This year’s Six Nations is no mere warm-up for the Rugby World Cup
It would be good if coaches and journalists took a vow not to utter the words “World Cup” till March 17th, the day after the last matches in the Six Nations. To suggest, as people who should know better often do, that the Six Nations should be regarded as a trial or preparation for the World Cup in Japan this autumn is as stupid as it is boring. The Six Nations tournament has history on its side, and for dyed–in–the–wool rugby people it’s the high spot of the sporting year. In comparison the RWC is a parvenu. Moreover, there are no soft and precious few one-sided matches in the Six Nations, which certainly isn’t the case with the World Cup. Italy may struggle to record wins, but they compete very hard. At Twickenham two years ago, they made England look very silly for fifty minutes.
The Six Nations is always hard to win. Favourites often come unstuck. There is only one certainty: it’s very difficult to win away from home. Last season only Ireland did so, and, accordingly, won a Grand Slam. But they were within seconds of losing their first match in Paris, rescued only by Johnny Sexton’s drop goal in the 82nd or 83rd minute. Any knock-on in the build-up would have ended the match.
Six Nations means five matches each and this means that in alternate years a country will have three home games and two away, two home and three away. This year England, Scotland and Italy are the lucky ones at home three times. This sounds fine, but the catch is that even impartial observers may reckon that the two best teams in the tournament are Ireland and Wales. They will meet in Cardiff at 2.45 on March 16. This might be the Championship decider, even a Grand Slam decider; it might be neither of these things. In many years when they have three matches at Twickenham England might be confident of winning the title. The trouble for them this season is that two of these games come in rounds 4 (v Italy) and 5 (v Scotland), by which time any chance of the title may have gone, for they start in Dublin and go to Cardiff in round 3. They will be a very good team indeed if they win both these matches.
Ireland will be happy to have England first. This may seem surprising for everybody agrees on the importance of winning your opening match and getting momentum. So, you might think they would want a supposedly softer opponent. However, Ireland have a settled squad and a strategy and tactics with which everybody seems to be comfortable. England have neither, though they may develop both in the course of the tournament. So Ireland may judge that if the calendar was different and England came to Dublin with a couple of victories in the bag, they would then be a tougher proposition than they are likely to be this weekend. Perhaps, perhaps. At present however, Ireland have the habit of winning; England don’t, not quite.
One way of assessing the respective strength of teams is to ask how many of one would get into the other. For a Scot like me this has often been depressing, because, trying to be dispassionate and set bias aside, one has arrived at the conclusion that perhaps only a couple might be preferred to their opposite numbers. Some English fans, steely enough to look reality in the face, might judge that no more than three or four of their players would be picked for a composite team. Even some of their brightest stars might fail to dislodge their immediate opponent, Owen Farrell not supplanting Johnny Sexton, even Billy Vunipola losing out against C J Stander. Likewise, it is difficult to see any department of the game where England are evidently better than Ireland.
None of this means England will lose. For one thing, Eddie Jones’s England teams are puzzling. There have been moments when they looked very good – against New Zealand in November for instance; they were unlucky to lose that match. In the first two Tests against South Africa in the summer, they played brilliantly for a quarter of an hour or twenty minutes, going well ahead on the scoreboard – and then lost both matches. One has the impression that they are not very good at thinking for themselves –but also that there is no plan they know how to stick to. This is in marked contrast to Ireland. Ireland know just what they are intended to do, and how to do it. One wonders only how they would perform if the plan wasn’t working. Even so they have rare individual talent in their backline; Garry Ringrose is a wonderfully creative centre, Keith Earls and Jacob Stockdale prolific try-scorers.
What of Wales, in what will be Warren Gatland’s last Six Nations season? They are likely to play marginally more ambitious rugby with Gareth Anscombe at 10 instead of Dan Biggar, but the strength of the Welsh team remains its well-organized defence and the leadership of Alun Wyn Jones. They have only two home matches this year, but since they are against England and Ireland, they may reasonably reckon that they have a better chance of the title than in the even years when they go to Twickenham and Dublin. On the other hand, kicking off in Paris tonight might mean that they go to Rome next week without a victory and lower in confidence.
For the first time in years a French coach – Jacques Brunel now – has picked a team that promises excitement. True, the pack is as much of a power-house as ever, and may lack something in the back row, but, at long last, there is a three-quarter line which looks like a throw-back to some of the great French back divisions of the Past. The centre partnership of the brilliant but too often injured Wesley Fofana and the 19 year-old Romain Ntamack, son of the great Emile, has one thinking fondly of past glories. Moreover, the club half-back partnership of Morgan Parra and Camille Lopez offers an authority not often evident in recent years. Parra has of course suffered injuries. All the same it’s extraordinary that this will be his first Six Nations match since 2015.
Nothing would be better for us all – well, for the tournament anyway – than to see a return of the famous “French flair”, sadly missing for most of the years since France deserted the splendidly atmospheric Parc des Princes and moved to the ghastly and soulless Stade de France. If it’s not a miserable cold wet night in Paris I expect France to win – though admittedly that expectation is rooted in hope.
Scotland kick off at Murrayfield against Italy which in theory is the best start they could hope for. But Italy almost always play better against Scotland than against anyone else, for the good reason that they believe they can beat the Scots as they did in their very first Six Nations match at the delightful Stade Flaminio in 2000, on a day when Scotland had gone there as the last winners of the old Five Nations title.
And Italy have indeed beaten Scotland several times, winning at Murrayfield, as well as in Rome. Still Scotland’s recent home record is good: unbeaten in the Six Nations since 2016, and pretty successful in the Autumn internationals too. Their coach, Gregor Townsend, played fly-half that day in 2000. He will be taking nothing for granted. Italy, now coached by the former Ireland full-back Conor O’Shea are playing a more expansive game than they used to. So, weather permitting, this will be an exciting match between two teams that want to run the ball and mostly eschew the Western Front tactics which can make even close matches like the Munster-Exeter clash two weeks ago a bore for the uncommitted spectator.
Finally let us hope that referees deal firmly from the start not only with high tackles but with illegal and dangerous taking-out at the breakdown, and that they have the self-belief to trust their own judgement –as amateur referees do in club rugby every week – and don’t refer everything to the TMO. On a different tack, it would be a good thing in these days of blanket defence and apparently endless re-cycling of the ball if players, especially of course the fly-halves, remembered that it is still permissible to drop a goal.