So the Six Nations is over for another year. This year’s competition has been remarkable, with many superb games on view not least the final match last night in which France beat England 48:46 with the last kick of the game, a penalty taken by Thomas Ramos. I recall a similar ending two years ago, when Ramos kicked France to a 31:30 victory. That victory gave France the Championship. Congratulations to them for winning a cracking tournament.
At the start of the competition the talk was of a French Grand Slam, but that dream was ended in comprehensive fashion by Scotland’s victory over them last week. Scotland visited Lansdowne Road in Dublin yesterday for the afternoon game and must have been high in confidence but were outplayed. After that match Ireland were top of the table, but would be caught by France if France beat England. Ireland rugby fans found themselves in the unusual position of wanting England to win. England certainly gave it a heck of a good go, playing at a much higher tempo than they had managed in any other match, but fell just short, so Ireland had to settle for second place. The result confirmed the view of many in Ireland that one should never rely on the English.
It was a great game to watch, except for the bizarre choice of team colours. Who decided to allow a team in very pale blue shirts with white shorts and socks to play against a team in white shirts, white shorts and white socks? Watching on TV, it was at times impossible to tell the teams apart!
Anyway, coming second was a good end result for Ireland, considering their heavy defeat by France in the opening match of the tournament. Andy Farrell demonstrated his coaching skills by picking his team up after that, especially huge performances against England at Twickenham and Scotland at Landsdowne Road. Though they did not win the Six Nations, at least they took the Triple Crown.
(The intransitive nature of sport was well illustrated in this competition: France beat Ireland, Scotland beat France and Ireland beat Scotland, etc…)
The other match yesterday was between Wales and Italy. I was happy to see a Wales victory at last, as they had no luck at all in this competition. They were particularly unlucky to lose to Scotland. James Botham dropped a clanger that led to the try that let Scotland back into a game Wales were leading, which was unfortunate, but I think the next and winning try for Scotland should have stood – there was an infringement at the ruck preceding it. Anyway, yesterday they didn’t really need luck: they started out like they meant business and raced to a 21-0 lead at half-time against an Italian side that looked very tired after its efforts last week in beating England. Italy recovered somewhat in the second half, and had chances to really get back into contention, but Wales ran out convincing winners 31-17.
Despite their victory yesterday – their first in three years in the Six Nations – Wales finished last. I am reliably informed that “wooden spoon” in Welsh is “llwy bren”. Still, they did produce the moment of the tournament with Rhys Carré (“The Fastest Prop in the West”) scoring a stunning try against Ireland.
I think many people thought France would win this year, and that Wales would be last, but how many would have predicted that England would finish 5th?
Reflecting on this year’s Championship I realised why I love it so much. Since the Six Nations involves a relatively small number of games – five for each team – there is real jeopardy in each fixture. That makes it different from longer league competitions in which there is more time to recover from a defeat and gives an edge-of-the-seat feeling to many matches. That is even more so when all the teams are strong. It is great for the competition to see Scotland playing as well as they did against France and England and Italy proving themselves much more resilient than in previous seasons. We just need Wales to emerge from the doldrums to make it a genuine six-way contest.
In the Dark 