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Andrew Cotter

Parks in a no-win situation (14)

Sportsmen, when being interviewed, fall into three categories.

Firstly there are those who simply have a normal conversation with you, listen to your questions and give an honest and usually entertaining answer. These are dream interviews and rare indeed.

There are also, unfortunately, those who are so wary of saying the wrong thing that they simply decide to let their brains diappear out the door, Homer Simpson style, and conduct the interview in a semi-catatonic state - bland, pointless utterances and a blank, vacant, deadness behind their soulless eyes. There are quite a few of them about.

But there is a third category - those whose facial expressions and body language betrays their true feelings, no matter how much they try and toe the party-line.

I give you Dan Parks.

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Ryan Jones

Jones the Pundit calls the Cup (11)

Swansea - The game on Sunday will be vital and the nervous excitement that the boys have built up in the past weeks will all come out.

We'll be out to hit the ground running and really make a statement to the rest to show that we are not to be underestimated in this competition.

I'm confident that the matches with Canada, and will see three convincing Welsh victories. I'd also defy anyone who thinks that we cannot beat the at home.

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Bryn Palmer

Picture row mars Cup opening (20)

Paris - It was all smiles on Thursday night as Bernard Lapasset, the president of the French Rugby Federation, Bernard Delanoe, the mayor of Paris, and Syd Millar, the chairman of the International Rugby Board, flicked the ceremonial switch on this sixth Rugby World Cup.

Their stage-managed act, captured live on French television, illuminated a giant rugby ball, suspended between the lower columns of the .

The official World Cup logo was also lit up, while the steel frames of Gustave’s iconic 324m-high creation also dazzled onlookers with a shimmering array of lights.

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Tom Fordyce

Not so mighty oaks (53)

Rambouillet, near Chartres, in the rain, Friday - A new morning, a new campsite – and a new way to be woken up before any normal human wants to be unsnoozed.

Yesterday, it was a rabid dog attacking the campervan next door; two days ago, the freezing dawn air whistling round the van after someone – let’s call him Den Birs – left the windows open and the electricity off.

Today? Today it was the sound of unspecified lumps of something falling out of the trees above us and crashing onto the roof of the van.

Donk. Donk. Donk. CRASH. Donk. Donk.

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