Men's Six Nations, 2024, Week 3

The middle weekend, and this time the weekend when all the home nations play each other, leaving those pesky foreigners to play. A nice bit of xenophobia in the scheduling put the two home nations matches on the same day and left France v Italy to the Sunday.

Match Reports

Ireland v Wales

There is no doubt that Ireland are the class team of this tournament, and they’re going to win at a canter unless there’s a huge upset. Wales, by contrast, are not really in rebuilding so much as building phase. Loads of their players are on fewer than 10 caps. Some on less than 10 senior appearances!

Last week, I suggested that it would be a success for Wales if they kept Ireland from scoring a bonus point try, scored some nice tries of their own and kept their penalty count under five. Sadly none of those came to pass. However, Ireland’s bonus point try came with the clock turned red, Wales mounted a number of good attacks, and although they got pinged off the park in the first few minutes, they adjusted well to the referee in the end, a total of 12 penalties when you’ve given up 8 in the first ten minutes is pretty decent.

For the first time this year, we saw Ireland look rattled. Only for about 15 minutes out of the 80, but they looked really ordinary. And while Ireland were absolutely good value for their tries, if you’re Irish you will say unlucky not to score a fifth, Wales massively dented the Irish attack, the first time we’ve really seen that.

Wales put in another “game of two halves” performance. In the first half they barely spent a minute out of their own half, and if they had the ball, they gave up a penalty at the breakdown to Ireland. In the second half they scored a penalty try, went close twice more, playing some lovely phase play, and really rattled the Irish.

I want Wales to win, of course I do, but this year was always going to tough. But we’re still seeing improvement, week to week, and there’s that hope that we’ll see victories next year.

Although Ireland cantered out to what looks like a comfortable win in the record books, and they were absolutely good for their win, I think you can argue that fourth try bonus point flattered them a little. When you look at Ireland running in five against France, six against Italy, working hard to score a fourth against this very young Welsh side says something about what Gatland is doing. The attack still needs work, but we know the Irish defence is world class and they stretched them. Ireland are just better than Wales right now, but I still wonder how they’ll do against South Africa.

Scotland v England

What a contrast this was to the earlier game.

The overwhelming impression has to be chaos. England are aiming to change to run a blitz defence, and have imported the coach that ran it for the Bokke to teach them how. You could see it working, sometimes, when Scottish players would suddenly jink back inside because their pass was cut off, or pressure from a blitzing defender caused a handling error. However, it failed too often, and players created space, got the ball outside, kicked over it or jinked inside and then stormed through an empty area for large gains, with support flooding through. Adding to the impression of chaos, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a game with as many charged down kicks as we saw in this game.

England’s handling in attack was equally suspect, there was a knock on that led to a VDM try that came because Furbank was trying to catch a pass behind his head. Ollie Lawrence threw a lovely pass to a winger in a wide channel, sadly he was well inside the 15m line. Those are the most egregious I remember but there were plenty of others. That helped add to the sense of chaos. Furbank hardly gets any game time, Lawrence is both returning from injury and playing out of his club position. I’m not particularly blaming them, just highlighting the sort of sloppy skills we saw.

The headline might be van der Merwe’s hat trick, but for his first two tries Scotland took turnover ball and made a total of three passes then watched him run it in. The third had hardly any more touches on the ball, and VDM literally didn’t break stride as he ran on to a kick from Russell and ran in to the corner.

England have papered over the cracks with their victories over Italy and Wales, where they eventually came from behind thanks to old heads on the bench, but a somewhat better Scotland exposed them for all to see.

France v Italy

If I’d pre-written this, I’d be talking about France’s return to glorious rugby. If I’d started when Danty's card got upgraded to red, I’d be talking about all the chances France blew in the first half, and how it was going to come back to bite them. If I’d been writing just as the clock went red, I’d have started to write about Garbisi's kick for Italy’s first victory over France in France in the 6N. But the ball fell off the tee, he reset it, with only eight seconds to take the kick, and the ball bounced off the post.

And really that sums up the match. In the first half France basically camped in the Italian 22, but only came away with 10 points. A little bit of that was good, at times great, Italian defence but much more was disjointed French attack. The forwards really carried the team, but the Italian forwards were up for defending in close. As soon as they tried to go wide, it all fell apart.

I’m softly critical of the Welsh attack, there are problems, but I’m soft in my criticism because basically the team is still getting to know each other. Building an attack takes time and understanding, and they’re still building that. (See my comments about Furbank and Lawrence above.) But France? Essentially this is the same French team that went to the World Cup, Lucu was there and played when Dupont was injured, so they’re used to playing with him, but it just doesn’t show. This particular team had a different wing because LBB was injured, but that hardy affects how the backline plays overall. Some of that disjointed feel is form. Lucu and Danty have been out of form (Lucu more questionably, but covered up by UBB having Penaud and LBB on the wings scoring tries for fun) but Galthié has stuck with them and they haven’t come good for him. Some is more than that.

There is a lot being said in the anglophone press about the French imploding after their World Cup exit and missing Dupont. I’m not saying those aren’t factors, but no one is talking about the massive rejiggle in the coaching staff. I don’t know how to assess the balance of these factors but we have watched the Top 14 and most of the players in Bleu are playing well for their clubs. (I’ve mentioned the exceptions.) We know they can produce for their country. Why aren’t they?

Circumstances will force Galthié to change Jalibert and Danty. I hope he changes Lucu as well. Having said that, the loss of Danty to a card and Jalibert to an injury, and the reshuffle in the French backs certainly won’t have helped the backs looked more fluent. But it wasn’t there before those incidents.

Having talked about France, I want to commiserate with Italy. They were denied a historic win by the ball falling off the tee, then the width of the post was all that stopped them. Italy are still missing some key ball carriers due to injury as well. In years gone by they would have been broken at some point. I think some of that is a genuine improvement in their defence, but remembering their match against Ireland, their defence is not super-solid yet. But it was solid enough. Their attack is still limited. But the days of “they’re showing promise” have turned to “they’re starting to deliver on their promise.” They might still be the weakest side at the moment but imagining them improving under Quesada is not a pipe dream.

Happy Coaches

Townsend will be delighted I’m sure. Beating England used to be the impossible dream for Scotland. Four in a row, and although it could have been more comfortable, it was a good win, denied them a bonus point, and showed Scotland were better on both sides of the ball.

Farrell will be relieved rather than happy to have eked out a bonus point win. But eke it out they did. His press conference said “he wanted more against a bloody tough Wales” and I think that’s a fair comment from the match I watched. Wales shut them down for long, long stretches.

Quesada will be disappointed not to have come away with the win, but overall happy to have got close enough to had a chance and to have come away feeling like he’s kissed his cousin.

Gatland will be on the positive side I think. I don’t know what targets they set internally, but I suspect they’ll have been close to what I laid out. Disappointed to have missed them, but he has publicly announced he’s looking for week-on-week improvements, and I think that was clearly there.

Borthwick not happy at all. The cracks are no longer papered over. He has to seriously consider whether he’s on the right track, because it sure doesn’t look like it.

Galthié even less happy. This was meant to be France refinding their mojo, putting together an 80-minute attack and restoring the French public’s love for their team. Fail, fail, fail. Some deep thinking to do and some real problems.

Looking Ahead

Next week is the second rest week of the Six Nations. This will be the last time we have this symmetrical format.

In a fortnight we have the following matches:

Italy v Scotland

It’s hard to see Italy coping with Scotland, particularly buoyed by beating the English again. Tuipulotu hobbled off and it looked bad, but his replacement, whose name eludes me, looked good.

England v Ireland

The English defence, at the most charitable, is trying to learn how to be what the Springbok defence last year was. There’s a quote from one of the core Bokkes, Am I think, saying it took them 25 tests to get to the point it was right. England will be playing their fourth game with the new system. While I’m not sure that this Ireland are as good as the Ireland of last autumn, I’m not sure they’re that far off. And this is the only side that beat South Africa in the World Cup last year. Yes, we can talk about close decisions in their defeat of France, the red card and the extra man in their defeat of New Zealand, but Ireland still beat the fully bedded in defensive system. I can’t see Ireland losing this.

Wales v France

I don’t know how to call this one. If France perform like they did on Sunday, Wales - I can’t believe I’m going to write this - don’t have to play at the best we’ve seen this year to win. The side that scored 26 unanswered points against Scotland in the second half, will beat that France. But, we know it won’t be that France. Who knows what team Galthié will pick? Even if he makes the smallest changes possible, 10 and 12 only, the team will play somewhat differently. Will it be good enough? 🤷‍♀️

A month ago I was hoping Wales had improved enough this wasn’t embarrassing. Now I’m hoping it’s a win, but any result is possible.