Six Nations Rugby: Jim Telfer could be crazy to call the Welsh lazy

Of all the hoary old clichés that had their annual, eve of Six Nations and Calcutta Cup airing this week, Jim Telfer's claim that Welsh players are lazy was the most laughably wide of the mark.

The English were damned, too, by Telfer's scattergun.

So they are cocky after the hiding they gave New Zealand last time out? What a shock!

That victory deserved to be celebrated to the rafters.

But the Welsh being lazy?

If that view was ever valid - and Telfer does have a wealth of personal experience to call on from his illustrious international coaching career - then it is ludicrously outdated.

Miserably out of form on the field, yes. But lazy? As if.

Their training regime of recent years, which has variously involved five fitness sessions per day in spartan conditions at boot camps in Poland, has quickly become the stuff of legend.

And then there is the case of Jamie Roberts, the Wales centre and British & Irish Lions certainty, who presumably counts as one of those "very good rugby players" Telfer accepts Wales do produce.

As well as being a full-time professional rugby union player, Roberts is studying to be a doctor. The next seven weeks of Six Nations rugby coincide with his finals.

During said boots camps, the powerful centre has probably been sat in a cryotherapy chamber with his nose in a pile of medical journals. Seems like he has probably been a bit too busy to be lazy.

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