Women's Six Nations, Week Four

We’ve really got the tone of this year's championship sorted out. Ireland are woeful, Wales, Scotland and Italy (probably in that order, but still tbd) are clearly improved from last year but 12+ months of professionalism is not enough to catch up with 5+ years. France and England (order also tbd but that’s my guess) are still the dominant forces in the NH. Really, before they started, only one match this weekend mattered, Scotland v Italy, but France v Wales will also show a bit more about Welsh progress and resilience - how will they bounce back after the disappointment of the last 60 minutes of last week?

Match Reports

Ireland v England

When England scored after two minutes I was amusing myself working out what the projected final score was if they kept that rate up (135-0 if you’re interested). Obviously that’s unreasonable, but 27-0 at halftime was based off a pretty poor England performance. Conversions were one from five. Penalty kicks for touch were missed - that s on kicks is not a mistake. Those errors are purely on England. There were a number of missed passes, some of those were purely on England too - totally unforced errors - passes you’d expect this England side to make but they went astray. England also knocked the ball on incredibly often. It’s hard to judge how much of that is poor English play, how much good Irish play… the English were so off form, and the Irish mixing between good tackles and then really struggling so quickly it’s hard to judge. Some were, almost certainly, good Irish defence, but others were, equally certainly, just bad English ball retention. When’s the last time you could say that?

The Irish scrum worked well, at least until the front row replacements came on. Again. That really is an issue for them. The Irish defence seemed to work better, statistically, but I think that’s because the English attack was stuttering and didn’t ask it hard questions as often. For example, it took until the 70th minute for England to score in the second half, but that wasn’t really superior Irish defence, certainly not consistently, it was just bad English play. The Irish lineout was terrible and their attack was laborious at best. There was a point where the 10 ran a line and was going to pass back inside, but inside runner was so late the English defence reorganised and she ran into a pod of three instead of a gap. Instant turnover.

I’m writing this before I’ve seen the French match, but if England play like this next week, and France play as well as they did last week, Grand Slam France. [I’m doing final edits on Monday before posting it. I’ll stand by that. England can improve of course, but Les Bleues of the first 20 minutes will tear this England apart.]

Scotland v Italy

If you could, and I will, loosely characterise Ireland v England as one side unable to play and one side just not turning up for large parts of the game, this match rarely came alive but that seemed to be more because the two teams were pretty evenly matched and cancelled each other out, or forced errors. There were moments - D'Inca somehow kicked a ball that had been jabbed through before it went into touch and chased it; heartbreakingly it bounced low and she couldn’t collect it to score what would have been a great try.

Scotland will be happy that, unlike in their first three matches really, when they got into the Italian 22 they were able to sustain the pressure and score points. Italy will rue the creakiness of their lineouts and their inability to keep hold of the ball.

While I don’t think it changed the overall result of the match, especially after the red card, there’s a TMO decision that really needs to be taken out and shot. It’s not as bad as the “diving on the player” decision against Exeter last week but if the TMO is going to claim it’s late and taking the player and the kicked ball is still in frame when there’s contact and the charging player is aimed straight at the kicking foot, we’ve got problems. The red card, honestly, I have a problem with too. From the only angle we see, it looks ok, but I’ve seen enough other, similar looking tackles, mitigated down to yellow for hitting the ball/chest first if we see them from the side. We weren’t shown that and when I’m already questioning the TMO's judgement I’m wondering why?

France v Wales

I suggested that the only way that Wales stood a chance in this game was f they scored first and smashed the French out of their game plan, a bit like they had against the English but even moreso. So when France kick off and and the kick receiver knocks on, France score a try from the scrum you know it’s going to be a long day. When the next “touch” by Wales is actually to let the ball bounce and it jinks off into touch letting France gain huge territory that’s another nail in the coffin. Wales win that lineout, but 10 kicks directly into touch… Wales lose more territory. Ugh.

In fairness, after a start where France started at an insane rate, Wales started to exert some control, retain a bit of possession, and apply pressure to the French. Enough? No, the French defence was magnificent and always stopped it eventually, at least in the first half, but it was made to work. But just as it was last week, the French counterattack was fast and lethal. The Welsh defence has been good, at least against that next tier down, but the French were too fast, had too many players in support, so even though the Welsh scramble defence was often better than the Irish and got to the first and even second ball carrier, the third, fourth and fifth were always lined up… however, it was noticeable that, after that first 15 minutes or so, the Welsh defence made the French phase attack work for their metres. Sometimes the French were successful still, but often they were stopped.

In the second half the weather changed, it started raining and Wales played with the wind behind them, at least until the last five minutes. This really slowed down the French attack but also suited the Welsh too. You hear about going out and “winning the second half” well Wales did that 14-10, and that’s only the second time ever they’ve scored more than 7 in France.

Wales performed well for, actually quite long chunks of this game defensively, and in the second half in attack too. France were definitively the better side, let’s not pretend otherwise. They played some really attractive rugby. But after the first 15-20 minutes Wales started to make them work and grew into the game. I’ve commented on the progress Wales have made since last year, this feels like progress since last week.

Happy Coaches

• Cunningham, Mignot and Ortiz. Wales won one half, France won the other. Cunningham will be delighted that Wales didn’t collapse and fought their way back to at first limit the damage then take advantage of the weather in the second half. Mignot and Ortiz will be happy that Les Bleues got to practice their defensive systems in grotty weather. England don’t only attack like that of course, but if the weather in Twickenham is bad next week, they’ve got serious practice minutes under their belt in match conditions. Perhaps it’s no surprise that the best match of the weekend has the happiest two coaches.
• Easson. I thought Italy would win this, but Scotland played really well. You can quibble about the impact of the TMO but the Scots were good on both side of the ball, in the set piece and were pretty efficient about converting entries into the 22 into tries. What’s not to be happy about? I seriously thought about putting him up with the Welsh and French coaches, but beating a 14-woman Italy and knowing that a slightly luckier bounce for D’Inca could have made it a much more uncomfortable match just pulled him down a little.
• Middleton. It was a win. There is very little else to be happy about though. If Italy had stolen a bonus point of two I’d have put him lower.
• Raineri and McWilliams. Honestly for Raineri just one more try, and thus two bonus points, would have made a huge difference to his happiness levels. But, as it is, all the weaknesses will haunt him: lineout, ball retention and, at the end, scrums too. This will hurt because the game was there to win. McWilliams will have expected Ireland to lose but he’ll be disappointed that against an oddly disjointed England his team still didn’t really perform except, possibly, at scrum time for the first 60 minutes and occasionally in the tackle.

Looking Ahead

England v France

France are playing better than England right now. They’ve improved over the tournament where England appear to have gone off the boil. England ought to start favourites, especially at Twickenham, but I honestly think France should go into this with more self-belief and a great chance at winning.

Italy v Wales

If Italy can cure their multiple cases of dropsy and actually protect the ball and build pressure they can win this. However, realistically, Wales are the only side to have genuinely pressured the English attack, and slowed and harried the French attack so far. They’ve bullied all the other attacks with their rush defence and their turnover work (who would have thought that having a fetcher as head coach would make such a difference to how Wales play at the breakdown) and Italy need to improve their retention against this defence - too big an ask. Wales might not score much, but they’ll outscore Italy.

Scotland v Ireland

Ireland have not advanced evenly over this tournament, for me there was no step up from their game in week two, against France to their game in week three (after a rest week as well) against Italy, when you might expect it just because of the rest and, with the greatest of respect to Italy, the lesser quality of opposition. Scotland are going to win, it’s a question of how many they score.