A wrap-up of round 4 of the 2013 Six Nations (just one more round to go!):

Wales 28, Scotland 18: In round 3, Scotland beat Ireland with a very simple strategy: trying to actually hold onto the ball as little as possible. Scotland is not very good at gaining ground by carrying the ball, so they just punt it back to the other team as often as possible. Surprisingly, this leads to a fair number of penalty attempts for the Scots. Despite not coming anywhere near scoring a try since round 2, Scotland got one win and darn near had another in this round.

This match set a record for the number of penalties (field goals, for we Americans) attempted, with 18 between the teams. Wales made seven. Scotland made six. This was as boring as it sounded.

England 18, Italy 11: This match was played in England. It was kind of cold. England played badly, only scraping by a bad Italian team. The fans were silent throughout, except to boo at the end, and every time the camera cut to the crowd, it showed either A) Italians dressed up in ironic, stereotypically Italian costumes (think Chef Boyardee, or a politician paying to visit a prostitute), or B) English people looking in every way entirely miserable.

Nevertheless, those two results did set up an England-Wales championship match next week, though Wales would need to win by 15 to clinch the title.

Ireland 13, France 13 – France finally didn’t lose. Ireland still have played exactly one good half in the entire competition. Both appear to want this tournament over as fast as possible.