Irish side underperformed at the 2007 World Cup but with the same personal now are starting to look like a world class side, it should give you an idea of how much work we still have to do until thing really click. It is interesting to see Toby Flood in at ten, and I feel the Goode got a lot of stick for his performances in the last two games, but when you analyse it, he set up nearly all of our tries and didn't play that badly, although I do feel Flood gives us an extra dimension with ball in hand, lets just hope he remembers how to tackle! I think this game will be similar to the one against the Welsh, we will go at them hammer and tong, but you just get the feeling the Irish will have too much class and I can see them scraping home by 5 points..........but as long as we play like we did a fortnight ago, I will be a happy England fan.

Moving onto the round shaped ball, it's a huge weekend for the West Midlands teams in the Premiership and Championship. The Baggies have an early kick off tomorrow against an in form Everton side at Goodison, but the Toffees won't have Mikel Arteta at their disposal after his knee injury that has ruled him out for the rest of the season, while I don't think this is a game the Mowbray will have exactly targeted for three points, you do feel that they will have to start picking up points against teams soon, or things will start looking worse than they already do, and a draw will feel as good as 3 points.
Villa don't play until Sunday when they welcome Stoke to Villa Park, and it is a huge game for MON and his team after a run of three losses, and knowing him they will want to start getting back into the winning habit as soon as possible, something that is never that easy against a harrying and bustling Stoke side. Still I think with the rest MON gave his star players during the week, they should be too good for Tony Pulis' men, and I can see Villa winning 3-1.

As for Wolves, well they are another side that desperately need to start getting back into winning ways and they are up against Plymouth at Molyneux on Saturday. I know a lot of Wolves fans are already getting that sinking feeling that all the early hard work is being thrown away, but I feel that McCarthy will have targeted this game as the one where they can turn it around. Three points would feel huge, and a clean sheet would do wonders for Wolves' confidence and with a win they would go 6 points clear of their main rivals the Blues who also have a massive game on Sunday against Sheffield United at Brammal Lane. Both teams have been trying to throw away their advantages at the top of the Championship, but luckily for them Reading have not exactly been on fire either. I'm tipping both sides to turn it around this weekend, but I get the feeling neither will cruise to victory and both sets of fans will be lacking a few fingernails after the next 48 hours!

Finally, Frankie Gavin makes his professional debut on Saturday in the ring against Georgian George Kadarian, and it is going to be great to see him set of on his road to world domination, which will hopefully end in us having a Brummie World Champion! Already he is being compared to Amir Khan, who is a good friend, and I reckon in a few years time we could see a match up between the two, as for his first fight though, I expect him to be much too good for his opponent, and Frank Warren is no mug, he will have learned from the mistakes he made with Khan, and he will be looking to make sure that Gavin's rise through the ranks is as smooth as possible, and against a man with a 8-5-3 record, he should win it in the first 2 rounds.

Right, those are my picks for the weekend; I will be covering all of the action on Saturday afternoon between 1-5pm on Offside on Kerrang with guests Frankie Gavin (yes him I was juts talking about!) and England rugby legend Kyran Bracken, plus don't miss the live blog action from Molyneux and Goodison right here on the Mercury website.....its uber cool!

Check back Monday for my review of all the weekends sporting action, I have had a mad few days and went home to visit my Bro down in London after a few meetings, and you'll be glad to hear he is as sports addicted as me, we literally sat and watched every ball of the day 1 of the test match, and then Tiger getting knocked out of the World Match play accompanied by a reservoir of Rose...........bliss!