Squad of 23 is selected from the 40 who attended the only training camp a month ago and includes 14 of the 15 who achieved one of the worst results in Swedish rugby history by losing to Gibraltar last week. Conversely, they hailed it as their greatest ever triumph. I noted before that match that four good players were missing and three have now appeared for the Hungary match. They are Philip Murphy, Sami Paulsson and Richard Nunstedt. I assume the 4th is injured/unavailable, but that these three will be in the starting lineup. This will strengthen the team somewhat but half a dozen obvious names are still missing. The two best Swedish teams, who won their games by wide margins last Saturday, are still ridiculously underrepresented.
Hungary are a team of journeymen who have done well to stay in Conference 1 for the second year running. They were unlucky to lose last week against Luxemburg and will remember that they came close to beating Sweden in Norrköping 18 months ago. They are a considerably better team than Gibraltar.
I hope the Swedish team wins this weekend, it is not their fault that other, better, players are ignored.