Who has the fittest team in the 6N?

Trojan

Interested to see thoughts on this - who do you think has the fittest team in the 6N?

pickarooney

Wales' ability to put in hundreds of tackles and still be running the length of the pitch at 80 minutes gets them my vote.

turnikett1

In fairness the Ireland squad is full of rides

chupacabra

turnikett1 wrote: »

In fairness the Ireland squad is full of rides

*blocks your path*

stephen_n

Which use of the word fittest are we going by here? Rob Kearney fit or a bleep test?


It’s hard to gauge fitness, because defence is more energy sapping than attack, so teams that defend a lot need to be fitter. The French wouldn’t be particularly fit but they did pretty good defending against us. I’d say overall it would be between us and the Welsh though.

.ak

I'd have to say Wales based on the fact they've purposefully worked on conditioning to help them attack the final 10 minutes of a game. Looked evident against us when our pack were struggling to corner flag with them.

Trojan

stephen_n wrote: »

Which use of the word fittest are we going by here? Rob Kearney fit or a bleep test?

Perception of fitness. When starting this thread, I was wondering which team most Irish rugby fans *think* is the fittest.

I think there's probably some natural bias for everyone to think that their team is the fittest. Then there's the stories from folks who've worked in France on Top14 fitness - or lack thereof - and recently I've heard a few different sources talking about how Gatland always has his teams at the top end of the scale.

I think Wales do. Sometimes they don't have the best quality but they never stop. Not sure there'd be much between ourselves, Scotland and England.

pickarooney

French players only aim to get proper fit by about April. Up until that they work on strength mainly.