It’s the second leg of the back to back rounds in the Challenge Cup this weekend, kicking off tonight with Newcastle’s visit to Paris to take on Stade Français. The Parisians are one of the sides out for revenge this week, and have named a handful of their star-studded players in the team.
On Saturday London Irish will be looking to avenge their comfortable loss away at the Cardiff Blues last weekend, a game that was brilliantly open – more of the same please.
Finally on Sunday, London Welsh have probably their best chance of grabbing their first win of the season against an Edinburgh side whom the pushed (relatively) close at Murrayfield last weekend. The Scots don’t travel particularly well and you’ve got to question how much importance they’re going to place on this fixture.
What do you think of our predictions for the weekend?
Stade Français vs Newcastle Falcons: Stade Français by 10
Dragons vs Bucharest Wolves: Dragons by 24
Lyon vs Bordeaux Begles: Lyon by 5
Rovigo vs Grenoble: Grenoble by 30
London Irish vs Cardiff Blues: London Irish by 7
Exeter Chiefs vs La Rochelle: Exeter Chiefs by 35
Zebre vs Gloucester Rugby: Gloucester by 18
Oyonnax vs Brive: Oyonnax by 12
Bayonne vs Connacht: Connacht by 3
London Welsh vs Edinburgh: London Welsh by 2
Photo by: Patrick Khachfe / Onside Images
I hope your tip for London Irish to win is as good as last weeks was! :-)
Seriously think we should have more than enough to win this one. Irish are woeful looking, we’ve got an almost fully fit squad and are starting to craft a bit of rugby.
London Welsh to win? Edinburgh are poor, but they’re not that bad.
I didn’t do the predictions last week! Only saw snippets of the game but Cardiff did look good, so it’s a tough one. Irish might have been woeful last week but they’ve been much better than their results suggest this season – they won at Welford Road, which, no matter how rubbish the Tigers are playing, doesn’t happen if you’ve not got a bit about you as a side. I think they’ll bounce back.
“More than enough”, eh Brighty? Always nice to see hubris justly rewarded. ;-)
Aye, bad loss for The Blues. Anscombe charged down for a try again. Messy. I was getting excited by our unprecedented run of 2 wins on the trot. Back to reality.
It is almost impossible to make predictions without the lineups being released especially in the Challenge as you never know if French teams play with a B, a C or a D team. But thank you for sharing!
I’ve got a hunch Welsh will pick up their first win of the season, too. I hope so, as so far Bath are the only side in any competition to have given them a table point!
Went for Bordeaux, Cardiff, and Edinburgh. What have Lyons got to play for, LI looking very shaky recently imo and just can’t see a LW win, no matter what. No doubt I’ll be wrong on all three!
Well so much for Bordeaux and Cardiff! Looks like I’ve doomed Edinburgh as well!
Well my predictions have been woeful however this well they are similar to yours Jamie so hopefully more luck.I do however question how many teams take this seriously.I put in same category ad the Europa cup in soccer!